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As the number of smartphone users continues to grow at an incredible rate, the challenge facing many retail brands is to continue to find ways of utilising smartphone technologies to effectively connect and engage with consumers. In recent months many retail brands have focused on smartphone features that integrate with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, to not only create something new and unique as part of the consumer journey, but to also take advantage of the fact that through successfully integrating social media with the overall brand experience, the likelihood of fans and customers “sharing” branded content and increasing brand visibilty in the social space is also increased; something that more and more companies are continually striving to achieve across multiple social media and online PR campaigns. Interestingly, something that an increasing number of people are now starting to talk about when looking at the ways smartphones are shaping consumer and brand day-to-day lives, is Near Field Communication technologies (NFC) and the possibilities that they present.

In short, Near Field Communication technology enables smartphone users to gain instant access to digital data from another NFC enabled handset or NFC tag simply by placing or waving their phone next to the NFC tag. Much like scanning a QR code or connecting via Bluetooth, the tag then sends content automatically between the handset and the tag - be it a Foursquare-style check-in at a record store or access to an exclusive in-store promotion.

Although at first this may not seem all that different to what we have seen recently with the introduction of QR codes, the possibilities we are seeing for NFC technology are far greater. So much so, that we're not only seeing an increasing number of smartphone brands integrating the technology into their latest handsets, we are also starting to see large named brands such as Google, Visa and MasterCard getting involved at what is a very early stage.

The internet of things with its unprecedented level of connectivity does not only catalyze the rise of “social” but also the rise of “smart.” And smart means complex. Increasingly, products and services are multi-functional, multi-layered, and connected to a broader ecosystem of services, serving as a platform for added-value applications. Companies, across industries, are beginning to develop smart solutions – from smart phones, smart energy, smart healthcare, smart housing, to smart mobility, and more. Smart ecosystems have emerged as the lynchpin of innovation – as the holy grail for user experiences that brands can truly own.

What if “connectedness” was a new modus operandi for brands and required them to be “smart brands”? By textbook definition, smart systems are self-organized systems with built-in feedback mechanisms and the ability to constantly reorganize themselves in order to adapt to their ever-changing environment. They are capable of describing and analyzing a situation, and taking decisions based on the available data in a predictive or adaptive manner, thereby performing smart actions.

as Allison Fine, author of Social Change in the Connected World, puts it aptly: “It is counterintuitive but true; the more decision making we push away from the center, the more powerful our social networks become. That’s the power-to-the-edges concept.”

So what’s making gamification so popular today? Consider these four factors.

1. Consumers Want It

consumers are looking for new ways to entertain themselves — 40% of U.S. online adults have expressed this interest in a recent survey. What’s more, consumers want game elements everywhere. 60% of consumers play a video game online in a typical week. Consumers (especially Gen Yers) are increasingly accessing games online and on mobile devices.

It conjectured the use of NFC (Near Field Communication) and how it could benefit brands, their awareness and message all through social media.

The hypothesis that brands can utilise NFC technology within their stores, which may further enhance their brand message with brand awareness, along with social media tie-ins with NFC technology should be taken seriously.

There’s already an associated cost with print labels, which uniquely identify a product, so the respective costs associated with reproducing the same product with an NFC tag should be negligible, right?

Why are brands killing the Facebook conversation? I read this post by Jan Rezab, CEO of Socialbakers, writing on Econsultancy, about the lack of interaction of brands have on their own Fan pages. Apparently only 5% of wall questions from consumers on brand pages ever receive follow-up interactions from the brand – shocking really! It’s really shooting yourself in the social foot – first it’s plain rude, second the more interactions you have, your brand updates get wider exposure in streams due to the way Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm works.

55 percent of Americans are interested in working for a company that uses gamification to increase productivity, according to a new survey by consulting firm Saatchi & Saatchi S. In its report titled "Engagement Unleashed: Gamification for Business, Brands and Loyalty", the agency found that around half of online Americans play social game during a typical day -- 28 percent of them who work play them more than 30 minutes a day at their jobs.

37 percent of survey respondents said they prefer to hear about a new product via online game experiences, versus the 44 percent who said they prefer email and the 3 percent that prefer TV or radio advertisements

Among smartphone owners, 75 percent of participants want to play clues-based challenges from brands, and 85 percent would be willing to play them for at least half an hour for the chance to win a $100 cash prize

A recent interview takes a look at what Facebook’s recent platform changes mean for businesses. It begins, “Recently at f8, Facebook’s developer conference, the company introduced a series of action verbs into its social platform. ‘Read,’ ‘Watch,’ and ‘Listen,’ Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained, were added to help build a ‘language for how people connect.’ The one missing word, of course, was ‘Buy.’ That’s really why Facebook and its army of content partners from news, publishing, music, and film and TV are rushing to set up shop on the famous platform with 750 million users.”

