My daily commute on the central line was brightened up immensely this morning as I read an article in Metro that Minority Report-style advertising will be here in a just a few years time – by 2015, in fact.

The technology available for “gladvertising” (for that is the term being used) would take the definition of “interactive advertising” to a whole new level.

The gist of the article is that talking digital billboards containing cameras backed by advanced emotion recognition software will detect your mood and target you with an advert. Going one step further these billboards will link with your smart phone to access personal details such as body shape, anniversaries and favourite foods.

I can already imagine the scenario – I’m strolling down Charing Cross Road on a warm summer’s afternoon, when a talking 3D hologram poster says to me “Hey Rob, why not pop into the Royal George just across the street for a nice cool pint of Heineken? You deserve it after your hard day at the office and the mini-break you booked to Berlin is still over a month away. Go on, treat yourself!”

There would be no limit to the new business opportunities open to marketers of all disciplines with this sort of technology available. On top of this affiliate marketing could become more intelligent than ever and become totally personalised to truly suit the individual.

Then I pictured the flipside to this sort of marketing. Similar scenario, but this time the poster shouts “Hey Rob, you seem to have an itchy bottom – maybe it’s piles? Why not pop into Superdrug just across the road and treat yourself to some nice soothing Preparation H?”

It would be like walking the streets with the constant fear of bumping into a really embarrassing drunken mad friend who never knows when to shut up.

I always look to read Gideon Spanier’s advertising & marketing column on a Monday in The Evening Standard, but last week, yet again, it dealt with the rise of social media and its increasing importance in the business world. Slightly disheartened with the progress in this area galloping well ahead of my understanding of it, after a few flicks of the page I hit on an article entitled:

“Steve Jobs and other movers and shakers say it by phone”

What a breath of fresh air. When I joined Alchemis in July 2000, I feared that traditional telesales was on borrowed time. Earlier barriers such as voicemail were still there, but the internet was taking off as a marketing tool and everyone wanted to receive emails rather than actually talk. That fact still remains, but now we also contend with tweets and pokes and every article is pushing home the potential benefits of social media as a business tool (a fact that I find ironic since many companies banned Facebook due to decreased productivity at its inception). However, Alchemis has gone from strength to strength utilising the phone. The survival of our competitors and the rise of numerous start up new business agencies gives me real confidence that the phone based new business industry is a resilient one and that the phone, whilst maybe not having the potential quick reach of other mediums, is the most powerful and effective tool when selling your business, service or product.

The article quite rightly points out that when your creditors want payments they don’t send emails, they use the phone. It goes on to say that as many “retreat behind the walls of electronic communication, the advantage only grows for those ready to make phone calls”. A statement I wholeheartedly agree with.

· The phone allows you to quickly react to a person’s mood or persona – something email does not

· Email content and tone is open to damaging misinterpretation by the recipient

· “The phone is the best medium to find out things you may not have anticipated”. Absolutely!! A good telesales person will find the issue and opportunity

· As more and more people use the phone as a secondary communication tool, the cards are stacked in favour of those who have the skills to use it effectively

· You can get your point over in one clear concise message, which is not fragmented by a traffic of related emails sent hours or days apart

I do appreciate the value of new communications tools and ways of working, but I firmly believe that the humble phone will continue to play a key role for a long time yet and should remain a part of any integrated sales/marketing strategy.

Further to my last post and specifically the part that addressed the situation advertisers find themselves in at the mercy of the Sky Plus remote control, I thought I’d follow up with a blog concerning product placement in TV programmes.

Just in case you’ve been living in a cave and hadn’t heard, Ofcom are allowing product placement within TV shows from the end of February. Technically, product placement has been going on for years on TV, but unless a brand specifically pays the programme to include its products then it doesn’t count as product placement.

However, this got me thinking about all shows that have been broadcast here but made overseas. I remember going on a Sopranos Tour about 6 years ago through New York and New Jersey and the tour guide spent several minutes telling us how brands such as Tropicana made damn sure that when Tony Soprano opened his fridge and poured himself a nice refreshing glass of orange juice there was no way it was going to say Del Monte on the carton. It wasn’t really the sort of information that most of the tourists were expecting to be told on a locations visit – they were itching to see the car park of the diner where Chris Moltisanti was shot by Matthew Bevilaqua – but I found it pretty interesting given my line of work in business development.

When these US shows are subsequently aired in the UK I presume (though somebody correct me if I’m wrong) that this means that any international brands have effectively been getting free product placement to a British audience. And with some of these shows that become massively successful (let’s not forget the DVD box sets that will be bought and lent to everyone in the office who hadn’t seen the show) that is a truly staggering amount of coverage. Nobody is going to skip past the storyline with the remote, so you have a truly captive audience and an opportunity to raise brand awareness and win ever increasing amounts of new business from what might be a fairly reasonable price.

Of course, the first trick for brands is to identify the shows that are going to take off. Again, I’m no expert in this but I presume that some programme makers must have a deal with brands who want product placement that will take into account future repeat screenings of the programmes, DVD sales, etc, etc. After all, you can’t delete those scenes featuring product placement if they contain essential dialogue or if they are central to the story, so once the brand is in, it’s in for good.

Product placement is not confined just to television. It’s being increasingly used in areas such as computer gaming too. This is another ever-increasing market that has worldwide reach and seemingly limitless possibilities for brand marketing.

So what does the future hold for brands hoping to win more new business from product placement?

My prediction is that psychology will become increasingly involved. Suitable shows and games will be scouted out as viable marketing vehicles when they are just a glint in the writer’s eye. Within these media, brands will want to subliminally target consumers by associating certain characters or events with certain emotive decisions that the viewer makes. There will be a lot of complex research involved and even a sub-industry that develops with specialist agencies that are retained by brands to influence scriptwriters and directors to work certain situations into a show in order to increase the association we feel towards a product in relation to these situations.

And the Sky Plus remote control won’t be able to save us now.