Speaking "geek" to the masses

I have read a lot about the forthcoming launch of Google Wave and although not fortunate enough to be sent an invite I have read a number of independent blogs (unsurprisingly Google overloads their first 4-5 pages with Google referenced material!). The blog opinions seem to vary - from "it is like a new mobile phone with no one to call or text" to the fact that poeple believe it will become a "conference staple" and replace Twitter - the main conclusion seems to be in the words of web worker daily "It still has way too much geek cred to dismiss outright." I looked on the site and found a confusing and long intro video so it was hugely refreshing to see that they have also produced a very entertaining video on You Tube to explain it better. It uses the famous scene from Pulp Fiction where Samuel L Jackson uses, in the words of wikipedia , " a baleful "biblical" pronouncement".
It is not only entertaning and memorable but also works well to explain something that is complicated and detailed. Watch it here and see what you think.

Burn after Tweeting

There was a lot of furore this weekend when in a moment of doubt and introspection Stephen Fry self proclaimed "British Actor, Writer, Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blogger" threatened to walk away from Twitter because of "aggression and unkindness". this was followed by Katie Price who broke down in no-more-than-140-character sections, telling her "haters" to just attack her and get it off their chest (her words).
It seems that now that Twitter has reached the mainstream it is the must use method of communication for a "celebrity" to stay in the public eye but they are all unprepared to deal with the backlash which Mr Fry's 938k followers exacted on him.
The same principle is true for brands - few have found a useful way to use Twitter a good example being Habitat's fateful foray and some have made a huge success of it such as Zappos with their 1.5m followers they have successfully used social networks such as Twitter to build a very successful business.
We have recently completed a project for one of our Clients that involved an analysis of a number of Twitter based campaigns including T Mobile, Walkers, Dell and Skittles and the overriding conclusion was that people are pretty fickle - the most successful way to build followers was a prize draw or competition - indeed Moonfruit came top where by simply giving away 10 laptops and asking people to mention #moonfruit they generated 55k Tweets and a buzz of up 15k mentions per day, it also accounted for a significant sales boost.
I guess the challenge for brands is how they can grab hold of the zeitgeist and integrate themselves in a productive and intrusive way into the conversation - right now the biggest topic is unseen prequels where "People are tweeting made-up titles for nonexistent prequels to different movies" - there are approx 1,000 tweets per minute right now ranging from "Batman and Robin The Curious Years" to "The Devil Wears Primark" - I wonder how a brand like can integrate itself itself into this - prize for the most innovative / make the actual movie ?

"I sell products not advertising"

Dave Trott's blogs on Brand Republic are always interesting and today's was no exception - in it he recounted how a tube driver's amusing announcements cheered up his day and outshone the majority of D&AD ad entries that he reviewed that day - in his words "What he did started my day off really nicely. There was no reason to do it. He wouldn’t get paid anymore for it. None of us would buy more tube tickets because of it. There was no financial benefit. No material incentive. So, in advertising terms, why do it? It couldn’t be justified. And we don’t do anything that can’t be justified, ultimately, in financial terms" His point was that maybe is not always about selling but rather that "word-of-mouth is the best media you can get".

Shock horror .....an advertising God acknowledges that there are often stronger routes than advertising.- albeit unknowingly. It reminded of a quote from another Ad God -Don Draper in Mad Men - ""I sell products not advertising" - back in those days there were only a small number of channels to reach an audience and advertising was about shouting at people to buy a product - whilst this has changed beyond all recognition the objective is still the same ultimately we do always sell it is just about considering the channel for delivering the message. This is precisely why it is not always about shouting at people but rather a considered and consultative approach relying on the understanding and subtley of the messenger. Call me a cynic ..who knows? maybe the tube driver was told to cheer people up to deliver better customer service and extol the virtues of the much derided tube or maybe he had a postive feeling about TfL because of better HR - the point is now we need to consider every touchpoint to ensure that the consumer has no reason for negativity and that includes every level of the chain - after all the new World of Marketing means there are now so many places to talk positively or negatively about a brand maybe even the great Don would be presenting a WOM campaign !

