Flack's Revenge

It's the End of the Storytelling World as we Know it: My Interview with Doug Rushkoff

I am a big fan of author Doug Rushkoff, and have read many of his books, starting with Media Virus back in the late 90s.. 

Doug has a knack for being the first to spot and describe things which in retrospect seem pretty obvious. In particular, he likes to hone in on topics related to media, information, technology, how they are changing, and what this means for our culture. 

I met Doug at a NY Tech Meetup a couple of years ago, where he spoke about his book Program or be Programmed, He agreed to an interview, which I posted back then.

More recently I learned of Doug's new book Present Shock after seeing reviews of it it in the NY Times and WSJ. The title is an ironic twist on Alvin Toffler's classic Future Shock (classic Future, sounds like oxymoron, doesn't it?!).

Well, Doug has nailed it once again.  His new book eloquently describes what happens when we are eternally stuck in the present, a social media, 24 hour cable news, sensory overload-driven Groundhog Day kind of reality. He says, essentially, that we are llosing the capacity to put things in context and take the time to smell the roses, so-to-speak.

One of the most dramatic conclusions relates to something Doug calls Narrative Collapse. In marketing  and PR, one of the first things you hear  is that "you need to tell a good story..."  It is the mantra we repeat endlessly to clients and each other.

It seemed to me that this was something that should be explored further, and would be of interest to Flack's Revenge readers.  So I asked Doug for another interview, and he agreed.  Here  it is:

You seem to soak up lots of pop culture as you observe and write about the impact of tech on society; the first chapter alone refers to scores of movies and TV shows, ranging from Mary Poppins, Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead on up through to Sopranos, Real Housewives, etc. - do you really watch all this stuff (either not such a bad gig or torture, depending on what you like)?   

Well I don't watch it all at once, but I have been alive 50 years so there has been a lot of time. I saw Mary Poppins in the late 60's. Simpsons and Beavis and Butt-head in the 80's, Sopranos in the 90's, and bit of reality TV over the past decade. You don't' have to watch every episode of every TV show to get a good sense of what they are about and how they work. You can't help but soak up pop culture if you are alive these days. But there's plenty of shows I've just missed completely. Or watched maybe one of, like CSI or something. 

In light of Narrative Collapse, why bother with your book – are long form content creators doomed to irrelevancy?

No, just because we are transitioning from a culture based in narrative to one based in more open-ended styles of media doesn't mean long form content creators are doomed. I'm not looking so much at the length of experiences as the quality. A fantasy-role-playing game lasts a whole lot longer than a game of Monopoly. And it is still narrative - just not in the closed-ended Aristotelian way. It doesn't have a simple crisis and conclusion. It just keeps going. 

So presentist entertainment can collapse narrative by being as short as a YoutTube video, or by simply refusing to drive towards a single endpoint.

Don't we need stories and story frames to understand the world?

We need stories when we want to understand the world as a story. Many of us still want to believe God is coming to save us at the end, or that the world is going to end in a zombie apocalypse.  In order to maintain the belief that there's a plan with a beginning, a middle and an end, then it sure helps to have a story. 

If we are ready to believe that the world keeps going - that there could even be sustainable solutions to the world's problems rather than wars we win and bad people we vanquish, then we might want to look at forms of context that go beyond the simple story. 

"You Need to Tell a Good Story" is one of the mantras of advertising and PR.  Do these trends portend the decline of marketing as we know it?

Yeah. But anyone half-way intelligent in advertising has known this for a long while. I'm not saying anything new here. They all know that the creative storytelling in advertising works better for winning Cleos than selling products. 

Brand mythologies were created to shield consumers from the realities of mass production. We don't want to know our cookies are made in horrible factories, so companies invent brand myths like Keebler Elves and the Snackwell's Cookie Man. Today, we care less about whether the cookies were made by elves in a hollow tree than what is really happening: are kids losing their fingers in a cookie machine? Is this made with corn syrup? Organic flour? 

