The Digital Mindset Blog

HP and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Licensing Agreement Announcement

Eric Kintz — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:24:00 GMT

Busy week…. We just announced that Sony Pictures will license select catalog titles from its home video library for production and distribution via HP’s DVD manufactured-on-demand service – making Sony the first major Hollywood studio to present its home video titles using HP’s service.

The MOD service allows Sony to offer a wider choice of catalog titles to consumers because we can press and ship single discs as they are ordered through affiliated Web sites. Many studios have not released valuable content (classic shows, foreign movies, niche movies, etc) because of the traditional inventory costs. This solution allows them to better monetize their product library.

A billion dollar opportunity according to Video business….

HP to acquire Exstream Software

Eric Kintz — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:05:00 GMT

Phew, what a busy few weeks!! We announced this morning that we were acquiring Exstream Software, a privately-held provider of enterprise software that streamlines the creation and delivery of personalized documents and other communication materials.

This acquisition is a great proof point of our Print 2.0 strategy and positions us as a leader in the fast growing document automation and variable data publishing market. Think about the transformation, which enables users to design, create and distribute highly customized documents intended for an “audience of one,” based on business rules and flexible content such as information about a specific customer or product. Think about documents including rich media (audio, video) published on print, online and mobile platforms.

That’s a mouthful, but a couple of examples in action are: a retailer could run a promotion where customers receive a sales circular that is tailored to them, based on their purchase history and frequency of visits to the store. Or, a financial institution could create and deliver sophisticated statements, reports, and other fully customized one-to-one communications that clarify investment performance, encourage financial planning, and reflect the complete client relationship. And that’s just the beginning….

Craig Le Clair over at Forrester has a great blog post today: “In October of last year, I published "Give DOM its Due" and argued that for years, document output management (DOM) had been pegged as a back-office operation that produces customer statements and bills. And that now, customer experience demands will thrust DOM into a major software category supporting the growing and diverse content that enterprises must assemble and deliver to customers.”

Blogging from my hotel room in Lexington, KY. It’s cold and snowing outside……

In Case you have been living under a Rock – Snapfish at 9 Cents

Eric Kintz — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:21:00 GMT

In late December, we cut Snapfish’s everyday price on 4x6 prints to 9 cents from 12 cents in the US. We continue to offer the best value in photography for our 45 million members! This represents more than 50% savings compared to prices on other photo sharing sites.

Now is the time to print those Holiday pictures…. www.snapfish.com

Predictions 2008 – battle of the giants between Microsoft and Google

Eric Kintz — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:19:00 GMT

Boy my blogging has been really lazy in the last months – it is so easy to lose the rhythm… Anyways make it one of my new year resolutions….

Predictions are always a dangerous game. As Kara Swisher would say, “could we have predicted a tiny start-up with negligible revenues but explosive growth could be valued at $15 billion? Could we have guessed that Apple stock would be up 135%? Could we have foreseen that a devastating writers’ strike in Hollywood would be waged over nonexistent Web revenues?” So this post is less about a prediction, than a growing interest on my part on the battle between Google and Microsoft in 2008.

The software industry is experiencing a dramatic transformation with the growth of an advertising based business model, the shift from the client to cloud computing and (finally) the rise of rich mobile experiences. This transformation will require the type of scale (think 60% market share for Google in US search), capital investments (think $30B in cash for Microsoft) and software talent that only a few players can sustain.

The New York Times had a great story over the holidays: Google believes that 90% of all computing will ultimately reside in the cloud, as connection speeds become faster and internet software improves. The launch of Google Apps (e-mail, instant messaging, calendars, word processing and spreadsheets) is a great illustration of this trend: 2,000 companies are signing up for Google Apps every working day. The battle for universities is very telling too - when Arizona State University, one of the nation’s largest with 65,000 students, decided last year to choose a new e-mail system, it decided to go with Google and saved $500K in the process. I am curious to watch whether Google can truly capture a significant share of consumers and businesses for productivity applications.

