Personalization and Porkappolis

Back when I was working on my doctorate at the University of Washington, I belonged to a working group of professors and grad students in the communications department. The goal of that group was to focus attention on gaps in social communication. That is, our ability as a society or societal parts to communicate with one another in support of collective action - taking steps together. We worked through influences that impacted this step-taking ability such as "recognized threat", "collective opportunity", "historical redress", "causitive neglect" and other drivers of people coming together to solve a problem. These discussions impacted my research on global environmental issues; getting people to recognize a phenomenon as a problem, let alone one requiring their active engagement in communicating with one another. Tough to do with the tools of the early 1990s.

Fast forward to the second decade of the 2000s. I'm here, at this location. I know everything about it, and now you will know how this spot is relevant to me. I can relate to one person, every person I know, or potentially every person in the world over information and insight and tie it to a location, event, meeting, cultural phenomenon, localization of a global occurence.

I was touched by the recent Egyptian revolution, having completed my graduate research in Cairo I crossed Tahrir Square on a daily basis and could relate my own experiences to the images being shown across the world. I had been in many of the building being shown on TV, and the bridge occupied by tanks was my path home each day to the Dohi neighborhood. My point is that I can add my context to the conversation easily now and interested parties from across the world can link with me to understand, contribute, act, support and form community with me over a topic. We can be a collective because the tools are here. Now.

Local context provides the key. A reader can understand a particular place, at a particular time from the perspective of anyone. And I want to bring in a commercial opportunity successfully leveraging this ability. The Cinnicinati Inquirer has introduced a competitive tool to Yelp and Foursquare called, of all things, "Porkappolis". Cute title, powerful tool. This is a location-based app that plans to go HTML5 so as to cross mobile platforms with the toolset for you to get info and give info about a particular place. How is this better than a national/global tool like a Yelp? The local insight always will provide a better personalized experience. And personalization is the key. The ability to upload my personal experience about a place/time, and the ability to put relevant insight at the right moment in my location gives me better decision making power and better communication ability. So great, I can know everything about the local restaurant and choose to go there or not. Now add in an instantaneous couponing function, a social media function so all my friends can meet up, and see my rating of the experience. All this becomes cataloged to form the collective history of a place. My personal contribution to the collective experience.

Why was I so taken with the Porkappolis application? It's the understanding of their audience and their ability to provide better, relevant tools for everyday living, socializing and communicating. In my work advising companies on their mobile channel, I often find them desiring an application for the sake of the technology itself - its closeness to the target audience, its immediacy for access, its reminder of the brand on every viewing. But what few brands realize is their ability to impact people's lives for the better through the mobile channel. They can empower folks through an experience or tool that is personnally relevant, and evolves to continue relevance to that audience. I love seeing the client's face light up as I explain how they will engage their prospects and current customers right now through select viewings of products, coupons and brand communications, and then in the future as each interaction adds to the collective knowledge of a customer's likes/dislikes and therefore better personalization on the part of the brand communication. Simply put, a company knows you better to provide you with better service. In this way, a mass product company becomes a personal shopper for you, gives you their brand to shape through your input on the brand experience, and allows you to guide the future of products and services. All from your location. Porkappolis does this, and every city that still has a functioning local news gathering organization should have a specialized app for this purpose. Go Pork, Get Personal.


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