Marketers these days have to convince companies to tell the truth about their products and processes. And if they're not proud of those things, then they have to change them. It's very very simple, but very hard: companies have to actually do stuff that's worth talking about. Then people will Tweet it all over the place. What's worth talking about? These days, it's as simple as not being totally incompetent. Just find one little area in which the company is not completely screwing things up and hurting people, and then trumpet that achievement. 

Does this mean we have to produce "Now-ist” content like much TV has become these days?

You don't "produce content" so much as help the company communicate its non-fiction, real creation of value. Surely the company is doing something for someone. It's asking for money for its stuff, right? How does buying from this company reflect my values? How does it extend my intention? 

 

Attention Story Shoppers: Only 6 Pitching Days Left (NY Times Deconstructs Tech PR in Light of Apple News)

Our clients generally have very busy PR and marketing schedules. 

To get everything in, we try not to let external events dictate the pace. There are some obvious exceptions; you don't want to announce news on a major holiday, or shortly before or after one. If there is a major industry event, such as a trade show, and you or your client are not there, why compete with the noise of other announcements?

Then, there are the planned and unplanned events and news outside of tech that can steal the thunder from your announcement; You need to use good common sense and look at each situation, in general we are an aggressive shop and don't like to stand down if we don't have to (see my post Hypocrisy Rampant in "When not to Pitch a Story").

To use a real example, if you follow the world of tech or use an iPhone, you by now probably know that next week - September 12, to be exact - is when Apple is expected to announce iPhone 5 details.

The New YorkTimes covered how other vendors of consumer tech have adjusted their PR schedules in light of Apple, which does tend to suck the air out of all other coverage (see Rivals Jostle for Spotlight... and excerpts below).

Back when Apple was an underdog, it had an easier time shrouding its product announcements in mystery and perhaps catching its competitors off guard. But now technology companies are watching every one of Apple’s moves — and scrambling to get out in front of them.

Several major tech companies are cramming product announcements into this holiday-shortened workweek...

In past years it was common for technology companies to deliver product news at trade shows like the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Now some major companies have scaled back their presence at those conventions and followed Apple’s lead in running their own elaborate news conferences, hoping to grab the news media’s undivided attention.

Fall product introductions are important to companies seeking to generate excitement ahead of the holiday shopping season. The fall has become especially jam-packed with news in recent years as both the number of companies involved and their product lines have grown, with the addition of players like Amazon and its Kindle products as well as all the companies building mobile devices based on Google’s Android operating system.

Social Media: To ROI or not to ROI, that is the Question

This week on Windmill Networking, I wrote about how to measure and earn ROI for social media-fueled
content marketing campaigns.

Unfortunately, before you even get started, your campaign can get lost in the corporate approval quagmire: one, because securing any or more investment for social media can sometimes be tricky, and two, the whole thing may be viewed as risky, since it may take the company out of its comfort zone of tried-and-true marketing tactics.

The more general topic of ROI for social media is a hot one, and there are a range of opinions.

On Windmill Networking, Neal Schaffer said, in his article, There's No Such Thing as Social Media ROI; It's Called Business ROI:

Social media, like your website and internal IT technology, becomes part of your company’s infrastructure over time. It’s not a question of having a robust social presence just like you need a robust website: You simply must have them.

On Occam's Razor, Avinash Kaushik said, in his post Best Social Media Metrics:

You don't participate in social media to only drive business outcomes. I cannot stress that enough. If that is your primary objective you are going to suck at it

Problogger Media CFO Sean Jackson made some excellent points in the article: There is No ROI in Social Media Marketing:

The truth is, marketing will never produce an ROI... marketing activity is not an investment.. An investment is an asset that you purchase and place on your Balance Sheet....Marketing is an expense, and goes on the Profit & Loss statement.