Social media killed the website (star)

Do you think your time online has increased over the last few years ? I am sure that the answer will be a resounding "OF COURSE!" and I am sure that when asked what you were doing I am sure the answer will be "Durr social media stupid" (or similar) BUT have you ever stopped to consider the effect on your online behaviour elsewhere ?

I always assumed that the rise in time spent online had a knock on effect to other sites from news to information based to educative or fun but apparently this is not the case.

A recent post on Supercollider that was highlighted on http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/ talked about "the end of the destination web and how the times are fading for websites and microsites are dead" In the post there are some great Google trends graphs that show that some of the best known brands in the World are losing visitors at a rate of knots - see ehere the example fo Disney.

Digitalbuzzblog have cited 2 reasons why they believe that website traffic is declining, firstly that social networks (obviously) are growing and most people prefer to hang out there instead of searching the big brands websites for content to interact with and secondly that off-site content distribution is rapidly growing so naturally this removes unique visitors from their main sites. I would add that the main reason is that brands have not fundamentally grasped the reason why people use the web - for entertainment, information, conversation and participation - 90% of sites out there don't deliver on this - they are simply brochurewear, a brand information depository that adds no value to the user and hence provides no reason to visit in the first place or come back.

Some brands are, of course, acknowledging this - we always use Nike as the best wayof creating social utility with sites such as Nikeplus and the Ballers network - both great examples of a fantastic insight flawlessly delivered.

The sooner that brands understand and embrace this the sooner they will start becoming relevant to their bread and butter consumer.

The Saviour of magazines is.....video ?

Can you remember the last time you bought a magazine from a newstand or shop ? nor can I (excepting the one I get delivered monthly for a fraction of the cover price) after all why buy when you can get more interesting, accurate and varied information online? - I guess this points towards the the reason for the huge decline in magazine readership - and the much discussed death of the print medium so when I saw an article in the WSJ (online edition) I was unsure whether this was a last gasp effort at "advertainment", an attempt to create Word of Mouth or just a gimmick to try and woo back cynical advertisers (or all three!)

The story was about CBS's recent attempt to achieve standout in Entertainment Weekly using what they term VIP or rather "video in print" which involves embedding a video player in a print ad that works like one of those audio greeting cards - opening the page activates a quarter-inch–thick screen player which is a viewable through a cutaway between two pages - you can see how this looks on you tube here. The ad, which will only be seen by subscribers in the New York and LA markets, plays about 40 minutes of video.

According to various reviews it "plays full-motion video at a crisp resolution" and despite what appears to be good audio quality there are no volume controls so watch out on the train. Apparently this comes at no small cost - the ballpark dollar cost for one of these video units is in the "low teens,"
This is not the first foray into challenging magazines to enter (or rather challenge) the World of web 2.0 - a year or so ago Esquire magazine tried it with The E-Ink display which drew a muted response - from disdain to the slightly more positive with most writing it off as a publicity stunt.

On the face of it this appears to be a genuine effort to provide more interesting and valuable content for the reader and a great opportunity for advertisers to reach out to consumers in a more interesting and rich way - on a wider scale the technology provides for interesting application both within the print medium but also on a wider level - from cereal boxes to in-store media.

However unless the costs come down significantly I cannot see how this will take off other than a gimmick - unless of course the porn industry gets hold of it !

What is the fastest growing company in the World?

Starbucks ? Tata ? "Some Chinese or Indian tech company" - these were the results of the straw poll I conducted in the office this morning,

According to Fortune BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) is the World’s fastest-growing company, apparently the Canadian firm recorded average yearly revenue growth of 74% over the last three years,and average profit growth of 84% over the same period. Since 2006, RIM has provided an average 45% return on its backers’ investment.

This growth is directly driven by the huge rise in demand for smartphones in the last three years.- it now has 74% of the business smartphone market and recent reports indicate that the BlackBerry now outsells the iPhone in the US. Interestingly Apple also features at 39 which belies their sucess recently due to the huge base it is growing from.

