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Kissing babies is still a valuable trick of the political trade, but it’s not enough for the digital world. The modern politician will capture the baby-kissing on video and quickly post it on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube while making sure constituents “check in” on Foursquare. According to a recent Iowa field study of politically themed advertising conducted by SocialVibe, the digital road to the White House is now dependent on social-media engagement.

“Social-media engagement will decide election 2012,” Jay Samit, CEO of SocialVibe, a digital advertising technology company, said in an email. “Voters are hungry for sharable content that resonates with their values, priorities and interests.”

It’s to be expected that a social agency will sing the praises of social media. And reality dictates that old-fashioned TV advertising is, once again, going to account for the overwhelming bulk of political advertising this election cycle as politicians seek to target undecided and swing voters.

But online and social will be crucial to any successful campaign — especially in terms of fundraising and getting out the base. And experts parsing the results of the study during a conference call today offered up five solid tips for campaigns:

1. Use Facebook and campaign websites to engage supporters. According to Karen Jagoda, executive director of the E-Voter Institute, 81% of those 18 and older expect candidates to have a website. Also, with Facebook user numbers at roughly 150 million in the U.S. alone, many candidates will look to utilize this social media tool.

In the last election Google was the largest player — the Obama campaign directed 45% of its online campaign dollars to the search site. However, in this upcoming election Facebook is being forecasted at being equally important to Google, according to Kate Kaye, author of “Campaign ‘08: A Turning Point for Digital Media.”

2. Make your social presence a conversation. Thanks to social networking, it has become easier to target supporters with specificity. This is because, according to SocialVibe, “campaigns can target by political party, a cross-section of information imbedded into a profile (ranging from a user’s ‘likes’ to the topics she discusses on her wall) and by age, gender and location.” Also, with the use of social networking a particular message can be passed along multiple times to reach a wide range of people. According to SocialVibe, “94% of voting-age users engaged by a political message in social media watched the entire message, and nearly 40% went on to share it with their friends.”

3. Go mobile. Jon Gibs, a Nielsen VP, said that there are 230 million cellphone users in the U.S., of which 30 million watch video on their mobile phones. Further, political campaigns are turning to quick-response codes that allow users to check in to a particular event using Facebook or Foursquare. According to SocialVibe, “The Mitt Romney campaign recently took advantage of this feature by creating a Foursquare badge for participating in a one-day fundraiser in Las Vegas.”

4. Make emails social. Although email is no longer the principle way to get a message out to the public, it is a still an important tool. “While younger voters may be disinclined to even open emails, their parents and grandparents still rely on email for information and connection,” according to SocialVibe.

5. Build allegiance through engagement advertising. This form of advertisement relies on the people themselves to maintain and further the success of the advertising. People choose to engage a particular advertisement, receive information about the subject and gain credit by playing a social online game, premium content or other goods they find value in.

“Campaigns that embrace the latest trends in commercial brand advertising will see the same kind of results that are driving more and more advertising dollars both online and to mobile devices,” said Mr. Samit.

By Michelle Peck

What do you get when you mix Google, Facebook, Groupon and Pandora in a room? Those lucky enough to attend Interactive Day San Diego got to find out. The panel representing today’s largest digital companies concluded an inspiring day of knowledge with competitive banter, digital camaraderie, and desire to be a part of your next great ideas. So, where do we start? How do we come up with successful digital ideas, great interactive campaigns, and something worthy of Google’s attention? I think it all can be wrapped into one big idea: brand engagement.

Interactive Day was a unique experience for me since I started the morning as a volunteer. I got to greet all the familiar industry faces I recognized from social media—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Flickr. It felt like one big interactive family coming together to learn and tweet about our always-evolving industry. My first two sessions followed the mobile/social track with panelists sharing tips and tricks about implementing campaigns involving local, mobile, social and commerce (aka “LoMoSoCo”). Over lunch we heard from the mighty Groupon about how they are bringing new experiences to the world and changing the way we do things. And for the afternoon, I jumped in on the creative track with more social examples from local companies TurboTax, Taylor Guitars, and Hot Spring Spas. The best was saved for last with a jaw dropping demonstration from Juxt Interactive showing us how we can combine mobile, augmented reality and Xbox Kinect to create amazing virtual experiences that truly engage with audiences who live in the present.

While I missed out on some of the hot sessions like Concepting for Conversation and Optimizing the Zero Moment of Truth with Google’s Sam Sebastian, I definitely picked up on the key takeaways of the day:

1. Content is still king

The importance of good, relevant content is still extremely important. You can’t just expect people to find your site and read information about your brand. Content needs to entertain our audience and be something worth sharing. Whether it’s viral videos, localized storytelling, ratings and reviews, or user generated content, if people won’t click the like button, you may want to rethink your content strategy.

2. Social should be at the core of every campaign

One thing Interactive Day reminded me of, is that any brand can be social. You may think toilet paper and taxes are topics people just don’t care about, but Charmin’s Sit or Squat app and TurboTax’s social badges (so you can boast “I just finished my tax return” to all your friends) show us how to do it right. Brands need think outside the box and create experiences that people care about. Every campaign should think how to leverage social ideas to create real human connections and drive cross platform engagement.

