Smarter Marketing via Gaze Tracking & Location Detection

Gaze tracking is for real. Minority Report, anyone?

As if The Minority Report wasn’t already a frightening glimpse of the Big Brother future with its crime prediction and eye scans that deliver targeted marketing on the fly, a new patent application from Philips Electronics would monitor what consumers are looking at as they view a retail store’s display window and then provide more information about what is being looked at via video displays or other methods.

Another application I’ve seen for this is tracking gazing trends for large groups of consumers. Presumably, one could test different layouts or displays to measure effectiveness of different presentations or even what times of the day or week are likely to make passers-by stop and look.

College Teaches Important Social Marketing “Skill”?

 

With the increasing usage of social networks like MySpace, connecting to consumers is almost second nature.

As a professional marketer who tends to be a generation behind those I hire and manage, I’ve been constantly faced with the challenge of connecting to and fostering relationships with my younger peers who are entering the workforce. In fact, according to an article at CNN Money today, more and more companies are looking to younger workers — even before they fully enter the workforce — to staff some of their entry-level positions and help them transition through the current economic downturn.

I came upon an article the other day on RedOrbit.com which was a pick-up from the popular Chicagoland daily newspaper, The Daily Herald. It seems local community college, Elgin Community College (ECC), actually has a course for students to help them set up and manage their MySpace pages. 

The instructor, Nathan Murfree, is an 18-year-old ECC student who will instruct users how to create a safe and content-savvy Web page. According to Murfree, “I want to talk about the controversial issues around MySpace … Internet predators, precautions to take, communications — simple things to keep them out of trouble.”