With smartphone sales representing the fastest-growing segment of the mobile devices market surpassing 40 million units,- a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year they have recently become the "phone of choice" for everyone from high powered International businessmen to sutudents which have apparently adopted them in droves - mainly down to unlimied access to personal email, free contracts and according to some even to cheat in exams ! it will be interesting to see if this growth is sustainable but with the exponential rise in social networking through phones, applications and announcements such as Nokia recently announcing a partneship with Microsoft and Apple relaxing its association with specific carriers such as O2 in the Uk it looks set to continue

I still dream about the simplicity of my old Nokia 6310i !

Music for nothing and your TV for free...

Over the last few years Social media has grown at an exponential rate. The founders of Facebook, Myspace, Youtube and twitter could not have foreseen the uptake, or the impact that they have on popular culture. With elections being contested, news of earthquakes alerting the emergency services and fan bases emerging from the broad to the niche, social media is a new defining force in our everyday lives.

This has mean that some things which in the past we have become accustomed to purchase, have been forced to go free - nowhere is this more visible than in sites such as Spotify, Zattoo and lastFM, plus of course file sharing sites like BitTorrent,, Graboid and Napster.

Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail” recently penned a soon to be best seller, “Free” (which incidentally if you visit his site http://www.thelongtail.com// , you can download for free) in which he argues the free model has a basic premise - offer content for free, then up-sell to your consumer the benefits of purchasing whatever it is they have taken.

The free model in music was taken to a whole new level in 2007 when Radiohead released “IN RAINBOWS”, the first totally free album, downloadable from their web site - it was a worldwide success, but fans didn’t just want a digital copy, instead 100,000 people pre-ordered the album and original EP’s at full cost and the physical CD still sold 1.75 million copies worldwide, which puts them alongside Lil' Wayne in proving that making music free digitally doesn't necessarily impede sales. Interestingly despite the album being available to download for free on Radiohead's website, 30,000 Americans paid full price to get "In Rainbows" from iTunes in its first week of release (go figure!) - it was Radiohead’s second largest selling album in over fifteen years.

Each of these free sites subscribe to Anderson’s model - Spotify do offer free music they do offer a three tier model - free music, with an audio advert every five songs; pay £0.99 advert free for a day, or £9.99 advert free for a month. The site has over 30 million users, 1 million from the UK alone.

Zattoo is free TV over the net. No more paying your TV license, and with more channels subscribing every month, it’s soon to be a force to be reckoned with – at present digital MPU’s are the only distraction however I am sure that there is an income generation model coming soon.

File sharing remains extremely popular. It was estimated that over 2 million files are shared every day. TV programs, music, Films and so on. A legality question ensues, and sites are being taken to court every year and being forced to close down, but you have to ask, are you, the user just as responsible as the administrator sharing those files?

What remains is this. The net will continue to grow, and whilst technology will develop and allow us to continue benefiting from free forms of entertainment and purchases at faster and less intrusive ways, the models need to adapt just as well. The free model can’t continue to be sustainable forever. Independent sites will need finance and advertising to keep going, which could be to the detriment of your viewing/audio pleasure; big retailers can only give so much away for free, you will eventually have to purchase items and services, to keep them in business.

But what makes this truly different is the landscape. Businesses now have a choice. Attract new customers by giving them what they want for free, gain loyalty and then start to sell. As for the consumer, if they truly want something, they too have a choice.

As Chris Anderson says, “you can listen to music for free, but going to a concert has never been more expensive”