People who use the term ROI see marketing as something to buy...But smart companies see marketing as an integral part of doing business — a necessity no less important than the company email system, their computers, or their office lease.

The questions about using social media to support marketing – how to justify, fund it and ideally earn and prove returns – reminds me of the more general topic of marketing tech. I wrote about this back in 2009: Don't Underestimate the Soft benefits of Social Media.

I have spent many years, introducing marketing technologies; I might be showing my age, but we faced similar questions when trying to get sales teams to adopt CRM in the early 90s, or organizations to buy Lotus Notes in the 90s; these were infrastructure plays too, but we found that it was just good business to propose pilots that had strong business cases, usually tied to some quantifiable business result.

Similarly, while I agree that social media investments are fundamental, not all costs are fixed, and some can be tied to campaigns like marketing; these should promise a return.

Also, taking an ROI-driven apporach can help justify the spend and sell in projects for smaller organizations that are cutting their teeth on social media and may have tighter budgets, or others that are the later adopters.

Suffice it to say, it is just good business sense and corporate politics (if you unfortunately need to engage in politics) to make sure that your efforts deliver on some kind of projected return; this gives you credibility to get more funding, and may make it easier to get support for campaigns that dleiver soft vs. hard ROI results.

Tablets Lead Way to Power News Consumers, and Apps for PR

More people are using tablets, and in some cases spending more time with them than other devices and media channels. What are the implications of this trend for the PR field?

For starters, tablets can update and improve on many applications and projects. E.g. in my series of posts we explored reinventing the clip book, turning it into a dynamic, electronic magazine (see this post for one solution, devised by team member Kesley Judd). I am sure there are other examples of tablet apps, and potential apps that have relevance for PR.

Further, our jobs have gone beyond simply getting a nice placement to also caring about how the hit is shared and read, and to playing more of an active role in keeping stories alive and increasing exposure through social media channels. If you look at the tablet within this context, and consider the results of recent research, then ideas for PR start to jump out.

Paid Content wrote about a new report from Pew Research that describes news consumption habits of tablet users.

Tablet owners read a lot of news… The Pew study was conducted in conjunction with The Economist Group and found that half of tablet users use their devices to consume the news on a daily basis.. According to the report, 30 percent are spending more time with the news than before they had a tablet, and one-third are seeking out new news organizations on their tablets they didn’t frequent on their computers or televisions.

The article and report revealed that tablet users in large numbers (40%) are reading news via Web browsers, and (sadly, for the news business) paying for news content only in small numbers (14%).

Further, according to Journalism.org:

Eight-in-ten tablet news users say they now get news on their tablet that they used to get online from their laptop or desktop computer... [a majority] say the tablet takes the place of what they used to get from a print newspaper or magazine (59%) or as a substitute for television news (57%).

Also, it is not just about consumption but also WOM and social sharing:

Fully 85% of those who get news on their tablets said they had talked with someone about a long article they had read there. Some 41% of tablet news users say they share news through email or social networking...

The results point to the emrgence of tablet users as power news consumers; PR efforts need to align with this trend. We should be tracking how news gets on tablets, and exploring ways to get through to the tablet news consumer.

B-M Fiasco Another Example of the Transparent PR Campaign

One week later there are still some rumblings about the Burson Marsteller Facebook fiasco. It is a spectacle that continues to draw attention and coverage.

If we look at the episode more closely, however, it becomes clear that all the hyperventilating is a bit overblown. Also, I'd like to take the story back to where it started, as a PR pitch made public, and question assumptions people may have about what has become a now familiar story line, namely the outing of PR tactics and pitches, and offer advice and context in terms of what this means for the field and the future.

I, for one, am a little tired of seeing the PR industry and our pitches swatted around like sport. When one approaches a journalist in confidence, the assumption is that the information and source will be protected. If they don't like our pitches, there are many options outside of publicly outing offenders and destroying reputations and careers - change the channel, hit unsubscribe, delete, filter, etc.

