James Cogan

Are barcodes jumping the shark in North America?

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:32:00 -0800

Not quite, but it's getting close.

QR Code Use Jumped 617% From January to December in Top 100 Magazines

A Record 4468 Mobile Action Codes Appeared in Ads and Editorial Pages. QR Code Market Share Reaches 80%.

The monthly count of codes printed in the top 100 magazines grew from 88 in January to 631 in December.

Advertisers contributed heavily to the growth. The monthly percentage of codes from advertising increased from 87% in January to 96% in Q4.

The average number of codes per issue grew – from 2.33 in Q1 to 6.50 in Q4.

QR market share increased from 66% in January to 80% in December.

Almost all codes in Q4 led to product demonstrations, branding videos, sweepstakes, e-commerce and/or social sharing sites.

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Validation is the crack

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:47:00 -0800

Ben Parr really nails this one. Any consumer-focused product or service needs to keep this in mind.

Why do you post photos on Facebook? Why do you tweet? Why do you check out your Klout score, even though you claim you never check it? The answer is simple: we get an emotional high every time somebody likes, retweets or comments on the things we post.

We always want another hit. Validation is the crack, Internet is the crack pipe and Facebook & Twitter are the dealers.

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How many does it take to play guitar? Five.

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:26:00 -0800

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Social shower?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:18:00 -0800

£14.99

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Online Video Ad Spend To Grow 40%

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:57:25 -0800

A text-centric medium no longer.

After a robust 2011, online video advertising should enjoy yet another year of rapid growth. eMarketer said online video ad spending should jump 40% this year to reach $3.1 billion. That’s after a 52% rise in 2011, and the boost will continue to be powered by pre-roll ads. - MediaPost

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My Best Sports Moment of 2011

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 05:44:00 -0800

124 years of Arsenal football, and we had never won a game against Barcelona. On February 16, 2011, I had a feeling it was going to be our night. With the family gathered round and only 12 minutes remaining down 1-0 it was not looking good. That's when the magic happened...

First came the equalizer...

Van_Persie_Equalizer_CL_Barca.mp4 Watch on Posterous

Then came the winner less than 5 minutes later...

Arshavin_CL_winner_Barca.mp4 Watch on Posterous

My house sounded something like this...

My favourite sports moment of 2011 by a country mile and probably for a few years to come.

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Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:06:00 -0800

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My Worst Sports Moment of 2011

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 06:53:00 -0800

I put this question to Twitter and it didn't take long before someone nailed mine.

@jamescogan Worst by far: Canucks losing the Cup. That'll be the worst for a long time to come.
— Adrian Crook (@adriancrook) December 23, 2011

I was at the Garden for Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, my first ever Stanley Cup game.

I'm at TD Garden (100 Legends Hwy, Causeway St, Boston) w/ 110 others http://4sq.com/ixGWKJ
— James Cogan (@jamescogan) June 7, 2011

Super fun trip, great company, brutal result. 8-1 Boston, and the beginning of the end for the Canucks dream season. Ouch! Definitely qualified as my lowest sporting moment of 2011.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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What is a camera?

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:27:00 -0800

The best camera is the one you have on you when you need one...

"...smartphones accounted for 27 percent of photos shot this year - last year, the number was 17 percent. Accordingly, photos shot with dedicated cameras dropped from 52 to 44 percent."

via How Smartphones Are Changing Photography: The Numbers Are In

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Is Super Bowl Live Streaming a Touchdown, Field Goal or Just an Extra Point?

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:36:00 -0800

One of the primary reasons the NFL and its broadcasting partners have resisted making an online live stream available for the biggest game of the year is viewer cannibalization. However, with big events like the Olympics and March Madness having tested the live stream waters successfully, the NFL and NBC are ready to kick the Super Bowl to the web.

Canadians will be left out of the online party this time, but it won't be long before that changes. Americans will be able to view two different streams, one with the much-hyped TV ads, and a different stream with ads targeted for the live stream only. While International viewers will be blocked, nobody in US will require a cable account to access the live stream on the web, while Verizon customers will also be granted access on their iOS or Android mobile device.

