Four Click Freedom

Wednesday I went to Beijing for the advertising event of the year as it came through China on its last stop.  Everyone was very receptive to the idea of Clickboards.  I handed out seventy five business cards and then just got tired of saying:

Who do you work with? What do they do? Well I’m here today representing Clickboards. Clickboards is a new type of Internet advertising that connects the web to feed to mobile.  The reason it is called Clickboards is because they are like banners but you can click on them more than once (making a clicking motion with my hand) and you can enter information into them like your phone number.  Then without leaving the site you are on, the information is sent to your personal coupon feed.  Then those discounts on the feed can be accessed at the point of purchase with your mobile.  The discount is then verified for the vendor and is erased from your feed.

I told a lot of people I was based in Tianjin and why Tianjin was such a perfect test market for the fact that most retailers have no register or computer in the stores and that I was at a point where I just need to start spending money to get it started.  Most people were a little shocked I was from Tianjin.

So…………………. I met a lot of great people from really cool companies. I guess the conclusion is that I am successfully beginning to brand the term Clickboards and I’m still number one when you Google Clickboards.

I did get to thinking if some of these guys wanted to start this in more developed markets, and I tend to believe that having oversimplified Clickboards to get to this point, that it wouldn’t work.  So I am in the clear as far as broadcasting my message.

Next post is about Smart Kiosks and how they are already being installed, and in the beginning of creating Clickboards this was part of the conclusion to the future development of Clickboards.  So now how do I leap frog?

http://www.google.com/adwords/gadgetads/

This is starting to really get somewhere.  The interactivity is what it is all about.  The actions on the ad can be tracked.  However there is no user input.  I’m sure this will eventually be incorporated.  Another down play is that you still need to be directed to a third party website in the end for various options.  I know that is most advertisers point, but in the end it is unnecessary and is a draw back.

I want Clickboards to be much like the Google Gadget Ads and I think if I want to start I should probably just create them and become a client of Google and just use them the way I want to.  It’s not hard with this format to promote discounts and relay enough information to promise the user that when they disclose some information about the product they like that the next time they go to the store to purchase the advertised item, the discount will be waiting there for them.

What else can you call it but a Clickboard.  It is what it is.  A Clickcard is what it is.  You don’t have to protect them you just have to use them.  I predict many people will create ‘Clickcards’ and ‘Clickboards’ to connect them to their own sites.  But that really defeats universiality.  There will be competition but there will be a winner.  If you use your card all the time and it doesn’t give you savings and discounts and promotions you will eventually use the one that works.  The one that works is the one that is going to be most intrinsic.  But all in all the terms are the only thing that will be completely universal.  Everyone will refer to whatever you are offering with these two terms.

When you think about advertising, you probably think that all the power lies in the hands of the advertisers.  These days when someone wants to advertise they can do a fundamental narrowing down of demographics and pay for click through or even purchase by the customer.

So what power was given to the customers?  Customers using the Internet can usually, in theory, be narrowed down by what they are looking at.  But is this really true? No.  If you want to target someone, you have to give the choice to them to tell you what they are interested in, not based by what site they are on or what keyword they searched for.

When most marketers market, their basic intentions are good and seem to be sound.  Whatever I’m looking at, well that must mean I’m interested in things related to that.  Or if I am looking at a site about a certain subject I must want to know everything about the subject and therefore all subject matter in this particular category.  But what marketers fail to understand is the relationship between products.  If I am looking at beer, that means I could be interested in a cooler, swimming trunks, sunglasses, and a volleyball.  How are AdWords going to help you here?  I’m not really interested in beer and all the exotic drinks that I could drink on a Saturday afternoon, I’m really interested in where I can go outdoors and get a tan while drinking beer.

So who has the power now?  If the power was given to the customer, then a simple description of what I am doing or planning to do can bring all the clients related to this activity right to my computer.  It doesn’t really matter what I am doing right now, it matters what I am going to do, the bigger picture.