Don’t have an iPhone? Try the website.

Just shows how dead trees media can still be relevant on this digital age. Sort of.

In one more example of multiples or synchronicity of ideas, today i tweeted an idea for turning 404 pages into a charity opportunity. Well, a few hours later i found out a campaign by Fischer+Fala for AACD (The Brazilian Handicapped Association).

When browsing to a partner website with an incorrect URL (which have over 17million of uniques), instead of the usual “Page Not Found”, the user is surprised with a plea for help by AACD, inviting donations on AACD’s website. And if your organization wants to do the same, just download the 404 page assets on the website.

Turning a browsing error into a charity opportunity is a great example how we don’t always need big budgets, but rather be ingenious with what we have available.

Visit Osocio.org and find out more about the great works nominated, showing that advertising and marketing can also help to make the world a better place.

Mobile devices, and particularly smartphones, are building a silent revolution, happening at the edges of the mainstream. While many are playing Angry Birds or checking in at Foursquare, entrepeneurs have been discussing and engineering a new set of of technologies and hardware that will deeply transform commerce and culture.

The first few weeks of 2011 are rather elusive of how the talk around mobile payments will get louder. From the lively discussion at Peter Paul Koch’s blog to the recent announcement of Google allowing operator billing for their Android platform, things will get really, really interesting.

If you need further examples how deeply this affects our lives, just think about a world where you’ll travel without your credit cards, as they’ve been replaced by secure SIM cards and upcoming NFC (Near Field Communication) technologies.

A light demo by Timo Arnall of NFC applications

With early experiments by Touchatag or Square (from Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey) setting the stage, higher smartphone penetration will pave the way to new forms of commerce. What marketing can do on top of it is left to explore.

Mobile Wallet Demo by Toon Coppens of Touchatag

Kevin Rose (of Digg) demoing Square

Robert Scoble interview to Zong’s CEO David Marcus

Carmobili: loyalty cards on your mobile phone (plug: Carmobili is a portuguese company)

Imagine going to a vending machine and all you need is to swipe your phone to get a soda. Or buying a coffee on Starbucks without leaving your seat. Oh wait … they’ve just announced mobile payments.

So, there you have it. The year of mobile payments.

Blog Action Day joins bloggers to support a common cause, with water being the selected theme in 2010. Help me, Gavin, Drew and all the Age Of Conversation bloggers to support this non-profit organization by purchasing this collaborative book:

• Kindle Version
• Paperback Version
• Hardcover Version

charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects.

Did you know that just $20 can give one person clean water for 20 years? The simple act of buying a book, written by some of the most influential marketing authors, can indeed make a difference!

P.S. Do let me know of what you think of my chapter.

Original Flickr photo by badjoni

E-commerce was at first a personal activity, where each user was a self-determining agent regarding products and services. With wishlists, customer reviews and ratings, recommendation or referrals it evolved into what is now usually called Social Commerce.

The past few months have brought some new patterns, that further confirmed the importance of the social graph for e-tailers as confirmed by recent studies by comScore and Performics/ROI Research , with consumers connecting with brand channels (40%), recommending products and services (32%) and finding out about new deals on social networks (37%).

Another study by Sage Pay, revealed that while on average 7% of visitors to an online store make a purchase, when directed from social media network, the percentage of visitors who will go to the transaction section goes up to 71%. Social proof is even more important for e-commerce, as Simon Black, managing director at Sage Pay, says: “The modern shopper often looks for reassurance from a positive review, a special offer to make it more affordable, inexpensive delivery options and a quick, easy and secure way to pay.”

Video case of Levis Friends store

Adding the social dimension to e-commerce websites was once difficult, but with the release of social plugins by Facebook (Like buttons, Recommendations, Activity Feed) e-tailers have now instant access to a network of more than 400 million people, used with succes by global brands like Levis or TripAdvisor. It has also expanded the reach to social services and platforms such as LivingSocial, SocialAmp or Fluid Fan Shop . And you’re not limited to Facebook: with Cheap Tweet, the best deals right are delivered to your Twitter timeline, with the site picking the best ones ranked by users’ votes and re-tweets. Altough this latest service risks becoming obsolete with the announcement by Twitter of @earlybird.

