1) What steps did you take to develop your brand as a tech, pop culture, PR, fashion and multimedia all-star and when did you realize that you’re officially “tech savvy”?

My entry to the media landscape was as a news-talk producer, which taught me how to find the right story for the right audience from a wide variety of news topics. I got into the tech scene just over two years ago when I produced a technology-based radio and TV show. The tech and mobile space moves just as fast as the news so I’m used to staying on top of trends. I keep up with the latest and greatest because I love technology so my tech-enthusiasm fuels my passion.

Can you tell us about some current trends you think will strike it big?

Augmented reality has been a buzz-word for some time now, however, it will be explored even more in the next year or so, especially in the world of online shopping. There are a growing number of eCommerce sites that offer deals on fashion and home decor like HauteLook, eBay’s fashion store (Fashion Vault), HomeSav, Gilt, and Amazon’s newly launched MyHabit, that need to find innovative ways to attract more shoppers and encourage more spending. This is where augmented reality will make its grand entrance onto the catwalk. A web cam or front-facing camera allows shoppers to virtually “try on” clothing and accessories from the comfort of their own home.

eBay recently rolled out an AR app to help shoppers try on sunglasses before buying. UK retailer Banana Flame’s AR app, the Social Shopper, lets you try on a bunch of outfit virtually by standing 4-5 feet away from your web cam and moving the pieces onto your body. You can share the pictures with your friends. It’s only a matter of time before your Facebook News Feed page will have status updates like: “Does this outfit make me look hot? Plz comment. I’m taking a poll on whether or not I should buy it at 50 per cent off. Good deal, eh?”

Do you have any favourite sources of tech/media news?

I refer to a lot of sites. Off the top of my head: Engadget, TechCrunch, Mashable, VentureBeat, LA Times Tech, Vancouver Sun, The Verge (formerly This Is My Next), TrendHunter. Another good source is the MediaBistro newsletter which provides a succinct rundown of the top stories in news, pop culture, and tech. I also enjoy listening to Leo LaPorte’s podcast, The Week in Tech as I appreciate his perspective as well as the strong panel of opinionated guests he invites.

Integrating platforms such as TV, film and the web in order to provide a single, transmedia experience for users seems increasingly important — is there anyone in the digital space who’s doing this particularly well?

One brand that immediately comes to mind is Salomon, the makers of sports-specific clothing, footwear, and equipment. They’ve done an impressive job of taking elements of TV and film and applying it to the web and online audience with the launch of its web-series, Freeski TV. The content in each episode is compelling, interesting and leaves viewers hungry for more. Salomon is reliable and consistent on delivering the content for its growing audience; as a result, they’ve earned respect as a strong yet cool brand in the industry. They’ve innovated the advertising model for ski/snowboard from being a logo slapped on an athlete’s helmet to utilizing content to drive brand awareness and loyalty. It worked on me, as I just bought new gear from them.

If you were to coin a term that communicates today’s current media landscape (that isn’t “new media”) what would that term be?

“Distinctively trending media” The current media landscape is hustling to be bigger, broader, and grander. Media players, brands, companies and personalities are experimenting with ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors. There is no clear path in the landscape for anyone, it’s like throwing darts at the board until something sticks or better yet hit a bull’s eye. Essentially, players are experimenting in this media playground with the intention of being distinctive and trending. #Innovation

Competitive innovation rests on the ability of an organization to actually accelerate internal learning, and in many cases, to extend this learning to the client. By necessity, an agency may need to make a surgical assessment of one’s own and the competition’s technical, tactical and creative advantages  in order to “right size” one’s ambitions — not to maintain strategic equilibrium.

By engaging in competitive innovation as a primary strategy, the agency can leverage its unique competitive resources in an aspirational manner with the goal of broadening its porfolio of offerings — especially in the new media environment.

The public is saturated with social media and the phenomena itself will reach some sort of critical mass in the next five years with all the niche apps and news and digestible information streams available to the consumer. This has already started. Love economics? Get the Economist widget on your Iphone. Political junkie? Check out Newsvine or Politico.com.  Not very serious? Sign up for The Onion’s twitter feed. However you want your news and views, you can get it.