The interviewer “sat down with Gi Fernando, an expert on social-networking data, to help explain what Facebook’s platform changes mean for brands, consumers, and marketers.

When asked about the single biggest change that Facebook is making, Fernando replied, “The biggest change is Facebook driving toward becoming the semantic web. The semantic web is making sure that the Internet has a dictionary and a grammar that can be understood by consumers, yes, but also by advertisers and brands. It’s also understanding how people behave on the Web rather than just clicking on stuff: what are they actually doing? You read, watch things, you get instant feedback, your friends can read and watch with you, but then the brand knows what you and 13 others are reading, watching, listening to as well, and you can target advertising based around that. It’s a beautiful feedback loop both for the consumer and the brand.”

Despite all of this 99% of brands and businesses are ill prepared for this new flood of mobile tech. They literally don’t have a clue where to start. Most brands think that building an app is the solution to all their mobile problems but with over a million apps across the various platforms they are notoriously hard to promote and rarely get cut through. Many businesses have started implementing mobile sites but that is only really the tip of the iceberg and the vast majority of businesses wouldn’t even know what a mobile site was (have a look at some of the biggest businesses in your country to see how bad it is). The simple reality is that brands and businesses don’t even know that they should have a strong mobile presence yet and that presents a huge opportunity to a new breed of entrepreneurs willing to provide solutions.

Digital agencies will still be pumping out apps for the next couple of years to support campaigns and PR firms are not even at the races. Most importantly you would have to focus. Focus on nothing but mobile. As tempting as it would be to build websites and carry out traditional advertising that will just bring you down to the level of your competitors. The opportunities are immense though because mobile is not something that is just going to go away. It would take you 2-3 years to position yourself correctly but if you started now you would be miles ahead of the curve when this stuff really hit the mainstream from a marketing perspective.

We are adding our own mobile capabilities to compliment social because the two go hand in hand but there is plenty more room for agencies all over the world to spring up who are purely focused on mobile. It will without a doubt be the next big marketing frontier. That is my free business idea for the year so just send over the check if you do go ahead and give it a go and it turns in to a huge success

Don Kingsborough could have called it quits. The man who founded Worlds of Wonder Toys, famous for Teddy Ruxpin and helping lead the introduction of Nintendo in the U.S., and the former president of of consumer products at Atari, was just winding down his time last year at Blackhawk Network, a pre-paid card company that he had sold to supermarket Safeway. With his options expiring, he decided to sell and contemplated retirement.

But then PayPal came calling, and Kingsborough couldn’t resist the opportunity to make one more big stab at shaking up the retail world. Kingsborough joined PayPal in March 2011 as VP for retail and prepaid products, heading up PayPal’s efforts to launch an in-store payment system.

In his first extensive interview since joining PayPal, Kingsborough said he wasn’t just interested in extending his career; he saw a huge chance to fundamentally change the way people shopped in retail stores as digitalization moved payments beyond cash and credit. And he believes that PayPal is uniquely positioned to bring that vision to market.

Starbucks is launching its first major augmented reality app this holiday season that will let customers animate their coffee cups with their smartphones.

Starbucks Cup Magic launches for iPhone and Android devices in the U.S. next Tuesday. (In Canada, just the iPhone version will launch.) As demonstrated in the video above, the app works by pointing your phone’s camera at the company’s red holiday season coffee cups and 47 additional objects, such as bags of coffee, on display at Starbucks retail locations.

Doing so will produce animations involving five characters — an ice skater, a squirrel, a boy and a dog sledding and a fox — on your screen. You can also interact with the characters. For instance, if you tap the boy on the sled he does a somersault. Those who activate all five characters can qualify to win an as-yet-unnamed prize.

China's leading location-based social service is distributing NFC window stickers to more than 3,000 merchants in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Taipei and Hong Kong

Jiepang is to distribute NFC window stickers to more than 3,000 merchant partners in six cities in Greater China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Taipei and Hong Kong.

Jiepang is China's leading location-based social service. Its users currently check in and earn rewards via a GPS-enabled smartphone app which comes preloaded on all new HTC, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and other smartphone brands in China, including all three of the new Nokia NFC smartphones announced earlier this week.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, 22pc of businesses polled in the sector were investing in social media marketing. This figure fell to 8.5pc in the first quarter of 2012 and to 6pc by the second quarter. Pearlfinders, a major business research company, spoke to more than 5,000 marketeers around the world about their budgets. “This represents an interesting about-turn. We saw investment in social media increase steadily throughout 2011, to reach the highest levels ever by the end of the year. However, as financial services brands embraced new methods for communicating with customers, they opened themselves up to criticism and negative sentiment,” said Anthony Cooper, Pearlfinders managing director.

putting spending on hold until they have developed a clearer picture of how social media can be harnessed to improve their brands.”

conversations directly linking to brands near impossible to control

An ad agency, several musicians, and an app developer have collaborated on Lucozade Energy’s latest campaign, creating drink bottles that launch videos through an augmented reality (AR) smartphone app.