Don't hate the player, hate the game

I have waited for months now to write a post with that title and when I saw a campaign that Nissan ran recentl y I found the perfect excuse. In short to promote their new car, the Cube in their words "they avoided the usual mainstream quadrangle of TV, radio, print and billboard to trumpet their car launch" and instead used a social media led campaign targeting the creative classes to spread the word according to Jeff Parent, Nissan Canada's vice-president of sales and marketing "The creative class is what's motivating everything these days they are the ones that other people coalesce around. Creative people make their art to infect others. For us, it was a natural fit."In short five hundred finalists were assigned a blank webpage on Nissan's hypercube.ca website and invited to creatively "audition" for their chance to win a free vehicle - one of the winners award winning Canadian artist Greg Sczebel ended up generating more than 4,000 votes and 21,000 profile views.
So what is the point in the title ? - well the point here is not the campaign - it is not particularly innovative or different - but rather that a huge company chose the launch a new car in this manner and spent (according to them) a third of the amount they would normally would for a car launch of this type as PHD's Rob Young says "The thinking here is that you could spend $5 to reach 1,000 people in a TV commercial at a relatively low level of involvement, or spend $5 reaching 10 people at a high level of involvement. The high level of involvement – if you get the right consumers – is a better payback." My issue is that that this is not a UK based campaign (it is from Canada) and it is by no means normal and the reason is not because of agencies not presenting these ideas (I am convinced that any agency worth its fee will be pushing social media activation wherever relevant) but rather that Clients at best do not understand the opportunties afforded by this approach or at worst are not willing to embrace the myriad of opportunties that are available in the new media landscape and "think outside the cube"
So the conclusion has to be fairly aimed at Clients to raise their game - and the although the risks are high so are the rewards, as Ice T says in the aforementioned song "If you out for mega cheddar, you got to go high risk" but I am sure the rewards will be worthwhile.

How much do your friends mean to you....and to anyone else ?

The latest edition of Business Week carries a fascintating article about the value of friendships not only to us but also to companies how by analysing the closeness of friendships and associated behaviour a great deal of useful information can be gleaned about that person and the opportunty they represent.

One part that particularly struck a chord was from a study that is being carried out by Cameron A. Marlow, a research scientist at Facebook, who has studied social media communications including wall posts, shared photos, pokes, and friend requests among 200 million people to determine how close we are to our friends online. According to the article "They looked at how often people clicked on their friends' news or photos, how often they communicated, and if the communications traveled in both directions. Studying this data, they determined that an average Facebook user with 500 friends actively follows the news on only 40 of them, communicates with 20, and keeps in close touch with about 10. Those with smaller networks follow even fewer"

The conclusion to this is obviosuly that in order to make sense of the opportunity to drive WOM then the focus should be on the closest friends ignoring the wider group - as they say "By focusing campaigns on people who interact with each other, they'll likely get better results".

I think the opportunity does differ by product as I know I have a small group of close friends with which I will discuss certain brands and products in detail I also have a slightly larger group of friends who are experts in certain areas - wines, holiday destinations, bikes, technology etc. BUT I also have a much wider group of acquaintances with whom I will discuss either very specific issues with eg a new laptop or music system (as they are perceived to be experts in these areas) and this is is where it becomes an awful lot more complicated.

I guess as a brand or company trying to tap into this the key is coming back to the traditional method of understanding your consumer and their decision making journey and where and what degree of influence the friendship group carries on this journey.

Do you Wordle ?

Writing a good presentation is always a challenge that takes time, skill, great content but the biggest challenge of all is making it interesting and there are fantastic resources out there that help not only hold the attention of the audience but also interest them and make them want more - http://www.wordle.net/ provides a perfect resource to create and interesting first page. Have a play with it - I have directed it to look at this blog and it developed the word cloud displayed here - I guess we talk about social media a lot then !

How dirty is your mind ?

Apparently according to Irish bank RaboDirect" Life is more interesting when you tell the truth" and they have launched a viral to support a website that does just that - a place "where you can confess your truths read confessions or get things off your chest. Up to you.There are 5 categories - Money, Relationships, Personal, Professional and the obligatory 'Other' for the stranger ones among you." I had a look through the "confessions" and most are pretty tame and a little boring even - the Sarah Beeney one was funny. Overall I like the approach- it works well with their "straight talking" proposition and the involvement of their staff work well at adding a human face to the brand plus they seem to be getting some traction judging by the forums and the increase in chat online BUT the videos are boring (they could have had a lot more fun with these) and it feels like they could have gone one step further and linked the viral more directly to their brand and product offering or related their offering to the areas eg insurance or cover for accidents that people confess to or some of competition for most juicy / honest confession with a financial prize eg money in a bank account to escape the consequences or pay for the damage etc. That way they also have some sort of follow up.

