We’re doing a joint blog post this week – Colin Linggo is joining me to discuss Project Canoe.  So this past week we had the pleasure of having David Verklin – the new CEO of Canoe Ventures speak to the marketing leadership at HP regarding the company and it’s plans for changing the way people interact with television.

For those of you not familiar with David, all you have to do is Google his name and you’ll get a ga-zillion hits as he is the former CEO of Aegis Media.  I’ve heard David speak on a number of occasions and have found his discussions to be extremely thought provoking, controversial at times – but always leaving me with more questions to ponder.

So, for those of you not familiar with Canoe – I direct you some articles on AdWeek, TechCrunch, NYT.com, to get a better understanding.  We’re now referring to Canoe as a television platform on steroids!

The part of the discussion which we’ll focus on specific product areas and possible implications:

1. Addressability – or “targeting” has been an online buzzword for years, but TV has been lagging in this basic online advertising feature.  Los Angeles’ interconnect, also known as AdLink, was one of the major DMA’s to employ a technology called AdTag and AdCopy to segment the market and customizing specific messages across it’s footprint.  This technology has been around since 2004, but only at the local level.  Similar to AdLink, Canoe’s first national go-to-market product is called Creative Versioning Platform which marries the cable industry’s ad zones with demographic databases, and this will offer national advertisers more targeted, relevant and effective advertising with commercials that run simultaneously across the national market with different messages and tags.  Although national addressability (or NA) is rudimentary at first, this will be the foundation Canoe will be build upon. 

So who might this impact... How about consumer banking?  Although there is a major consolidation in recent weeks with consumer banks, they still have specific audiences they are trying to target with their diverse banking products.  Imagine Bank of America’s Private Wealth Management group only targeting household income over $150k with one specific message and another message for free checking account for households less than $75k.  Or how about Purina dog food for only dog owners?  Did you know that 40% of all U.S. TV households own a dog?  The opportunities are endless. 

2. Data – will be a major emphasis in Canoe’s charter.  Nielsen’s TV ratings methodology has been the currency in which TV advertising deals are negotiated for as long as I can remember.  For anyone that sold or bought television knows that Nielsen people meters are only a sample size of the U.S. TV viewing habits.  How could this be a true reflection of whom and what people are actually viewing?  In the very near future, Canoe will have the ability to measure and monitor viewing via their set top boxes, second by second data by each box.  Look familiar?  That’s right, the Internet!  These boxes will have in-dept and granular data for programmers and advertisers alike.  Could this revolutionize how we negotiate TV deals in the future?  We shall see…

3. Voting & Polling – basically being able to use your remote control buttons to vote or answer a poll that shows up discreetly in the corner of your TV.  Now this might seem like basic “internet” technology, but think about it from a consumer engagement perspective.  As opposed to having to call in to case your vote for American Idol or Dancing with the Stars  -- you could simply click the remote control.   Or how about during the Super Bowl – as opposed to having Madison Avenue Think Tanks tell us which ads “won” – the consumer could actually vote.  And the obvious one, happening right now are the Presidential Debates and Vice Presidential Debate… as opposed to having to do polls after the event, viewers could cast their vote immediately.

So who might this impact….How about cell phone companies, internet surveys and possibly research companies who rely on the internet, telephone or in-person interviews to get quick answers to simple voting, etc.

4. Request for Information (RFI) – another basic feature with high potential.  Basically requesting information on a product/service, etc. via your remote control through a visual that comes up on your TV screen.  Now I’ve used this service with my TIVO device to receive information on the new Land Rover vehicles – and it worked great.  So imagine being able to have mass network commercials running and people requesting a coupon, information, etc.  Pretty powerful stuff – high level of tracking, reduced costs of doing “mass” mailings, ability to test different offers or creative, etc. etc.

5. T-Commerce – or purchasing products by using your remote control via a TV infomercial or commercial.  Now you can sit down and watch The Home Shopping Network and purchase today – but you have to call in, give them your credit card number and sit in front of HSN for hours/days/weeks to find what you might want  vs.  having it appear as a 1 minute TV ad while you’re watching House and then allowing you to purchase it.  What could be better – you buy it during your favorite show, have it billed to your cable bill, have it shipped to your house (as the cable co. has your address) and you pay for it at the end of the month. 

So who might this impact….How about credit card companies to begin with!  And if the cable company offered to finance the purchases, they could create their own finance companies – similar to auto dealers.  That’s called “extra income.”

As we see it, the key to all of this is getting all the cable MSO’s to agree on technology, platforms, compensation, etc.  If the MSO owners don’t see the benefits clearly or get greedy, the whole thing could fall apart – and the hope for a true national platform to conduct business through the cable box would be lost.  Frankly, I don’t see that the MSO’s have much choice – with ad revenue falling, the percent of each hour the local stations have to sell, and the competition from the internet, search, etc. 

If anyone can pull them together and get this project accomplished it’s David Verklin…

Colin Linggo & Scott Berg