Kaon Interactive Awarded Communicator Award By International Academy Of The Visual Arts For Mobile Product Marketing App

Posted on May 20, 2013 by

Communicator AwardsMAYNARD, MA – May 20, 2013 – Kaon Interactive, the leading provider of interactive 3D product marketing applications, today announced that the company has won an Award of Distinction in the 2013 Communicator Awards competition judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts. Kaon won the 2013 Award of Distinction in the “Integrated Campaign” category for its development of a mobile interactive App for leading global telecom/networking company Juniper Networks.

With over 6,000 entries received from across the U.S. and around the world, the Communicator Awards is the largest and most competitive awards program honoring the creative excellence for communications professionals.

Kaon Interactive created an innovative mobile application that integrates interactive solution stories with information from the Juniper website as well as real-time social media feeds and sophisticated virtual 3D Product Model demonstrations. Global channel partners can now use these dynamic photo-realistic 3D Product Models that look and behave just like the physical products, to give product demonstrations tailored to every individual customer need at the specific prospect’s level of interest, providing a more personalized experience than ever before. On the road, in an airport, or at a remote meeting, every sales professional is now able to showcase and differentiate the company’s product and solution portfolio using only their iPads. Having a cutting edge sales tool available to the entire direct and indirect sales team gave Juniper a competitive advantage by genuinely exciting and engaging partners while making their solutions and products easier to communicate and sell.

The Communicator Awards are judged and overseen by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), a 600+ member organization of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media. Current IAVA membership represents a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms including:  AirType Studio, Condè Nast, Disney, Keller Crescent, Lockheed Martin, Monster.com, MTV, rabble+rouser, Time Inc., Tribal DDB, Yahoo!, and many others.

“We are both excited and amazed by the quality of work received for the 19th Annual Communicator Awards. This year’s class of entries is a true reflection of the progressive and innovative nature of marketing and communications,” noted Linda Day, executive director of the International Academy of the Visual Arts. She added, “On behalf of the entire Academy I want to applaud this year’s Communicator Awards entrants and winners for their dedication to perfecting their craft as they continue to push the envelope of creativity.”

For more information about the Communicator Awards, please visit www.communicatorawards.com, email the Communicator Awards at info@communicatorawards.com or call (212) 675-3555.

About The Communicator Awards:

The Communicator Awards is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for communication professionals. Founded by communication professionals over a decade ago, The Communicator Awards is an annual competition honoring the best in advertising, corporate communications, public relations and identity work for print, video, interactive and audio. This year’s Communicator Awards received thousands of entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world. Please visit www.communicatorawards.com for more information.

The Communicator Awards is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms. Please visit www.iavisarts.org for a full member list and more information.

Follow Kaon
Blog: http://blog.kaon.com
Twitter: @marketing3D
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KaonInteractive
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kaon-interactive

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Kaon Interactive’s Customer Instrumentation Laboratory Wins 2013 Dx Creative Communication Award for Interactive 3D Product Storytelling Application

Posted on May 13, 2013 by

MAYNARD, MA – May 13, 2013 – Kaon Interactive, the leading provider of interactive 3D product sales and marketing applications, today announced that two of Kaon’s medical device customers won first place awards in the 2013 Diagnostic Marketing Association (DxMA) Creative Communication Awards for their use of interactive storytelling solutions and 3D Interactive Product Models.

For over 23 years, the Dx Creative Communications awards have honored the best of the best in diagnostics marketing, advertising, and promotional programming.

IL DxAwardInstrumentation Laboratory (IL), a global leader in diagnostic instruments, reagents and software for Critical Care and Hemostasis, won first place in the Corporate Communication category for its “GEMweb® Plus Interactive virtual-Demo”.