I'd also like to point out that in other fields the types of tactics employed by the B-M team are done all the time. E.g. in political PR, opposition research, planted stories - all in a day’s work in politics, and doesn't raise too many eyebrows. I am not justifying sleazy behavior, but just pointing out it is not at all that unusual.

In his post Hyperbole Meets Hypocrisy: Googlegate Jeremy Pepper also said, essentially, that the outrage is overblown, and that in tech too, there is a long history of competitive sniping and creating fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) - he is correct, but I have to say in my many years in the field of tech PR, I have not seen PR teams brought into the mudslinging and story planting all that often.

This episode (and others like it where PR pitches and tactics are outed) seems to show that we are entering an era of the transparent PR campaign. I pointed this out in my post Media Wonderland: Down a Rabbit Hole and Through a Looking Glass.

The best defense is to be good at your craft, focus on relationships and not transactions, deliver great and targeted pitches, and adhere to the highest level of ethical standards. As much as PR desires confidence in media interactions, it is safest to assume that your tactics and motives will be outed and communications will be thrust onto the public stage and held under close scrutiny,

Google Refresh is a Good Thing for PR, Social Media and the Web

Google was in the news this week for making significant adjustments to its search algorithm. Their move was an apparent response to all the outcry about high rankings for low quality content, which in turn has been driven by the growth of content farms and other attempts by many to game the search system.

I think this is a great move and should result in changes that benefit those who work in PR and social media, among others. I work hard to generate original content that I hope will be interesting to others, and is not  driven by what people are searching for at any given moment. So do the people I work with and our clients.

The growth of content syndication sites and content farms has led to a lot of noise and garbage that just gets in the way of things on the Web. Sure, there is some good content on these sites. But as anyone who tries to monitor topics and brands and wade through never-ending streams of Google alerts quickly realizes, there is a ton of redundancy and garbage. Even when you do find good articles, the syndication sites make it hard to understand the original source and date of the information.

The Wall Street Journal had a couple of stories this week on the topic.  Google Reorders Web Winners discussed likely winners and losers, and included the following quote from a Google spokesperson:

... "people generating original content and maintaining high-quality websites" benefit Google.

Another article in the Journal introduced the term "article vomit,"  which, amazingly, was coined by someone from one of the offending sites, who also pointed to changes that are forthcoming:

He added that authors will now be required to write a minimum of 400 words an article, up from 250 words, along with many other changes to improve quality.

Clearly, given Google's influence, the changes will hopefully encourage longer and higher quality articles (and perhaps even stem an apparent decline in blogging, a topic that I wrote about in Builldog Reporter this week).

As the Media Turns: Has Apple Bulldozed One Deal Too Many?

It is one of those truisms that is especially relevant in the PR world: don't pick fights with those who buy ink by the barrel. While in most cases it is electrons that are at stake these days, the principle is the same - and one that seems to be lost on Apple.

Using the same approach and sharp elbows that worked so well in music and smart phones, and in an apparent attempt to convince yet another distressed industry that rising tides of coolness and brand can lift all ships, Apple is playing hardball with publishers and media companies.

I am talking, of course, about Apple's efforts to find a mutually agreeable model for monetizing content from publishers, and this week's chapter, in which the company announced the launch of subscriptions on its App Store.  If the move was meant to appease the industry - which had complained about lack of support for subscription pricing - this has not worked, judging by the headlines.

Let's not forget, these are media companies, which all have pretty big megaphones, of course. These are the downtrodden left-behinds of the digital era, a group that has the sympathy of the public and vaunted principles of the Fourth Estate (and its status as a special and protected institution) behind them.

If Apple is helping them find a way out and show a way forward with new content platforms and monetization gambits, it is on their terms.

Did they make their latest move because they want to respond to industry conerns, or is it because others like Google are cozying up to publishers with better deals? Probably a little of both, see this post Clash of the Tech Titans: Google One Pass vs. Apple.