But the NYT article does a poor job in my mind highlighting Microsoft’s Windows Live efforts. As Mary Jo Foley indicates on her blog, Windows Live wave 2 has launched with a comprehensive suite of apps (Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery and Family Safety, along with the online Skydrive service), connecting cloud based apps with Vista. Skydrive, for example, is a password-protected online file storage, where you can share files in a private or public environment. Microsoft is also launching a new ad campaign — “Open Up Your Digital Life” — that is designed to highlight how Windows Live services relate to Windows Vista – one the major communication problems Live has had since its inception. And the NYT article does not mention either the massive $6B acquisition of aQuantive, which gives Microsoft access to an end to end ad platform (paid search, display ads, CPA).

It’s still early days – Windows Live wave 2 was just released, Google Apps has 1.6 million users (compared to 500 millions for Office), but the match should be interesting to watch.

What do you think?

Going Wild with Pumpkins thanks to HP and Snapfish

Eric Kintz — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:43:00 GMT

Halloween is right around the corner and HP is bringing you some great ways to teach your kids about the environment. We are jointly promoting with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) a U.S. online pumpkin carving challenge to raise awareness for endangered species.

You can download on the HP Activity Center stencils to help you carve beautiful wildlife-themed jack-o-lanterns: check out the Gorilla or the Tiger (tigers reside in only 7% of their historic range). After carving, you can take photos of completed projects, upload to the Snapfish photo site as well as vote for your favorite photos. Prizes will be awarded to the photos that receive the top 100 overall ratings. Prizes include HP products and WWF panda t-shirts.

The Going Wild with Pumpkins challenge is a part of a significant HP and WWF joint initiative aimed at fighting climate change by reducing HP’s own greenhouse gas emissions, advancing energy-efficient products, leveraging HP technology in global climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and raising awareness of climate change issues and solutions.

"What Do You Have to Say?" with Gwen Stefani

Eric Kintz — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:27:00 GMT

Our new ad campaign featuring Gwen

Mobile Social Marketing – Digital Mindset Goes Mobile

Eric Kintz — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:51:00 GMT

Stephen Miller, who manages the photography mobile team in my organization, had a nice surprise for me: he took my blog mobile! I thought I would give him the opportunity to share his thoughts on mobile social marketing.

-------------------------------------------

As Eric has pointed out, the disproportionately high representation of Japanese language posts in the blogosphere (37% as of the April 2007 Technorati update) can be attributed to mobile micro-blogging. To me, this is an indication of the potential of mobile in social networking once barriers to adoption, such as network speed and ease of use, are adequately addressed.

So how important is mobile for social marketing? In short, very.

John Hadl, whom Brandweek called "the father of mobile marketing" and a top 10 Next Generation Marketer, predicts that in a couple of years mobile phones will be the "premier consumer connection and medium for insights available for marketers."
Julie Ask of Jupiter Research makes the case that mobile has already become a natural and increasingly important complement to social marketing campaigns. She provides a list of seven best practices for marketers to keep in mind when creating mobile social marketing campaigns.
In his keynote at Mplanet 2006, AT&T's COO Randall Stephenson, said that of the three vehicles AT&T has to reach customers in their new Three Screen Initiative (internet/PC, TV, wireless/mobile phone), wireless is the most important.
Wireless Week's Brad Smith suggests mobile advertising may be poised to explode next year.
Tomi Ahonen calculated that in 2006 mobile social networking was already worth $3.45 billion. In Ahonen's view, "if you are not on mobile, you won't be relevant soon."
Mmetric recently reported that 12.3 million consumers in the United States and Western Europe accessed a social networking site with their mobile device in June. And this was prior to the launch of the iPhone.

As a minimum step to stay, as Ahonen put it, "relevant", one might want to consider mobilizing one's blog. Blogs, like other web pages, can be readily accessed via mobile web browsers and text-based rss feed reader applications. However, these can be slow, awkward experiences on a phone.

An alternative is to use services that adapt blogs and other feeds to view on mobile phones. Two such services worth looking at are Kaywa's Feed2Mobile service (in beta) and Winksite. What makes these services interesting is they are examples of mobile web 2.0 mashups, where web content is automatically repurposed for mobile consumption. Such tools make it almost trivial to mobilize one's blog. And they provide nifty mobile hyperlinks to make the mobilized blog easily accessible from camera phones with the right scanner software.