We are also now more than familiar with the usual barrage of client concerns that include: new, uncharted and seemingly contradictory consumer behaviours, crowd-sourcing, media fragmentation, the ever-looming end of broadcast, and the complete domination of the market of  apps and device-specific functionality.

During the next 5-10 year, agencies will tend to fall into two distinct categories. They  will be either data-focused with a zeal for quantitative measurement (and often because of this completely unimaginative), or they will be creative power-houses.  Either way, two-thirds of the equation is missing.  Clients insist the primary motivation for strengthening their digital arsenal is to procure better methods for measurement, and yet only 16 per cent of clients even use metrics.  Remember agencies have three, not two, distinct and primary challenges.

1. Thought leadership in New Media. Which, mind you, means tolerating and cultivating individuals that don’t necessarily fit into your “culture” but who can bring new life and ideas to it. The invigoration is good for everyone.

2. Intellectual property development (apps). This is absolutely key.

3. Radical design innovation-which means hiring creatives who have strategic and design sensibilities.

Overall, the agencies that master the next five to 10 years will be lean, mean, and ultimately dominated by strategic mastery, technological prowess and radical design ethos.

Barrett  is featured in the Sundance award-winning documentary, The Corporation, and has been profiled extensively in media such as USA Today, New York Times, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, and People Magazine. He co-authored the book, Direct Your Own Life. Barrett was the first corporately sponsored college student in America, as well as one of the youngest patent holders in the world. Today, he is the new media producer for Roger Friedman’s entertainment news source Showbiz411.com, a partner in Powerhouse Pictures Entertainment, a film production company, and KBC Media, a media relations firm and founder of the public relations start-up PRserve.com. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisBarrett.

What do you think of the term New Media? Still relevant?

The term New Media will always be relevant but the New Media concept will change in the future. Ten years ago, the concept of New Media was digitizing videos and putting them on CD-Roms or DVD. The new frontier of new media is that the media will be available on demand, streaming to every device.

Is there a lack of transparency when it comes to New Media?

I have always seen a lack of transparency in both traditional and new media forms and that is an issue that everyone will have to tackle in the coming years.

In 2008, I was obtaining press credentials to cover Senator Obama’s presidential campaign whenever the campaign would come through the Philadelphia region. I would apply for credentials with the idea of filming the entire stump speech and posting to my YouTube channel (youtube.com/chrisbarrett). My camera and tripod would be set up along side of CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. The traditional outlets would pull the best sound bites out of the speech and air them on TV and post online.

However, I believed the voters had a right to watch the entire hour-long speech and not just the sound bites the news organizations felt were the highlights. I have always tried embracing new media as a transparent medium. 

Last year, when Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures brought me on board to be the new media producer of entertainment journalist Roger Friedman’s Showbiz411.com, they wanted to bring to life Roger’s articles and put a video to his online articles.

I wanted to bring the same transparency I brought to my campaign videos to entertainment journalism. You may talk to the actor for a half-hour but you will go back to your office and write a four hundred-word article based off of two or three minutes of your conversation. 

In September 2010, we spoke with James Franco on camera for fifteen minutes. The highlight of our conversation was that he told Roger and I exclusively that he got a D in NYU acting class when he was filming 127 Hours. Instead, of just pulling that sound bite and put a quick two-minute video online. I posted three five-minute videos to show our entire conversation with James Franco.

The raw video of Franco talking about getting the poor grade in acting class was embedded everywhere from PerezHilton.com to CNN.com. Watch Part 1 here, part two, and part three here.

What do you think the future hold for online videos? How/where do you see the technology changing?

I see the future of online video leaning towards capturing a moment and sharing socially with your friends. Currently, the iPhone App Viddy is a great way to do that for 15-seconds. You shoot a video, add music and a filter over it, and share it on Viddy.co and socially through Facebook and Twitter. iPhone App Viddy had a very successful launch with more than 500,000 downloads through Apple’s App Store. I’m excited to see what the future holds for this start-up.

In a new, ongoing series called Digital Dialogue, Invoke interviews influencers from all over North America, including NY, LA, and Vancouver. If you are interested in being featured in the series, contact us @invoke. Keep the dialogue going! Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

Interactive marketing aims to engage consumers by encouraging dialogue and exploration of the brand. With traditional marketing, consumers are obliged to be a passive user and the communication channels are only one-way. With the proliferation of social media, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook encourage two-way communication and enhance the dialogue between consumers and brands.

