One new approach to online journalism will be launched May 4 with Civil Beat, the brainchild of Pierre Omidyar, who started eBay in 1995 and now lives in Honolulu. He is banking on the fact that fellow Hawaiians will pay $19.95 a month to read and comment on local and community news. Civil Beat is positioning itself as a virtual civic square where reporters will write about issues relevant to Hawaii, converse with readers, and host discussion forums.

According to Editor John Temple: “As we do our reporting work, we’ll share our experiences, using Twitter and a blog-like approach on each beat. We’ll bring you along, we’ll point out important developments, and ask for your help and your thoughts. When we’ve come to our own conclusion about an issue, our editorial board will let you know what we think. We think it’s important to take a stand and propose concrete steps, even if you won’t always agree with us. We hope that by sharing our point of view , it’ll help you sharpen your own thinking. Of course, we’ll be inviting you to do the same with us. We believe civil debate and discussion are essential parts of good journalism, and a positive way to create a better community. And that even goes for our reporter-hosts, who’ll be free to let you know when they disagree with the board, just the way you might.”

Civil Beat has its work cut out for it. Ultimately, the reinvention of journalism may be decided not by online content, but by enabling devices, such as the Apple iPad and the Amazon Kindle. Just has the iPod reinvented how music was to be consumed, creating a device-driven business model to counter the Napster phenomenon, the iPad may also help create a revenue platform for what’s left of professional journalists.

Until then, I will keep my watch and hope that the Fourth Pillar survives and thrives in a new form that engages community, not just solicits readership.

Today, more than ever, these two worlds are interdependent.  While the proliferation of social media along with the fragmentation of the media audience has posed challenges for traditional brand managers, a new breed of brand architects are emerging that are both digitally savvy and brand astute. This is apparent with the emergence of a new form of agency that is proficient in both brand and the user experience. Case in point: 4ORCE Digital in St. Louis recently invested more than $200,000 developing a state-of-the-art UX Lab for its clients and prospects, and has an entire team of UX experts that perform “deep dives” on the user experience. Why? 4ORCE, like many other leading brand and digital agencies understand that agencies can no longer have credibility talking brand when they are not thought leaders in the digital ecosystems that speak the brand language every day: User Interaction, User Personas, Social Media Marketing, Web Analytics, and the list goes on. Brand IS user experience and vice versa. Perhaps we are entering a new era in Brandology that calls for Brand Experience Optimization. Similar to how SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps companies optimize their websites so they are front-and-center in terms of relevancy, Brand Experience Optimization is the unification of brand strategy and digital application to transform the customer experience at various touch points – online, point-of-sale, mobile apps, in addition to internal culture. For tomorrow’s leaders, the most relevant brands, will be the most optimized. So, get ready to start hiring your Brand Optimization Manager.

• Tell Your Story in Your Own Voice. J.D. Salinger’s book was controversial because for the first time an authentic teenage voice was echoing the truths we all thought about but were afraid to reveal.  A famous Holden quote: “It’s funny.  All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.” When companies speak to us, are they talking above us, below us – or right to our heart?  When a company’s brand speaks to our heartfelt experiences, without patronizing or pontificating, it resonates.

• Phoniness Will Be Outed. Holden made a mission of exposing phony people. In the age of social media, the brand experience is more exposed than ever, with every customer being an online Holden Caulfield, ready to out the mis-aligned brand. Case in point, Comast’s customer service issues were exposed by a customer with a handycam witnessing a cable installer asleep on his couch. He uploaded it to YouTube and it became the customer experience case study for the newly empowered dissatisfied consumer. Four years and 1.4 million views later, Comcast has learned a hard lesson.

• Every Customer Counts. Holden’s vision was to be the “Catcher in the Rye”, saving children as they walked over the cliff, one at a time. Sometimes companies get so overwhelmed by the nature of Customer Experience Management, they lose site that even one customer can mean the world. What if every company aimed at improving the customer experience simply told their employees to have one goal: Retain and wow just one customer every day. That customer would tell ten others, and so on.

The Catcher in the Rye once had the dubious distinction of being at once the most frequently censored book across the nation and the second-most frequently taught novel in public high schools. The book remains widely read with total worldwide sales over 65 million. Perhaps the book’s authentic voice and simplicity will soon be taught as essential branding strategy in corporations everywhere. Well, maybe not. But a few tips from an authentic classic couldn’t hurt.

