Mike Berry's Blog

2012-01-03T05:06:00.000-08:00

We're moving!

Effective immediately, I will be posting at http://mikeberryassociates.com.

Hope to see you there soon.

Thanks

Mike

Mike Berry

Hey, What's The Rush?

2011-11-12T12:16:00.001-08:00

I read recently that in the 'Browser Wars', Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s share has dipped below 50% of all users (on all devices, globally). Lest we forget, in 2004, IE’s share was 95%. Firefox was the first real challenger to IE and continues to gain ground, but the big winner is Google Chrome, which positions itself as a new, fast browser.

‘New’ is a familiar advertising copy word which has been proven to be effective (after all, new must be ‘improved’…). But what about ‘fast’? The car manufacturers aren’t allowed to sell ‘speed’ any more but browser makers still can.

Google announced last year that page load speed was going to be ‘a ranking factor’ for a website in its search results. In other words, the faster your page loads, indeed the faster your whole site is to respond to a user’s click, the more likely it is that Google will recommend it when someone searches for a relevant keyword term. Fair enough, we know ‘user experience’ is important and waiting for a site to do what you’ve asked it to is boring; in the Internet Age, we’re all accustomed to instant results and instant gratification. We don’t like to wait: in short, we have a need for speed.

Moreover, as increasingly demanding web users, we don’t want streaming videos to buffer; i.e. if we’re on the web and on YouTube, we want to click on a video and have it play right through, in the highest available definition, perfectly without freezing or stuttering. And we want the same experience on all devices; PC, Tablet, Mobile phone. As you may have noticed, generally speaking, we’re not there yet.

The earliest web connections were via 56kb/ second modems. Anything faster than this was deemed to be ‘broadband’. Now there’s a global dash for speed; countries are vying with each other to provide a better infrastructure and faster average speeds. It’s almost become a matter of national pride (perhaps replacing the flag-flying airlines of the late 20th Century!). The current holy grail is ‘fibre to premises’; ie a fibre optic cable that goes all the way to the user’s computer rather than to a cabinet at the end of the street from which point old copper wires take over (and slow everything down).

Akamai’s State of the Internet report for Q2 2011 makes interesting reading.

In world terms, the leaders (for average Broadband speed) are The Netherlands, South Korea and Japan.

Europe dominates the list of top ten countries with the highest broadband connectivity.However, Asian cities dominate the list of the 100 fastest cities in the world, with 10 South Korean cities and Japan alone having 59 cities.
Brno, in the Czech Republic, is the fastest-ranked city in Europe and is only ranked No. 55. Eighteen U.S. cities are on the top 100 list, with San Jose being the fastest —ranked 9 out of 100. The average speed in San Jose was 13.7 Mbps. San Jose also had the highest peak speed in the U.S., 38.7 Mbps.

The South Korean city of Taegu is the fastest city in the world, with an average Mbps of 15.8 Mbps. South Korea’s Taejon had the highest peak speed, 55.3 Mbps.

The UK is trailing in 25th place.

In mobile, we’re waiting for 4G: the next generation mobile networks which will power a new age of superfast speeds on the move, via smartphones and tablets.

The adoption of these new technologies is patchy and driven by entrepreneurs as well as governments. Trials are underway in an unlikely group of locations (including Russia, Cornwall and Jersey?).

But will broadband speeds ever be ‘enough’? How much bandwidth does a household actually need? Once 4 family members are streaming HD video perfectly, is that sufficient? What about businesses, or travellers on the move? Finland last year made broadband a 'legal right' of every citizen, but how fast should this be?

Indeed, will we soon reach the point where we are surrounded by a ubiquitous superfast Wi-Fi cloud so we don’t need to choose a coffee shop, hotel lobby or airport lounge with one eye on the data deal?

In this rush for ever faster speeds, who are the real winners likely to be? Well, in short:

a) the consumer

and
b) companies who have built and maintain fast websites.

So Google Chrome browser is fast and it’s growing impressively, taking share from Microsoft’s Internet explorer in particular.

Google Chrome Operating System (OS) is perhaps the first real challenger to Windows as a PC operating system and again it’s all about - speed. The first Chromebooks (Samsung, Acer, …) typically boot faster than other machines. With more and more data in the Cloud and not saved on our hard drives, PCs will boot faster and faster. Manufacturers are racing to satisfy the demands of impatient users.

And by the way, how long are we prepared to wait for our computer to ‘boot up’?. Well, now you ask, why should we need to wait at all? After all, how long does it take for an electric light to come on? Or a car to start up? Or a radio or TV set? Even our mobile phone is faster to get started than our PC. But this will change.

So what does all this mean for marketers? Just that the bar has been raised: the best sites are getting faster. Users are starting to expect this level of responsiveness. As Google once said, disloyalty is only one click away; keep them waiting, and the users could easily choose to head back to a site that does what they want it to...So does your site need to be faster than a speeding bullet to have any chance of getting to Page 1 on the Google results? Not necessarily. Content is still king, and relevance is still royal (OK I just made that one up) but speed is certainly getting more and more important.

To see how fast your site is, check out Google Page Speed http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/

Brands are starting to get the message. Good web designers are now building faster sites and some older sites may find themselves left in the slow lane. So you should check out how your site stacks up. And you’d better be quick...

Facebook addresses privacy concerns...(again)

2011-08-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

Do you care who knows what about you? Of course you do; face-to-face, we all share different stuff with friends, family, work colleagues and strangers. It should be the same in social networks. I believe many social media users are guilty of 'unintentional oversharing' and that it is the duty of the social networks to remind people exactly what they are sharing with whom and to give them the opportunity to change their privacy settings easily.

I just read that Facebook now has close to 800 million users. Wow. Not bad in less than 8 years. But how much does Facebook know about you, your friends and your family? Are you completely comfortable with that? Do you trust them not to abuse this trust inadvertently? Or even not to go 'evil'? And do you always know exactly what details you are sharing on Facebook?

Recently a German Regional Privacy Watchdog, the ULD, took the serious step of instructing website owner sites in Schleswig-Holstein to close their Facebook pages and remove 'Like' buttons from their websites. They have until the end of September to comply, or risk prohibition orders and fines of up to €50,000. Yeah: they can do that. Other regulatory authorities may follow. And not just in Germany.

But wait; check out this video. This new announcement suggests Facebook may, at last, be genuinely responding to users' privacy concerns in a major way. The Social Media giant is changing radically the way Facebook users control their privacy; starting immediately. In the new Facebook, items posted online will each have their own sharing settings, which will determine exactly who can see them i.e. each posting will have its own privacy settings. When users are tagged in a posting (eg a video or a photo) they will be able to confirm or remove their identity before it appears on their profile.

And there's more:

Every item on a user's wall will have its own individual privacy options, (e.g. public, friends and custom). You will get the ability to remove a tag of yourself, OR to ask the person who tagged you to remove it, OR to block the tagger
Users will be able to tag anyone, not only their Facebook friends. Then that person can choose not to accept the tagged post onto their profile. Users can ask for tags of them to be removed or have the content deleted completely
Geographic locations can be added in all versions of Facebook, not just the mobile app
The option to see how others see your profile will be added above the news feed
When Facebook members share a piece of content for the first time, their default suggestion will be 'public' (instead of the current "everyone" setting). If a user selects a different option, that will then be their default.

Of all the changes, pre-approving photo tags must be the biggest and should help to make Facebook even more attractive to many users.

Facebook has promised there won't be any 'unexpected' changes to users' privacy settings as part of the update process. We shall see...

This new policy represents an attempt by Facebook to address persistent criticism about how members manage (or fail to manage) their personal information. Some have speculated that Facebook might be adjusting its privacy controls in preparation for the extension of Facebook to kids under 13; Mark Zuckerberg has previously indicated he thinks this is a good idea. Facebook have officially expressed the hope that the changes will safeguard users and counter malicious tagging, often used by 'cyberbullies' who like to add other people's names to 'dodgy' images.

Is Facebook only making these changes because it believes it must? Indeed some have suggested Mark Zuckerberg doesn't really understand the concept of privacy, since 'his life is his work' and that he thinks the people complaining are being over-sensitive. However this is to underestimate him. Zuckerberg is certainly not naive and he knows he needs to tread carefully here. For instance, Facebook now acknowledges that it is not acceptable to hide privacy settings in out-of-the-way places and hard-to-find 'account settings' menus.

Many will say these changes are long overdue. So why now? Some will suggest the real reason for the new Facebook 'selective sharing' is a response to the 'Circles' feature of the new Google+ social network...Facebook is not exactly waiting around for Google+ to catch up. It has announced its intention to complete 20 acquisitions this year (11 so far).

Marketers are naturally very interested in those 800 million potential customers and the mega 'dwell time' they spend on the Facebook site. If these new changes keep Facebook growing, advertisers will keep spending on Facebook Advertising and investing time in their Facebook pages, generating even more traffic and revenue for the site which would be good news ahead of its much mooted IPO (early in 2012?).

Whatever Facebook's beliefs about its members' privacy rights, I'm sure we can expect more changes from Facebook soon to strengthen its position and to try to see off the new challenger. 800 million is unlikely to be enough for Mr Z...

Google+. Tell your friends.

2011-07-19T01:34:00.000-07:00

We are, anthropologists tell us, social beings. None of us is an island. As members of 'society', we have connections, of different types, with various fellow humans. These relationships are created and nurtured by communication, i.e. talking, writing and, in the digital age, by sharing content electronically. If we're the sort who likes to classify, we can imagine our contacts in groups; labelled (for example) 'family', 'co-workers', 'thought leaders', 'celebrities' and, of course, 'friends'.

We don't talk with everyone in the same way, or about the same things. We wouldn't share the same stuff with our mates, with Lady Gaga, with our Boss, with our Parents or with our Kids. Most of us dress for work. A night out with the girls or the guys might feature different content, and indeed vocabulary, from a family Wedding and from the Monday Morning Status Meeting at the office. That is of course why we have both Facebook and LinkedIn. Privacy is a flexible concept; most of us share selectively. (Could someone please explain this to Mark Zuckerberg?).

We're living in exciting times. Google+ has just been launched.

Well actually it hasn't yet; it's still in a 'Field Trial'. Right now, across the 'interwebs', Techies, Bloggers, Geeks and Social Media Gurus (if any really exist) are fighting to get their hands on an invitation and then obsessing about every granular detail of what is still an embryonic platform. There are of course plenty of other social networks out there and this one might turn out to be a dead duck. But this is Google, so we should pay attention. Google is being fairly picky about who gets hold of Google+ and we can be sure they're watching and listening carefully to see what we all think i.e. whether they've got it right. (Luckily they have Social Media Monitoring to assist and checking out G+ posts would be a good start). And it's still a work in progress; expect changes. We're some way away from a full launch; indeed Google+ will only really take off if and when friends start recommending it to friends in large numbers, at which time it could spread virally...Facebook better keep announcing 'awesome' things...

So what's all the fuss about? Well Google have had two previous attempts at 'cracking' Social Media; namely Google Wave (too complex) and Google Buzz (err...we went there but nothing happened; let's blame everyone else). Having played with Google+ for the past week, I'm here to tell you this is their best attempt yet. It might even be the first genuine challenger to the mighty Facebook which has recently appeared to stall in the US and Western Europe while still pressing on relentlessly towards 1 billion users globally.

The Google+ user interface is pleasing; Google has taken a lot of trouble considering the platform is still in 'Beta'; the design is clean and attractive and the usability is great; it's easy to navigate your way around.

But we know good ideas often fail. Can Google, at the third time of asking, persuade people to submit to the pain and inconvenience of changing their social networking behaviour by offering something whcih is clearly different and better? (and can it take hold faster than Facebook can copy its cool new features?) Well: it just might.

Google+ features Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and The Stream.

Circles

This is great: It’s a hybrid; somewhere between friending and following. You can put different contacts into different groups and target your updates at certain 'circles' only. This neatly resolves issues of what personal updates you don’t want prospective employers or colleagues (or your Mum) to see and, with this feature, Google+ could be seen as a threat both to Facebook and LinkedIn. You can put anyone in a circle, and they can choose whether to reciprocate. Crucially, regardless of whether someone you’ve added to your circles chooses to 'circle' you back, you'll see their public updates.

The animations for creating, deleting and modifying circles are nice and an incentive to move people in and out of your circles. If Google+ does take off, the circles idea could turn out to be its 'killer app'...

Unless of course it's:

Hangouts

OMG: arguably the coolest feature of Google +, which currently gives it an edge over any other social network out there.

This is a group video chat function. Of course we also have Skype's new video chat service. But for millions of Google+ users, Hangouts could be a fantastically attractive feature. A casual, relaxed place for a video chat with your mates, family or colleagues. The future of social networking(?), this could be the 'clincher' for many Google+ users. (And could be a threat not only to Facebook but also to Fast Food restaurants, Bars and Shopping Malls, not to mention Second Life...)

Google has obviously put a lot of thought into the design of Hangouts, even letting users mute video or audio and giving you a second to make sure you’re presentable (clothes, hair and make-up) before joining the chat.

Not only does the group video chat feature function beautifully, but Google has neatly integrated YouTube into Hangouts so you can all watch a video together. (Remember how we all used to gather round the TV set?). There is a push-to-talk feature when you’re watching a video as a group.

To start a Hangout, you just press a button declaring you are open to hanging out, you choose which Circle(s) of friends to send the invite to, and up to 10 people can be in the room at any one time. The group can collectively talk or watch YouTube videos together. And it's so easy. It just works.

Video chat at last. Together with Facebook's Skype calling, this may mark the official turning point for this 70+ year-old technology. Indeed older readers may recall that video calling was predicted by Hanna Barbera in "The Jetsons" cartoons in the '60s, in which a family of 2062 talked on a video phone. In fact Space-Age housewife Jane Jetson never answered it in the morning without first putting her wig on. Pretty impressive futurism. (They missed email and SMS though...)

Skype, now the world’s largest telecoms company (measured by minutes of phone calls) has been offering free group video chat since last year. Facebook and now Google+ have just made it EASY. Suddenly: if you can Farmville, you can video-call any of your contacts with a webcam.

We can get ready for an almighty battle between Facebook and Google around video calling. And if you throw in Apple's FaceTime for iPhone and iPad2, we can include mobile video chat. Watch this space...

Sparks

With this feature, you can get a feed of things you love, then suggest things that interest you and encourage your circles to talk about them; these used to be called 'conversation pieces' but now we might say 'social objects'.

This is also a great idea, enabling users to list various topics of interest and monitor news about them in one easy-to-find place. No integration with Google Reader yet though?

The Stream

This is like the Facebook News Feed. But better. It pulls in posts made by the people in your Circles. You, and anyone following you, can also +1 or comment on any post. You can also sort your stream by Circles to view selective posts (e.g. work-related stuff or news from your friends), depending on whether you're in work or leisure mode. This for me again puts Google+ ahead of Facebook.

Overall? Exciting. Google+ genuinely appears to be offering something different (and better) on several fronts; some advantages might take a while to become clear e.g. it might also be big for in-depth discussion of news articles - you can write a longer comment than Twitter allows.

So what about Marketing? Already Brands have been all over Google, asking how they can join in the fun. "Not yet!", says Google; in my opinion, wisely. When Google+ is opened up to businesses (as we can be sure it will be), it will need to deliver immediately; that will need careful preparation. Let's remember that Facebook took the time to build a loyal and engaged member base before going all commercial ahead of its IPO. ("Sell at the top" as they say...)

Personally I'm already keen to use Google+ on a regular basis but I don't feel inclined to maintain separate profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+, so something has to go. Facebook? LinkedIn? Of course the tipping point will come when (if?) people start to delete their Facebook profile and switch to Google+; this sort of thing can become a stampede... just ask MySpace how it feels to wake up on the floor with a hangover and discover that the party has moved on somewhere else.

Google has achieved massive success in Search. Their Android mobile platform is at last really taking off. It is, of course, very early days, but Google+ could be their 3rd big revenue earner; suddenly Facebook looks vulnerable. How quickly things change in Digital...

I've noticed that most posts on Google+ are about...Google+. Understandably, people are sharing their experiences, their thoughts, hints and tips and advice. Which is, of course, what friends are for...

Email marketing: timeless classic or just horribly old-fashioned?

2011-05-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

I recently chaired the Econsultancy Client Roundtable for email marketing specialists. Over an afternoon in London, we discussed email marketing - trends, challenges and best practice. Attendees were people who know; they do this stuff every day for major corporations and charities.

The discussion was very stimulating and wide-ranging.

The whole session was held under 'Chatham House Rules'; so I won’t associate specific comments with individuals.

For the expert practitioners who attended the Roundtable, the big issues in email marketing currently include:

Best Practice

· Deliverability – still a problem: (ISP throttling, Sender Score, data quality etc.)

· Email challenges with a range of email clients (e.g. MS Office)

· Customer segmentation models (behavioural triggers and targeting)

· E-mail as a customer acquisition tool is virtually dead, whereas for Abandoned Shopping Cart reactivation and customer retention, it’s thriving

· Multi-channel marketing e.g. e-mail + direct mail, + call centres. Lots of evidence of 2=2=5

· E-mail Video/ audio growing but still problematic

Research and Measurement

· Open rates are not a great measure (consider the rise of image-blocking software) but still widespread. Clickthrough rate is a better metric but not enough on its own

· List, creative, timing make a difference: normally in that order

Budget and Resource allocation

* E-mail marketing still believed to be under-invested (money, time, people) given the revenue it generates. Attitude seems to be “It’s not broken, so why fix it?” in some organizations

* Resourcing – What to outsource? Where to find people with the right skills? Generally an HR policy decision. Marketing needs to get more involved.

General Discussion

* Deliverability : do emails even reach the inbox? Still a challenge, with ISPs increasingly keen to protect their users from 'unwanted' commercial messages.

* Integration of email and social media – some suggest email is just ‘another social channel’? Others consider Facebook and Twitter as eCRM channels. It was noted that you need an email address to sign up for Facebook…

* The rise of mobile email – becoming more important, and in some cases, more likely to be opened and read by a mobile user 'killing time'. But most email is still not optimised for mobile… Few email senders seem to be treating mobile email recipents/ viewers as a separate segment (yet).

* Amazon's Simple Email Service – picture not clear, but may lead to big drop in deliverability prices?

* Gmail Priority Inbox: email marketers need to get their messages into the 'top part' of the inbox. Along with Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, email clients are increasingly providing webmail interfaces which make it easier for users to sort email and better integrate social media, videos, and photos. It’s all about protecting the user from 'less important' commercial messages, even if they’re not strictly spam…The challenge for email marketers is of course to get into the 'Important and Unread' section, preferably because the recipient actually wants to read the message.

* New Facebook Messages: can’t be ignored owing to Facebook’s scale, but consensus seems to be that the interface may confuse some users, that take-up of the new service will be patchy and that there is no guarantee that significant numbers of users will want to use the new @facebook.com addresses.

* There’s a general feeling that email has lost some status within digital marketing departments. It may not be as ‘sexy’ or fashionable as Social Media BUT: it’s still quietly making big money for those who know how to get the most out of it. CFOs like this, and they tend to come out on top…

Overall, email marketing appears to be alive and well. Perhaps we should bear in mind that in 1976 Punk Music didn’t kill The Rolling Stones, Elton John or Paul McCartney. (And indeed some might even suggest The Bay City Rollers weren’t such a big loss). In 2011, following the Social Media Revolution, email marketing is certainly changing, but looks to be here to stay.