Interesting (and probably inevitable) that the top 5 are all about sex !

Everything you need to know about Social Media - in one place

Last month I was invited by UTalkmarketing to attend a round table discussion on social media with (their words) "some of the UK’s biggest agencies, brands and experts in the world of social media." the full article is included in "an unmissable ezine" which you can download here - as they say "It gives you everything you need to know about social media - all in one place!"

My take out from the discussions was encouragingly everyone involved agreed that social media was not just another channel but rather a whole new opportunity for brands to get involved in in a huge number of ways - from listening to learning, embracing to engaging and talking to energizing - the reality check was that there was a general lack of knowledge about the opportunties and concern about the potential fall out.

Personally I think this can be overcome by not creating such a halo of complexity and black magic around the area but rather talking about how easily social media integrates and enhances more traditional marketing - that way it is not seen as a step into the unknown but instead a hugely interesting and exciting opportunity.


Have a read and let me know what you think.

Ning, Facebook, Twitter all showing growth as social media marches on

Nielsen recently published it regular review of what is going on in Social Media land the highlights of which were the 2,500% rise in Twitter and the fact that FB has now overtaken MySpace as the most visited Social Network.(69m montly visitors for FB v 56m for MS) There was also one other very interesting fact - Ning which according to Mashable recently announced that more than one million social networks including Twitter Moms group with upwards of 13,000 members, the This is 50 fully branded social hub for 50 Cent’s 400,000 adoring fans, and Ning’s MuggleSpace, where 15,000 plus Harry Potter fans gather together - is now the 2nd fastest growing social networking site with traffic up 283 percent YOY.

It's not all about digital and social media !

In these challenging times "getting the attention of the consumer" has become the most consistent and clearest part of most of the briefs that we receive and all channels are vying to achieve this. As a result social media has become the buzzword of the moment in many Clients' HQs and agency office with varying degrees of desire, aptitude and ability to deliver on this still nascent medium and it was with this challenge in mind that I was invited to attend a round table discussion on social media by Utalkmarketing an online community for the marketing industry (more about that soon). Anyway, after the session, with the lively debate still bouncing around in my head I walked up Tottenham Court Road to a new business meet (about social media) and came across 2 great examples that restore my faith that it is not all about digital. The first was very simple but very attention grabbing - a six sheet poster (picture top right) for "The Boat that Rocked" that incorporated a loudspeaker playing the voiceover trailer for the film including parts of the soundtrack and a sampling van for Vitamin Water that featured a spin and win device based on moods and a free sample for everyone - this was so popular there was a queue of consistently 40+ people for the 30 mins or so I observed the activity for. I know it is not scientific or new news but still encouraging to see not everything happens online !

We've found Wally and he's just round the corner !

Google officially launched Streetview last week to much controversy and general public indignation about privacy with numerous stories from reports of images showing a man being arrested in North London, another going into a Soho sex shop and one throwing up on the pavement in Shoreditch and that the UK Google Chief's house has been deliberately not included. On the flip side this has been regaled as a revolutionary developments that it offers in real World mapping - after all when was the last time you were lost and the map made no sense and you wished for a proper look at where you were ? The storeies and conspiracy theories will continue BUT the most important development for us was that Richard in the office found Wally just down the road on Putney High Street - some things never change !

Are you a NOOB or a GURU?

I read an article yesterday that really struck a chord talking about web 2.0 / social media and different people's levels of knowledge and how they view others from this perspective. The essence of the article was, in the words of Joel Postman "Some social media “experts” and veterans look down on social media “noobs,” aka newbies, or newcomers. (The word “noob” comes from l33tspeak, an early hacker “language” now popular among some social networkers.)"
This is something that everyone who knows a little about social media has (I am sure) been guilty of but is absolutely against the principles of social media - after all the clue is in the name "social" - namely that no one knows everything about everything and the point of web 2.0 is about sharing, passing on and commenting on information.
I found this particularly pertinent on a personal level when I recently undertook a search for information on new Asics Kayano trainers and wanted to know if I should get the 14's or 15;s and all the info online proved very useful (the 14's are best btw) and I am currently looking at multi room wireless audio system that is less than 4 figures and social media is proving a hugely valuable resource- on a professional level we recently won a pitch for Racing UK and getting under the skin of the racegoer/ watcher was key to success - social media was invaluable in gaining this understanding (indeed part of the challenge is now setting up their own social community) and for another pitch for a large financial services firm where the challenge was to present how social media could be used to help sell their product in to a new target group understanding the social media profile of these targets was key to the response.