I first learned about Feed2Mobile from this interesting video by Elektrischer Reporter. The service provides a specially adapted version of RSS feeds for viewing on mobile phones. The mobilized feed is browser-based and looks much better on the phone than one would likely experience with a standard text-based reader. Even cooler, though, Feed2Mobile generates a QR code, a mobile hyperlink enabling users to set up the feed on their phone without having to type a URL on the phone's keypad and otherwise navigate the phone's menu system to configure the blog. To use the mobile hyperlink, user's scan the code using their phone's camera. Winksite, like Feed2Mobile, adapts blog feeds for mobile viewing, but also provides a full mobile portal with features such as a guest book, forum, profile, and other social networking tools. In addition to QR Codes, Winksite supports a form of mobile hyperlink called a Shot Code.

For a nice demonstration of mobile hyperlinks used in advertising, watch this DoCoMo ad or this Shot Code demo.

Users who don't have a QR code reader on their phone can still browse to Eric's mobilized blog by entering the URL on the phone, but using the mobile hyperlink is a lot easier, and frankly way cooler. Kaywa's site provides a way to download a QR Code reader if you need one for your phone. You can download a ShotCode reader here.

Videoblogging from NYC – The print 2.0 revolution

Eric Kintz — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:39:00 GMT

I am trying my hand at videoblogging, taking advantage of our “bedroom” at the NYC Print 2.0 event. I am curious to see the viral spread and to see if this adds value to the blogging experience. Let me know what you think.

If you like this video, I would be really happy if you can help spread the love.

Here is the youTube embed code for your blog:

This is part of a really cool program launched by HP – HP Uncut – where ANY employee can videoblog and post the video on the HP Uncut site. The best videos will be syndicated on YouTube. My favorite is this one.

US Tennis Open and Serena Williams

Eric Kintz — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:43:00 GMT

Very cool and sleek Serena ad (and the Times Square ad as a bonus for David)

HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center – Have Fun Creating Personalized Memories

Eric Kintz — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 01:03:00 GMT

Rarely do you have the opportunity to create a new consumer category and reinvent how people preserve their memories and print photos at home. My team did just that with the launch of the HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo center. As Gina Hughes and Zara Rabinowicz highlight it in their reviews, this egg-shaped printer is a real photo studio, featuring a large 7.0-inch color touchscreen, an industry first. Using a stylus, the A826 allows users to edit, design and personalize photos with borders, text and creative graphics. In addition, the A826 allows for true image customization with over 200 creative options to choose from and prints 4 x 6-inch and 5 x 7-inch. The HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center will be priced at $249.

The product development process started in July 2005. We looked at other products that reinvented their categories through design and innovation (Think Swatch watches, George Foreman grills or Apple’s Ipod). We looked at the growing adoption of touchscreens in consumer electronics from the iPhone, to HP’s touchsmart PC, to Microsoft’s interactive coffee table and Electrolux’s touchscreen “Cyber fridge” to provide a simplified user experience.

The Approach

We focused on our target customer and the core experiences we needed to deliver. We really delved in and explored a day in the life of this customer, what goes on inside their head, what energizes them and what zaps their energy. We fleshed out and prioritized the core/essential experiences.

Once we had a good idea of what experiences we needed to deliver, we then looked at the “how” part. It was very challenging to avoid the temptation to add features only because we think they are cool or that they are possible. We had to come to grips with more is not always better! And most importantly, remember that every “piece” of technology has its purpose and is measured against its ability to deliver a core experience.

Our customer

The busy mom who owns the burden and joy of photo distribution, sharing, preserving for self, kids, and extended family. She has no more than a few spare minutes at a time. Multitasking between work, kids’ naps, kids’ activities, housework, cooking. She needs to be able to start and stop activities to accommodate higher priority interruptions (kids/work). There is no time for extended projects or learning new processes.

Family is her top priority. Being a “Good Mother” means providing a rich environment for the family. Children’s education and activities are top priority, followed closely by well-decorated home, creative meals, and quality family time (these may be more aspirations than actually achieved) and managing photos is a key aspect of this rich environment and being a good mother.