Created by Kaon, IL’s GEMweb Plus Interactive virtual-Demo enables the company to showcase the GEMweb Plus management software solution, which features an intuitive, user-friendly interface that provides users with complete control of their analyzers. The application demonstrates the GEMweb Plus solution in various point-of-care-testing environments, allowing users to explore the many facets of the product at their own pace and area of interest. The GEMweb Plus interface allows health care professionals access to vital patient information from any location, using any networked PC or GEM® Premier™ 4000 Critical Care analyzer. It offers total connectivity whether the user is in the ICU, a satellite facility or at home.  Now, IL has an interactive demonstration that can be used to crisply articulate the clear value of GEMweb Plus in any selling situation.

“With this unique visual storytelling solution, we are now able to better communicate the features and benefits of GEMweb Plus, while providing our team with an interactive tool that is innovative and easy to use,” said Sally McCraven, Worldwide Marketing Communications at Instrumentation Laboratory.

Another global medical device customer of Kaon’s won first place in the Product/Service Brand Creation category for its interactive 3D Product application. Built on the Kaon platform, this breakthrough sales enablement tool dramatically improves sales effectiveness and efficiency by enabling the client’s sales and marketing teams to demonstrate the company’s entire diagnostic solution portfolio anytime, anywhere, at dramatically lower costs. It addresses customer questions interactively via engaging user interfaces for the iPad, laptop, and large touch- screen appliances. This solution communicates the value of clinical chemistry products in a manner specifically designed to address the variety of audiences in the medical device buying cycle. Each constituent in the user’s organization can interact with areas of the application that are of interest to them, from a high level overview of all products down to an interactive photo-realistic 3D product model of a particular analyzer or system.

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The Agency Post:Your Marketing Budget is Cut. Now What? 3 Ways to Do More With Less

Posted on May 3, 2013 by

Agency Post logoIt’s become the new normal in business: do more with less. And for B2B marketers, it is more than a catch phrase — it is reality. Recent surveys of large corporate marketing departments yield the following common challenges:

- Imperatives to build even higher revenues with lower marketing budgets.

- Fewer staff to execute the same or higher volume of programs and campaigns.

- Requirements to execute marketing solutions across all channels, in particular mobile and the ill-defined “social media marketing” channel.

Much attention is currently focused on content marketing, which is a broad term commonly used to imply building thought leadership and demand-generating content rather than product- or solutions-centric content.

Recent research shows that B2B marketers plan to be spending a significant portion of 2013 focusing on how to better use content to create deeper prospect engagement and offer a more meaningful customer experience. This represents both a challenge for marketers to do more with less, but most critically, an opportunity to more closely align marketing with sales by delivering sales-enablement solutions that reuse and repurpose this content beyond the marketing experience through every customer encounter.

With increasing competition, companies must find ways to differentiate themselves and communicate their unique value. Here are three ways marketers can be seen as innovators who can do more with less:

1. Create flexible, reusable marketing content:

Don’t jump in and start producing product content just because you think you need to fill your channels. B2B marketers should get more from investments by creating product content ONCE, which can be used across multiple platforms without needing to be re-formatted, re-created or re-developed.
That Flash piece you want to develop for your website may seem like a great idea — until you want to utilize it on an iPad and realize the device has no Flash compatibility. Be sure to look into the reusability of content prior to development. A project’s cost can quickly balloon when it comes time to deploy your content to a platform other than the one you developed it for — from your website to mobile devices, social media, trade shows, etc.

Creating content that is easily modifiable is crucial as well. The expensive, impressive video you labor over developing loses its usefulness as soon as one sentence of the information in the video becomes outdated, leaving you to either abandon what you’ve created or pay to create another video entirely. It’s impossible to see such changes coming, but why not prepare for the future by making content that you can simply modify and update as your products change?

People want interactive product content that’s relevant to their real-world experiences and consistent anywhere they go, so having the same content everywhere a prospect encounters your brand is ideal for a memorable customer experience. B2B product marketers should create product content once and use it repeatedly across multiple venues — trade shows, sales meetings, analyst briefings, training sessions, etc. — without needing to re-develop or re-create the content for different types of hardware or operating systems.