According to Mashable, driving this shift is the proliferation of connected devices – the power is put, literally, into the hands of consumers and “[enables] them to have deeper, more enriching relationships with companies.”

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) approached Invoke with the task of helping the organization reveal its new logo while conveying a new brand identity that reflects the energy, youth, and diversity of the 2.2 million veterans that have served since 9/11.

IAVA represents the United States’ first and largest group dedicated to the troops and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the civilian supporters of those troops and veterans. IAVA’s mission is to better the lives of those veterans and their families, and  it accomplishes that through advocacy, awareness and assistance. Invoke was excited to work with IAVA to help it reveal its new logo and brand identity.

Invoke created a splash page on the IAVA website to reveal the new logo. Members and supporters nationwide who visited the page were asked to share in one word what IAVA means to them and submit it to the page. The words were then displayed on the splash page as more and more of the logo was revealed. This interaction conveyed the message that supporters define what IAVA is. Social media was also leveraged by asking participants to post their words to Twitter and Facebook.

The results? During the seven days that the splash page was live, traffic to the IAVA website totalled more than 19,000 unique visitors and more than 1,100 people submitted words.

The new brand identity and the logo reveal was a great success. The easily recognized symbol will become a badge of honour and pride for the IAVA members and supporters and reflects the dynamism of a truly innovative generation.

Be sure to check out IAVA on Facebook and on Twitter!

Social media is communication 2.0. Leverage your consumer base so that customers become your personal sales team — nothing sells more or increases customer loyalty and engagement better than the voice of other customers. Social media takes word of mouth marketing  into the digital sphere as customers peruse the Internet for twitpics of the best pulled pork sandwich or the latest blog post about an Italian restaurant from a favourite foodie.

If you’re thinking of taking that dive into the social media deep end, here are some reasons you should incorporate social media into your small business strategy.

Customers can be your friends
For years consumers have been fighting a battle against advertisers – we were sick of being sold to from a faceless corporation and want to be treated like humans. Social media allows businesses to do that. Like the corner store your grandpa visited as a little boy or the butcher who knows you by first name, social media allows businesses to invoke a sense of community. Engage your customers in a conversation. Let them see the human side of the business. Leverage the community to gauge interest about new products, keep them up-to-date about events and let them know about specials before the regular public. Talk with, not at.

It’s cheap
Forget about buying that ad space in the newspaper or sending your intern out on the street with a sandwich board. Social media allows businesses to gain exposure for little or no money at all. Create a Facebook page, sign up for a Twitter account, establish a WordPress blog – all free. The only real investment is time. Interacting with your customers on these platforms can put them to work for you. They can spread the word about your great product or service by engaging their own social networks through yours. Ultimately, they help you expand your reach far beyond what you could have done with traditional advertising.

Responsiveness
Take off those rose-coloured glasses. Not everything that your customers say will be positive. It’s up to you as the business owner to respond to everything, even the bad stuff. Be ready to deal constructively with any negative exposure. The key to this is to be participating in and guiding a two-way conversation. Hootsuite is a great way to easily monitor several accounts, as well as understand perceptions and sentiments about your organization or service. Customers appreciate accessibility, transparency, and openness.

Stake out the competition
Staying competitive is the key to success in any industry. Social media can help you improve your knowledge base about your industry and interact with other movers and shakers in your industry. Network with those on the cutting edge and stay ahead of trends by tracking all the buzz within the industry. Stalk Twitter feeds, blogs and Facebook pages. Compile a list of important Twitter users and bloggers in your industry or come up with a list of keywords to track in Google alerts and bring the info to you.

Expound your unique product
While some of us may employ an army of clones, not everyone has the time  to  speak to each and every individual customer that walks in through the door. If you have a unique product that you are passionate about, social media allows you to extend your voice across time and space. Share pictures, videos or behind-the-scene looks that regular consumers would not be able to access anywhere else. Allow your social media platforms to be that unique place to share exclusive content and encourage others to share their own.