So I guess the point is that we are all gurus in some areas and Noobs in others and the web is there for us to learn from others and social media means there are plenty of teachers out there! 

How to buy a blogger

I wrote a while ago about Alltop - a virtual magazine rack - and how Guy Kawasaki was doing some great things so it was with much disappointment when I saw Guy's latest blog entry in his blog entitled "How to change the World" all about an Audi R8 and how he had been loaned the car for a week in return ...well apparently nothing....but in reality some great coverage on his blog, lots of pictures and a discussion about what car he would get next....A Q7 it seems from the blog. Whilst I think the R8 is a great car and would love to own one it seems that the strategy of influencing influential bloggers has led to the point where any blogger however well respected and followed (like Guy) can be bought. Maybe

I am being too much of a purist but surely the point of a blog (especially one called "How to change the World") is to share your thoughts with your readers and the blogosphere generally and not to be influenced by outsiders in return for a cheap thrill - but then again maybe this is a sign that blogs really are becoming the newspapers of old where a few well placed complimentary favours are rewarded with complementary copy !

Challenger Agency Tactics

Came across an great article on Ad Age by Milan Martin of Gyro International in New York entitled "A Few Steps to Help Your Challenger Agency Thrive" which made some very interesting points - read the artciel in full to get the whole story but the main points were:
Be better suited to create big ideas
1) Be better suited to create big ideas
2) Don't hide your creative people
3) Offer skin in the game
4) Share the hatred
He concludes "All in all, it's business as usual for us challenger agencies. These are the things we do in good times, as well as bad, to show our clients that there is a better way. As we would tell our clients, from crisis comes innovation and change."
We couldn't agree more with all the points and would add - the ability to be agile, keep your finger on the pulse of what is going on and consistently deliver great Client service - I am constantly amazed how the bigger boys just don't do this for example how many big agencies practice what they try and preach about the importance of new media by writing blogs and setting up their social media profiles ???
The time seems right for poacher to become gamekeeper.

Ever wondered how often you "get busy" with someone ....or yourself !

I blogged in the past about weird social networks but then I saw this site nd things really can't get any weirder !
As Springwise describes it "Bedpost is an entirely personal application, password-protected from the prying eyes of others, and stresses that it offers absolutely no social networking features. Rather, it is a way for consumers to keep track of the sexual encounters they've had by logging in and entering some key details after each one. Users begin by creating a profile for the partner involved in their most recent encounter and then clicking on the calendar to indicate when the encounter happened. Then, they enter not just the time it happened, but also how long the encounter lasted, some descriptive tags and a star-based rating of the experience. The site then records all that information and presents it in a map of activity for the month on the user's dashboard. For a historical view, Bedpost tracks summary statistics including frequency, average rating, and totals for the month and year so far.
Hilariously "Solo sex" tracking is also available ! Sensibly (and I guess pretty integral) they have been very specific about privacy and data and instead of hiding the privacy policy in a link at the bottom of the page they have made it very clear on the home page. There is a point that all the data is kept by third party companies so they cannot absolutely guarantee that your closest darkest secrets don't end up in a skip or worst still in the inbox of your closest friends !

Advertising can work !

Every now and then the role for good old fashioned advertising is reaffirmed - either by inspirational creative (Honda's impossible dream or Cadbury's Gorilla) tapping into a zeitgeist (see the new Virgin Atlantic ads) or fantastic media placement to which I think this ad placed in the Sydney Herald this week is a fantastic example...

Nuff said !