2. Create a Mobile App:

With the advances in mobile technology, everyone is staying more connected to the brands they love, and more companies are pushing mobile marketing to capitalize on this increased mobile connectivity. This creates a positive challenge for brands to create even better product experiences that are available 24/7 on mobile devices. As previously discussed, it is best to create content that works not just solely on one device (like the iPad or a particular Android device), but rather, develop mobile content that is device agnostic as users are increasingly adapting to the BYOD (bring your own device) trend.

Creating a mobile product app can help you keep your messages consistent because it allows you to put product content into the hands of all employees with a simple app download. With app updates, every single user can have access to real-time product information updates, which puts the most up-to-date information into the market faster. Due to the fact that apps can be dispersed globally through a simple download, mobile devices provide a great platform to get marketing messaging out to every corner of the globe. It will help you accelerate the sales process and increase global reach — even if you have less money to spend.

3. Create Marketing Materials that are Relevant to Sales:

A recent survey by the CMO Council uncovered that sales departments think presentations created by marketing are less than useful: salespeople are spending approximately 40 percent of their time preparing customer-facing deliverables, and they are leveraging less than 50 percent of the materials created by marketing. Why? They feel they’re too “cookie cutter” or generic — not relevant for specific prospects, not compelling enough or fail to clearly depict how their products differ from competitors’.

Therefore, marketing departments should focus on creating content that is relevant to any audience in your buying cycle. In doing so, your content will not only be repurposed at all marketing touchpoints but also in almost any sales venue. Sales needs the flexibility to show each person its products on a personal level. Avoid the pitfall of “one-size-fits-all” marketing. Create interactive, non-sequential sales and marketing materials that can be uniquely tailored for each customer to tell a compelling story.

By Gavin Finn, President & CEO, Kaon Interactive

Featured in the Agency Post on May 2nd, 2013

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Why B2B marketers are risk averse (and therefore less effective than they could be)

Posted on April 12, 2013 by

UPDATE: It seems that Lisa Nirell has uncovered a related set of issues regarding the “condition” of marketers, and the need to take a new approach if different results are expected. Interesting read on Fast Company.

Let’s face it. The only major innovation that B2B marketers have adopted since the invention of 3 color printing is the internet. Email marketing, banner ads, blogging….. all are new ways to deliver the same content. A new medium, for sure, but does this represent the potential for marketing innovation? I think not.

Many marketers are risk averse (which means that they think that the “cost” of trying new approaches outweighs the benefits) because:

- they are afraid of losing their jobs; it follows that if they “stick their necks out” and try new things that fail, they may, well…, lose their jobs.

- they are ridiculously busy; with marketing budgets contracting, and marketing departments reducing personnel, those marketers left are barely keeping their heads above water, never mind trying something new!

- they are content with the results they are getting now; “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

But research has shown that most people misjudge risk (by enormous ranges), and in this case, the reality is that the failure to constantly innovate represents a much greater risk than simply doing the same things as before. Why?

- most B2B marketing departments are operating with fewer people and less budget than in the past. It is impossible to do the same things anymore – there is simply not enough money, and nowhere near enough people. Something has to change!

- the results that they are achieving are less than optimal (in a recent CMO survey, marketing results were seen to be “inadequate” or “inferior” more than 80% of the time!)  So, it appears to be “broke” – and needs fixing.

- if marketing results are underperforming with respect to the company’s needs, and it is impossible to continue to do things as they have been done before, then attempting to keep things the same is a far riskier strategy than betting one’s job on innovative ideas.

Marketers tend to see investments in new ideas and solutions as a “potential loss” because there is an element of the unknown in anything new – and it is now well established that humans are predisposed to favor strategies that avoid losses rather than acquiring gains. What we all have to recognize is that by maintaining the status quo, the risks have been elevated because the world around us is changing – and we need to change too.