Difference Between Augmented and Virtual Reality

First, a little AR 101. Virtual reality is a computer generated, interactive, three-dimensional environment in which a person is totally immersed. Virtual reality systems usually involve a head mounted display worn by users  (3D glasses). The user is completely immersed in an artificial world and becomes divorced from the real environment. On the other hand,  augmented reality involves augmenting the real world scene so that the user keeps one foot in the real world and another in the virtual world. The virtual images are merged with the real view to create the augmented experience.

Augmented Reality Applications

In the past year, the rapid evolution of AR has contributed to breakthrough digital marketing campaigns for Nike, Coca-Cola and McDonalds; AR Avatar toys for Mattel (said CNET, “I’ve seen the future of toys and it’s augmented reality”); social media applications for Kia; AR entertainment promotions for Paramount’s Transformers and Star Trek; AR consumer packaged goods campaigns for Procter & Gamble; AR in publishing with InStylemagazine — even an AR attraction at Six Flags Great Adventure theme park.

But the perfect AR tool may be right in your hand. A recent iPhone App from Acrossair lets you interactively access names and places of anywhere you are just by using your iPhone and its AR application. But applications such as this, are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to AR. Imagine the following AR uses:

• Healthcare: Pre-operative imaging studies, such as CT or MRI scans, of the patient often provide the surgeon with the necessary view of the internal anatomy. From these images the surgery is planned. Visualization of the path through the anatomy to the affected area where, for example, a tumor must be removed is done by first creating a 3D model from the multiple views and slices in the preoperative study.  Augmented reality can be applied so that the surgical team can see the CT or MRI data correctly registered on the patient in the operating theater while the procedure is progressing. Being able to accurately register the images directly on the patient, rather than some artificial 3D environment, will enhance the performance of the surgical team.
• Advertising: Some advanced billboard companies have developed augmented reality systems that allows broadcasters to insert ads into specific areas of the broadcast image. Imagine while broadcasting a baseball game this system would be able to place an advertisement in the image so that it appears on the outfield wall of the stadium. The electronic billboard requires calibration to the stadium by taking images from typical camera angles and zoom settings in order to build a map of the stadium including the locations in the images where advertisements will be inserted. Now imagine that these images can be dynamically generated for targeted advertising to the viewers.
• Maintenance: When your car breaks down, the mechanic approaches a new or unfamiliar part.  Instead of opening several repair manuals he could put on an augmented reality display and the image of the part that needs to be fixes would be augmented with annotations and information pertinent to the repair.
• Home Design: So you want to put a new addition on the house but you want to know exactly what you’re getting for the $30,000 you are willing to dish out. AR would allow you to bring a video tape of your house shot from various angles, then in real time it would augment that view to show the new deck in its finished form. Or bring in a tape of your current kitchen and the augmented reality processor would replace your current kitchen cabinetry with virtual images of the new kitchen that you are designing.

While AR is a novelty advertising vehicle right now, it holds the promise to dramatically increase the quality and value of the products and services we consume. So get ready to go beyond virtual. It’s a brave, new, augmented world out there.

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

If Google were to pull out of China, it could mean cutting off access to a country with the most robust economy and the largest number of Internet users. However, Google’s search-share, 29%, is still dwarfed by Baidu.com in China, which has 62%.

Why should US consumers care? First, by setting forth a clear message that it is willing to lose business for ethical reasons, Google can set a tone for the new decade that resonates with its professed corporate culture:  You can make money without doing evil. Second, if Google is to be viewed as an ethical player in such important initiatives as Google Health, it must show good faith as a global citizen. Would you trust Google with your personal health information if it is willing to sell out Chinese human rights activists for profits?

For much of the last few decades, nation-states have played catch-up to technology in terms of controlling the flow of information. Fax machines got the word out about Tiananmen Square in 1989.  Technology and media provided crucial to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, blogs and Facebook are undermining the information grip of the Iranian regime. China has proven that nations can successfully counter the free flow of information by dangling the carrot of market access to the world. If Google holds firm, it may be the tipping point in China, proving to the world that capitalism without democracy has a hollow ring to it.