Is SEO the new spin?

2011-03-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

We all know digital has disrupted everything in marketing: Advertising, Direct, Promotions, Design and yes, even PR.

Of course journalists have always had space to fill and demanding editors to appease. In this digital age, they are, as ever, under constant pressure to come up with interesting content which people want to read and which sells magazines/ newspapers/ TV advertising. The 'Digital Revolution' hasn’t changed this.

But digital has, nevertheless, changed PR. Today, pretty much all journalism appears somewhere online. Not all appears in print. And people are reading the online stuff! PR agencies report that their clients are at last properly valuing online coverage. Some offline journalists actually prefer to receive 'pitches' via Twitter or LinkedIn; even the default is email. The days of the caricature PR man/ woman, immaculately dressed and spoken, who does most of his/ her business in wine bars, buying journalists lunch, kissing everyone on both cheeks (mwah, mwah) and then taking a taxi back to the office to craft and dispatch a press release printed on crisp white paper (swiftly followed by a hefty invoice, ditto) are behind us, along with yuppies, shoulder pads and other relics of the 20th Century.

On the other side of the fence, we now have a new breed of online journalist whose deathless prose just happens to appear on a screen (PC, Tablet, mobile device) rather than on something made out of a tree. But make no mistake: they’re under pressure to produce great content too. Bloggers face similar challenges; (tell me about it!) ie. constantly needing to come up with fresh and interesting things to blog about (except, of course, for the apparently effortlessly prolific Seth Godin).

So what exactly is ‘online PR’?

Well a lot of people are writing stuff which appears on websites/ blogs etc. and in the main, they are receptive to press releases in whatever format: ie. interesting facts/ useful ideas to help them generate compelling content: after all, that’s their job, and who wouldn't welcome a helping hand?

Interestingly, we are also seeing the gradual emergence of new type of Press Release, actively promoted by 'Digital PR firms' who offer ‘a new PR for the digital age’. The promise is to “get your news straight to the search engines that everyone uses, like Google, Yahoo and Bing”.

The primary objective here is still to communicate with journalists and editors and help them to write a story. However there is also a secondary objective: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), ie. to get found (indexed) by Google/Yahoo/Bing, leading to appearances in Search results (including searches made by journalists writing stories: truly a ‘virtuous circle’ in which the story can ‘go viral’). The result is a persuasive and informative piece which will motivate journalists to write a story, but which also acts as a mini-website in its own right with a few skilfully-placed links back to the main site; the best of all worlds. SEO PR is a reality.

Check out firms like PRWeb, Pitch Engine and SEO-PR, all of which are experts at the SEO press release. In simple terms, this is a piece of content which is optimised for certain keywords; moreover once it’s up on the web, (preferably somewhere the Search Engines respect ie. with a high PageRank), the inbound links it contains will improve the Search Engine Results ranking of the author’s site.

As with any type of SEO, it doesn't pay to push your luck; if the targeted keyword appears in every sentence it can make the piece unreadable by humans, even if it impresses the Search Engines. In any case Google and Bing are wise to ‘keyword stuffing’ these days. So you need to know what you’re doing.

Econsultancy, in its Report Social Media and Online PR (September 2010) revealed that only 40% of client companies were currently doing any SEO PR; i.e. their press releases are written by people with little or knowledge of/ interest in SEO. This is a massive missed opportunity.

The report includes this quote:

“It amazed me in last year's results, it's amazed me again. Only 40% of companies use SEO press releases and only 56% use press release posting sites. With SEO celebrating its 17th birthday (at least), why are so few companies utilising the most basic form of link development techniques?”

David Hardy, Group Marketing Director, bigmouthmedia

Every SEO marketer knows the importance to Google and Bing of inbound links (= 'backlinks'). SEO PR can be a key tool for generating such links. For (much) more on routine but effective (and also more cunning) ways to get links, check this out from 'Linkbaiter Guru' Kelvin Newman, who has just written the (e)book on this subject: http://www.clockworkpirate.com .

As we have seen, SEO Press Releases serve a dual purpose: this requires a marriage of talents. The skills required here are a blend of SEO and PR; not many agencies currently have both the necessary media relations and SEO skills in-house. Indeed PR agencies are rapidly re-engineering their businesses for the changing media world. It appears some of the smaller agencies are further down the line with this change than the big PR firms. Check out thebluedoor and Red Dog who describe their mission as “creating buzz in a digital world”. For those agencies who ‘get it’, ‘The New Online PR’ is about much more than media relations/ just sending out (e)press releases.

We all know print journalism is shrinking but we also know that there will always be a demand for quality content, whether consumed on paper, mobile or tablet. If you’re not only trying to engage journalists and persuade them to run a story, but also trying to drive traffic to somewhere else on the web, you’d do well to know your SEO before you send out that Press Release.

Digital, and specifically SEO, hasn't killed PR; rather, the two disciplines will increasingly need to work closely together. Client PR Personnel and PR Agencies need to take this on board and evolve, or risk rapidly becoming irrelevant.

Integrated solutions need integrated knowledge

2011-02-05T08:36:00.000-08:00

Seems like everyone's talking about integration of digital platforms at the moment. However in my experience, far fewer people are actually doing it. We still have Search specialists, Social Media specialists and Mobile specialists. They're not talking to each other enough. These silos exist both within client marketing departments and in the agency world.

But the winds of change are blowing; the big ad agencies 'got' digital some time ago and now they're busy developing their high-level strategic and creative relationships into total 360 communications partnerships. The big media agencies are doing the same. These guys are investing in training, hiring digital experts and building structures to deliver truly integrated solutions, driven, of course, by their clients' needs. One example: Search and Social Media have never been so closely tied together. SEO Press Releases, the benefits of which are still insufficiently understood, will rapidly become standard practice. Everything's moving onto Mobile. (Facebook Deals is already causing huge disruptive waves). Offline isn't going away either, although some spend is certainly being switched. And, as we know, all marketing communications drive searches...

In 2011, the various specialist agencies need to understand each other's roles better and clientside marketers, however many agencies they work with, need to know enough about each marketing 'instrument' to conduct the entire integrated orchestra. No matter how senior and experienced you are, there's never been a better time to learn, even (in fact especially) about something you don't currently do.
It's going to be an interesting year!

Smart(phone) marketing

2011-01-16T06:40:00.000-08:00

Cell phone (US). Handy (Germany). Mobile phone (UK). Mobile device? (Global).

Next time you leave your house, apartment, factory, college or office, take a look at the people on the street. Many of them will be talking. But not many to each other. They may also be reading. But not newspapers. Or typing. But not on giant PC keyboards. Aargh! Quick: better check your smartphone is safely in your inside pocket and, crucially, switched on. Breathe. Calm. It's OK: you're connected to the global cellular/mobile internet life support system. Phew.

How these shiny gadgets have come to dominate our lives. But do they liberate us or enslave us? How do you feel when you lose yours? Or just leave it at home? Or drop it down the toilet? (sorry-horrible image). Even synchronisation problems are enough to induce a state of near-unbearable frustration and panic in many of us.

On the positive side, how long before your contract expires and you can get your hands on a nice new one? Or until you can afford to buy one? Which do you have your eye on? Have you looked online at the goodies that might be within your reach? Have you discussed with your friends? On Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Read any reviews yet?

Yet despite all this excitement and the strong, positive relationships we have with our 'phones', I would bet that virtually no one unboxes their new 'smartphone' (how long will that term last I wonder?) in anticipation of viewing ads on it.

But that, of course, is exactly what 'mobile marketers' are plotting and in many cases successfully doing. And increasingly, all marketers need to focus time and budget on the opportunities mobile offers. It's their job. Too many people are spending too much time looking at these little screens for mobile to be ignored. The challenge, of course, is to add value and enhance the user's life, creating positive experiences/ interactions around the brand.

Direct marketers used to claim they owned 'personal one-to-one marketing, allowing precise targeting and immediate, measurable response'. But they were talking about direct mail, direct response print ads and telephone marketing. If they only knew it, they just needed to equip each prospect/customer with an iPhone 4, a BlackBerry Torch, a Samsung Epic 4G or even a Motorola Droid X. I'm not saying it will be easy, but the opportunity is undeniable: these gadgets are individual, always on and, err... mobile. The smartphone is the most personal and powerful communication device mankind has yet invented.

American/Canadian author William Gibson allegedly said: "The future's already here. It's just not evenly distributed." Some people have had cellular telephones since the '70s. But now it's really happening. For those who enjoy a good cliché: from now on, every year will be The Year of Mobile. As someone else once said: We've only just begun...

2010: The Year Of The Tablet

2010-12-05T12:02:00.000-08:00

What do you want for Christmas? Well apparently thousands of us will be hoping Santa brings us a tablet computer. Last year that wasn't really an option (btw how much am I bid for a 2009 netbook?). On January 27th 2010, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed "Netbooks aren't better at anything!" (although to be fair, Steve, most are at least pretty good at multitasking and many even support Flash). He went on, as had been widely predicted, to introduce a 'magical and revolutionary product': the iPad (not iSlate, iTab or Maclet - OK I made that one up). And the rest already looks like history. What a difference a year makes.

Other tablets are already here and more are in the pipeline: e.g. Samsung Galaxy Tab, Archos 101, Blackberry PlayBook, plus offerings from Dell and HP, among others.

Apple has shipped 10 million iPads since April. Apps are selling well at around $5 each. According to a survey of 5,000 tablet users by Nielsen, 91 percent of iPad owners have downloaded an app and over half have paid for content. Early days, but looking like a success by any measure.

The rise of tablets has even offered the prospect of a new lease of life for the beleaguered Newspaper and Magazine industry, whose tough times have continued during 2010. We recently got the first results for the traffic on The Times and Sunday Times new websites with their new paywall (for a great analysis read this by Ashley Friedlein of Econsultancy). If Mr Murdoch can persuade large numbers of us to pay for the news, whether on iPads, Macs or PCs, the entire newspaper industry, and many outside it, will breathe a sigh of relief. And I, for one, will be surprised.

New iPad apps are currently being announced every day from a range of content owners including Wired, Sports Illustrated and The Washington Post. News Corp and Apple have said they will launch an iPad-only publication entitled ‘The Daily’, while Richard Branson’s new ‘Project’ will also be launched for the iPad only. Meanwhile, The Independent’s new newspaper ‘i’ will not be published on the web at all, rather it will be launched as a paid-for iPad app. The new Guardian iPad app is expected shortly.

Crucially, we should remember tablets are mobile devices and we are prepared to pay for mobile apps whereas we seem to expect everything we access on the web via our PC/ laptop to be free (eg. telegraph.co.uk and guardian.co.uk). Don't ask me why this is; I blame the BBC and The Pirate Bay (unlikely bedfellows, admittedly). Interestingly, the new BBC iPlayer international service is launching exclusively as an iPad app...For what it's worth, my prediction is that tablets and laptops will in time merge to form one class of machines with a wide range of specs and form factors. Until then, I'm sure Apple is happy to sell both iPads and MacBook Airs (often 1 of each to the same person!).

So much for the shiny new boxes and their glossy new content. But what about 'ads on the pads'? Check out Apple's iAd mobile advertising platform, launching in Europe this month and offering ads within mobile apps on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; brands including Renault, L'Oreal and Unilever are among the first to book campaigns through the network. Allegedly and in typically bullish fashion, Apple won't talk to UK agencies about advertising via iAd, its first ad network, unless they're spending £600k+. Possibly too expensive for a new initiative of this kind in this market. But if consumers continue to consume increasing amounts of content on tablets, make no mistake, we WILL find ways to drive brand engagement on these nice new screens; especially the full 9.7 inchers (and even on Samsung's and BlackBerry's smaller 7-inch models of which Steve Jobs has been so publicly contemptuous).

So, yet again, Apple has invented a new category of device. Tablets have changed the game: things will never be the same. Cue gratuitous link to my favourite TV ad of 2010, for Yeo Valley... over 1,267,000 YouTube hits and rising; 3,348 Facebook 'likers' (remember this is for YOGHURT!!!), narrowly beating (in my book at least) P&G's Old Spice Guy who started out on good old TV and then 'went social' (and indeed viral) at a much lower cost/000 (24,120,000+ YouTube hits, 1,166,000+ Facebook 'likers' and 120,000+ Twitter followers).

OK so maybe 2010 was the Year of iPad. And as for next year? Take your pick. Social Media. Location. HTML5. Mobile internet. Even faster Search. Windows Phone 7 (yes really). Android. Chrome OS. Facebook Places and Deals. Oh...and iPad 2 (new shell, camera, USB port but definitely no Flash).

Happy Holidays!

Learning AND Doing

2010-10-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

After being asked for some advice, I've recently been reading various forums/ online discussions about Digital Marketing training and education. There is much heat vented about the merits of formal qualifications versus professional short courses and 'on-the-job training' (famously favoured by employers who don't want to fund professional input!). Then there's the old dilemma: external 'public' courses or bespoke 'in-company' training? And maybe your next (potential) employer won't believe you really know your stuff without a suitable piece of paper from the right Professional Institution/ Trade Body?

There are certainly passionate Fanbois and Fangurlz enthusing/moaning about particular awarding bodies and, as one would expect in this 2.0 world, plenty of intense debate, involving current students, alumni and even grizzled old educators. Many have strong feelings and entrenched positions. Some maintain that 'academic' education about Digital Marketing has limited value, since it's inherently a practical discipline, while others say it pays to learn the theory as well as to benefit from the hard-earned knowledge of experienced practitioners; why make your own mistakes when plenty of others have gone before you?

I may be missing something here but this situation appears to cry out for that old cliché and refuge of every trainer/ teacher/ lecturer facing a tricky question in real time: "Well, it all depends...".

Are you a marketing manager aged 28, who's so far worked alongside rather than in the online team? Or are you a 22-year-old Business Studies graduate looking to start a career in marketing? Then again, maybe you're a 40-year-old entrepreneur trying to make your PPC ads work better and cost less?

There's room (and indeed a need) for lots of different types of Digital Marketing training and education out there; so: decide which segment of the market you (or your people) fall into and then shop around carefully. Solicit and study peer recommendations (after all, it's digital!). If you don't get exactly what you were hoping for, don't worry. It's (almost) all changing all the time anyway and provided you go to a reputable provider, engage and ask questions, (almost) any training is better than no training. You'll come out with some new ideas, a better understanding of concepts previously incompletely grasped and in many cases an extended network. Then, when you do get (back) 'on-the-job', it should all make a bit more sense.

Good luck!

Happy Old Year

2010-09-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

So that was the Northern Hemisphere Summer, huh? September already. Back to school. Brrr. A chill in the air. Colder misty mornings. Leaves turning brown. The year’s rushing by. Soon be time to start planning Christmas. OK: exaggeration. (?)

I sometimes wish I were a futurist; it sounds like fun to be able to make some predictions about the future and then run away (on to the next conference in a different continent) before anyone can hold me accountable. But let’s be fair. Just for a moment let’s pause and look back to January. What did we predict was going to happen in digital marketing this year? And has it?

I was recently re-reading my Blog post dated Jan 10 2010. Predictions for 2010 included:

The Androids are coming

Google's mobile platform is gaining ground fast. The first Android phones have sold well and more are on their way. HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and yes, even good old Motorola (who invented the category so long ago) are all getting in on the act. Meanwhile iPhone 4, after a few embarrassing birth pains, is selling well and it currently looks like RIM/Blackberry which is in danger of getting left behind in the smartphone race. The Android invasion is gathering momentum.

Location-based services/ augmented reality
Well this one was a no-brainer. Check out (or check-in?) Foursquare, Gowalla and yes, the new Facebook Places (damn - missed that one). Watch out for privacy issues though.

Rupert Murdoch to pull all his content off Google.
Well the Paywall is up for the Times/ Sunday Times and the UK ‘red-top’ The News Of The World is next. As to how many online readers have been lost, estimates average at about 50% but some suggest many more. Are these few paying online readers a sufficiently engaged, high-quality audience for which advertisers will willingly pay a premium? The Jury’s still out.

HTML5
If anything, Steve Jobs of Apple appears to hate Adobe’s Flash even more than at the start of the year. The iPad and iPhone don't support Flash. No apologies for this from Apple. All the Flash designers I know are learning HTML5 and quickly...

...and the Apple tablet
OK so we didn’t get the name quite right (iSlate? iTab? Could easily have been.).

But Apple certainly launched the iPad on January 26th and at a stroke defined the new tablet category, selling 3 million units in the first 80 days. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has just been announced and we await tablet offerings from HP, RIM (the "BlackPad") and even Toshiba. Game on.

Meanwhile downloads from the Apple App Store hit 6.5 billion. Apple also announced the iBooks app (for the iPad naturally) while iAds promises to disrupt (or should that be kick-start?) mobile advertising in a big way. In May Apple overtook Microsoft to become the world's biggest technology company. No wonder Steve Jobs seems to be enjoying every new announcement even more than the last these days, despite the odd glitch along the way.

Admittedly we also predicted a Facebook IPO (2012 apparently), that Twitter’s growth would stall and that Steve Ballmer would step down at Microsoft. But some of these weren’t really serious. And could still come true anyway. It certainly seems that Windows 7 is a better product than the bizarre launch promotional activity had led us to expect. Oh and News International has not YET done a content deal with Bing (but watch this space). At least we didn't predict 2010 would be 'The Year Of Mobile’ (as everyone knows, that will be 2011)...

Overall, then, not too shabby. We’ll try to do better for next year. With apologies to our Southern Hemisphere readers, (btw, anyone need a speaker in Cape Town?) let’s enjoy our digital Autumn...

Bumbling politicians serve up digital dog's dinner

2010-07-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

"The Law is an Ass" says Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. Yes, even here in Good Old Blighty, the oldest democracy in the world (err...sorry Iceland, Greece, Isle of Man, America, NZ +++), we sometimes get it badly wrong: the upshot being that we end up with laws that are ridiculous, unenforceable, dangerous or all of these. One such is the new UK Digital Economy Act (DEA). The Act was rushed through by the last UK Government without proper scrutiny or discussion, in the pre-election 'wash-up' period.

I recently took part in a debate at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park in London about the Act, organised by Digital Lounge and Digital Marketing London LinkedIn Groups (I always suspected these guys were real). I met some very interesting digital people and heard some great arguments (against) the Act but unfortunately(?) none of us is currently a Member of Parliament.

The DEA was voted through on its third reading in the House of Commons on April 7 this year by just 189 votes for, to 47 against. (there were 646 constituencies, meaning that approximately 37% of MPs bothered to turn up to vote and only some of these even attended the debate: democracy in action?).

Despite a massive '(Twitter) storm 'of opposition and over 20,000 people writing to their MPs in opposition to the bill, all that ultimately matters in these cases is what the MPs actually do on the day and the Digital Economy Bill duly went through; it received the Royal Assent on April 8 and became law on June 12 2010.

The Bill was largely the work of former Business Secretary Lord Mandelson (aka 'The Prince of Darkness' -his words, not mine). What was its inspiration? It was apparently intended to protect the intellectual property of creative people, specifically movie-makers, musicians, authors and their publishers, the thinking presumably being: "Without ownership there is no incentive to innovate"...

But maybe this view of copyright and its enforcement has been overtaken by technology. Perhaps it is outmoded and might actually stifle creativity. A friend of mine drew my attention to this excellent TEDTalks video about the lack of copyright in the Fashion Industry.