Billington Cartmell, a UK ‘thinking brands’ agency, led the project to join artistic expression with an interactive brand experience. Using a the unique ability of the Aurasma app to map and track cylindrical objects, the agency asked seven of the UK’s biggest musicians to design a Lucozade bottle which when viewed through Aurasma leaps to life with video and animations.

A great deal of exclusive content was created for this campaign, and most of it is accessible only through the AR-enabled app. The animations that play from the bottles in the app are really only teasers, directing users to a website with documentaries and behind-the scenes video.

The infographic which outlines who does and doesn’t use location-based services and why, states a number of concerns regarding the use of these services. First, 50 percent of users don’t have smartphones (I was once among this group and have since been unable to imagine life without it). 48 percent of non-users cited privacy concerns, which is very understandable because it was at the root of my apprehension until I realized I control my own privacy when using these services, and 49 percent had no motivation.

Motivation to use location-based services like Facebook Places, which is utilized by 90 percent of people who “check-in” anywhere online, shouldn’t be waning. Companies should be offering more promotions to bring in local costumers because it’s basically free advertising! 54 percent of current users use the services for discounts and coupons and 44 percent of non-users would consider using a location-based service for discounts and coupons. Why aren’t they converted? There’s just not enough good deals, in my opinion.

What’s also interesting is users are more likely to check-in with large brands (perhaps this is because those are the ones that often offer promotions) but less likely to share those check-ins with friends. When it comes to the social aspect of sharing your location, who cares if you went to Panera for lunch? Friends want to know about the cool mom-and-pop places they’ve never heard of.

American Express is going all in on the daily deals business, striking a deal with Facebook that is similar to the one it already has with Foursquare. Through a new Facebook app called “Link, Like, Love,” AmEx cardholders can link their cards to their Facebook accounts just like they can already link their cards to their Foursquare accounts. Once they do so they will get a dashboard of deals from brands such as Whole Foods, Dunkin’ Donuts, Virgin America, and Sports Authority. (These offers are different than Facebook Deals, which Facebook sources itself)

Unlike Groupon or LivingSocial, these AmEx deals don’t require anyone to pre-purchase anything or present any coupons to merchants. One of the biggest challenges for the daily deals industry is how to measure how many offers are actually redeemed at thousands of different participating businesses. But AmEx has an advantage here in that it is already a payment network that is set up and accepted in businesses large and small around the world. All people have to do is buy the deal item with their AmEx card and they will be credited the deal amount. The Facebook twist is that the deals you see are influenced by what you and your friends “like” on the Web using the Facebook like button.

Although many of the deals at launch are with national brands, AmEx is also leveraging its relationships with smaller local merchants. It is a launching a program aimed at them called Go Social which allows merchants to manage deals across both Facebook and Foursquare, with other social networks to be added in the future. Business owners will be able to create their own coupon-less deals in a self-serve manner that are triggered whenever someone with a linked account buys a deal item. Self-serve has been a challenge so far with local merchants, but AmEx can market to them through its existing channels.

Over the past year, American Express has been making several key payments partnerships with technology companies and launched its take on the digital wallet, Serve. Serve integrates a variety of payment options into a single account that can be funded from a bank account, debit, credit or charge card. The company has also landed a number of lucrative carrier partner deals for Serve. Separate from Serve, American Express’ recent partnerships in the payments space include Foursquare, Facebook and even Zynga for personalized deals. We sat down recently with Harshul Sanghi, American Express’ new VP of Enterprise Growth Group to chat about Serve, the digital wallet and how the company plans to dominate the payments space.

Sanghi, who was formerly the Managing Director of North American venture activities for Motorola, joined AmEx in September. His focus is on further developing the Serve brand and forming these partnerships that help expand the card member base into new segments.

Sanghi explains that while every payments company (including even Google) and credit card company is releasing their own version of the digital wallet, it’s whats in the wallet that’s truly important. “The wallet that has the most brand partnerships is what customers are going to gravitate too,” he says. And this wallet needs to tie in seamlessly with loyalty programs, and virtual currencies, which is why AmEx bought virtual currency monetization platform Sometrics a few weeks ago. And the wallet needs to store offers and deals as well so that consumers don’t have to carry around coupons or discounts to a store.

Here’s some good news for web video publishers and producers. Online video advertising budgets are expected to jump sharply in 2012. Brand advertisers who purchased online video ads this year are projected to spend 47 percent more next year. These numbers were released this morning in the second annual “Video State of the Industry Survey” by Adap.tv and Digiday.

For advertisers that didn’t purchase any video ads so far this year, 84% say they will include digital video in their campaigns in Q4 2011 or 2012.

Advertisers say they are most likely to shift spending away from display and print ads to fund the increased online video spending.