Image by Emarketeer

Entertainment, by definition, is one of the more promising areas where to apply this new social dimension of shopping. Take for instance the Facebook app Tickets Together created by Disney that lets users buy tickets fo Toy Story 3, not only for themselves, but also inviting their friends.

Not only does this app makes it easy to choose where to watch the movie (local listing) but it lets you engage with the ones you’d probably will watch the movie with, and invite them right on Facebook, by integrating with ticket-buying services like Fandango.com.

Exciting as it is, these are only tools and technologies. What’s really interesting are the new behaviors brought by the social web and connected consumers.

Group Buying

Making purchases together is one of the biggest web trends in 2010. It’s easy to understand why: when users reach for their friends to get a deal (usually a minimum number of buyers is required), a viral loop is created. New models of authentication to social networks (Facebook Connect, Friend Connect, OAuth) have only made it easier and faster. From limited time offers, to price anchoring (show how much it would cost on a normal purchase), it’s one of the most effective ways to generate word-of-mouth.
These deals are available on social web services like Groupon, This Next, Tippr, LivingSocial, TownHog, Homerun , Milo or even as integrated applications such as ‘Special Deal’ group-buy app by preferred Facebook partner Wildfire.

Groupon

Groupon is the biggest player, with a simple proposal: advertise a special business offer, only valid if a certain amount of users purchase it immediately.
Launched in November 2008, it has sold over 7 million online coupons in 70 cities and is now expanding worldwide (UK, DE, ES, PT). Paying attention to small details is their main strenght: from putting a phone number on every coupon to 2 way ratings (customers rating merchants and vice-versa) it created an engaged community. Even unsubscribing from their newsletter is funny.

Graphic by Compete.com

From June 2009 to January 2010, the number of monthly visitors went from 26,000 to over 2.1 million, increasingly engaged with an average of 2.5 visits per month for each user. And what’s really amazing is that these visits are not coming from the usual sources. Last January, Facebook represented 44% of all referrals, Twitter 8% and search only around 3%.

Growth happens not only in visits but also as a platform, helping third-party developers and affiliate members get the word out about its daily specials. Groupon’s API has become available both as Division API (about cities) and Deals API (about daily deals for specific locations), further explored by integrating with Groupon’s geolocation service.

Another example on how groups and communities will become increasingly important in shopping is Woot.

The basic idea behind Woot is to offer only one discounted product each day, a “One Day, One Deal” policy until the stock is sold out, with no announcement of what’s the next offering. Innovative events and product specials like “Woot-Off”, “Bag Of Crap” or “2-for-Tuesday” coupled with bold marketing have built one vibrant community where it’s members actually have fun shopping.

Woot shows their different business culture, on their Amazon’s acquisition wicked celebration rap

Recently acquired by Amazon, much of the coverage focused on how Amazon captured the opportunity of real-time shopping, but the real value might be on the social side, venturing into new business models where communities represent a bigger role than the usual 20th century e-commerce.

Collaborative Consumption

The concept of collaborative consumption is the subject of the upcoming book “What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption” by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers.

Recently speaking at TEDx Sydney, Rachel explains that “collaborative brands make it easy for communities to act on behalf of their brands”, where we are no longer defined as consumers by our personal possessions, but also by what we are part of, what we share and the groups we belong to.

Original Flickr photo by boostventilator

New trends like swaptrading (such as Swaptree.com, sort of online dating service for all of your unwanted media), reveals new models of commerce, where trust mechanics and collaborative behaviors are principal. This groundswell of collaborative consumption is further accelerated by the rise of mobile communication.

