Cross-posted with permission from Digital Disruption
SAN FRANCISCO - The dust has settled and the inflatable Android blow-up dolls have been put away...Apps World North America is officially over.
I finished Day 2 with probably the best talk I heard this week, given by Marc Heedt of Twitter. The brand strategist and social TV specialist for the online social networking platform, Heedt talked about how TV and Twitter are the “force multiplier” in the second screen experience.
“We’re seeing that through TV, people are engaging and making impressions that are transcending what had ever been done before in the communications space,” Heedt said. “You know the formula: Mass x Acceleration = Force? Well, we believe that it’s: Mass of Media x Social Acceleration = Force of Media. In order to control an audience and the conversation of social media, this needs to be how you approach it.”
This made me think about how many sporting events, concerts, and shows I’ve watched where Twitter has been almost as engaging and entertaining as the event itself.
During the final day of Apps World, I also sat in on talks surrounding retail, commerce and mobile. Sephora, Forever 21 and Rue La La, though separate panels, all had consistent strategies when it came to delivering great digital experiences.
“The customer believes that it is one brand, so the messaging and the experience you create for them needs to be seamless,” said Danny Sullivan, VP of mobile for Sephora. “Finding the right use cases for a particular platform, making sure you utilize the screen space well and making sure you provide the most engaging, personalized consumer experience is something that we, at Sephora, view as what’s top of mind. We’re 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, so being able to effectively execute on the plans we have for mobile and digital is how we define success.”
Day 2 workshops featured panels that included TV as a second screen, HTML5 and retail and mobile. I met some great developers, digital strategists and encountered apps that all were taking on a similar challenge: ‘How do we deliver the same experience for consumers no matter the device or platform?’
I’m not quite sure that anyone has the universal answer for that, but with the panels, workshops and plethora of booths at Apps World North America, many were at least one step closer to solving this problem. Watch for my Apps World follow-up interviews and blogs on digitaldisruption.com.