Of course the one thing everybody will want to know, is how many people will actually watch the game online vs. watching it on that massive flat-panel television you got for the holidays? Time will tell, but I would be surprised if this offering didn't serve to both expand the audience and provide a pot-pourri of insightful analytics.

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100,000 Toothpicks

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:30:00 -0800

"Scott Weaver's amazing piece, made with over 100,000 toothpicks over the course of 35 years, is a depiction of San Francisco, with multiple ball runs that allow you to go on "tours" of different parts of the city."

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Korean Air TV commercial ~ Mongolia

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:33:00 -0800

Beautiful and clever, no airplane in this ad.

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RG3

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:08:00 -0800

Note to self; make sure you draft Robert Griffin III on your fantasy football team in 2012. Anyone who wears these socks to a Heisman Trophy ceremony (and wins) belongs on my team.

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Steve Jobs' Speech from 1980

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 07:51:00 -0800

Quite possibly my favourite Steve Jobs video. Perhaps only his Stanford speech stands above it. The word visionary gets tossed around lightly these days but there is no denying Jobs' as the genuine article. He gave this speech 4 years before the first Macintosh computer was even launched, yet so much of what he talks about still applies to the modern Apple of today. At a time when computing power was doubling exponentially every year, IBM was intently focused on harnessing that power to broaden the computer's functionality. In contrast, Jobs was primarily interested in using that power to make the computer easier to use. Think different, indeed.

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Canopy + Connection

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:59:00 -0800

I love this video because it serves as a great metaphor for the evolution of the web. As we navigate through the world both online and in physical space, we are now enveloped by an ever-present always-on canopy of internet connectivity. As we move through these real and virtual worlds, we are creating tendrils of attraction and connections to this web canopy with every barcode scan, tweet, photo share, Facebook like, check-in etc.. Our movements and interactions are constantly changing our relationship and experience with the canopy, and in turn it is influencing us.

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Bubble bubble toil and trouble?

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 04:33:00 -0800

Yelp is readying a $100M IPO that follows Groupon's similar offering. What do these two companies have in common? No profits.

When multiple unprofitable companies are given access to this kind of liquidity, largely by slicing off a small portion of the equity and dividing it up among thousands of overeager investors, I can’t help but conclude that we’re back in a tech-stock bubble.

via MarketWatch

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"Advertisers are Schizophrenic" when it comes to online video

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:04:00 -0800

Whether online video has asset value (premium, high production value, offline content) or not (UGC, viral etc.), advertisers/brands are still feeling their way through this emerging medium and marketplace. Advertisers want to be wherever the views are, but do so with some perceived risk and trepidation. At the end of the day, if the video is getting views, it has value.

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Urban street skiing?

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:20:00 -0800

Don't try this at home.

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Scan, Browse, Shop

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 13:42:00 -0800

Black Friday was a prelude to the Christmas shopping season, and by all accounts this holiday season is going to be a watershed coming-out-party for mobile shopping...

"GSI Commerce, a division of eBay that hosts commerce-related websites for several large retailers says that it saw a 345 percent increase in US mobile sales compared to last year's Black Friday... In addition, PayPal saw a year-over-year 350 percent increase in the number of customers shopping through PayPal mobile."

James Cogan

Are barcodes jumping the shark in North America?

Validation is the crack

How many does it take to play guitar? Five.

Social shower?

Online Video Ad Spend To Grow 40%

My Best Sports Moment of 2011

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse

My Worst Sports Moment of 2011

What is a camera?

Is Super Bowl Live Streaming a Touchdown, Field Goal or Just an Extra Point?

100,000 Toothpicks

Korean Air TV commercial ~ Mongolia

RG3

Steve Jobs' Speech from 1980

Canopy + Connection

Bubble bubble toil and trouble?

"Advertisers are Schizophrenic" when it comes to online video

Urban street skiing?

Scan, Browse, Shop

Play football? Get a haircut...