At Speakers' Corner, I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Killock, Executive Director of The Open Rights Group who is a passionate and articulate opponent of the Act and defender of civil liberties, both online and offline. He is currently locked in talks with Ofcom (the UK regulator) about the Act. Now that it's the law, the inertia inherent in the system means the legislation tends to trundle inexorably into our lives...Jim deserves our support.

As we know, the music industry is in turmoil. At the same time, newspapers are fighting a desperate battle against 'the desire of their online content to be free' (and the unwillingness of readers to pay for it). The movie industry is focused on protecting its intellectual property and revenue streams. This Act, in a significant content market, where people spend a lot of money on the arts and are also relatively digitally savvy, will be seen by the big studios as an important pillar in their global defensive edifice against illegal file downloaders and they may even seek test cases 'pour encourager les autres'.

Another friend of mine is a photographer who has shot many classic music album covers; however he regularly sees his work in places where he wasn't paid for usage. He doesn't think the new Act will help him recover a penny in unpaid royalties (Copyright Lawyers For You anyone?). Rather, he believes the DEA is by the big content owners for the big content owners and that it does nothing to protect the little guy who has created something using his/her imagination and skill. So another Fail.

The penalties for suspected infringement of the DEA would appear to be draconian and the monitoring necessary for enforcement would potentially go against EU privacy law. Moreover the scope under the Act for miscarriages of justice is massive. What happens if your wireless router gets hacked? What about 'Pirate Bay teenagers' or indeed 'LimeWire grannies'? Will poor old 'Bill Payer' be clobbered for the sins of others? How will guilt be established? Innocent parties might have their internet connections restricted (aka 'throttled') or even suspended. Legitimate websites may be blocked. Owners of internet cafes, university libraries and other public spaces will be too scared to provide Wi-Fi zones, for fear of prosecution under the Act. And in the Digital Age, is it fundamentally reasonable to deprive individuals and businesses of internet connectivity? So much for 'Digital Britain'!

Moreover, who is going to enforce this Act? Are we to have an even keener surveillance society? Will the Police be sent round with wirecutters? Unlikely. Instead the ISPs will be required to be the bad guys. But TalkTalk and BT have already challenged the Act, the former stating that it is not prepared to comply with any instruction to disconnect their customers. So the Act is looking unworkable even as it hits the statute book...

However: as Edmund Burke apparently didn't say(!?), "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing". Already, the big content owners and various Government spokespeople are talking about "making the Act work" and "getting on with implementation". So we can't rely on this Act to implode and reform itself.

This is the most important piece of legislation about the internet EVER in the UK. It's too important to be left to politicians. Web access is a basic human right. Like food, water, shelter and political and religious freedom. (OK, we're still working on some of these too). We didn't get the right Law. So sign the petition against sections 11-18 of the Digital Economy Act 2010. And if you're not a UK citizen, please pray that the 'Mother Of All Parliaments' gets it right next time.

Changing Times. But will we pay?

2010-06-14T03:22:00.000-07:00

Today, we find a place to rent or a house to buy, we book a holiday and stay in touch with our friends using different technologies from those our parents relied on 25 years ago. We all know the internet has changed the world, both economically and sociologically. We call it 'The Internet Revolution', but this wasn't just an event which occurred in 1998 (say) and then stopped. It's an ongoing process. This is the Revolution. We're in it. And big changes will keep on happening.

In the near future, two websites will no longer be free to access. You'll need to pay £1 for a day, or £2 for a week's complete access. The two sites are thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk. (quick: have a look for free now, before the 'paywall' goes up!) It's not much money really. So what's all the fuss about?

The significance of this move is that these are big serious 'newspaper websites' and that this 'experiment' could go either way. We are used to getting our online news for free. But soon the c.21 million (unique users per month) readers of www.timesonline.co.uk are going to be told: "We have 2 great new sites now, but you must pay or we won't let you see them." (No fee, no view). How will readers react?

The world is watching. This is being seen as a test case. If anyone has the 'cojones' to try this move, it is Rupert Murdoch, Proprietor of the (London) Times and the Sunday Times. Indeed it could be argued that he has little choice. The Times and The Sunday Times lost £87million in 2009. But was this due to: i) not charging enough for its content or ii) paying too much to too many journalists or iii) not attracting enough advertising revenue? (or indeed all of the above?)

We are talking about the most extreme form of 'paywall'. Google and Bing won't be able to 'crawl' the content or show it to us. Searches will no longer turn up stories from either website. If I subscribe and you don't, when I send you a link you'll have to stop at the entry barrier until you lay down your dollar (must remember that for future posts...) This is certainly a bold initiative, and the advertising and media world is divided as to whether a) it's a good thing and b) it will work.

The Times and The Sunday Times are part of Times Newspapers Ltd which is part of News International Ltd which is itself part of News Corporation (still with me?) which also owns 38% of Sky TV and of which the founder, chairman and chief executive officer is Rupert Murdoch. The CEO Europe and Asia and heir-apparent is his son, James Murdoch. The Times itself is one of the oldest newspapers in the world. Founded in 1785, the newspaper (nicknamed The Thunderer) invented the Times New Roman typeface (=font) in 1932. It was bought by Murdoch in 1981, and in the late 1980s, after a fierce struggle against the trade unions, based its operations at 'Fortress Wapping' in East London. Murdoch himself is not a Luddite; far from it; News Corp. owns MySpace (another brand currently engaged in a bitter fight). He has introduced much new technology into newspaper creation and production. This could, however, be his biggest battle of all; persuading us to pay for our news (+ comment + opinion); in other words, proving that people will pay for quality news journalism even when it's accessed online.

The new sites are currently available on a free trial. No expense appears to have been spared in their content, design and build. There are cool features like a culture planner (from which you can plan your week's entertainment and even set your Sky+ TV recorder) and loads of embedded video and audio. They look great (especially on an iPad). Suddenly Harry Potter's The Daily Prophet doesn't seem like Science Fantasy. Perhaps this is what James Murdoch meant when he recently predicted "a revolution in reading". Maybe, just maybe, this is what the next generation of newspapers (and magazines) looks like. And we will have to pay.

If the model works, it offers the prospect of a viable future for news journalism. (Success would also raise questions about the validity of a Google search for news in a situation where the' best' analysis and comment is hidden away behind the various paywalls). If this initiative fails, who will choose a career as a trained writer-journalist in the years to come? If the paid-for printed newspaper is becoming a 'status symbol' carried by the few as an accessory (à la FT), will the online news site subscription be its digital equivalent? (So we can send those links out to impress our friends/ Twitter followers who can click them but can't see the content? I think not.) Will sufficient advertisers enthusiastically welcome the thinned-out VIP group in the rarefied atmosphere behind the paywall, deeming this to be an attentive, engaged (paying) audience worth paying a big premium to reach? That's the gamble. We're at a crossroads.

Understandably the media (on- and offline) is buzzing right now. These are just some of the views currently being expressed:

"I want my employer to be paid for my intellectual property."
Danny Finkelstein, chief leader writer and political columnist, The Times

"They must understand the fundamental dynamics of online advertising. It is unlikely that advertisers will pay a premium for ads on The Times because the ad unit is bigger, looks nicer or indeed, is being shown to a paying subscriber.... The real opportunity is to monetise the comment, analysis, features and interactivity that are a key part of the Times offering."
Rob Horler, MD, Carat (via Campaign)

"We estimate that the (online) audience ...will drop by more than 80 per cent. They're not going to be able to charge 20 times what everyone else charges (for advertising space). But... I would never bet against News International...I think everyone should applaud what they're trying to do."
Claudine Collins, joint head of investment, MediaCom (via Campaign)

"We're going to stop people like Google, or Microsoft or whoever, from taking our stories for nothing."
Rupert Murdoch

Speaking personally, I buy the Sunday Times Newspaper every week as I have for years. It's an overwhelming tome in 9 sections and generally it's interesting, well-written and free of typos. One of the stresses in my life is how little of it I have time to read before it goes into the recycling bin. But I don't resent the cover price of £2. I believe it's more than worth it. However, online, I feel and act differently and I know I'm not alone in this. The BBC gives me almost as much news as I want - for free. When I feel I need more, there are other (free) sites which help me to keep up with the latest developments in digital marketing and, equally importantly, the various activities of Wayne Rooney, Cheryl Cole and Justin Bieber.

It isn't much money but neither is it free. Every consumer will make their own 'purchase' decision. Will enough people pay the subscription to the new Times sites and will enough advertisers be prepared to pay enough to target these few subscribers so that the whole business model works? That is what they used to call the $64,000 question.

No-one can accuse Rupert Murdoch of walking away from difficult battles. And with an estimated net worth of $6.3billion, he can afford to take some risks. But has he taken on too much this time? Writers, both professional and amateur, crave credibility, authority and INFLUENCE. That is helped (albeit not guaranteed) by building a big audience. Will The Times's world-class journalists, who have grown accustomed to building their personal brands by accumulating large (unmonetised) online audiences, find themselves ignored, lonely and irrelevant behind the paywall, like the late night DJ on local radio, talking to only a few people (which might also mean only a few advertisers)?

Will this move by The Times turn out to be the salvation of paid-for news journalism, or just another brick in the wall of its mausoleum? No-one knows for sure: not even Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG, himself. But it's going to be interesting to watch.

Digital? Direct? Or just Marketing?

2010-05-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

(This post first appeared on the UK Institute of Direct Marketing Blog: http://www.theidm.com/blog/ .)

Maggie. Dallas. Durannies. Lunch may have been for wimps, but there were plenty tucking in.

The 1980s. It was an exciting time. A combination of factors meant that Direct Marketing (a term which was coined around this time to include ‘direct mail marketing’ and ‘direct response advertising’) became ‘respectable’ and was even acknowledged for its creativity. In the UK, The Royal Mail sponsored awards and there was an annual beano in Montreux to celebrate ‘the best of direct’. Of course, the Ad agencies still tended to look down on these ‘snake-oil salesmen’; their clients, however, were attracted by the promise of accountability and measurability. Since you could count responses, it followed that you could determine with certainty whether it was working: "accountable advertising". Hmmmm.

By the late 1980s, Sales Promotion too could lay claim to having become an industry (nay even a 'profession') in its own right. Indeed as proof of this, ‘pure sales promotion’ agencies sprang up. Moreover, increasing numbers of the exponents of DM and SP did not wear ‘shiny suits’ (unless they were silk) and indeed many of them wore something Italian like their above-the-line brethren. Suddenly, below-the-line was cool, a valid career choice and in those days of Maggie Thatcher, the Pet Shop Boys and Wall Street (1), brands like Triangle, FKB, KLP, WWAV, MSW, HLY and THB&W were launched and thrived. Red yuppie braces were twanged amidst an intoxicating atmospheric mix of creativity, excitement and avarice; “let’s make lots of money”, indeed.

As the ’90s dawned, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was doing clever things at CERN which exploited the US Military/ Academic network of computers called the Internet and would contribute to the launch of the ‘world wide web’. Bill Gates was busy putting a (beige) Windows PC on every desk (with Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office helpfully and intimately bundled) and Steve Jobs at Apple was doing something similar but including design. Suddenly there was a branch of marketing called ‘Interactive’ which embraced the ‘new media’. Most marketers expected it to remain the province of ‘geeks and losers’ and never to amount to much, but it did attract some attention. It was even mentioned in Campaign Magazine (albeit in the sarcastic tone of voice then normally reserved for sniggering about a list management error in a piece of Direct Mail mistakenly sent to the Diary Editor).

Gradually at first then rapidly the ‘world wide web’ took off and soon the ad industry took a lively interest- in taking the dotcoms’ money. Since these companies were intent on burning through as much VC dosh as humanly possible, the old-media New Biz Directors welcomed them with open arms and for a while it was a very happy marriage. Soon we had ad breaks stuffed with dotcoms and everything was lowercase, with THAT suffix. (aol.com, boo.com, lastminute.com, yahoo.com and err… CompuServe). The ad agencies smirked a little when these ‘new media’ guys used good old TV and posters to build their ‘online communities’ (although mainly they weren’t actually selling anything to those people or indeed building any revenue at all) but not too obviously since they really liked their VC money. They also watched the Nasdaq rising like a rocket and sometimes even accepted stock instead of cash for services rendered. After all, they observed how those rock-solid, long-established Wall Street and City of London investment banks were funding these new enterprises; they surely knew what they were doing. Then in 2000, the bubble burst.

But of course the internet itself wasn’t discredited; just unsound business practices and the rash investors who were seduced by those heady times. Sure, the emperor’s new clothes fell down like house of cards (or something) but the web kept growing, powering thorough Cyberspace on the Information Superhighway. By the mid-nineties, “Shall we have a website?” became a non-question. As broadband took off, consumers started spending more and more time online and the web became worthy of consideration not just as somewhere to sell, but as somewhere to advertise; as a medium where Target Audiences hung out. ‘New Media’ gave way to e-marketing, ‘Online’ and finally ‘Digital’. Agencies like AKQA, Dare, Glue London, Profero and LBi become the new hot shops. Suddenly it became apparent that the world had changed. Direct Marketing looked increasingly middle-aged and untrendy. In the 21st Century, nobody launches a ‘pure’ DM agency any more; it’s direct and digital or pure(play) digital. And as for Sales Promotion, that’s a term that belongs firmly in the era of free plastic daffodils, Green Shield Stamps and petrol station free glasses promotions; soooo last century.

Times change. Precision Marketing magazine has gone.Promotions and Incentives and Marketing Direct first went online, and were then ‘eaten’ by Brand Republic. The ISP is busy rebranding itself as The Institute of Promotional Marketing. The big ad agencies have done what they always do; restructure to meet changing client demands (as far as they can divine what these actually are); the latest trend is to fire the Head of Digital (“that position perpetuates unhelpful silos”) and instead to “put digital at the heart of everything they do”.

So where does that leave Direct Marketing? When I studied for the IDM Diploma in Direct Marketing, I learned that DM was an interactive system of marketing generating a measurable response/transaction at any location and dependent on data. That would certainly include some digital marketing (email marketing, affiliate marketing). Other digital marketing could be deemed to be awareness/ attitude changing (eg display, publisher websites) ie part of advertising. Social Media strategy might be viewed as a subset of PR (Online Reputation management, anybody?) and Mobile might just be a way of doing all of this while walking down the street (or on the Underground with an ‘always-on’ signal of course).

Today I find it amazing to recall that as a young account director I had numerous fights with art directors when I asked them to put coupons on press ads and 0800 phone numbers on posters. “NO- I won’t let you spoil the design- it’s an AWARENESS ad.” Times have certainly changed. Today all advertising is “brand response” (‘like’).

A few years ago I wrote a book in which I dared to predict that, one day soon, “Marketing communications will at last be viewed holistically, as a planned system of activities establishing, developing and controlling a set of relationships with consumers…all marketing will be direct marketing.”

I suggest that day is here. Moreover, nothing is new forever, even DIGITAL. And of course, TV didn’t kill Radio or Cinema; and neither of these killed Press and Posters. As has always been the case, the new media are talking their places alongside the old. Meanwhile, communications and entertainment technology continues to advance at a bewildering pace. I found Avatar in 3D a memorable cinematic experience but apparently we ‘ain’t seen nothing yet’. Someone called me yesterday to sell me on the need to ‘get ready for 3DTV’. A mate of mine is really excited about the next generation iPads. The prospect of Super-Fast Broadband is my excuse for avoiding thinking about Blu-Ray. Now that all my music is on MP3, is it time to get rid of those CDs? Actually, now I have Spotify Premium, do I even need the MP3s? We are living in interesting times.

So when ‘Digital’ starts to sound a bit mainstream and ‘noughties’, what will be the next new kid on the block? Mobile? Virtual? Augmented? Something we haven’t heard of yet? The web (via desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile) offers marketing tools which ‘Direct’ practitioners have been craving since the great Drayton Bird himself was a whippersnapper. Masses of behavioural and purchase data, ample targeting and testing opportunities, instant response, instant results.

These days, we’re all in Direct Marketing. Yes: even, and indeed especially, the digerati. Tell that to the trendy Flash Designers in Shoreditch. (And by the way, Steve Jobs really hates Flash and HTML5 is on the way so they’d better get themselves on a training course: super-fast!).

Getting the most out of digital agency relationships

2010-04-25T01:49:00.000-07:00

(An edited version of this post first appeared on www.aprais.com.

Aprais is a global business relationship management consultancy.)

For most people working in marketing, the ideal client/ agency relationship is a healthy one, based on mutual respect and perceived equality: i.e. a true partnership. However we all know "all good things must come to an end" and with agency-client relationships, this sometimes happens prematurely.

So what about digital? Well because digital is still relatively new, and fast-changing, the picture is fragmented. And because digital is growing so fast in terms of share of marketing budgets, there seems to be plenty of digital business to go around and Marketing Directors have a wide choice of agency partners to help them plan and implement their digital marketing activity. There is certainly a role for the full-service digital agency, for the specialist digital agency (design and build, search, viral, social media or mobile) and also for the ad agency which has 'strategically embraced digital' and/ or 'placed digital at the heart of its culture' (choose your preferred form of words).

Most digital agencies work on a project basis which sometimes causes them frustrations, not least because this can disincentivise them to think outside the confines of the current brief (likely to be subject to tight time and budget constraints). Moreover, many clients still seem to believe they haven't seen a creative idea until they see a TV idea.
What are the most common reasons digital agencies lose their clients?

Overselling: because there are often technical and jargon barriers, digital agencies often ask their clients to "trust us, this will be fantastic." This works once or twice before the CMO is called in by the CFO to discuss ROI (is that enough acronyms?). Indeed I anticipate an imminent backlash from the Boardroom against much current social media activity which may be producing 'engagement' but no attributable sales.

Massive error (=catastrophic mistake): rarer than might be expected; most digital agencies are staffed by experienced professionals and have systems in place for checking work which minimises the chance of this sort of thing happening; however, once in a while, the agency CEO (in an unguarded moment) might say the wrong thing to a journalist, or an intern might accidentally be let loose on the Twitter stream or allowed to put a film up on the company YouTube channel......

Personality clash (e.g. new Marketing Director): always possible in cases where the new senior client didn't appoint the agency in the first place. Equally, over a period of time people can simply get on each other's nerves. It may be that the agency can shuffle the team, unless the problem is with the Creative Director say, in which case he or she might agree to adopt a lower profile on the account...

'Irredeemable breakdown of the relationship'. ("They wouldn't work with the ad agency; they just don't understand our business" or "They just don't get digital; they kept moving the goalposts; they never really knew what they wanted"...)

In my experience, the most common avoidable reason for client/ agent relationship breakdown is suboptimal communication from both parties, specifically the lack of a formalised mechanism for identifying and addressing problems/ issues while there is still an opportunity to fix them i.e. long before they become terminal. Some of the above is common to all types of agencies' relationships with their clients. Specifically, I suggest that clients might remember that good ideas can come from anywhere, including the digital guys. If you involve them earlier - when the strategy is being formulated - you may get more value out of them.

As for digital agencies; many would benefit from being (a) less obviously thrilled by their own technology, (b) closer to their client's typical customer and (c) more confident to go their clients with demystified, jargon-free business-building initiatives and big multi-channel creative ideas - not just cool techie stuff that works as a bolt-on to the ad campaign. Only then can they expect to be treated as top-table strategic partners. A few digital agencies have already started this process. Along with some of their 'ad' agency fellows, they will make up the top-tier of integrated communications agencies of the future, by which time 'digital' is likely to be about as cutting-edge a term as 'The Information Superhighway', 'CompuServe' or 'Netscape'...