3. Mobile is the way of the future

If you haven’t heard, mobile is where we should all be heading. People live in the moment and want quick, on-to-go interactions with the brands they care about. When a person gets a smart phone, his or her desktop or laptop use goes down 30%. Advertisers need to catch up with this audience and ensure content is accessible and promoted on mobile devices. It could be an app, a mobile site, in-store tablets, QR codes, iAds or augmented reality, just make sure to start integrating mobile with your campaign now to further brand relationships.

4. Good ideas come from solving simple problems

Every successful digital idea somehow enhances peoples’ lives. By providing creative real-life solutions, making it fun, and connecting with consumers, we can provide tools that empower our audience and keep them engaged. We should design around how people use things, and not the other way around. Touch screens and body movement simplify experiences with intuitive interactions and should inspire a new way to think about interactive.

Brand engagement that sparks connections and consumer dialogue, using multi-platform technologies is where interactive campaigns should start. So, go out there, be creative, have fun, and engage with your audience. Maybe you will be speaking at Interactive Day next year…I’ll see you there.

by Cheryl Tieken

Hold onto your seats ladies and gentlemen… Google has just announced a new feature… again. And this one’s a doozy. Well, for all of us Sci-Fi freaks, Trekkies and tech-nerds, we probably could have predicted this was coming someday.

So anyways, guess what? Next Christmas, forget about buying your significant other a sleek new leather wallet. Why? Cause Google is already on top of that.

Today, Google officially announced it’s newest innovation – Google Wallet. The idea is to be able to put tickets, credit cards, receipts, coupons – you name it – all on your mobile device. Even your driver’s license. Already available on the Google Nexus S 4G (Sprint), the whole wallet concept will function through an NFC technology.

So what does this mean? This means that soon you’ll be able to pay for a meal at a fast-food joint, like McDonald’s by waving your phone in front of an NFC-chip reader – very similar to Mastercard’s current PayPass system. In fact, Google’s system is already able to work with this system, which is currently in place in over 300,000 merchant locations.

The plan is to also have billboards with embedded coupons so all you’ll have to do is wave your phone in front of them to get the coupon. Pretty cool huh? Less paper wasted. As the daughter of a tree-hugger, I love that.

As far as credit cards go, you’ll just need to create a PIN which you’ll enter before you pay for anything. This will prevent people from being able to scan your phone and get all your info. Sounds safer than a wallet if you ask me. Can’t put a PIN on a credit card. And as someone who has been the victim of identity fraud, I more than appreciate this capability.

So far, Citi, Sprint and Mastercard are all talking about helping Google Wallet launch. Macy’s, Subway, Walgreens and Toys R Us have already said they will be the first to support the new technology. And Google has said it will not charge a transaction fee, but will instead make money via ads and via Google Offers – Google’s current stab at the whole Daily Deals epidemic. In fact, Google Offers is slated to tie in with Google Wallet – sending you an “offer of the day” which will be exclusive to Wallet users.

Google Wallet is scheduled for a trial this summer in New York, Portland and San Francisco with other cities to follow.

Well, we knew it was coming. Technology never ceases to amaze. And although I think it’s a cool idea and definitely love the paperless thing it does for the environment, I have to say this whole thing makes me a tad nervous. I can’t help but go back to images of computers-turned-human and monkeys jumping around giant monoliths (a la 2001 Space Odyssey). In the words of a friend of mine, “I guess it’s only a matter of time before we have chips like that inside ourselves.”

So what do you guys think? Google Wallet – cool new thing or something we should be wary of? Comment below!

by Cheryl Tieken

Around the office, we are all on chat – all the time. We need to be so we can communicate with each other quickly and easily. Yes, I know what you’re thinking… Geez, those lazy people over at JT, why can’t they just get up and walk over to someone if they want to talk? Trust me, having that quick way to communicate and share files is essential.

Well, when I first started here at JT, I was practically shunned for not having AIM or Adium set up. My rinky-dink Gmail Chat just wasn’t suffice to the rest of the team because all of them were using the other two. So, I bit the bullet and created an AIM account.

Turns out, if I had just waited a few months, I wouldn’t have had to. Gmail chat and AIM are now linkable. Ok, ok, not big news to the rest of the world, but this seemingly tiny event has made me think more about the changing world of online interaction.

I mean seriously, it’s amazing how connected people are nowadays. Take Facebook. When I joined, I was in the first wave of the new social media platform. It came to the University of Washington shortly after it’s creation – back during a time when it was exclusive to four-year university students. At the time, the whole thing just seemed so weird to me. If I wanted to talk to someone, I’d just call them. Why the heck did I need to “write on someone’s wall?” But here we are, six years later and the whole entire world is on Facebook. Revolutions are happening over it, babies are being named after it, nearly every country has access to it.

I recently met some people from England and Facebook has made it so easy to stay connected, even though we live thousands of miles apart. Think about it. You can chat, post on someone’s wall, look through all of someone’s photos – literally acting as if you were actually there in front of the person. Social media has made the possibility of being multiple places at once, virtually possible. When you throw in mobile and its ability to constantly be online, it’s almost exhausting how connected we are – all the time.

So what do you think of all this connectivity? Is it empowering? Do you enjoy the ability to constantly be connected to people? Or do you find yourself turned off? Seriously people, tell us what you think!