• More Alerts Please: Let me sign up for alerts that are relevant to me.  Pollen counts, pollution levels, heat waves, virus outbreaks, community education events, health screening – I want to know.
• Drug Safety: Unfortunately we are a medicated people, and we need to know which of the 5 prescriptions we are taking could make us break out in a cold sweat. Link my personal health profile into a clinical decision support engine and let me get micro-content on adverse drug reactions specific to me.
• Find My Grandma: If my grandma (or anyone in the community) wanders away from the nursing home, give me an alert on Twitter.
• Coach Me: Give me daily health tips, encouragement, disease management, and coaching. I will follow you if you help me get healthier.
• Connect Me: There are thousands of people and support groups out there who have the same health conditions and concerns as me. Help me connect to others and I will follow you.
• Care About Me Better: Why can’t my healthcare be more personal? Can you send me tips to help me in pre-and post-operative care? If you send me patient care reminders in a personal way, I will follow you.
• Don’t Make Me Wait: My time is important, so let me know your wait times at the ED and urgent care. Help me save time and I will follow you.

These are seven simple ways healthcare organizations can begin building a following on Twitter. If the last decade was about brand positioning, this decade with be about brand following. Market share will give way to “Follow Share”. The organization with the most followers will be able to engage with their patients/customers from a position of strength and authenticity.

So go the lyrics to the 1992 Bruce Springsteen song that lamented the hollowness of an expanded array of channel options with very little substance. If Bruce were to rewrite the song today, in our social media savvy world, it might be “There’s fifty-seven million posts but there’s nothing to say.” There is no doubt that social media has reached the mainstream. There are now 91 million Facebook users and 14 million Twitter users, and the numbers are climbing each day. Marketers are debating the merit of investing time and effort in jumping on the social media bandwagon. Many recognize, once you begin the dialogue, you can’t stop. You can create a Facebook fan page in seconds, however, populating that page with relevant, timely and consistent content that engages community is a much larger task. So, before marketers invest heavily in any social media platform, they need to think about the art of the story. Here are some brainstorm starters for crafting stories that play well with social media:

• Thought Leadership: Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, provides and excellent example of how an inside look can establish a thought leadership presence online. Levy is sometimes controversial, other times philosophical, but his posts are always well thought out and intentional. Task: Find thought leaders in your organization who have a voice and a story to tell, as well as the skills to do it. Build a blog around their leadership insight, then tie into the blogging ecosystem.
• Showcase Your Culture. Your corporate culture is your best recruiting tool and usually your best story. Southwest Airlines has done a great job showcasing its culture on YouTube. Behind most of its videos, is a well crafted story. For example, this video documents the story behind Southwest’s “25-minute turn” – highlighting operational efficiency and it’s corporate can-do culture.  It’s easy to create a YouTube channel, and even produce your own video, however, lay the groundwork first. Crafting your story online takes thought and time.  Before you flip on that handycam, think through the story line basics: What are the top 10 stories you have going at your company? How do they reflect your core values? What are the elements of the story? Who are your best storytellers? Sometimes I encourage clients to create a Story Map before embarking on a social media initiatives. This keeps everyone grounded in the content, rather than the enabling platform.
• Relevancy, Relevancy, Relevancy. More than ever, we live in a relevant culture. From web searching to news, to personal relationships, people are seeking relevant content and engagements that speak to them and their immediate situation. A relevant social media strategy includes three things: 1) Knowing your audience; 2) Understanding what’s important to them; 3) Delivering content in a way that respects their time. While the H1N1 virus was an unwelcome visitor to many of us this flu season, it has brought about a great example of how social media can be used to tell an important and relevant story. At the onset of the epidemic, the Center for Disease Control placed social media at the cornerstone of its public awareness strategy. The CDC website contains numerous ways health providers, care givers and community members can share important updates about H1N1 using social media widgets.

The bottom line: A successful social media strategy includes a blend of technology enablement and old fashioned story-crafting. One without the other is not a recipe for success.

With patient empowerment must also come patient enlightenment.

Battle One: Fighting Over the Frugal Soccer Mom

Before the Great Recession reared its ugly head, Wal-Mart and Target seemed to co-exist fairly nicely. While both retailers went after thrifty consumers, Wal-Mart concentrated on price, a blue-collar feel, and friendly greeters for its brand positioning. Target went slightly up-market, a little more hip and urban with slightly better brand names. The giants seemed to have carved out their niches until the hip, fashionista Target-shopping mom became the frugalista mom.