Online video: it's going to be HUGE…

2010-03-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

This post first appeared on:
Digital Minds from the CAM Foundation

As Fairfax Cone, one of the founders of US advertising agency Foote, Cone and Belding (today Draftfcb) observed in 1940, “Advertising is what you do when you can’t be there in person”. Historically, posters and press ads ‘ambushed’ people while they were going about their daily business and offered them something attractive, useful and/or enjoyable – something to make their life better. This was called Advertising and, as we know, a whole industry grew up around it.

Then radio was invented and soon it became possible for companies to add commercial messages to radio broadcasts. As usual the US was first (“It’s the top of the ninth and the bases are loaded here at the Yankee Stadium but now here’s a word from our Sponsor!”) and other markets including the UK followed later. Then came TV – what an advance! The golden age of creative ad agencies (the ‘Mad Men’ of 1960s New York and London) exploded as this exciting new medium took off. So what was so good about TV for brand owners? In a nutshell: moving colour pictures with sound; truly the next best thing to putting a salesman in front of each consumer, as Mr Cone observed.

But this medium was one-way: effectively the marketer was guessing where the target audience was and shouting at them. Today we have something even better: TV ads the user can interact with. Online video advertising, whether ‘in-stream’ (e.g. pre-, mid-, or post-roll – eg. around a YouTube video) or contained within banner ads (either standard display ads or rich media) combines the best of the old interruptive TV Commercials (e.g. “Beanz Meanz Heinz”, “Mild Green Fairy Liquid”, “Have a Break – Have a Kit-Kat”) with the interactivity of the internet. The user can ‘mouse over’ to expand the banner, click the button to add sound, play the video and click to go to the advertiser’s site. S/he can enter name and email to request a quote, browse a microsite or simply sit back and enjoy a video – immersed in the ‘brand experience’. Each user will be in a different stage of awareness of/ attitude to the brand and specifically in a different point in their web session and the advertiser wants them to have an appropriate brand experience without being irritated. More than ever before, well-planned and implemented online video advertising (OVA) makes this a realistic proposition. Even better, provided privacy concerns can be addressed, the emerging discipline of Behavioural Targeting offers the tantalising possibility of serving these powerful ads only to those most likely to be influenced positively by them; the media planner’s holy grail.

Instead of segmenting by ‘traditional’ and ‘digital’ marketing, we can consider ‘broadcast’ and ‘online’ as two types of video advertising. And we know the power of video. No wonder OVA is growing fast. As connection speeds increase and the ‘always-on mobile web’ becomes a reality (via mobile, tablet, laptop or PC), as static banners merge with the wallpaper and their click-through rates plunge, OVA offers advertisers the opportunity to combine the power of TV with the targeting and interactivity that Direct Marketers have been dreaming of for years; TV ads at your fingertips; instant response capability; the right message to the right person at the right time. OVA will keep growing as Marketing Departments appreciate how much it can do for their brands and their sales. If Paid Search is a direct response medium, OVA is a branding medium with the built-in option to start a dialogue with the brand; truly ‘brand response’ advertising.

So: while we still can’t be there in person, the new online video advertising might just be the (very) next best thing…

End of the Hippie Dream: did business break The Web?

2010-03-02T12:09:00.000-08:00

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a scientist and something of an idealist. Oh yes: and he invented The World Wide Web. I wonder what it says in his passport under ‘Occupation’…

In my book that's about as cool as having been in The Beatles. However I'm certain Sir Tim is worth less than Sir Paul (even without an expensive ex-wife). You see he has deliberately chosen not to exploit his invention for personal gain. Which (many would say) is also pretty cool.

When Mr B-L was working at CERN in 1989-90 he wrote a paper helpfully entitled ‘Information Management - a proposal’ which contained the breakthrough idea of combining the internet (a networked collection of computers scattered across the world) with the hypertext link; allowing one computer to directly (and simply) access information on another. He wrote his initial proposal in March 1989, and in 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau, produced a revision which was accepted by his then manager, Mike Sendall. The first 'Web Site' was built at CERN, was put on line on 6 August 1991 and the rest is history.

The vision embraced by TB-L, following the vision of earlier internet evangelists including John Perry Barlow, lyricist of The Grateful Dead (and if they weren't hippies then who was?) was of a great leveller; an empowering tool that allowed anyone to be a publisher, a record company or a bank. Almost at a stroke, the power to distribute information was taken out of the hands of the privileged few and handed to the many. This change has been described as the biggest transformation of society since the Gutenberg Bible, printed by Johannes Gutenberg circa 1455 and heralding the arrival of the Printing Press (btw why does no-one ever credit William Caxton these days?)

However in recent years, Sir Tim and other early web pioneers have expressed concerns about the way business has colonized the web and also about growing threats to our individual privacy posed by the sheer amount of personal information held by Google, Facebook, Amazon et al.

“We've noticed that people who browsed X..”

pleaserobme.com highlights the very real issue of how people thoughtlessly give away too much personal information online - especially on social networks.

But this doesn’t mean the web's become 'evil'. Sure, bad things happen online but generally they are caused by bad people. To blame the web is tantamount to shooting the messenger. Yes terrorist groups have used email to organise, but so have disaster relief agencies. For all its faults, there has never been anything that has so enabled, empowered and connected the global population; even though only c.25% of the world is currently online (remember that!). And it’s good that people are concerned. In most wired countries there is data protection legislation in place and healthy debates about privacy and 'the cost of free' .

So did business break the web? No: not yet. And we don't have to let it. The web will bring benefits to millions more people in the months, years and decades to come which should far outweigh the costs (cyber-crime, loss of privacy, internet addiction etc). Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, created a product which has made shopping a whole lot easier and more enjoyable for millions of people. Facebook has 300 million users which would make it the 'third largest country in the world' (ahead of the US). These people choose to 'talk' to each other and it's free. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't force people to connect (OK so maybe he encourages them just a bit...).

Throughout history, the founders of successful businesses have, generally speaking, made a lot of money. The web can be a force for good which includes good business and if people like Bill Gates of Microsoft make more money out of it than they need, they can always choose to give it to Charity. (But that's a whole 'nother Blog post...).

So Sir Tim: thanks for the wonderful gift you have given us; and please don't worry. We'll do our best to use it responsibly (won't we?)

Digital Marketing Training: learning from others' successes (and failures)

2010-02-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

(This Post first appeared on the CAM Foundation Blog - http://digitalqualifications.blogspot.com)

There are times when one needs to be sure one is dealing with skilled, thoroughly-trained professionals.

A very senior and experienced Marketing Director said to me the other day: “You know Mike, the single biggest thing holding back Digital right now is the shortage of experienced, knowledgeable people who really know what they’re doing online. I can’t hire them as employees and I don't see enough of them in my agencies. Of course, there are plenty of people with experience of design and build, SEO or paid search, but they tend to be do-ers rather than thinkers, and there is a lot of dead wood out there- at every level, from project manager to MD. And don’t even get me started on Social Media - talk about The Land of the Blind…”

Then she referred me to this video, which on one hand proved that she had a sense of humour, but on the other left me hoping that I’d never told her I was a “social media expert”.

In September last year, figures produced by the UK Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC revealed that £1.75bn was spent on online advertising in the first 6 months of 2009, which meant that online had overtaken TV as the UK’s biggest advertising medium. This was a ‘world first’ for a developed advertising market. The announcement shocked many of the ‘Old Guard’ in Marketing Departments and their ad agencies. There was no denying that Digital had arrived. TV had been the leading ad medium for almost 50 years; now online had overtaken it in ten. There were, admittedly and perhaps deservedly, some accusations of 'comparing apples with oranges' but no-one disputes that online advertising in all its forms has come a long way, in the UK and globally.

The point my client was making was that the rapid growth of Digital has left what HR people call a “skills gap”. At all levels there is a lack of experience and there is widespread concern that this is actually holding back the emergence of Digital as a serious, grown-up and respected part of the marketing mix. There is no doubt that budgets are moving from traditional media into digital channels, but for many marketing directors this is something of a voyage into the unknown; it is certainly difficult to know where to get impartial advice; everyone who appears to know about Digital seems to have an agenda; most of all, it could be argued, the big digital agencies. Mistakes are being made, opportunities missed. Cowboys (naming no names) are surviving and even prospering.

As we know, pretty much everything in Digital is measurable but this may not be as big an advantage as it sounds. Many online marketers are currently drowning in a sea of analytics: an excess of data and a shortage of actionable information. They are, all too frequently, at the mercy of the ‘Web Analytics Guru’ whose position of power is akin to that of the car mechanic dealing with the distressed and ignorant customer; sucking his teeth, shaking his head and naming an outrageous sum: “Bad news I'm afraid; your big end’s gone…” And then doing a poor job…

So how is the buyer (of digital marketing services) to find reputable, professional suppliers? Well for one thing, I suggest you should ask your agency about its policy on training its people. Granted, an organization’s involvement in professional training and qualifications doesn’t guarantee that its employees are competent, but it does show a commitment by the employer to professional development and a willingness to invest in its people and their careers.

Digital marketing is certainly growing: driven by technology and also partly by the belief that is it more measurable than other sorts of marketing so that ROI can be demonstrated. However: unless we, as a profession, can train a group of Digital Marketing professionals, there is a real danger that there will be a backlash; the CFO will turn to the Marketing Director, demanding proof of return and, if it is not forthcoming, next year’s budget may well be smaller. (“Well we tried Digital…”)

It has been suggested that ‘Digital’ as a discriminator will soon disappear as online channels are integrated into the overall marketing mix and the big ad agencies increasingly ‘get’ digital (very much as TV was rapidly integrated into Press, Poster and Radio advertising agencies in the 1960s ). The jury is still out on how quickly and to what extent this will happen, but regardless of this trend there will still be a need for skilled practitioners who understand the unique features of online display advertising, of natural and paid search and social media and how they all fit together into the marketing mix. There is already a substantial body of knowledge about Digital but it needs to be shared more effectively; training and professional qualifications can help, increasing digital expertise and understanding, both in marketing departments and in their agencies.

It is in everyone’s interest, and the interest of marketing in general, that sufficient people in the marketing profession get the right training in digital skills so that they can use these exciting new channels in the appropriate manner; as a key part of the marketing mix; alongside, not necessarily instead of, ‘traditional’ media. This means not only learning relevant craft skills / 'techie' knowledge but also gaining strategic understanding of how Digital channels can be utilized within the overall marketing mix, which of course is based on principles formulated long before the internet was invented.

Time is money of course, so you will want the highest quality, most appropriate training, tailored to your specific needs; why not resolve to send your people (and dare I suggest yourself?) on a professionally developed and delivered Digital Marketing course? For your highest fliers, consider a professional qualification; the right people will find this highly motivating and better people get better results! Don't look at training and professional development in these rapidly-evolving Digital Channels as a cost; think of it as an investment in your people and their future - i.e. the future of your organisation.

More predictions for 2010

2010-01-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

“...and a new one just begun.”

It’s the time of the (New) Year for predictions...So, having dragged ourselves back to reality, overcoming ice, snow and seasonal hangovers, let’s jump on the bandwagon and look ahead to what we will apparently henceforth be calling “twentyten”. What will be big in technology and digital marketing this year?

Real-time Search

Google and Bing are quickly ramping up their real-time search, having licensed real-time data streams from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, et al. But real-time search is still regarded as a niche, and not yet regularly included in the main search results page. In 2010, this is likely to change as the search engines learn for which searches it makes sense to show Tweets and other real-time updates. Real-time search will also become a form of navigation, especially on Twitter and Facebook. The key will be to combine real-time search with filters so that people are given the most relevant results (a mix of the most authoritative and the most recent information). This is far from straightforward!

Cloud computing: Online apps

There is no doubt that Google Apps and OpenOffice (from Sun Microsystems et al) are already hurting Microsoft Office. Access your documents and calendar from any internet-connected device, and collaborate in real-time with others, working on the same documents. And save money (and hard-drive space) on desktop applications.

HD takes off, Blu-ray stalls

HD TVs will continue to switch to LED backlights instead of the more traditional fluorescent lamps. This will reduce power consumption and give better contrast, since it's easy to switch LEDs on or off in those sections of the image that are light or dark.

However Blu-ray, having won the brief war against HD-DVD, might find it controls a shrinking market as downloadable video (e.g. via iTunes or Amazon Video on Demand) booms. As shown by the success of mp3 audio and the fuzzy videos on YouTube, the highest quality format may not in fact be the ‘killer app’, especially if it comes at a premium price: we might instead see a 'good-enough revolution'.

As for the 'next big thing' we can look to 3D TV. But I predict 2010 won't be the big breakthrough year for this exciting new technology.

The Androids are coming

The Motorola Droid (Milestone in the UK) launched on October 17, 2009 running Google's 'Android' Operating System. Now the new Google-branded Android phone, Nexus One is launching into an increasingly competitive market. Other Smartphone makers Apple (iPhone) and RIM (Blackberry) as well as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung are watching closely. Apple may be playing 'catch-up' for once. There are already more than 10,000 apps for Android. We'll be seeing more Android phones this year.

Chrome OS

Last November, Google gave us a first peek at the Chrome Operating System, expected to be released this year. Chrome OS is Google’s most direct attack on Windows so far with an OS built to run Web apps- fast. Google is also rumoured to be working on a Chrome Netbook which will demonstrate what is possible with it a “Web OS.” It may be perfect for Tablet computers also (see below). Chrome OS is potentially highly disruptive.

Windows Azure

Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform, launches as a paid service on February 1. It’s a huge bet by Microsoft, which has built massive data centres; they will need to get developers onto the platform quickly.

Location-based services

A recurrent theme in this post is the mobile Web. The combination of GPS chips in mobile phones, social networks, and increasingly innovative mobile apps means that geolocation is fast becoming a must-have for any mobile app. We’ve seen social broadcasting apps like Foursquare and Gowalla. New Geo APIs from Twitter, SimpleGeo, and possibly Facebook will change the game. Twitter has recently launched its own Geo API for Twitter apps and it has acquired Mixer Labs, which created the Geo API.

HTML5

The World Wide Web is built on HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and the newest version which has been taking shape for a while is HTML5. Already web browsers such as Firefox and Google’s Chrome browser are HTML5-friendly. Once HTML5 takes hold, it will reduce the need for Flash or Silverlight plug-ins to view videos, animations, and other rich applications. It will make Web apps behave more like desktop apps. A big opportunity for web agencies as their clients demand 'HTML5 inside' in 2010!

Mobile Video

Now that video cameras are integrated into the latest iPhone 3GS and other Smartphones, live video streaming apps are becoming more common, streaming both from phones and to them. As the mobile data networks increase their 3G bandwidth and then move to true broadband with 4G (see Verizon’s new LTE network), mobile video usage will surge.

Augmented Reality (AR)

The increasing range of augmented reality apps allow us to use the camera on our smartphone to add a layer of data to reality by associating detailed information from the mobile web with the live images captured by the camera. Expect to see lots more AR apps this year.

And now a few more speculative ideas (just for fun):

Google faces a massive anti-trust suit (at last)
Steve Ballmer steps down at Microsoft after 10 years as CEO
Twitter stops growing; this trend is led by Stephen Fry and other celebs taking 'time-out'
“Cash or Cell Sir?”- mobile payments start to kill plastic. (see also Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s latest start-up, Square, which will be a rival to Paypal; it allows users to accept payment via physical credit cards on a mobile device.)
Facebook IPO (25-year-old Mark Zuckerberg would stand to become an actual $billionaire)
Rupert Murdoch pulls all content off Google (and does a deal with Bing)

AND FINALLY, THE BIGGEST ONE OF ALL:

Tablet fest!

Yes: they’re the most anticipated products of this year: tablet computers. We’ve seen pics of some beautiful Android ‘concept tablets’, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been showing off a Windows 7 HP tablet and, of course, there is a lot of talk of the tablet which could define the category, the Apple Tablet. Or iSlate or iTab or iPad or whatever it’s called (assuming it actually exists). Rumours include a 10 to 11-inch touch screen, a processor not from Intel but instead one designed by PA Semi (which Apple bought two years ago)and a price tag of around $1,000. Indeed if Steve Jobs doesn't have a tablet somewhere under his black mock-turtleneck jumper ready to unveil at the Apple January 26th meeting there will be widespread disappointment. Do we need yet another computer in between a laptop and an iPhone? Yes and I’m sure Steve will explain why. The fact is that increasingly the Web is all we need (bad luck Microsoft). As all of our apps and data and social lives move onto the Web, it may be that the Tablet will be the embodiment of the Web in device form, stripped down to basics, with an intuitive touch interface. It will also be a superior e-reader for digital books, newspapers, and magazines PLUS a portable Web TV. Disruptive or what?

Most confidently of all, I predict that several of the above won’t happen. It will certainly be an interesting year in technology and digital marketing. We hope it’s a good one. And in terms of the always-on mobile internet, I suspect the war is far from over...

The tweet smell of success: will Twitter profits soar in 2010?

2009-12-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

Will 2009 go down as ‘The Year Of Twitter’?

The website of this ‘micro-blogging platform’ attracts over 54 million unique visitors worldwide in an average month (according to comScore estimates) and many more use Twitter via 3rd party apps. I am writing this in the ‘Twitter Capital of the World’: London, England. Instead of sorting out the traffic or the Underground (=subway) ready for the Olympics, we’re all (OK many of us) at our PCs, Macs, Netbooks and mobile devices, tweeting madly. No longer just a platform for friends to stay connected in real time, Twitter has evolved into something much bigger. Marketers are looking at it increasingly closely as it appears to offer larger and more closely targeted audiences than other media channels. The media (mainstream, tech, and yes, even bloggers) is obsessed with Twitter. It has come from nowhere and completely appropriated the Zeitgeist. The company is valued at $1 billion (WSJ). Yet only 4 years ago Twitter didn’t even exist.

Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in 2006 and its rise has been rapid. People using Twitter during the fires in California in October 2007 kept their followers (often friends and neighbours) informed of their location and those of the various fires as they spread. The American Red Cross has used Twitter to exchange minute-to-minute information about local disasters. During the 2008 Mumbai attacks, eyewitnesses sent an estimated 80 tweets every 5 seconds. Twitter users on the ground helped compile a list of the dead and injured and users tweeted vital information eg. emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals needing blood donations. CNN called this "the day that social media appeared to come of age". President Obama used Twitter in his Election campaign. In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 experienced ‘multiple bird strikes’ and ditched in the Hudson River. A passenger on one of the ferries that rushed to help took a picture of the downed plane as passengers were evacuating and sent it to Twitpic before any other media even arrived at the scene. The Australian Country Fire Authority used Twitter to send out regular alerts and updates during the February 2009 Victoria bushfires. The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, used his Twitter account to tweet information on the fires, how to donate money and blood, and where to seek emergency help. This sounds like a totally new platform which is operating as a force for good (on the whole). The ex-US national security adviser Mark Pfeifle has suggested Twitter should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Twitter’s website attracted a total of 44.5 million unique visitors worldwide in June, 2009 (comScore); at this time it was involved in sharing the news about the Iran Election protests. Twitter apparently continues to show rapid growth: The site had 54.7 million unique visitors in August, whereas it had just 4.3 million in August 2008, (WSJ- comScore).The September 2009 figure was 58.4 million. There is a suggestion that US growth is starting to stall but new Twitter features may well reverse this.