I have started to see some negative articles about a vendor that has always been a media darling (what a tortured relationship, this morning an NBC Today newscaster discussed possible government antitrust action Apple and almost in the same breath gushed about an Apple store coming to Grand Central Station).

Yesterday's Wall street journal article Apple Risks an iPad Backlash said: 

By playing hardball with media companies on App Store subscriptions, Apple risks a painful rebound. Few media outlets can afford to not have their mobile applications available through Apple's App Store. With the iPad, Apple has an early lead in tablets, with a 75.3% share of global tablet shipments in the fourth quarter, Strategy Analytics estimates. And while its share of smartphone shipments was only 16.1%, the iPhone is the phone of choice for many affluent consumers. But that hardly justifies Apple's terms for subscriptions sold within its App Store. The company will keep 30% of the revenues and won't automatically give publishers information about their subscribers.

Yesterday, TechCrunch ran a post Why are You Defending Apple? It said: 

As you’ve doubtless heard by now, yesterday Apple revealed its new fee structure for premium content: all apps that offer premium content outside of the App Store have to also offer it via Apple’s official in-app purchases (this includes Amazon’s Kindle) and Apple takes a 30% cut of all subscriptions...

My reaction has been one of trepidation. I don’t like where this is headed, and I think that many who consider themselves technophiles are completely dropping the ball by rationalizing what Apple has done......

I don’t like the precedents that Apple continues to set. The App Store has existed for less than three years, and Apple has been drastically changing the rules on the fly...

I don’t take issue with Apple demanding a small processing fee to handle credit card transactions, but 30% is too much, especially combined with the restriction that publishers can’t change their pricing to adjust to the tax. Not every business will be able to offset the decrease in margins with the increased purchase volume promised by one-click payments. And companies that are in the business of reselling premium content with fixed costs, like MOG or Amazon, don’t have many options… The App Store isn’t a storefront in the way that Amazon.com or Walmart are — this isn’t just an extravagant affiliate fee. We’re talking about the primary method of app distribution for one of the most important computer operating systems, ever.

What's Wrong with Tech Marketing - and How to Fix it (Forrester Interview)

As I blogged last week, I spoke with Dr. Thomas Grant of Forrester about a new report: Tech Marketers Pursue Antiquated Marketing Strategies. Our wide-ranging discussion covered many topics that should be of interest to Flack's Revenge readers.

The report calls technology marketers out on the carpet for being too focused on lead generation and new business.  When compared with other industries, the techies simply do not spend the time or money that they should on market research or customer relations, and do not use social media or PR to full advantage - it is instead all about big bang events, product releases and other news, and talking rather than having thoughtful conversations.

No doubt, some will wince at its conclusions, however, the report does offer suggestions for improvement.  In Part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Grant, I tried to zero in on these things, elicit examples and also find out more about ways in which tech marketers can more productively use PR and social media, and work with media and analysts.

Read on, and if this is a topic that interests you, I encourage you to visit the Forrester site as they have a selection of interesting reports that pertain to marketing.

Do companies ever make the transition (from being product-driven to market and customer-driven)?

it is wrenching... and sometimes takes disruption.

Discussion about SaaS as an example of disruption that is changing thinking

What really struck me about SaaS was that it kind knocked people for a loop... they started saying things like "Well, this isn't just a delivery model, this is a business model... we have to have a very different engagement model around our customers, we have to design our products differently."

In a way, what had happened was that they had been thrust into a very close relationship with customers that didn't exist necessarily in an on-premises world... with many layers of obfuscation between you and ultimately what people were doing with the technology... and suddenly people realized, well, damn, customers aren't just interested in things that are new, and they're not just interested in products, and they're not just interested in us as a vendor in delivering products that are new...

[This] has led people away from emphasizing too much what is new, and new leads and so forth... obviously from the statistics, not everyone is there yet.