Rachel Botsman defines 4 big drivers of the shift to collaborative consumption:

1. A renewed belief in the importance of community
2. A torrent of peer-to-peer social networks and real time technologies
3. Pressing unresolved environmental concerns
4. A global recession that has fundamentally shocked consumer behaviors

People are starting to share resources without sacrificing their lifestyles or personal freedom, supported by 3 clear systems:

1. Redistribution markets (stretch the lifecycle of a a product, reducing waist)
2. Collaborative lifestyles (sharing of resources like money, skills and time) – coworking, couchsurfing or even landshare (http://www.landshare.net/) will become mainstream
3. Product Service Systems, where one pays for the benefit of a product without needing to own the product outright. Examples include rental services like Netflix or Zipcar .

You can get an overview of this new model of consumption on the promo video below:

Collaborative Consumption Groundswell Video from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

After the financial crisis, consumers are adopting these new behaviors that will impact e-commerce for the years to come. Group buying and collaborative consumption are the latest of these trends that brands will need to pay attention to and embrace the value of social capital and not only the monetary side of commerce.

If you know of more examples or want to discuss how communities are impacting e-commerce, please drop a note in the comments.

Trying to figure out trends is on of the key assets for a creative technologist like me. Dealing with social media before it became popular, playing with Flash when it was still version 3, getting curious about OAuth in 2007, or betting that Facebook would become huge in Portugal, i wonder if this isn’t only a confirmation bias.
So, what are the tea leaves that i’ve been reading lately?

• Digital Curation
  Steve Rubel was one of the first to highlight it, but now we’re seeing it at a micro-level, with tweets becoming the new quotes. Who will organize the best content? Or maybe it’s just an exit strategy for journalists.
• DIY@home
  The main theme at Shift10, this trend has been building up since the maker manifesto. What will happen when movements like Fabrication become accessible to the regular Joe?
• Portable profiles
  Taking our digital identity TVs or cars, plugging our Facebook profile to our train seat, downloading a ticket using RFID authentication, adjusting enviromental data through sensors, it all feels to much like science fiction. Or maybe not.
• Democratized video publishing
  What happened with blogging will happen again with video. We just need cheaper cameras and easier video linear editors.
• Ad rating
  Ad people be afraid. We’re seeing it already with the like button on Facebook, and it’s not far fetched to expand the notion to all online advertising. Because clicks don’t matter neither your Cannes Award. It’s the consumer, stupid.

Maybe i’m dead wrong in a few years, but prescience delivers great new challenges.

In partnership with Daily Motion, but also with a Youtube channel the animated films are a fun way to inform young europeans, but also engaging them with the web series by allowing them to vote on the theme/tip for the next episode.

The series depicts 3 super-heroes who try to save smokers and non-smokers from the negative effects of tobacco, by giving them absurd tips and advice. Chuck, Skinny and Loona, accompanied by Tapas, a masochistic freak of nature that won’t leave them alone, unify their strengths for better or for worst.

You can also find the Helpers on Facebook and Beebo.

Advertiser:Help-EU
Agency:Ligaris

Cross-posted at Osocio.org

- Message from the Gyre by Chris Jordan

- Storytelling: Choose a different ending by AMV BBDO for the London Metropolitan Police

- Watermarks make the flood visible by Chris Bodle

- The trillion dollar campaign by TBWAHuntLascaris for The Zimbabwean

- Before you turn away put yourself in my place by David & Goliath for the Weingart Homeless Center

- Just add water by Kennedy Monk for Yes Men + Bhopal Medical Appeal

- The smoking plant by Fischer America

- Contemporary beauty ideals by Ogilvy & Mather Frankfurt for ANAD

- Going west with the New Zealand Book Council by Colenso BBDO

- TubePetition by Mizbala

The winner is to be announced next week, and hopefully 2010 will bring a new fature: “Campaign of the Month”. For more details, check the original post at Osocio.org.

The infographic rich website also informs about the installation at Boylston Plaza with 738 figures waiting for a warm red heart, meaning that 10 people have donated coats for each figure.

Finally, do check the also special and personalized video after the jump.

Source: @brianjeremy

Cross-posted at Osocio.org