After initially attracting 'geeks' and the 'web-savvy', Twitter has become mainstream with Celebrity ‘tweeters’ eg. Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears, TheEllenShow and Stephen Fry from the UK where Twitter has grown by an almost incredible 1,959% year on year (Nielsen). No wonder Twitter has just been voted 'Medium Of The Year' by Campaign magazine.

Counting Twitter.com website hits always understates total Twitter usage, as this neglects traffic on third party apps such as TweetDeck, which users access to monitor and publish tweets. TweetDeck alone accounts for an estimated 20% of all tweets. Twitter's audience, therefore, is certainly much larger.

Twitter has so far raised over US$150 million from venture capitalists. Yet apparently it continues to lose money.

Hang on; didn’t we learn from the 'Bubble' (AKA the first internet boom/ bust) that dodgy dotcoms who run up big debts on expensive technology platforms and on ‘buying’ loyal users crash horribly? Boo.com anyone? We were never going to make those mistakes again, remember?

So what’s going on?

No-one is suggesting that the guys running Twitter are crazy. They have however been tantalisingly unforthcoming about their intentions. Their plan could be:

Either:

(a) Build up as many loyal users as possible then MONETISE. (see below)

OR b) sell the business to a wealthy older generation company (Apple? Facebook? Microsoft? Amazon?) This depends on someone believing that they can monetise where the founders haven’t (yet) but there are plenty of examples of this not going to plan; just ask Google what is their payback forecast for YouTube which they bought in November 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock, or consider AOL’s $4.2billion acquisition of Netscape; then again there is Skype, bought by eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005. The auction giant struggled to monetise Skype and until recently even faced a lawsuit from its founders as it tried to spin off the business at a loss. (The founders now own 14% again which I believe I called ‘having your cake and eating it’?). However, since it’s Twitter, I’m sure a buyer could be found.

OR c) float (even though Tech company IPOs are currently out of fashion)

OR d) carry on as they are while they're having fun and still growing.

This raises an interesting question; when will Twitter stop growing? Has it already plateaued?.

Gartner’s 2009 Hype Cycle Report (see diagram) suggests that most new technologies/ tech companies reach a peak then hit “The Trough of Disillusionment” (something we would all surely wish to avoid at any time in our life cycle!)

According to Jackie Fenn, VP, Emerging Trends at Gartner:

“Technologies at the Peak of Inflated Expectations during 2009 include cloud computing, e-books (such as from Amazon and Sony) and internet TV (for example, Hulu), while social software and microblogging sites (such as Twitter) have tipped over the peak and will soon experience disillusionment among corporate users.”

Well, maybe.

Now let’s consider the ‘M’ word - monetisation.

By the way, I have a theory that this is one of those words that separates people who ‘get’ digital from those who just read/ hear about it in the mainstream (offline) media. If you can say ‘monetisation’ without smirking you are in the former group (and if you spell it with an ‘s’, either you’re British or Australian or someone’s been messing with the country settings on your spellcheck.)

The rumours regarding Twitter monetisation include:

Selling advertising space on the Twitter site

(It's interesting to speculate what these ads might look like: online banners/ skyscrapers? Google AdWords-like text only? Or like tweets slotted between the ‘real’ ones?)

Partnership with other site owners

Twitter recently announced that its new ‘sign-up API’ would be live on Citysearch (the US local online guide) This is significant because it could point the way to another monetisation strand.

Paid-for Premium Accounts

For an indication of Twitter’s plans, let’s look East: Twitter Japan has acted like a ‘testbed’ for the company and operates differently from Twitter in other countries eg. its launch of a video-sharing service.Twitter Japan already allows ads on each page (a feature not yet allowed on the site in any other country).

It is understood to be introducing ‘a tiered payment model that will charge audiences to view tweets from premium Twitter accounts’ (Media Asia).

Kenichi Sugi (Twitter’s man in Japan), announced the changes at the Mobidec2009 conference earlier this year. He said that Twitter would be adding paid subscription options early in 2010 – which would allow business account holders to charge audiences for access to their tweets, links to external websites and images.

Users who want to pay for full access to these premium accounts’ tweets can do so via a monthly subscription model using a credit card or have their mobile network include it in their monthly bill, or buy a pre-paid top up card at convenience shops. Prices will be dependent on the figures set by the charging account holders. Twitter will take 30% (tbc) of all fees generated.

Twitter’s Biz Stone and Evan Williams have talked openly about charging businesses for the commercial use of Twitter – however the idea that users will be charged to access information from such accounts surprised many Twitter watchers. Twitter accounts which deliver real-time information – such as news and original photographs – are the most likely to be able to charge users successfully. (Just ask Rupert Murdoch about the challenges of getting users to pay for content!)

At Web 2.0 in San Francisco, in September 2009, Evan Williams stated that Twitter Mobile in countries like Japan and India – was a big focus because the reach and revenue potential are huge, especially in Japan – where internet mobile penetration levels are some of the highest in the world.

Twitter has signed a major SMS deal with India’s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, enabling its customers to send tweets via SMS and is in talks with mobile network operators all over the world to allow people to post and receive tweets via text message, without the need for web access. Millions of people already post tweets via SMS, use Twitter mobile or third party apps on the go; Twitter wants deals with all the major mobile phone carriers in its target territories.

In the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe said: “ If you build it, he will come " (often misquoted as ‘they will come’ which would be much more appropriate). When applied to websites, we know this 'ain’t necessarily so'. But Twitter has built it, and they’ve come all right - in their millions. Many of us, to varying degrees, are addicted to Twitter. It is a true game-changer. In social media, in marketing and more generally. If we suddenly had to pay for some of it, for ‘special’ attractive content, or for new, exciting, ‘premium’ features, many of us would. Sure: much of Twitter is trivia of interest only to a very few (“Hard-boiled egg for breakfast, yum!”, “Cute picture of my poodle Fifi”, “OMG started raining in Manchester- again!”) but these conversations are between real people talking to their friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances about their lives. The audiences Twitter potentially offers are very attractive to marketers; especially if they can be packaged in a way that is easy to segment, target and buy.

This has been the year Twitter took off; perhaps next year will see the start of pay-back. The guys at Twitter are smart. Several ‘people who know’ think this is going to be a famous case history: Twitter will monetise and soon. Then we’ll all be saying we knew they’d make it all along. What is indisputable is that things are moving fast in Twitter HQ in San Francisco and there’s much more to come. Maybe 2010 will be the Year of Twitter…

(Oh and please follow me on Twitter )

How was it for you? The joy of UX

2009-11-28T03:18:00.000-08:00

Google is planning and currently beta testing some design/ layout changes, both on the Home page and the Search Results page to include a new left-hand navigation pane. Google is known for making such changes very rarely and when it does, for researching them very painstakingly. Which raises the question: isn't agonizing about miniscule changes in logos, column width and colours all a bit unnecessary? After all, Google has a strong brand and isn’t it the reliability of its search results that really matters?

Well, in a word, “No”. We’re talking about the User Experience (or UX) here (more specifically web usability) which is just as crucial for Google as for any other website. Indeed, arguably more so, since Google has such a massive volume of traffic. And as Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said “disloyalty is only one click away”. Bing and Yahoo! are ready to welcome anyone who has a sub-optimal experience and fancies a change of search engine. I would argue that the phenomenal success of the Google search engine owes much to how simple it is to use. (Indeed Google has had less success with more complex, less intuitive products: e.g. Google Radio and maybe Google Wave?)

Indeed Google search is not even particularly comprehensive. Michael K Bergman, an American academic and entrepreneur, published a paper on the ‘deep web’ in 2001 that is still regularly quoted. "The deep web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined world wide web," he wrote. "The deep web is the fastest growing category of new information on the internet …internet searches are searching only 0.03% … of the [total web] pages available."

Of course this isn’t the point. Google works. And the company pays a massive amount of attention to UX. Their team of UX experts, headed by Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience, goes to great lengths to keep the Google search experience in tune with users' changing wants and needs, including what they see on their screen and how they interact with it. I believe this has played a big part in the Google search engine's rise to dominance. Granted, most people find it gives acceptable results but most of all, it is quick and easy to use. Most searchers find what they want fast i.e. they get a good experience. Google wisely adjusts the user interface with great care and only after careful consideration.

The world-renowned UX Guru Jakob Nielsen has said “People are on the Web not to enjoy your Web design, but to get something done.” Not surprisingly, he has been strongly criticized by the design community for downplaying the importance of aesthetics, particularly in situations where the creator of the web content is seeking to persuade, influence or entertain rather than purely facilitating. Few would disagree with the argument that different factors come into play when one considers the optimum UX in browsing a particular area of an online store to find suitable gift ideas, compared with what is required at the checkout. Similarly compare an online photo gallery with an online banking site. The need, of course, is to understand the user and their requirements at the time they are using each part of the site; this is UX (web usability) research and design: a fascinating meeting of technology and human psychology.

UX has become big business and rightly so. There are now companies who specialize in 'eye tracking' to optimize website usability. To ensure a site is accessible and easy to use, they look at the site through the user’s eyes - literally. Under laboratory conditions, site owners can observe directly where the user looks for information, what elements are missed, and where the user is confused. 'Point-of-gaze' metrics combined with 'measures of mental effort' can highlight key usability areas that need attention. We can study how users click and where they look and in what sequence. Granted, we don't know exactly what they're thinking and feeling (yet) but it's a good start in our mission to deliver the best possible UX.

Site owners are continuously competing against distractions (including ads and other websites) in their attempts to engage and hold the attention of the user. The slightest irritation or unwelcome surprise can produce frustration and cause the user to click away/ leave the site. Improved web design has raised the bar compared with the ‘brochure sites’ of 10 years ago. Today’s users expect good usability. They are not, in general, fascinated and impressed by website design or Flash animation. They are demanding and impatient. Thus sites should be designed and tested for speed of loading and ease of navigation on equipment and with connection speeds typically experienced by the site’s core user group (a factor which the design and build agency, with its high-end machines, has been known to neglect!).

Given ‘Content is King’, one can commit regicide by neglecting UX considerations. Yet even in these days of widespread broadband, the user doesn’t always experience a freely flowing interaction. There are far too many sites with good content that are unnecessarily frustrating to use. And too many major companies that (re)launch websites without adequate testing. Why would they do that?

Smart companies understand the importance of UX and devote appropriate time and resources to optimizing their user’s interaction (a) with their site and (b) looking at the bigger picture (including all touchpoints) with their brand. Apple certainly knows a thing or two about Total User Experience design, as demonstrated by the attention it pays to packaging, materials and colours as key elements of product design.

I'm not sure exactly when we’ll all get to use the new Google interface. But when we do, I'm sure it will be a good experience.

Social Media: What? We can’t measure it?

2009-11-10T08:06:00.000-08:00

In the fast-changing world of digital marketing, one has to keep up-to-date. I recently attended a digital industry trade show/ conference: I met my client as arranged, we did some business and we said goodbye. I then walked round the stands looking for anything new and interesting. The ‘usual suspects’ were in evidence. There were various ladies with lots of make-up, wearing shorts and high heels, walking round in pairs giving out bits of paper (at a digital marketing event?) and smiling with as much sincerity as they could muster. There were the ‘mobile masseuses’ accosting bemused delegates as they staggered around with carrier-bags laden with bumph. A truly horrible cup of expensive coffee, then on to mingle with the massed ‘digerati’ at the free seminars.

Interestingly, the lengths of the queues varied: notwithstanding any bias in the show attendees, I suggest this was a good barometer of which topics within digital marketing are ‘hot’ right now. The approximate pecking order (in ascending order of popularity) was:

Affiliate Marketing
eCRM
Email Marketing
Web Analytics
Paid Search
Viral
SEO
Google AdWords basics
Social Media/ Online PR

In other words, if you wanted to hear an internationally-renowned, cutting-edge Affiliate Marketing Guru explaining his/ her craft, you were welcomed with open arms by the lady scanning your badge and ushered with a friendly smile to one of the best seats, whereas for “How smart marketers tweet - 49 Twitter secrets” (or something) they were queuing round the block for an hour beforehand (and even then many delegates were turned away with a different sort of smile and the suggestion they might "watch the presentation online" instead).

Social Media is certainly ‘hot’ right now. More and more consumers and business decision makers are spending more and more time on social networks (via Desktop PC, Mac, Laptop, Netbook or mobile device). For brands, it is undoubtedly possible to use Social Media to engage people in a very powerful way. For brand owners keen to dip their toes in the water, there is plenty of advice around. However: currently only a few of the self-proclaimed Social Media ‘experts’ appear to truly understand Social Media Marketing and even some of them are bluffing. These are still early days.

Suppose we open our favourite search engine and search for: “Social Media training courses”. We get a lot of sites (and even more courses) to choose from.

Bing: 29,200,000 results
Yahoo!: 36,900,000 results
Google: 86,100,000 results

So Social Media is what everyone wants to know about currently. Let’s have a look at what we mean by it, why marketers (and others) are so interested and how brands can participate successfully.

What is (are?) Social Media?

"Social Media are distinct from industrial media, such as newspapers, television, and film." Wikipedia

(but who ever heard of 'Industrial Media'? And if it exists, can we make money out of it?)

The use of the term 'Social Media' has risen steadily over the last couple of years. From a slow start, it has gathered momentum and now suddenly it's everywhere.

Social networks like Facebook or MySpace are online ‘places’ where people with common interests or concerns come together to meet similar people, to network, express themselves and share their thoughts. Brand owners can use social networks to understand what people are saying about their brand and to start a dialogue, a conversation with current and prospective customers.

Who are the players?

-MySpace

Launched in 2003 by a group of eUniverse employees including Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's starting CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's starting president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse. MySpace was the first true social network and grew rapidly; the parent eUniverse was acquired in July 2005 for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Interactive Media, part of News Corporation. Of this amount, approximately US$327 million has been attributed to the value of MySpace. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the US in June 2006.The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken internationally by main competitor Facebook in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors.Today, MySpace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30% of its workforce in June 2009.

MySpace would appear to be in decline, possibly terminal.

-Bebo

Bebo, allegedly an acronym for "Blog early, blog often" is a social networking website, founded in January 2005. It is popular in many countries including Ireland, Canada, the United States, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. A Polish version was launched recently and there are plans for French, German and other versions. Founded by husband and wife Michael and Xochi Birch, Bebo had a major relaunch in July 2005 . It was bought by AOL in March 2008 for $850m (£417m). This now looks like a lot of money as Facebook and other networks continue to take users from Bebo….

-YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google. The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS and the BBC, offer some of their content via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.There are also 'official' brand-owned channels, where TV commercials and brand-related films can be viewed.

-Facebook

If MySpace has lost its 'Mojo', Facebook has grabbed it.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 with his Harvard University college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.Facebook recently claimed 250million active users (out of 300million registered users) with over 120million of these visiting the site at least once per day.The free-access social network lets people connect with their friends, post photos and videos, share links, plan events and learn more about the people they meet. Although Facebook started as purely a ‘social’ network, for brands, there are now opportunities to recruit and talk to users (='fans').These pages can be public and therefore 'crawlable'.

Facebook dominates Social Media (especially in the US and UK) and it continues to grow. Facebook accounts for 74% of all time spent by UK users on social networks (Nielsen, November 2009); this time itself is up 83% on 2008. It offers brands a chance to recruit fans via Facebook Pages, and also Facebook Advertising, where you can choose to pay per click (CPC) or impression (CPM).

Facebook's US monthly unique visitors grew from 92.2m in August 2009 to 95.5m unique visitors in September 2009. (comScore).

-LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals launched in May 2003. Users create a profile summarizing their professional achievements. They can then connect with former co-workers and professional contacts, adding them to their LinkedIn network. Through LinkedIn, users can search for jobs, find new business opportunities, and network to further their careers. As of October 2009, it had over than 50 million registered users in more than 200 countries.

-Flickr

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. Launched in February 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in March 2005, In addition to being a popular website for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. In April 2008, Flickr began to allow paid subscribers to upload videos, On March 2, 2009, Flickr added the ability to upload and view HD videos, and began allowing free users to upload normal-resolution video. As of October 2009 it claims to host more than 4 billion images.

and of course

-Twitter

Twitter is the Social Media sensation of the moment. In the UK, it has grown by an unbelievable 1,959% year on year (Nielsen). It has entered the mainstream with Celebrity ‘tweeters’ including:

Ashton Kutcher (3,945,588 followers)
Britney Spears (3,725,547 followers)
TheEllenShow (3,687,260 followers)
and
Stephen Fry (970,368 followers)

Twitter is, strictly speaking, not a social media network but a micro-blogging platform that enables its users to send and read messages (or ‘tweets’); text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers (= followers). Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The 140 character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging, and has brought to the web the kind of shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140 character limit has also spurred the usage of URL shortening services such as tinyurl, bit.ly and tr.im, and content hosting services, such as Twitpic and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters.

Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in 2006 has gained massive popularity worldwide. Twitter’s website attracted a total of 44.5 million unique visitors worldwide in June, 2009 (comScore); at this time it was involved in sharing the news about the Iran Election protests.

It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet” since the use of Twitter's application programming interface (API) for sending and receiving short text messages by other applications often eclipses the direct use of Twitter.

“What we have to do is deliver to people the best and freshest most relevant information possible. We think of Twitter as it's not a social network, but it's an information network. It tells people what they care about as it is happening in the world.” Evan Williams

Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide by Alexa's web traffic analysis. Estimates of the number of daily users vary: Twitter does not release data on the number of active accounts.

RJMetrics has suggested:
-Twitter's user growth has plateaued
-Over 14% of users don't have a single follower, and over 75% of users have 10 or fewer followers.
-38% of users have never sent a single tweet, and over 75% of users have sent fewer than 10 tweets.
-1 in 4 registered users tweets in any given month.

Twitter received 20.9m unique visits from US users in September (ComScore) but this number should be treated with caution as the report only measures traffic pulled in by the main URL, twitter.com, neglecting traffic on third party apps such as TweetDeck, which users access to monitor and publish tweets. TweetDeck alone accounts for an estimated 20% of all tweets. Twitter's audience, therefore, is certainly much larger. In total, Twitter has raised over US$57 million from venture capitalists. It is currently unclear how and when the company plans to monetize the service.

Social networking sites sometimes unexpectedly cross borders: pioneering U.S. site Friendster, for instance, has faded dramatically at home but has found new and growing markets in Asia, while Google's Orkut is the top network in Brazil. Many of Facebook's biggest rivals around the world are local homegrown sites. With 200 million registered users, China's Qzone claims to be the world's largest social networking site, while VKontakte is far and away the No. 1 in Russia.

-VKontakte

vkontakte.ru is a social network for Russian-speakers. It looks surprisingly like Facebook! VKontakte (Russian: Вконтакте), internationally branded VK, is the most popular social network in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. As of November, 2009, the network has more than 48 million users and averages over 1.5 billion daily pageviews and 9.5m visitors per day and is the leading site in Europe. As of March 19, 2009, VKontakte was ranked 28 in Alexa's global Top 500 sites. In English "V Kontakte" is literally translated as "In Contact" or "In Touch". Major Russian companies routinely send job offers via VKontakte. Most of the site's users are university and high school students. However, as the site's popularity increases, the demographic is getting older.