Emphasis on the new, new thing

One of the things that companies have learned is that, [while] new is good... new is not always intrinsically and obviously valuable.   That is why the pace of innovation in the tech industry is a double-edged sword... on the one hand, it allows people to come up with things of value and deliver them to the market quickly, but often also lets them deliver things that are not of value, or not explain the value as effectively as they should because they're rushing to get it out and then they move onto the next thing.

On relatively small budgets for press and analyst relations (see chart)

The conceit that because we are developing new technology, we are defining the market, ergo there is no market research to be done is patently wrong.  Aside from the fact that not every technology [and] innovation is disruptive to that level, also, too, it is the case that you are addressing a human need; people do express their needs usually in a pretty clear fashion that you can then do market research about...

it is unfortunate that they don't tap available resources as much as they do, nor... other sources of influence... It is, especially in the B2B world, a pretty complex process... in the best of all possible worlds, you are trying to create some sort of a cascade of positive viewpoints on what you offer as a vendor that go, ultimately, into not just a press release or a piece of marketing collateral but ultimately go in a conversation between a CIO and a colleague when they sit down together... you're ultimately trying to reach that kind of conversation.

I don't think that is something the tech industry has effectively mastered... again, not just press and analysts, but other people might be important influencers... they don't get that picture too clearly.

There's an unfortunately standard model for doing analyst relations...  what analysts don't enjoy is talking to a vendor only when there's a huge announcement, and there's this carefully stage-managed conversation... frankly, the analysts have a hard time getting a word in edge-wise, because there's this gushing fire hose of information about this big new thing... that's not as effective as being in a more conversational mode with analysts....

Are tech companies under-investing in PR relative to other industries?

I think they are under-investing where PR is going... PR doesn't have to be just about announcements about new products.

One of the areas that is often misunderstood is the value of a new success story... what people look for in a success story is not necessarily what vendors think they are looking for... which is usually just validation that the vendor is wonderful.

If you are looking at PR as a conduit for information that will have an effect on a potential buyer or will help keep a customer loyal, having a story about how someone addressed a problem - even if the vendor is a minor character or not even mentioned - is still going to get my attention... 

What about tuning into vendors content on blogs and Twitter, assuming it is interesting and an area you cover you'd want to tune into that, right?

Yes... and I do, for example since I do write a lot about social media as an input into the development process, I'll follow a blog like, the social product development blog that PTC has... I've gotten to know one of the persons who posts there a lot and I have a lot of respect for what she has to say.  We're willing to follow what a social media outlet has to say regardless of whether it is a vendor or somebody else. 

We asked Cisco how has social media effected their launch process... they said, well what happens is that the spike of activity flattens out a bit, there's more conversation they have to engage in leading up to a launch event and there's actually, on the trailing side,more going on afterward... not just a "show up and throw up" event, then they rush off to the next big launch, but they have to engage over a longer time.

From Telephone to Twitter - Hits and Misses in Andrew Cuomo's PR Playbook

It is a new political season, and there's been lots of coverage about the new landscape and incoming class.  Politics follows not too far behind my primary passions of PR, technology and social media.  So I especially like to track and read the articles that combine a number of these things.

On that note, the New York Times had a couple of great stories recently about Andrew Cuomo, the new Governor of New York.  It was interesting that one article focused solely on Cuomo's use of the telephone as a power tool, in dealing with the media and others.  It is an old school approach that is apparently effective (well, anyway, this was a very long article and the reporter seemed somewhat enamored and impressed).  According to the story:

The call comes with no warning, at almost any time of the day...The unhurried, instantly recognizable voice on the other end of the line belongs to Andrew M. Cuomo. There will be long pauses. There will be many questions. Get comfortable: you may be on the phone for a while...He makes relatively few public appearances, rarely gives on-the-record interviews and disdains the Sunday chat show circuit. His e-mails are restricted to a small circle and, frequently, to two words: “Call me.”