The Design

A lot of mom’s life revolves around the kitchen, the kitchen being the ‘heart’ of the home where she cooks for her family, eats with her family, possibly help with kids’ homework at the kitchen table. So, how does HP enable easy photo printing for mom in the kitchen? The new direction would be to design a product that would fit in the kitchen with an easy two-minute or less experience while she is making lunches for the kids and talking on the phone. Priority #1: Simple unattended directed printing. Context: Mom has 30 new photos on camera. She uses easy touch screen in 2 min to set up unattended printing, then walks away until prints are done.

Key Enablers:

•Large touch screen
•Intuitive, guided UI
•Very few choices
•Simple supplies
•Quality prints
•Dry neat photo stack

So the product design should be kitchen-inspired… In fact, the original inspiration was an every day bowl with friendly curves providing approachability and protection of its contents. Deeming the necessity of one-ness and encompassing a large touchscreen, the design evolved into the egg shape you see in today’s HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center.

So, if first impressions are important, I think the new HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center will have a great first impression because it’s stylish, eye-catching, and friendly. And as you get to know it, you’ll find that it’ll have a lasting impression and you’ll want to introduce it to all your friends because of the convenience, creativity and control it provides for easy photo printing at home. Let me know what you think!

What do you have to say (about your business)?

Eric Kintz — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:55:00 GMT

Our new marketing campaign features key achievers such as Gwen Stefani or Jake Burton. But every person I know has a story -- lots of ‘em, actually. Some are good. Some are funny. Some should be made into Hollywood movies. We are leveraging the stories of our customers as part of our marketing campaign and allowing them to express what they have to say. I decided to ask Angela LoSasso who is running this part of the campaign to discuss our plans.

Some of the best stories in my lifetime aren’t really stories at all: They may be a statement, or a logo, or a photo, or a concept on a napkin. How do you take an idea, make it your own, and then be brave enough to share it with the world? The technology today is so good and accessible; I find there are as many ways to showcase a story as there are stories or thoughts good enough to share.

HP’s campaign, “What do you have to say?” is about empowering people and businesses to help share their stories. What better way to do that than with a community where you can access experts and tips, ask questions, contribute your own content, get real-world examples to download, and also get help from the community at large? We liked the idea so much, we created two:

HP’s Small & Medium Business Community

HP’s Home & Home Office Community

Don’t be fooled by the pedestrian names, these communities are full-blown Wikis that allow you to build and share your story right alongside the pages built by HP. So come share your tips, your photos, video, text, create a poll, ask a question or just leave a comment.

And if you’re interested in how we can help your business, check out the story of Sweetpea Bicycles. This custom bicycle-maker based in Portland, Ore., has gone from a concept to a little shop with an 8-month waiting list in less than a year:

Our Small & Medium Business Community (including HP experts Anneliese Olsen and Eric Kintz), will take Sweetpea through a branding boot camp. Sweetpea will develop from their marketing collateral from selections designed by Paula Scher and HP selections that are currently available in our business identity kits section on HP.com.

Stop by. Tell us what you think. And be sure to take the Wikis for a spin.

HP Ignites the Print 2.0 Revolution With Gwen Stefani

Eric Kintz — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:15:00 GMT

I am in NYC today blogging live for the launch of our new marketing campaign, a whole array of great new products and the announcement of groundbreaking partnerships for the Print 2.0 revolution. The vibe is just amazing here with 600 partners, customers, analysts and journalists (yes also bloggers, John Battelle is here). The first print revolution was around PCs and applications and HP became the symbol of desktop publishing and office productivity. We are enabling a second wave around the web where customers are in control and want to create, mash, manage, share and publish their digital content in ways that couldn’t be done before. We are empowering customers to be their own authors, editors and publishers and give them extraordinary ways to share their stories with the world. We have built an entire home here (I have to post pictures of the teen bedroom!) to see how we are transforming the lives of families all around the world.

We are literally igniting a Print 2.0 revolution!