As BusinessWeek’s Michelle Collins writes, Target’s target demographic had shifted under the weight of the Recession – Target’s working mom cared less about “thigh-high boots than the price of milk”. So the battle is on, with Target sliding “down market” and Walmart climbing “upmarket” with a revamp of its brand and store experience. What is especially interesting to watch is Target’s effort to launch more grocery products at select locations in a super “hyper-local” way – very regional but completely integrated marketing and customer experience strategies.

Who will win? Soccer moms will dictate that, but my bet is on Walmart, as long as they don’t go too far up-market and lose their base. The value shopper may be here to stay and I think “Expect More, Pay Less” will never be out of style.

Battle Two: Ads, Eyeballs and Applications

Google and Microsoft are coming out swinging. This war is bloody and is being fought on two fronts: Content and Applications. The content conflict first. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is calling for rebellion against Google’s lock on searchable content by throwing all of his content into Bing, Microsoft’s supposed Google-killer. In doing so, Murdoch hopes to re-enforce a “pay wall” strategy that will bolster his revenues and place content producers back in control of their creations. Problem is, Murdoch needs Google, whether he likes it or not – 26% of the WSJ online traffic comes from Google. In this day and age, anyone that doesn’t want to play in Google’s sandbox will feel it in their web traffic reports. Content producers would be better off thinking through a tiered value strategy for consumers that took advantage of Google’s traffic, rather than trying to cut off the flow from search engine giant. When your name becomes a verb for searching online, it’s hard to mess with you.

On the second front, Google is becoming a thorn in Microsoft’s side by introducing free online applications erodiing Microsoft’s once-thought dominance in the software world.  Google has launched major campaigns all year long, including Going Google, to target businesses and convince them to drop Microsoft Office for Google Apps. Google says that more than 2 million businesses, schools and organizations have signed up to use the various combinations of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and the other Google Apps.  That may not immediately put a dent in Microsoft’s $20 billion desktop software business, but it has prompted Microsoft to come out with it’s own online free version of Office, closely tied in with its desktop version.

The ultimate winners in this battle will be the company that focuses more intently on the customer experience. Making applications “feature relevant” rather than feature rich will be the hallmark of success.

Parting Shots

Underlying the battle between Walmart-Target and Google-Microsoft is a battle for the hearts and minds of customers who have long been taught during the heady ’80s and ’90s that you can have something for nothing. Low prices and a quality shopping experience and great user-friendly software that you don’t have to pay for along with free content online, anytime, anywhere.  Companies must re-open negotiations with their customers to determine the new value exchange for their goods and services. The companies who do this best, will be those that thrive in the post-Great Recession era.

• 32% of customers have taken a sick day or vacation day to wait at home for a service call or delivery in the first six months of 2009.
• Almost 1 in 5 Americans lost wages by taking unpaid time off work to wait at home in the first six months of 2009.
• 29% have left their home in frustration because the service/delivery person was late.
• 82% wait on average at least 1 day per year in their homes for service calls or deliveries.

TOA’s approach to combatting this customer experience epidemic is to offer a mobile workforce management solution to home-service companies, specifically cable providers, that narrows down the wait window and provides real-time feedback on mobile workforce performance and satisfaction. The result? Customer wait times are significantly reduced and companies can save money by reducing costly “truck rolls” to homes where the customer doesn’t show up. The process is simple: Customers are notified of their appointment a day before, they receive communication the day of the appointment verifying the time (narrowed down to within and hour or so), the service guy shows up and does his thing, then the customer receives an immediate follow-up communication to check how the service guy did. All this can be customized to a company’s workflow and a customer’s communication preference.

While this all seems very simple, it’s amazing how many companies have not jumped on this customer experience management bandwagon. Bottom line: If you are waiting too long for a service person to come to your house, ask them if they can begin implementing technology like TOA’s solution.

It’s time we stop waiting and start demanding better service.

(Footnote: Check out the blog by TOA Technologies CEO Yuval Brisker. He’s a stickler for customer service and has some good insight on customer experience management.)