But more often, Mr. Cuomo calls you... he will first ask about the foot surgery or Little League game that came up during the last conversation. Only rarely does a secretary ask you to hold for Mr. Cuomo’s call: he makes it a point to be on the line when you pick up. He almost never puts anyone on hold.

The effect, many say, is a powerful sense of intimacy.. Mr. Cuomo also relishes the visceral feedback of a phone call, he said: the sound of the other person’s voice and the sense of his or her mood...“I am not an e-mail person,” he said. “You don’t get context, you don’t get emotion and you don’t get a connection.”

I think the subtleties in how we communicate often go underappreciated, and this article serves as reminder about the importance of these choices.  While an in-person meeting might even be more effective, Cuomo can cover more ground using the telephone - and the phone is clearly better than other forms of communications when it comes to the nuances, the seemingly small touches that can make all of the difference in the world when it comes to relating to people.  Cuomo's direct approach is also noteworthy, and might cause some PR folks to cringe because there's apprently no PR intermediary in the mix - yet I am sure jorunalists appreciate having that type of access (even if it is on his terms).

Then again, in this era it is never enough just to master one mode of communications, and another article in the New York Times covered a misfire in the Cuomo administration's use of Twitter.  Apprently, they were quick to publish the name @NYGovernor, but someone beat them to the punch in establishing a Twitter account under that name.  Here is an excerpt:

At first glance, the Twitter page...  seemed perfectly plausible for a politician, and featured the same snapshot of Mr. Cuomo — smiling and looking off into the distance — that can be seen on the home page of the governor’s new Web site.. [the] first few Twitter messages seemed right out of the governor’s press office...

But the tone eventually got less statesmanlike, as the subjects veered toward his dislike of the Executive Mansion (not enough parking for his muscle cars)...

If that did not raise enough suspicion, there was Mr. Cuomo’s Twitter biography: “First elected governor of the State of New York since the Luv Guv.”

Birth of a Buzzword; Augmented Reality, and Apps for Tech PR

It is a phrase that conjures interesting imagery.

Some might think it is what happens when you have one drink too many.

Others would say people experience this when they become politicians (or when joining the PR profession, for that matter; there are no sacred cows here).

Actually, augmented reality refers to a relatively new class of cellphone apps that superimpose data over visual displays to enrich the viewing experience. I first saw it in action when a buddy of mine proudly showed me his new Google Android phone. Being a geek from way back, of the programming and Trekkie variety, Charles was stoked that he could point his cell phone at the night sky and see the constellations conveniently named and drawn on the display. As he panned across the sky, the display changed to show the ones that were in view.

Being a wordsmith and geek too, I am fascinated by jargon, and like to follow the usage and evolution of buzzwords. I thought I'd search Factiva to find the first mention of the term.  I was surprised to learn that augmented reality has actually been around for quite awhile (the first article, at least in their index, was an EE Times piece about virtual reality from 1992).  So I am apparently incorrect when I refer to the phrase as a new one, or technology that necessarily relates to cellphone apps.

However, as the graphic below shows, usage of the term has skyrocketed recently in comparison to 2001, which is as far back as their chart goes.

I thought I'd explore (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) potential augmented reality apps that could be a boon for those in the tech PR profession:

Real Time Thought Bubbles

This app interprets the incredulous or bored looks of reporters or analysts as they take in demos and PowerPoints and superimposes what they most likely are thinking over their heads like the thought bubbles you see in comics; it can be an invaluable aid to the spokesperson and PR rep.

BS Detector/Crash Saver

Designed to rescue your client when an otherwise great briefing is going off the rails (think software demo crash, or perhaps the hype is going into overdrive). The app superimposes a screen that says "Sorry for the interruption, we will soon return..." or "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system..."

Jargon Translator

This app can be used by the reporter or analyst - it miraculously and in real time translates indecipherable jargon and superimposes it as sub titles.