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Kaon Introduces Touch-Free Gesture Based v-Wave for Next Generation of B2B 3D Product Demonstrations

Posted on April 9, 2013 by

KAON INTRODUCES TOUCH FREE, GESTURE BASED V-WAVE™ FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF B2B PRODUCT 3D DEMONSTRATIONS 

B2B Marketers Use Natural User Interface Technology to Captivate Prospects While Delivering Crucial Product Differentiation Messaging

Kaon v-Wave

Las Vegas, NV – March 18, 2013 – EXHIBITOR 2013 – Kaon Interactive, the leading provider of
interactive 3D product marketing content, today announced the Kaon v-Wave™, an advanced
gesture-control based product demonstration platform that allows B2B marketers for the first
time to offer touch-free, photo-realistic 3D demonstrations of their products and solutions.
The Kaon v-Wave offers a new presentation experience for 3D Product Models and solutions
stories, enabling prospects and customers to interact with and explore dynamic product
content on a Kaon v-OSK appliance by simply gesturing with their hands.

“The Kaon v-Wave is the latest innovation in interactive technologies, and this gesture based interactive experience is intended to expand the portfolio of engagement models for customer at trade shows, briefing centers and events,” said Gavin Finn, Kaon Interactive’s President and CEO. “Using intuitive hand motions, prospects can now explore 3D Product Models, creating an emotional connection while they delve into core product and solution differentiators. The Kaon v-Wave is the first to combine the dynamics of a ‘fun’ experience with useful, relevant B2B product messaging and demonstrations that increases knowledge retention and accelerates sales.”

Draw in Prospects & Make Your Exhibit Memorable: Corporate and Product Differentiation on the Show Floor
The Kaon v-Wave is ideally suited for B2B marketers that are looking for a unique, user-driven way to demonstrate and differentiate their complex products on the busy tradeshow floor, where it can often be difficult to captivate a prospect’s attention. By focusing on product content, this new 3D experience creates the environment wherein both the ‘wow’ factor and a serious knowledge transfer can occur within the same interactive session.

Increase Prospect Engagement To Increase Booth Traffic and Drive Sales

Using the Kaon v-Wave as a component of the suite of interactive modes of exploring product tours lets users look ‘under the hood’ of your product to better understand workflow, process and what makes it different. While interacting with v-Wave, prospects are in the driver’s seat to explore and interact with the photo-realistic 3D products by manipulating them in the same way they would investigate the actual product. Users can rotate 3D Product Models to any angle, zooming and moving the products around on the screen, or navigate through solution stories depicting products in their natural environments, with the simple wave of a hand.

As with any Kaon-developed interactive content, prospects can navigate anywhere, in any sequence, allowing booth visitors to explore the offerings that are of interest to them, at whatever level of depth they desire. Kaon v-Wave now enables compelling and effective product presentations that increase customer engagement, bolster knowledge retention and improve Sales effectiveness – all with a flick of their wrist.

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Kaon Strengthens Management Team with New Executives

Posted on April 4, 2013 by

KAON INTERACTIVE STRENGTHENS MANAGEMENT TEAM

New Executives Join To Accelerate Rapid Company Growth & Product Development
in 3D Interactive Product Storytelling for B2B Sales & Marketing

MAYNARD, MA – March 20, 2013 – Kaon Interactive, the leading provider of interactive 3D product marketing applications, today announced the appointments of Ed DeArias as Senior Vice President of Sales and John Heffernan as Executive Director of Client Services and Operations. With these appointments, both Ed and John join Kaon’s executive team and strengthen the company’s commitment to improving sales and marketing effectiveness for its customers by bringing products to life.

“We are expanding our management team with two experienced and successful professionals who will focus on ensuring customer success as we grow.” said Gavin Finn, Kaon’s President & CEO.  ”Ed brings a wealth of knowledge to our company, having led several organizations though significant sales growth. He has the vertical market breadth to assist Kaon in expanding markets and geographies.  John Heffernan is a seasoned operations executive with an unparalleled track record in leading and growing profitable production organizations. His experience makes him perfect to lead our creative and production teams. We look forward to their combined contributions as we innovate solutions to enhance our customers’ success, while continuing Kaon’s long-term growth.”