-Friendster

Started in San Francisco in 2002 but now draws 90% of its traffic from Asia. It has 105 million users. The top 10 countries accessing Friendster, according to Alexa, (2009) are the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, the United States, Singapore, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and India.

-Orkut

Another free-access social networking service owned and operated by Google.. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil. In fact, as of May 2009, 49.83% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 17.51%. Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base.

-Habbo

… is a hybrid social network and virtual world for teenagers; it combines elements of Second Life and Facebook. Some suggest the avatar-based interaction, networking in a space that feels real, using a ‘self’ that you can customize, points the way to the social networks of the future.

Back to the present: in September 2009 The top 10 UK Social Media sites measured by unique users (Nielsen) were:

1)   Facebook (22.81m)
2)   YouTube (16.25m)
3)   Wikipedia (14.20m)
4)   Blogger (7.71m)
5)   Yahoo Answers (7.28m)
6)   Twitter (4.43m)
7)   MySpace (4.16m)
8)   TripAdvisor (3.70m)
9)   BBC Communities (3.17m)
10) Bebo (3.15m)

-Blogs (=’web-logs’)

Notice that Blogger features in the list above. This is Google’s Blog platform; competitors include Wordpress, TypePad and Live Journal. Blogs are one of many internet-driven phenomena. Today, pretty much anyone can be an author and their own publisher (yes, even me!). The only ‘barriers to entry’ are basically access to a computer and an internet connection…

Technorati lists an astounding 112 million blogs in the world today, and adds, “there are over 175,000 new blogs every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.” With such overwhelming numbers, clearly it is necessary to prioritize blogs in terms of their level of influence; (how many of your target audience actually read them, how many comment, interact etc) in order to assess their importance in Social Media terms and to determine which should be monitored and how closely. Truly influential bloggers merit individual contact (and account management) if at all possible, they should be cultivated, fed exclusives and generally kept ‘on-side’ (although many, like the best journalists, cannot be ‘bought’!)

What are key issues?

There are various heated debates currently going on in marketing circles about Social Media. Of course everything is changing all the time. The networks are adding new features, revamping their user interfaces, forming partnership with content owners, mobile handset manufacturers, network operators. Major structural changes are anticipated, e.g. Google moving further into Social Media, Twitter further developing real time search, and/ or selling (to Google? Facebook? Apple?), MySpace and Facebook forming an alliance etc. etc.

1) Who should be responsible for managing Social Media engagement?

This is a current and very lively debate. Part of the problem here is one of definition. All marketing disciplines and channels are interconnected: Social Media touches both online PR and SEO. Press releases can and should be keyword optimized (so that search engines can find them once they’re published on various sites); Social Media mentions (e.g. in a tweet, Facebook post or blog post) can drive site traffic and conversions, as do Pay Per Click (PPC), Online Display and offline advertising. Since SM is a high-profile growth area, lots of people want a piece of it:

a) In Brand Owner companies
There is no real consensus as to which department/s should be responsible for Social media. Candidates include:
Marketing
Corporate Communications
Customer Services
IT

?The reality is that Social Media touches all these departments, since a disgruntled customer ‘venting’ on Twitter might have a customer services issue, but could be tweeting angrily to his/ her followers which could be undoing the efforts of the Marketing and Corporate Comms people. Equally the new TV campaign might cause a ‘spike’ in brand mentions on Facebook, cut-downs tributes and parodies on YouTube and extra hits on the website.

In these pioneering days, corporations, governments and not-for-profits are coping with this issue in a variety of ways. I would personally recommend that one individual should be made responsible as the Social Media ‘Czar’, with the full support of senior management and a mandate to work across departments to ensure a ‘joined-up’ SM strategy. Good luck to this person; exciting job however!

b) Agencies
What does a ‘Social Media agency’ look like? What skill-set do they require? PR agencies certainly have a plausible claim to be the best qualified, in an online extension of their traditional role as builders and defenders of their clients’ reputations, so long as they truly ‘get’ digital. Many PR agencies have successfully reinvented themselves for the digital age. And It’s not just about pitching stories to journalists via tweets rather than Press Releases. Crisis management has long been a PR agency specialist service, and a swarm of negative tweets can these days be the first indicator of a gathering storm, as can an irreverent video appearing on YouTube. SEO agencies would appear to have a lesser claim; after all, 'traditional' SEO (organic search) is about helping Google, Bing et al to find your site, not proactively engaging consumers and participating in conversations. Difficulties arise when you consider that SEO can include activity designed to generate inbound links; a process to which Social Media can certainly contribute. Full service digital agencies, having already grabbed design and build, online display, SEO and paid search (PPC), now see Social Media (web-based and mobile) as their next growth opportunity. And of course all the 'traditional' ad agencies are now into digital(!).

For what it’s worth, I believe Social Media should be managed by a brand owner client in-house with the help and support (where needed) of an external Social Media agency. This agency might be ‘pure’ Social Media or a more integrated Digital Agency offering a blend of Paid Search, SEO and Social Media. It could be one of those PR agencies who have fully embraced digital, so that they now genuinely offer ‘online reputation management’. It could even be a traditional above-the-line ad agency who have finally caught up with digital and now have the right people in-house, including Social Media experts. Anyway: however they label themselves, they’d better understand Social Media and keep on top of it as it changes, as it inevitably will.

2) Resourcing

However Social Media Marketing is to be managed, it is crucially important to allocate sufficient resource; internal or external. Indeed this is the main cost of Social Media marketing: the sheer 'person-hours' required to listen and participate effectively. It is also important to make it 100% clear how much authority the individuals involved actually have: i.e. can they make up ‘policy’ on the hoof? What must be referred ‘up the line’? And all the while recognizing that these platforms are inherently spontaneous/ immediate so that delays in replying while appropriate clearance/ sign-off is obtained don’t play particularly well.

To highlight the difficulties which brand owners face in deciding in how to empower front-line social media staff while at the same time retaining appropriate control, here are some notable Social Media PR disasters:

Domino’s Pizza (‘disgusting people’)

Ketchum/FedEx how not to use Twitter

British Furniture Retailer Habitat had some over-zealous employees manning its Twitter Account

Dell had some problems with Social Media but ultimately made the necessary changes and is now a success story

3) How do you monitor conversations?

You can’t engage with your audiences until you know where your brand is being discussed and what people are saying about it. You need to know how to listen effectively. After all this is in effect ‘free’ market intelligence about your customers and prospects. You need to be aware of changes of ‘online sentiment’ as expressed in Social Networks (public pages only), ‘The Blogosphere’ and in Online News Media. Keeping on top of all this can be a big job. For a big, high interest global brand, there may be many millions of mentions to monitor; the requirement is for Social Media Monitoring tools which can provide a user interface or ‘Dashboard’ to enable the brand owner (or their agency) to make sense of it all for so that useful, actionable insights can be drawn from this vast mass of data. Fortunately several excellent ‘Buzz Monitoring’ tools exist: Brandwatch (which I would recommend), Spectrum and Radian6 are appropriate at enterprise level, whereas for SMEs and individuals, there are various free tools (e.g. Google Alerts, Twitter Search and Addictomatic. As Social Media itself grows, the monitoring industry is expected to continue to expand.

4) Metrics/ measurement

This is currently a massive area of debate and indeed concern. It is important to recognize that the ‘jury is still out’ as to exactly how to demonstrate ROI on Social Media. There can be no doubt that lots of positive mentions of a brand in Social Media must be driving traffic to the website (ie helping with SEO) which must be leading to an increase in sales; all this is good. The challenge is actually to quantify the value of all this positive buzz and to compare with the time and money spent to generate it, i.e. to measure Return On Investment (ROI).

“More research is needed to establish a tangible link between how many people are talking positively about brands versus the expected uplift in sales” - Econsultancy.

In a brand-owning company, the MD is likely to remark: “But you can measure everything online can’t you?” Well yes and no. We can certainly measure online behaviour (clicks, user journey, even eye-tracking on a given web page) but we can’t (yet) fully measure sentiment; how warm and/ or engaged people are really feeling towards the brand. Remember also that there are privacy issues; eg Facebook (unlike Twitter) is a closed community; only friends can monitor each other's updates and conversations. You can get excellent metrics on mentions in Blogs, Facebook (public pages), Twitter, hits on your videos on YouTube, Google/Bing/Twitter searches on your various branded keywords, generation of inbound website links etc but monitoring awareness and attitude shift, and turning this data into accurate ROI numbers is a challenge that hasn’t yet been fully met.

We need to recognize that Social Media marketing is still in its infancy. Let us remember that traditional advertisers have been struggling with this issue for more than 50 years. As Ad Agency Planning Directors have been saying since the days of the ‘Mad Men’ just because you can’t completely measure an increase in name awareness, or customer engagement or positive reputation with 100% accuracy, that doesn’t mean the activity was a waste of time and money. Note that no-one talks about ‘monetizing’ TV ad spend, although the metrics have never been 100% robust. Indeed certain traditional advertising research techniques can usefully be employed to measure the ‘awareness/ attitude shift effect’ of much Social Media activity.

Facebook and AC Nielsen have announced 'Brand Lift' to demonstate the effect of Facebook advertising (including use of pre- and post- user surveys). Measurement Camp has been set up to develop open-source Social Media metrics. Unsurprising, we don't yet have a common currency to measure Social Media ‘engagement’. Expect big changes in this area in the coming months.

Who’s getting Social Media Marketing right?

As we have seen, the first step is diligent and intelligent monitoring of the social media ‘buzz’ around your brand which is continuously taking place on social networking and micro-blogging sites like Twitter and Facebook. The next challenge is to participate in these conversations, in order to gain positive exposure for your brand, product, or service, without ‘selling’ too hard.

Dell, Starbucks, AmericanAirlines, BMW Mini, Lenovo and Amazon (among others) are all using Social Media to spot and fix problems, getting on to complaints early, moving fast to turn detractors into advocates, joining conversations, providing information and product news and in some cases to actually sell.

And also, interestingly, politicians and governments. On Twitter, we find:

@DowningStreet,
“The official twitter channel for the UK Prime Minister's Office”
489,030 Following
1,548,053 Followers
on 2,094 Lists

@whitehouse
“Official WH twitter account. Comments and messages received through official WH pages are subject to the PRA and may be archived”
72 Following
1,428,305 Followers
on 6,095 lists

@barackobama
Location Washington, DC
Bio: 44th President of the United States”
750,808 following
2,617,634 followers
on 18,068 lists

and last but not least,

@treatyoflisbon (European Union)
“Charter of Fundamental Rights to become law, protecting dignity, freedoms, equality, solidarity, citizens’ rights, and justice”
0 Following
211 Followers
on 7 Lists

Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign has been paraded as a classic digital marketing case history. My view is that he inspired a lot of people to give money, and a lot of people to work very hard on his behalf; he was smart enough to include Social Media and other digital marketing alongside all the traditional fundraising and vote-winning techniques. Scott Goodstein was the Campaign Social Media mastermind and has given interesting interviews/ speeches about his role in the campaign which employed MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. (If the election were today, then no doubt Twitter would feature more prominently). President (then Senator) Obama announced the choice of Joe Biden as his running mate simultaneously by text, email and on Twitter.

Indeed politicians and governments all over the world are getting wise to the need to engage with their electorate, their citizens, via Social Media and the many advantages this can bring. Social networks are not only for making friends…

“Last year YouTube received 11 million unique users from the UK and more than 35 million Britons visited a blog. People are using digital channels to talk to each other and to the Government. The Downing Street Twitter account is followed by more than 1.2 million people, more than the official White House Twitter and considerably more than the daily circulation on most national newspapers. It is vital that the Government understands the medium and uses it properly. If people want to engage with us online, we should be capable of engaging with them online.”

(UK Cabinet Office, September 2009)

What about the future?

Social Media will be interconnected. Today, online social interaction is imperfect and disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they are part of. In the near future, technologies that enable a portable identity will empower consumers to carry their identities with them, transforming marketing, CRM, and advertising. We are just seeing the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites (‘walled gardens’) into a cross-channel shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to be part of this. Socially connected consumers will form cohesive communities and shift power away from brands and their CRM systems; this will result in like-minded communities who will define the next generation of products. Forrester has spoken about the emergence of Social Relationship Management or SRM. Marketers will need to target these communities rather than individuals.

The future of Social Media is also mobile. This is natural and inevitable; people want to stay in touch; most of all when they are on the move between: home, work, school/ college, sports event, bar, friend’s house. The iPhone has changed the rules, the other smartphones have further empowered the consumer; all phones are getting more powerful and Social Media on mobiles will continue to grow. All the major social networks are working closely with mobile manufacturers and network operators.

Today brands are the sum of all conversations about them; the brand owners cannot fully control these conversations but they can influence them. It is essential to establish where these discussions are happening, to access these platforms, to listen, to understand and only then engage by joining the most relevant conversations where value can be added. That is social media marketing and as we have seen it is far from easy to do well and it’s changing continuously.

This is the time to get involved. Don’t wait. Tell senior management to trust you. You’re the visionary who's taking the time to read this post. Sure, we can’t currently measure the ROI for everything we’re doing in Social Media. But that doesn't mean we should stay away. On the contrary, strong and forward-thinking brands are already actively involved: listening, engaging, trying things, learning. These lessons will be valuable. Many are already paying back. It doesn’t need to be expensive (remember much of it is ‘free’ media), and it’s certain to be (part of) the future. These conversations about brands are going on NOW, whether the brand owners are participating (or even aware) or not.

As Social Media guru Larry Weber says: “It's time you joined the conversation.”

Apple: turning 'cool' into dollars

2009-10-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

Apple is not the biggest maker of computers in the US. In figures just released by IDC, Apple Macintosh (Mac) sales grew 11.8% in the 3rd quarter of 2009, as Apple took a 9.4% U.S. market share, maintaining its position as the fourth-largest U.S. PC manufacturer. Apple sold an estimated 1.64 million Macs in the US over that period, up 11.8 percent from 1.47 million in the same period a year ago. Although it’s not the biggest, Apple may well be the coolest. And remember Apple also invented the iPod, iTunes and the iPhone.

This post is about Apple; the first 33 years. Many would describe Apple as currently the "coolest tech brand on the planet". To understand this achievement we must of course consider the contribution of Steven P “Steve” Jobs; co-founder, CEO, charismatic leader, presenter and front-man; a key part of the Apple brand for most, but not all, of this period. Such is the strength of his personality and his powers of persuasion that he has been described as being endowed with a “reality distortion field”. In a land that famously values salesmanship (and to be fair, all around the world) he has many fanatical fans. A recent leave of absence, while he had a liver transplant, following his earlier pancreatic cancer, sent the Apple Inc share price plummeting. Now he's back. A survey by Junior Achievement, an organization that educates students on matters related to future employment, found that the Apple boss is the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers.

With Jobs at the helm, its range of desirable gadgets and its (in recent years) booming stock price, Apple has accumulated an army of passionate supporters among both consumers and investors. Most would agree it has earned the epithet ‘cool’.

What makes a brand cool? Well it helps if it looks good. And works reliably. And consistently spending millions on clever, creative advertising also has an effect. Of course there are no guarantees. As my old Maths teacher might have said, these are ‘necessary but not sufficient conditions’ for coolness…People have to deem your brand to be cool and it’s important not to appear to be trying too hard. Andrew Keller, co-executive Creative Director of Miami Ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky recently said : “to try to be cool is not to be cool.” He should know - he’s recently had a hand in creative work for Mini, Virgin Atlantic, VW, Burger King and, most recently, err… Microsoft.

CoolBrands is an annual initiative to identify the UK's ‘coolest brands’. The list has been compiled by Superbrands annually since 2001; the 2009 results were recently published. The survey seeks the opinion of independent experts and thousands of consumers. They claim the coolest brands of 2009/10 are:

1.iPhone
2.Aston Martin
3.Apple
4.iPod
5.Nintendo
6.YouTube
7.Blackberry
8.Google
9.Bang & Olufsen
10.Playstation

Notice Apple has 3 out of the top 4 'cool' brands.

Now let’s look instead at the 2009 Interbrand annual survey of the world’s most valuable brands...This is the list of the ‘best’ global brands based on estimated financial value. It looks a little different. Tech brands again feature but not in the same order:

1.   Coca-Cola
2.   IBM
3.   Microsoft
4.   GE
5.   Nokia
6.   McDonald's
7.   Google
8.   Toyota
9.   Intel
10. Disney
11. HP
12. Mercedes-Benz
13. Gillette
14. Cisco
15. BMW
16. YSL
17. Marlboro
18. Honda
19. Samsung
20. Apple

Notice that in this list, Apple just makes it into the top 20, well behind the (these days) rather less ‘cool’ IBM (No. 2) and Microsoft (No. 3). Several other tech brands feature above Apple.

Clearly, ‘cool’ is not just another word for ‘profitable’ or ‘successful’.

So what exactly is this thing called ‘cool’?

Dr. Carl C.Rohde (‘worldwide reputed trend watcher’), claims that what makes something cool is its ability to impart "confidence on a physical and psychological level".

Rohde has identified 'seven themes of cool empowerment' to categorize cool objects and cool people:

Wellness -- Chai lattes, yoga classes and charitable activities ... anything that makes you feel healthy and happy as an individual and a member of society.

Masculinity for confused males -- Fashion, sports-related products, grooming materials ... any product that can help men overcome their confusion about how to be a domesticated partner while still being a virile man.

Femininity for women on the rise -- Any image or product that acknowledges a woman's femininity while recognizing that she's also claiming her place as a power player in society.

Celebrities -- Anyone with a story to tell while still being extraordinary in a way. Examples: Nicole Kidman's tale of divorce, 50 Cent's hard-knocks life, Susan Boyle .

Cool personalization – In any form, be it a service, a brand or something done on an individual level to make a person feel unique by "putting their own imprint" on objects.

Technology -- Mobile phones, high-tech outdoor gear, gadgets ... things that help you navigate your life better. (see where this is going yet?)

Cool branding -- Products that make consumers believe that their lives are better for using them. Examples: Nokia, Puma and yes, iPhone.

Let’s take a look at how Apple got where it is today.

It started out as a rather quirky Silicon Valley tech firm but has risen to its greatest heights in the years since Steve Jobs returned as CEO and took it to places beyond the desktop. Apple Computer was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. It was one of a number of tech firms - including Atari, Radio Shack and Texas Instruments – who sought to transform the digital computer into a home appliance. Alone of that first personal computing generation, Apple and the charismatic Steve Jobs have consistently found a way to ‘touch the Zeitgeist’.

In 1979, Jobs made a now legendary visit to Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, where he viewed a prototype personal computer - the Alto. This inspired a range of ideas about computer design and graphical user interface (GUI) which led Apple to develop two families of computers, the Lisa and the Macintosh. Steve Jobs aimed to make Apple’s products “insanely great,” and he was convinced that they could create ‘personal computing’ and so change the world.

Although the Lisa failed commercially, the Macintosh succeeded, reshaping the computer industry over the next decade. The Apple Macintosh (complete with an impressive 128K of memory and price tag of $2,495 ) was introduced on January 24 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI) rather than a command-line interface. It is hard for us to understand today what a breakthrough this was. The ‘Mac’ rapidly became the industry standard for typesetting and design (try asking a creative e.g. an advertising Art Director to use a Windows PC).