- We are making it easier to print from the web: the web 2.0 printing experience is very poor today from blogs and social networks. We want to provide customers with new tools and levels of self expression and HP is embedding Print 2.0 technology in popular websites, from Flickr, Windows Live Spaces to Yahoo! Flickr plans to integrate HP's Tabblo technology with its site this fall to help members create highly customized print “products” such as photo books, collages and photo cubes.

- We are extending HP’s digital content creation and publishing platforms, where customers will be able to create, share, manage and publish mash-ups of professional and personal contents. We will offer the choice to print those mash-ups at home, through print service providers or at retail. We are announcing today that we will offer such a platform for consumers to manage their memories through Snapfish and our partnerships with key retailers such as Meijer, the Grand-Rapids, Michigan-based supercenter retailer, to print at retail. We are also partnering with Disney to offer mash up photo books of Hannah Montana content with consumers’ personal photos.

- We are delivering a digital printing platform that increases print speeds and lowers the cost of printing for high-volume commercial markets

Today we are bringing a core element of our Print 2.0 strategy to life -- the digital content creation and publishing platform -- via the launch of a $300M global integrated marketing campaign called “What do you have to say?” It is designed to inspire customers and empower them with new ideas and online tools to help them think about “what they have to say” and how HP can help them create, mash, express, share and publish their content exactly the way they want to, to better communicate, connect and be understood. We are kicking off the campaign with three web achiever experiences inspired by personalities – singer/fashion designer, Gwen Stefani, Burton Snowboard founder, Jake Burton and famed graphic designer Paula Scher. Personalize your own Gwen Stefani book!

Print 2.0 Launch on August 28 - Save the Date!

Eric Kintz — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 22:42:00 GMT

I will in NYC next week to showcase how we are enabling printing in the new web 2.0 era, present cool experiences and products as well as unveil a major new marketing campaign.

More than 53 trillion pages will be printed by 2010. As more and more content moves from the desktop to the web, people want new and simpler ways to manage, print and enjoy it — ways that complement how they do business and live their lives. That’s HP’s vision for the future of printing and what Print 2.0 is all about.

I will try my best to blog live from the event, post some pix and shoot some videos. So save the date and come back to my blog next week!

What’s In a Name? Marketing Excellence Becomes Digital Mindset

Eric Kintz — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 03:44:00 GMT

I have never been enamored with the name of this blog – Marketing Excellence – and I am taking the opportunity of the shift in content and focus to change its name.

I have been looking for a name that was a better reflection of the web 2.0 focus and was also a little …. jazzier… Here are the names I considered:

- Digital Photography – pretty boring, but great from a search engine optimization perspective

- Digital Snapshot – great name, but maybe too centered on photography

- Pixel Marketing – Could be confused with Pixar

- Digital fish – this one was my favorite. A long running joke in Silicon Valley was that if HP was to market sushi, they would name it “cold dead fish”. The name “digital fish” would have been a tongue in cheek recognition that we have come a long way since then. But I quickly came to the realization that it took too much explanation and that I did not want to attract fish fans!

I eventually decided to select “digital Mindset” to highlight the recalibration Marketing has to go through to adapt to a digital world. Let me know if you like it!

Barry Bonds 756th Home Run Available on DVD from HP and MLB

Eric Kintz — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:26:00 GMT

Barry Bonds from the San Francisco Giants hit his 756^th home run on August 8, 2007 to the deepest part of the ballpark from a 84 mph pitch from Washington’s Mike Bacsik. He made instant history by breaking Hank Aaron’s storied record.

Together with Major League Baseball Productions, we are announcing today that complete game footage of Barry Bonds' record-breaking home run will be sold immediately on DVD via HP's DVD manufactured-on-demand services.

Fans may purchase a copy of the Collector's Replay Edition, featuring the historic 756 home run game, on DVD at San Francisco Giants Dugout Stores and online at www.shop.mlb.com , www.walmart.com , www.fye.com and www.suncoast.com .

We are very excited to be able to deliver so rapidly to all baseball fans a broadcast quality DVD of this historical moment!

Technorati tags: Hewlett Packard, hp, Eric Kintz, marketing, Barry Bonds,