Seasoned technology sales veteran Ed DeArias will be responsible for driving all sales programs and revenue for the company. DeArias has extensive  experience in expanding sales in a variety of industries, broad expertise in implementing strategic solutions for large enterprise accounts, as well as the leadership ability to build high growth sales teams.  He worked in sales and marketing leadership roles for companies such as IBM, Sitara Networks, Lightbridge and Nokia. He was most recently Vice President, Global Sales and Services for Z Corporation, resulting in growth of Z Corp’s core business by over 20% per annum and he played a major role in the successful sale of the company for $137 million in cash to 3D Systems.

With over two decades creative services experience, John Heffernan will oversee the creative service and project management groups at Kaon, and is responsible for the creative and production processes. He is focused on innovating impactful applications and solutions for Kaon’s clients, while enhancing efficiency throughout the process. He is an experienced operations executive specialized in leading and growing organizations to success in the areas of management, workflow optimization, excellence in client service, and growth. Prior to joining Kaon, John served as Executive Director of Operations at Ashville Media Group, Vice President of Production and Operations at The Pohly Company and Director of Production and Manufacturing at Mosby Consumer Health/Staywell.

 

Follow Kaon
Blog: http://blog.kaon.com
Twitter: @marketing3D
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KaonInteractive
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kaon-interactive

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iMediaConnection: How to Lower Costs by Repurposing Content

Posted on February 7, 2013 by

How to Lower Costs by Repurposing Content

A recent CMO Council report called “Closing the Gap” found that sales teams spend approximately 40 percent of their time preparing customer-facing deliverables, while leveraging less than 50 percent of the materials created by marketing. The 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmark survey done by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs reinforces this content development issue, reporting that producing enough content was the No. 1 challenge faced by marketers.

Content Challenges for marketers

These statistics raise two major concerns for all companies:

  • Is our marketing message being consistently communicated?
  • Are we investing our marketing budget and resources in the right area?

With increasing diversification in marketing channels, how can product marketers repurpose digital marketing content that will engage prospects and drive sales leads? Here are four things to keep in mind as you develop new content or leverage existing digital content for diverse audiences.

Use consistent marketing messages across all channels

Marketing departments need to implement programs that ensure their key product differentiation message is communicated clearly and consistently everywhere that sales, marketing, and customers meet.

The continuing challenge for CMOs has been to create a marketing environment where sales teams and partners can clearly differentiate their products in a consistent manner, at every touch point, without having to modify or recreate marketing content. This goal seems to have eluded even the best CMOs, due to the propensity of individuals and groups to create unique, disparate marketing deliverables within their organizations.

Tell your product stories visually

No one likes to be statically pitched to. Allow consumers to be a part of the narrative and influence the outcome. Implement visual multimedia storytelling tools that will give users the ability to go forward and sideways through the content, providing a unique experience every time. This type of digital storytelling allows sales and marketing teams to tailor conversations in real-time, creating personalized demonstrations that are of interest to each individual customer. Videos don’t let you do that.

Reusing interactivity: No more one-sided experiences

B2B marketers want to create the same interactive experience everywhere prospects encounter their products, without having to spend exorbitant amounts to recreate it.

Video is scripted, and that’s great if you have someone’s attention, but if not then you need to be interactive and really captivate someone. Also, trying to modify or edit an existing video for multiple venues and audiences can be extremely expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, creating interactive experiences and seamlessly repurposing that engaging content across all platforms (iPads, laptops, websites, mobile devices, touch-screen appliances) and venues (trade shows, sales meetings, briefing centers) will ensure that the same interactive story will be conveyed consistently to everyone, every time.

Sharing content

Sharing your content through social media can help you find additional fans and create an audience to market to. Consider ways to reuse existing content to save time and money and show off what you’re capable of. Each social network has a unique set of users, so sharing content in a variety of places will allow you to connect with a broad array of audiences.

As you look to your content development and marketing plan, keep these things in mind as you determine where you should invest your marketing dollars. Whether you’re selling a network appliance, medical device, or industrial machine, it’s critical to deliver cutting-edge, compelling marketing content that can be repurposed, independent of the platform, to improve messaging consistency and significantly reduce marketing costs. Purposefully repurposing marketing content in 2013 will help companies tell their product story right the first time and every time.

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