In 1985, before Mac had really taken off, Steve Jobs, was forced out of the company by his appointed chief executive, John Sculley, whom he had poached from Pepsi. Apple struggled in the late 80s and early 90s as Microsoft's Windows operating system became the desktop computing standard. Things really began to unravel when Apple placed a large bet on the arrival of the hand-held computing market. When Apple’s Newton failed commercially, Sculley was himself forced out in 1993.

In 1997, Apple’s current era dawned as Steve Jobs returned after more than a decade away. At that time, many analysts gave him little chance of resurrecting the company, which had largely been written off by the computer industry and analysts (Michael S. Dell, who had by this time built his own PC empire, was even quoted as suggesting that Apple’s smartest move would be to “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”) Starting with the title of Interim Chief Executive, however, Jobs systematically rebuilt the company’s Macintosh franchise by adding an operating system he had developed while ‘in exile’. And then there were the new products…

In 2001, Jobs introduced the iPod music player, to an unsuspecting world. offering '1,000 songs in your pocket'. And the size of a deck of cards. (thanks to its 5 GB ‘ultra slim’ hard-drive). This was a stunning proposition at the time and it set the company on its current course as a major player in consumer electronics.

Other iPods followed the ‘Classic’ (Mini, Nano, Touch, Shuffle). Apple has sold over 220,000,000 iPods worldwide. There is no competitor in sight. The iTunes Music Store, created to enable users to fill the device with audio and video content, has made Apple an important force in the music industry.

Then, in 2007 Apple did it again as Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, a convergence of entertainment, computing and communications that has stirred up the entire telecoms industry. To be fair, the Apple TV set-top box has had less impact, but it signals the firm’s continuing interest in the living room.

For now at least, Apple appears to have a comfortable lead in the simmering smartphone battle. Since 2007 it has sold more than 37 million iPhones and iPod Touches, and these devices have become its most profitable product category.

On June 8, 2009, Apple offered its devoted fans a new version of the iPhone, the iPhone 3G S. This third model iPhone looks physically identical to the last version but includes internal hardware and software improvements. Among the changes, the iPhone 3G S has a three-megapixel camera which also records video, an internal digital compass and voice-control features that let owners use spoken commands to make calls and play music.

Advertising has always been a key component of the ‘coolness’ of the Apple brand and its sub-brands. Under Steve Jobs, Apple has consistently launched ‘game-changing’ products with ad campaigns to match.

Jobs and the LA agency TBWA\Chiat\Day go back almost right to the beginning. In fact it is rumoured that every Wednesday, Lee Clow, the creative director of TBWA\Chiat\Day, travels from Los Angeles to Cupertino, Calif., for his weekly meeting with Steve Jobs . They started doing this years ago and have created ads that are both stylish and indeed ‘cool’. In the early 1980s, Clow helped to create Apple’s ‘game changing’ '1984' television commercial introducing the Macintosh. The ad’s simple message was that buyers of the new machine would be striking against the ‘evil’ IBM, portrayed as Apple’s Orwellian foe. Jobs allegedly struggled to persuade Apple’s board to run the ad, which was directed by Ridley Scott (who had released Blade Runner the previous year without box office success!). Lee Clow was similarly adamant when his boss, the late Jay Chiat, tried to shelve it. The ad was unveiled during a time-out in the 3rd quarter of Super Bowl XVIII.

More recently, in a battle reminiscent of Coke Vs. Pepsi, Avis Vs. Hertz or American Express Vs. Visa, Apple took on Microsoft head-on. The 'Get A Mac' campaign ('Mac Vs. PC'), again by TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles, depicted PC users as sad, unattractive nerds, compared with the ‘cool’ (but interestingly never cruel) Mac. Jobs and Clow have substituted Microsoft for IBM as the ‘Evil Empire’ in these Mac ads. And there were even several tailored to the UK sense of humour.

In 2008 arch-rivals Microsoft, to the surprise of many, appointed uber-cool Miami ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky and hit back with their own campaign: 'I'm a PC'. The series first appeared in September, 2008. They followed up with ‘cute’ Kylie and ‘laptop hunters’.

However many commentators, techies and consumers felt that Microsoft was unconvincingly trying to prove it had a sense of humour; clever, ‘cool’ ads just didn't suit it. Apple already owned ‘cool’. So: bad luck CP+B!

Right from the launch in 2001, the iPod was an adman’s dream: a product with a genuine competitive advantage which was beautiful, simple and, well, ‘cool’. TBWA\Chiat\Day didn't disappoint: the advertising fitted it perfectly.

Also check out:

iPod Classic commercial
iPod walkie-talkie man
iPod technologic
iTunes now for Windows

The original iPhone was introduced in the US on June 29, 2007 followed by 3G and 3G S versions .

With this product, Jobs and his agency seem to have concluded that the device is so beautiful and pleasing to use that it is sufficient just to demonstrate it close up in order for it to sell. So far 21 million people appear to agree.

So what makes Apple so cool? In my opinion four things:

Original ideas - not stolen (or ‘borrowed’)
Good product design/ packaging
User interfaces which are well thought-through and easy to use
Control of hardware manufacturing

Well-designed products are a pleasure to use and enhance the user’s life. Apple makes products that both work well and look good. At a price most (OK not all) can afford.

Apple has always been rooted in Design. Indeed Jobs famously accused Microsoft of ‘having no taste’ (i.e. of being clumsy unattractive nerds as opposed to Apple’s 'Designer chic geeks').

But can Apple remain cool? Over recent years, Apple has created sky-high and possibly unrealistic expectations from enthusiasts and analysts. It has set the bar high. Apple's strategy – epitomized in the iPhone -- has come to depend on a steady stream of hit devices that are viewed by consumers as being so far ahead of the competition that they are worth paying extra for. (Note that Macs have always been more expensive than PCs). How long can this go on? The reality is: not everyone loves Apple .The company has been satirized and criticised for high prices, for tying iPod users into iTunes and even for being ‘elitist design snobs’. In many of its markets, the competition is now catching up and it will be fascinating to see whether Apple can continue to innovate so effectively and thus keep on selling units and increasing its stock price. After all it’s not cool to be a loser; as Jobs himself has said, ‘real artists ship’. We can’t wait to see what Steve has up the sleeve of that black mock turtle-neck next time he gets up on stage to the rapturous applause of the assembled Apple Worshippers.

But whatever the future holds, no-one can deny Apple’s success over the last 33 years. They have made technology stylish. Apple products are admired for their form as well as their function. The combination has enriched many lives. As a result they have made a lot of money.

As the Man says (frequently): "Pretty cool, huh?"

The tech company we love to hate

2009-09-17T03:21:00.001-07:00

Remember that company from the last century whom many consider to be the inventors of personal computing? Older than Google, and even older than Apple (just). To jog your memory, here are some of their products:Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Office, Explorer, MSN (bit of a give-away there), Encarta, Live Messenger, Xbox 360, Age of Empires, Halo, Zune (OK maybe you haven’t heard of that one), Bing. Most of us grew up with some of these (sub)brands.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (for it is they) has created four $billionaires and some 12,000 $millionaires from Microsoft employees. Today Microsoft employs some 95,000 people worldwide, of whom 56,000 are based in the USA. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009, Microsoft reported revenue of $58.44 billion, a 3% decline from the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the year were $20.36 billion, $14.57 billion and $1.62, which represented declines of 9%, 18% and 13% respectively. In January this year, Microsoft announced plans to cut 5,000 jobs by the middle of next year. These cuts are now well underway. CEO Steve Ballmer hasn’t ruled out more. We are living in extraordinary times.

Always controversial, Microsoft seems to have acquired a serious image problem in recent years. Compared with Google and especially Apple, it’s just not regarded as ‘cool’. Some have even suggested that Microsoft will turn out to have been “a 20th Century company” and that it is now being forced to pass the baton on (to Google/ Apple/ Dell presumably?). Ballmer is said to have ‘bet the ranch’ on Windows 7 (which launches next month) being a big success.

Microsoft has consistently attracted much criticism. In particular Microsoft, and William Henry “Bill” Gates III, as its very visible (and until June 2008 very hands-on) leader, have been accused of choking competition by bundling its products; especially Internet Explorer shipped with Windows PCs as a pre-emptive strike against Netscape (anyone remember them?). As for desktop applications, Word ‘killed’ Novell’s WordPerfect and Excel ‘saw off’ Lotus 1-2-3. Many have questioned Microsoft’s bullish tactics which have leveraged the dominance of Windows as ‘the’ PC Operating System. Indeed Microsoft has contested several lawsuits and paid heavy fines for ‘anti-competitive’ practices especially in Europe.

Steve Jobs

A world without Microsoft?

Damaging legacy of I.E.6

Steve Ballmer is the larger-than-life successor to Bill Gates; he certainly loves his company but he’s facing an uncertain future.

Here is the viewpoint of a tech-savvy friend:
“Ever since IBM first agreed to ship Microsoft software with their PCs, Microsoft has been charging us for providing an operating system for our computers. The frequent complaints of bloat, backwards-incompatibility and bug-ridden releases (infuriating for PC owners) are frankly justified. If you have been saddled with Vista on a newly-bought computer, it is reasonable to feel defrauded if you have to pay at least $120 to buy what is in effect a bugfix in Windows 7 - just as the poor saps who bought Windows 95 had to pay to get a usable system in Windows 98 a few years ago.”

Strong stuff. And this far from being an isolated case of an informed anti-Microsoft opinion. Vista has been widely criticised (especially when it first came out) by IT professionals and users for being released before it was ready; many claimed it was inferior to Windows XP which preceded it. People won’t forget these bad experiences. The web age is increasingly offering us more choices about technology. So what does the future hold for the nerds from Redmond, WA?

If you want to find true innovation at the moment, and a rapidly growing market, look at netbooks and nettops. These are small, inexpensive, low-power consumption desktop computers designed for basic tasks such as surfing the Internet, accessing web-based applications document processing, and audio/video playback. Originally the netbook market was dominated by Linux. When it emerges, Chrome OS (operating system) will be a big player, although it is in early development at the moment. Also operating in the Cloud will be other players including Jolly Cloud and Ubuntu. Microsoft has established a foothold by offering Microsoft XP as a very low price, but it will be interesting to see if they can compete as the netbook market grows.

Internet Explorer is, in any case, only available for Windows, and so if the operating system of choice is not Windows in this, the fastest growing area of the hardware market, that could have big implications for the future. Currently, IE is at the top of the heap, chiefly (as critics say), because it has for years been bundled in with other products including the various Windows operating systems. Firefox has gained ground in second place.

You work quite differently with a netbook than with a full laptop, and you may not need Windows if all you are doing is email and surfing. The crossovers are also beginning to be interesting... even for a full size laptop, manufacturers are starting to experiment with hardware with low power consumption to get some of the benefits of a netbook.

Currently, cloud computing comes with a price: you give up control over your assets by putting them in the cloud; if a piece of the cloud goes down and it happens to contain your data, it’s bad news. Cloud computing as a concept is itself still under development... there's a lot of work to be done to put regulation, privacy and protection in place. The interesting question is, what is Microsoft going to do in that market? Their corporate style has been very bottom-line driven, and seen by many as aggressive and protectionist. How will they fare when users have a free choice between their products and the competition?

Microsoft is still struggling to adjust to the web, and the choices that it gives people. Bing 2.0 is rumoured for release in the next couple of weeks, but it is still bumping along in third place with less than 10% market share, far behind Google. Google is successful because it works, not because they have monopolised search or hypnotised web surfers; users simply see no reason to go elsewhere. Microsoft haven't made something that really catches on as a choice in the web sphere...yet. People mainly get their products by default when they buy hardware. Yes, there is Linux for geeks with a technical bent and the additional cost of Apple for those with deep pockets, but basically, if you're buying a PC it is still a ‘no-choice’ choice of one OS...currently.

Even before Google’s Chrome OS hits, it is possible to see the potential impact of consumer choice on the market. And more and more power is being handed to the people: the introduction of Google Wave allows individuals to participate in the Cloud without handing over control of their assets to a third party. Wave will merge IM, email, document editing and Twitter functionalities, while giving you control of your data and who is allowed to access it. Instead of subscribing to Flickr or Picasa you will allow them access to your data stream, and control where you store backups, who gets access to your stuff, and where.

The future isn't going to be about bigger, better hardware, it will be about convenient/ appropriate hardware for a specific situation and having an OS which can morph into a lot of things so it can do specific jobs very well, whether on your phone, netbook or nettop.

Google has moved into the mobile phone market with Android, a Linux variant for mobile devices. Geeks are very excited about Android, which is Linux, open-source and has great apps. The word is that Netbook makers are already preparing versions running Android, even though it wasn't intended for netbooks. Who knows what will happen when Google releases their product actually intended for those pieces of hardware?

Most innovations in Microsoft come from the purely technical side of things... and they are not very exciting. The .NET framework has gained some traction on the server side of things. They have been steadily improving their server products. Microsoft certainly excels in creating developer communities and developer tools... they offer a fully integrated suite of tools for .NET programming. (The JAVA world is a lot more fragmented). BUT: these initiatives are hardly likely to set the average consumer on fire; the user’s opinion of Microsoft won’t be improved by having to purchase Windows 7 to replace the much criticised Windows Vista.

There is already an open-sourced alternative to Office in Open Office, which is a useable alternative, and must be considered a real threat to the upcoming Office 2010. Open-sourced alternatives to most graphics programs are already available (e.g. Paint.net, Blender and Gimp). In many fields open-sourced software is no longer the territory of the geek and nerd, but a viable alternative to expensive proprietary software. The world is changing.

Whether or not Microsoft deserves all its negative publicity, it will increasingly be operating in a world in which computer users (and IT managers) are in a position to make genuine choices, in which open-sourcing and crowd-sourcing create viable alternatives to each of those previously dominant Microsoft products. Bluntly, it needs to adapt or face decline and ultimately extinction.

It will be interesting to see what 'Microsoft 2.0' looks like…

Online display: SORRY TO INTERRUPT!

2009-08-14T02:36:00.001-07:00

“I find those ads on the internet really annoying; I never look at them.”

Anon. (OK it was one of my teenage daughters)

As you may be aware, those strips at the bottom or up the side of your web page are called banners and ‘skyscrapers’. Increasingly, you can ‘mouse over’ them to expand them and/or click to play a video. All (tell me if you know an exception) will take you through to a landing page on another website, generally owned by the advertiser. You will also have encountered films that play before the video you wanted to see (AKA pre-roll) and ads that pop-up and block the page just when you’re trying to read the content. (AKA the work of Satan). Collectively these ads
are called online display as a convenient term to distinguish them from paid search ads (e.g. Google AdWords). The term was borrowed from ‘display’ press ads; they’re the ones that aren’t the classifieds (small ads).

There is a lot of talk currently about ‘persistent’ online advertising. Two online ad networks, VideoEgg and Meebo, have recently started offering persistent ad formats . Unlike standard banner ads (which users can zoom by as they scroll down the page or move on to the next), these units stay on the screen, occupying a border at the top or bottom.

The idea is that the basic principles of TV advertising work online: show an ad to someone for long enough and it is likely to penetrate their consciousness. Sounds irritating though, huh?

There is a new piece of research by comScore/OPA into the efficiency of online display. At the risk of over-simplification, it concludes that online advertising often contributes to purchases in an way that is rarely tracked by web analytics (often fixated on the ‘last click’). In other words, Search often gets all the credit for online clicks and sales, while online display operates at an awareness level above the ‘purchase funnel’...This is surely what image (‘above the line’) advertising has always done.

Creative isn’t the only way to get attention and engagement for online display ads; the ad format can play a vital role; if the ad does something astonishing (or even just different), it can be impossible to ignore. Broadband connections, rich media and online video have certainly made online display advertising more dynamic. To see just a few of the formats available today, check these out: (suggest you use Internet Explorer with the pop-up blocker turned off, or alternatively skip them).

Snickers

Walk The Line

Ice Age

Hyundai

Today’s digital agencies can offer a bewildering range of online display ad formats including: Expandable Banners, Polite Banners, Sidekick Ads, Homepage Takeovers, Floating Ads, Full Screen Video, Synchronized Ads In Stream, Pre Roll, Page Peel Back (page curl), VideoStrip Minisite Ads +++.

However there’s a fine line between engaging and infuriating; online advertising has just as much power to annoy the audience as outbound telephone marketing (or indeed aggressive door-to-door canvassing). What looks new and cool to the creatives/techies/suits/client (no favourites here!) can rapidly become irritating to the time (and patience) poor consumer.

So are online display ads basically just press ads on a screen? OR Is this an example of a totally new marketing channel (perhaps with more in common with traditional direct response ads where the coupon or phone response was all-important)? This is quite an important question, because if it’s the former, to create effective online ads we just do what the press ad people have always done. i.e. we should draw on the received wisdom of the Age of Press Ads, before what Rory Sutherland, Executive Creative Director of OgilvyOne London, calls the TV Age (presumably roughly 1960-1995) temporarily(?) distracted marketers. If not, we conclude that online display is something new and different so that new lessons must be learned and new wisdom accumulated.

A key question is: should online display advertising be ‘interruptive’ or based on gaining the user’s ‘permission’? It is an inescapable truth that any Advertising must achieve cut-through, ignore this, and our online ads become wallpaper. (Which would be bad; after all, do you remember what your desktop background looks like?).

“You can't save souls in an empty church," said David Ogilvy .

"And you can't bore people into buying your product."

Indeed not; today more than ever, you need to engage them. To grab their attention, sure, but then to reward them by providing interest, amusement, entertainment or promise of gain/reward. In this respect, online advertisers face exactly the same challenges as Ogilvy and his ‘Mad Men’.

It used to be simple. In the old ‘Press Age’ days, the idea was to find a consumer reading a magazine say, which indicated they fell into your target audience. Then, just when they were enjoying it, you hit them with your ad. You distracted them from the editorial, gripped their attention and froze their hand before they turned the page. The picture attracts them, the headline flags them down and then the (long) copy completes the sell. (except they then need to go to a retailer or mail a coupon to close the loop!). When it arrived in the late ‘40s (US) and ‘50s (UK), TV advertising operated in pretty much the same way. The TV ‘commercials’ ambushed viewers who had tuned in to watch their favourite programme. The target housewife was just taking a few minutes off from her chores, to sit down with a cup of coffee, having made and served the kids tea (supper) when she sat in front of the TV and saw:

Fairy Liquid

Heinz

The viewer wasn’t looking for these ads, but generally speaking she was charmed by them, happy to watch; she felt good about herself, her family and of course the brand. (and she imagined her hands were very soft and her kids well nourished). This was the interruptive format at its 1960s peak (helped undoubtedly by the paucity of TV channels and the lack of a remote control). And so things continued in Adland, right through the ‘70s, ‘80s and even after the invention of the world wide web around 1989…

Then in 1999, Seth Godin, in his book Permission Marketing: turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers introduced a new view of marketing: the emergence of the internet had broken the old model and marketers needed to change their approach. The new way is to cut a deal with the ad-savvy consumer; they know what’s going on and they value their time, so you must, in effect, reward them for their attention- you are bribing them to engage with your ad. If you get it right, they will share their good brand experience with their friends/family/colleagues (via Facebook, MySpace or Twitter) and act as unpaid brand ambassadors for you. If you get it wrong they will also share and you deserve everything (bad) you get, so the theory goes. Godin argues that marketers should obtain permission at each stage in the purchasing process and that this is a more efficient use of resources because communications are only sent to people who have specifically requested them. Indeed, UK marketers must abide by the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 , but companies who espouse permission marketing generally go further than the letter of the law in seeking the customer’s agreement for each stage of their sales/ Customer Relationship management (CRM) process.

However, distinguished British Creative Director Steve Harrison, author of How To Do Better Creative Work eloquently expresses an alternative point of view.

While acknowledging the transforming effect digital has had on the world of marketing, Harrison disagrees with Godin on 'permission'; he argues that in today’s cluttered online world ads need, more than ever, to cut through; advertisers need to create intelligent, relevant, surprising messages that stop the consumer in their tracks and engage them, just as Ogilvy sought to do. He suggests that Godin’s dogma of Permission has been accepted without question, resulting in mediocrity; and specifically in bland, unconfident (especially online) advertising which is largely devoid of big ideas; the danger being that a) the ads don’t work and b) the brand itself acquires these same ‘boring’ characteristics. As 21st century marketers, he argues, we’re fixated with the idea of getting permission to do anything; this is the enemy of great creative work; after all, the great admen including Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach and Raymond Rubicam never asked permission; they believed in their clients’ products and offered them with confidence to the mass market, employing powerful ‘big ideas’ based on single-minded ‘unique selling propositions’ (USPs). Harrison argues that interruptive techniques, far from being and outmoded and irrelevant, are as vitally important to today’s digital advertising as they have always been to offline communications.

So what are we to make of all this? I believe the point is that online display advertising should be ‘interruptive’ as opposed to being boring. It should have the confidence of a successful market trader who knows his product is good but also that not everyone will buy from him every time. He sets out his stall, positions himself somewhere prominent so he’s visible but not blocking the road, and offers to engage with the consumer; if they decline he smiles and looks forward to next time. Some online consumers will be on a mission; paying their credit card, checking their Facebook or booking a holiday. They won’t expand our banner. They won’t click. In the same way, consumers are often too busy to notice our poster or press ads; that comes with the territory. Online ads are still ads; inertia is the enemy, the challenge to be overcome by the skills of the Creative guys. You can’t (ever) win 'em all.

Web advertisers (like website designers) must at all times think about the user experience. So: be interruptive in creative, but not in format. Ads that pop-up and/or take over the page, forcing the user to search for a close button while they are involuntarily subjected to your message, i.e. interrupting the web user’s journey AGAINST THEIR WILL, will turn people off, be blocked by the user via their browser, will increasingly not be accepted by publishers and are just plain stupid - i.e. bad advertising. However, if our ad is attractive, sucking the user in with magnetic force (i.e. the promise of value), but not intrusive then it will succeed.

Today’s consumer undoubtedly expects respect from brands; they will engage, but only on their terms. I’m with Seth on that one. The technology has advanced to make new formats viable; some are desirable improvements. Expandable (streaming video) banners are a smart innovation; those consumers who want to engage can do so while the others are not disturbed (or indeed interrupted!). TV ads were a 'killer app' because they offered moving colour images and sound (the closest thing to the salesman selling face-to-face). How much better if the consumers can choose to engage with the brand by playing the film at a time to suit them (and not when it doesn’t). They don’t have to ‘switch our ad off’; they can simply decline to engage.

The great advantage of online advertising is that you can hedge your bets. Online ads can be ‘double-duty advertising’, as Chris Barraclough, the irrepressible Founder and Creative Partner of Barraclough Edwards Chamberlain, calls it, i.e. your awareness ad can also be a direct response ad.

But don’t be too ambitious. When your banner is a small part of a large and busy web page, you can’t afford to be too clever; attempts to intrigue may well be ignored. At the very least you must pass the ‘glance test’; your corporate logo, colour and (space permitting) advertising strapline should be 100% on-brand. Allow for slow connections, old computers and small screens. You can’t guarantee that your ad’s creative will attract every reader/ user but do your best; some consumers will click, some of these will buy; others will choose not to and if they only take out some awareness then that’s still helping the brand. In fact it’s working just like good old (awareness) advertising. So please read those Analytics reports with care.

I hope the ads on this Blog engaged you. Without interrupting you…

PPC: how much will you pay per click? It's all about Quality.

2009-07-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

If you know all about Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) you might want to sit this post out (or better, please read and comment; this is Web 2.0 after all.)

Today's big news in the world of tech/digital marketing is the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, which sees Microsoft become Yahoo's search provider while Yahoo's sales team will sell advertising on behalf of both companies. This will, subject to regulatory approval, create a serious rival to Google in the world of search and specifically in the world of PPC.

A random sample of advertised jobs from this week’s UK (digital) marketing press (online and offline) includes the following:

Head of Search Marketing - Top 5 Media Agency
This is a senior management role for a talented SEM professional. It's one at a top 5 media agency, and is responsible for one of the biggest spending Search accounts in the UK. With a focus on PPC, you will also be able to devise strategy across all SEM activity and provide continuity and integration. For this a deep knowledge of Search media will be required, along with vast experience (7 years plus), preferably agency side.

PPC Account Manager - Top Digital Agency
A rare opportunity to join what is widely regarded as the best digital media agency in the UK has arisen - and as such we require a skilled search expert (PPC) to work in an AM role with financial & automotive clients. You will need to have at least 2 years working in a search-focussed role, preferably within a media or search agency working on big budget clients, managing their PPC campaigns on a daily basis.

PPC Manager - Integrated Agency
You will manage all elements of Paid Search, with an objective of enhancing our current client's marketing campaigns to encourage more PPC spend and gain new business for the agency. Responsibilities: Taking campaign briefings from clients Producing paid-search strategy and integrating it with other media activity. Preparation of copy strategy Building of PPC campaigns in Excel. Management of the trafficing process. Ongoing analysis of campaign performance.

(btw if you successfully apply for any of these jobs, you owe me a drink at the next Digital Lounge event in London. Cheers.)

None of these jobs existed ten years ago. It is estimated that PPC now accounts for 60% of total online spend (Revolution, July 2009).

So where did this PPC business spring from? I thought it might be interesting and useful to define exactly what were talking about, to summarize how we got where we are today and then speculate as to what might happen next.

• What is PPC?

To clarify: we are not talking about natural (organic) search (=Search Engine Optimization=SEO) i.e. making our website easy to find by Google/ Yahoo/ Bing. We are talking about paying for a ‘sponsored link’ i.e. a short (normally) text ad looking like a traditional classified ad in a newspaper except it can be clicked on. On the Google results page, it appears either above the search results or down the right hand side, in the section marked 'sponsored links'. When it is clicked on, you (the advertiser) pay Google for each clickthrough to your site.

Google AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for both text and banner ads. (with local, national, and international distribution). Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line plus two content text lines. Image ads can be in one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) defined standard sizes.

So: you’re effectively buying space, but in a different way from the old offline newspaper/ magazine model. For each keyword you select (which you judge to be relevant to your website), exactly where your ad appears depends on the result of an auction, in which all qualifying ads compete for the best places on the Google results page/s. (The amount that you have ‘bid’ is the maximum you are prepared to pay, per click, to get your ad displayed in the best possible position). And you pay £cost per click x number of clicks i.e. you literally PAY PER CLICK. (you can set a maximum total payment after which your ad will not be displayed - or if it is, you won’t pay).

• How exactly does it work?

Google wants:

(a) The user to have the best possible experience. If the user searches for a given keyword (a single word or phrase) they expect to see a series of results, the natural listings and the sponsored links (= paid-for ads), each of which indicates exactly what they will get when they click on it. Followed, after a click, by a website delivering EXACTLY what they are looking for. In this scenario, the user is happy and Google remains their automatic choice for future searches. So Google is happy.

(b) To make money. Google has created this amazingly complex and successful search engine which currently dominates the web and has become synonymous with search, which is itself growing as more and more users spend more and more time online, searching for more and more information, products and services. As a commercial company, Google expects a reward; it has done extremely well out of selling PPC advertising and intends to continue to do so. Indeed Google makes c.95% of its revenues from Search. (i.e. selling ad space on its results pages, and also on Blogs and Google mail/ Gmail). This helps to fund its various other ventures (eg.Google Wave, Maps, Street View, Latitude, YouTube, Android, Chrome, +++) some of which are currently net costs to the organisation i.e. ‘awaiting monetization’…

Google is adamant that (b) doesn’t get in the way of (a).

“We have a fundamental philosophy with which we push these projects-we really want to improve life for people.”

Sergey Brin, co-founder, Google.

But exactly what factors influence where AdWords places your ad?. Where your ad appears and how much you end up paying depends on the result of what has been called a “Generalized second-price auction”. Let’s have a look at the AdWords auction in detail.
Every time a user does a search, the auction is conducted and competing ads allocated to appropriate spots, all before the user sees the results pages. (Yeah. Amazing, I know.)

Your ad will be at the top or down the right-hand-side of the search results.
Google is trying to deliver the best experience for users so they want your site to be relevant to users who are attracted by your ad; they will tend to promote you in position (i.e. higher up) if they believe this is the case.

Crudely: Position = winning bid amount* x quality score#

*How much you bid per click. (the more you are prepared to pay, the higher position your ad will be shown in, starting with the top of results and working down the right hand side from page 1 and then onto the subsequent pages of results.)

#QUALITY SCORE: How relevant/ useful Google perceives your ad/ your site to be.

Note Google doesn't fully reveal how QS is calculated; expert commentators believe QS consists of:
• Historical click-through rate of this ad (and your others, if any!)
• Ad Copy Relevance (to the keyword i.e. how well the ad matches the user’s query)
• Landing Page Quality (loading time, relevant and original content and ease of the navigation of your site).
Note you can specify that you only want traffic from particular countries (e.g. those visiting the .fr or .co.uk or .de site/s) and/ or day/ time of day.

So working on improving your ‘Google quality score’ means you will pay less per click for better positions (getting you cheaper clickthroughs, from people who are specifically looking for your product/ service, which must be good business). Effectively Google is rewarding you for being a good advertiser, which some might find patronising. But hey, remember these guys have 65%+ of all search traffic(!) which some might also say explains a certain bullishness, sometimes bordering on arrogance…

Owing to the complexity of AdWords and other PPC products and the amount of money at stake, some advertisers hire a consultant or specialist agency to manage their PPC campaigns. (see job ads above). Indeed a whole industry has sprung up based on offering PPC expert advice. There are also various proprietary software products assisting with PPC Campaign Management, Bid Optimizing, Reporting and Analytics.

• History of PPC

In February 1998 Jeffrey Brewer of Goto.com, a 25-employee startup company (later Overture, now part of Yahoo!), presented a PPC search engine concept to the TED conference in California. Credit for the concept is generally given to the Idealab and Goto.com founder, Bill Gross (who allegedly ‘borrowed’ it from Yellow Pages).
Google started search engine advertising in December 1999. In October 2000 the AdWords system was introduced, allowing advertisers to create text ads for placement on the Google search engine. However, AdWords only introduced PPC in 2002; until then, ads were charged at ‘cost-per-thousand impressions’. Yahoo advertisements have been PPC-based since their introduction in 1998. So PPC is still a young industry.

• What’s going to happen?

Historically, Google hasn’t always got everything right. In November 2006, Google bought privately held YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock and still shows few signs of monetizing it. Remember Google Click-to-Call? It was a service provided by Google which allowed users to call advertisers from Google search results pages. Users entered their phone number, Google called them back and connected them to the advertiser, with call charges paid by Google. It was discontinued in 2007. There are ongoing challenges to Google in the areas of privacy/ consumer data retention. Street View has attracted significant opposition in this regard.

Google has, however carved out a massively powerful position in the world of search. Google can’t afford to lose this dominance; its business model is currently largely dependent on it. Indeed AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue (estimated at $21 billion in 2008). We may be assured that Messrs Schmidt, Page and Brin (the triumvirate running the company) are very interested in how well AdWords is doing.

Equally Microsoft will not accept its current small share of the lucrative search market. Its new search engine, Bing, and the much vaunted deal with Yahoo! (acquisition of the Yahoo! Search business would give Microsoft almost 30% of the US Search market) are evidence that Microsoft is going to take the fight to Google. Of course search advertising revenues depend primarily on where the users are searching and here Google currently has a position of massive strength. Even if Bing is a superior product (i.e. a true ‘discovery engine’) Google has strong user loyalty and inertia; suggesting that Bing needs to deliver a SIGNIFICANTLY better user experience to gain trial and change searchers’ habits.

Meanwhile Google is, understandably, not sitting idly by while Bing attacks its market share (after all “disloyalty is only one click away” as Google CEO Eric Schmidt is fond of saying). Google Squared is a response to the launch of Bing; Wolfram Alpha is positioning itself as ‘a computational knowledge engine that draws on multiple sources to answer user queries directly’ and Ask.com has rebranded itself (again). People are suggesting that Twitter's increasing use for ‘real time search’ is a threat to the search engines. Then there’s mobile search with its unique requirements and (currently) restrictions. Much is at stake here. Exciting times.

As with most things in digital marketing, we can measure what’s giving us best results and work to improve our overall ROI. You (or your PPC agency) should be asking: how much are we paying per click against which keyword and what do those clickers then go on to do i.e. how much is the click actually worth to us, the advertiser? Certain keywords will be very popular, (e.g. ‘lowest cost mobile phones’) so that bids required to get your ads shown in high ranking positions will need to be high. Maybe you can do better by bidding on niche keywords? What about your ad copy? Is it persuasive, descriptive and relevant to your site? And what happens after they click through? Test various landing pages, tracking the results. Measure and optimise your PPC ads. Continuous evaluation and improvement should be the strategy. TEST, TEST and TEST!

So if your boss asks you “how much do we pay per click?” the answer should probably be something like: “much less than we would be spending if we weren’t watching the metrics so closely and optimising every aspect of our campaigns so carefully, but still more than I would like.”

PPC will keep evolving. Specifically everyone involved with PPC should be watching Bing and the new Microsoft search partnership with Yahoo. Although the market shares of the various competing search engines are certain to change, the discipline of Pay per Click Advertising looks set to grow in importance within the world of digital marketing.

And oh yes; remember to work on that Quality Score...

Augmented Reality – because the world is not enough...

2009-07-07T12:06:00.001-07:00

The British Science Fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

In my opinion, one such technology is Augmented Reality. Or just ‘Augmented’ or even ‘AR’ to the cognoscenti.

I saw a powerful demonstration of AR (by Brand Attention) at the recent London Online Marketing Show. It reminded me how far AR has come.

The basic idea is to overlay something onto the real world (using a webcam) to provide more information than meets the eye. E.g. you walk down a street and view a building through your mobile device; you see a ‘heads-up display’ (or HUD, a term familiar to gamers who play First-Person Shooters) telling you the history of the building you are viewing, its current occupants, and even its price if it’s for sale. We’re talking about adding context to our physical environment. So: it’s reality, but augmented. You get the idea.

AR has been around a while but the technology is only now getting good enough to deliver the experience reliably and at a cost which makes it viable for a mass audience. A static webcam (e.g. the one built into most new PCs and laptops) is currently still best, but as we know mobile devices are getting more and more powerful and mobile will be the key driver for AR to take off.

AR has many applications beyond marketing (yes, there is more to the world!) e.g. museums/ galleries, medicine- for surgical operations, car mechanics/ engineers, tourism +++. Reassuring to know that an idiot-proof overlay will in future remind the car mechanic which tube is the brake fluid hose and the surgeon which is the pulmonary artery …

We, however, are looking at marketing applications of AR: e.g. you scan a printed marker using a static webcam or the one on your mobile device and you see something in ‘3D’ (and in some cases ‘animated’) which in some way enhances the image of the real thing you’re looking at; providing more information i.e. a richer experience. It can bring products, places, things to life which can make people buy. It’s really powerful in-store or at conferences /exhibitions to create compelling, engaging brand experiences. Increasingly, AR will be everywhere that we and our mobile device are; i.e. all around us.

This is a great demo from GE

Just print out the marker/image, switch on your webcam and follow the instructions...

This one is also good, but better if you understand German.

When I first read this article by Faris Yakob last year it really stopped me and made me think about AR and lots of other things (which I guess is the definition of good journalism and good strategic marketing thinking; i.e. have something to say and say it well).

To see AR in various situations, take a look at these:

Mini
Lego
On a mobile in Amsterdam

Damian Ryan, of Results International (a company which has bought and sold many marketing and digital companies), and co-author of the excellent book, Understanding Digital Marketing (Kogan Page) also delivered an interesting presentation at The Online Marketing Show entitled “Winning in the current climate”. When asked ‘what sort of digital business would you start right now? He replied without a second’s hesitation “Augmented Reality- it’s the next big thing.” And he should know.

So look out for Augmented Reality. It’s going to be big. Right now, it’s surprising. Soon it will be commonplace; then the challenge will be to write better software so that the effect is even more stunning.

My personal AR wishlist includes:

a) An instant translation of road signs and notices into the language of your choice (plus extra content, road safety permitting)

b) A clear 3D image of what my daughter’s self-assembly wardrobes might look like when I've finally finished with the drill and screwdriver

c) Meeting people at conferences and exhibitions. Visible Twitter Bubbles (last 3 tweets) plus LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. Instead of sending an IM, you could just walk up to them and…speak, with your mouth! (shocker).

(Unsurprisingly, I know the speed-dating industry is looking closely at AR for their live events; because we all have hidden talents...)

I’d welcome your thoughts on any more possible AR apps, and not just marketing; feel free to comment below, or follow me on Twitter and send me a direct message (DM).

Virals - Reach for the stars

2009-06-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

"We don’t think The Beatles will do anything in this market…"

Capitol Records internal memo, 1963.

What makes a film 'go viral'?

A client asked me this the other day. I thought I would share the gist of what I told her…

Firstly I said: "I don’t know" which I thought was impressively honest of me. (Didn’t all those years working in agencies teach me anything?). I quickly went on to suggest that nobody else knows either. Indeed no-one, but no-one, can guarantee success in viral marketing. That’s part of the fun. You can pretty much guarantee failure if you don’t do the basics (see below). If you do everything right, you are likely to get a good number of views on YouTube and/or Metacafé (not to mention Google Video, Break and Dailymotion). But as to whether your film will 'take off' or 'go stratospheric', well that’s largely in the lap of the gods. Viral marketing is so named, because if you get it right, people forward your video to others in an ever-increasing circle via the wonder of the internet and it spreads like a virus (but in a good way) so that the number of views rises exponentially to a massive number approaching infinity (or something.) Of course just because it's easy to forward the link to your mates doesn't mean people are going to do so. Therein lies both the challenge and the unpredictability of this whole business.

In the same way that a music act or a movie can ‘capture the Zeitgeist’ and take off (in some cases against all the odds), so can a short promotional film (or a game). So read what follows, cross your fingers and hope you’re sitting on the next Beatles,
Slumdog Millionaire or Susan Boyle!

It’s worth clarifying that we’re not talking ‘You’ve Been Framed’ or roller-skating dogs here; except where they are used to promote a brand (e.g. Cadbury’s gorilla) i.e. we are talking about viral marketing. We need to get the brand name/ logo in somewhere. The media isn’t paid for, (it’s 'earned' as the PR people like to say) but in general the creative, production and seeding is.

A few basic principles:

1. Content is king (sorry to resort to cliché)

You must give people a reason to forward your film (which after all reflects on them for thinking the recipient would be interested in it) , so your film needs to be:

• Funny

• Interesting

• Violent

• Risqué

Or some combination of the above!

Of course you may upset some people with violent/ sexy content: be aware what you are doing and the risks attached (certain grannies will probably hate you and certain video sharing sites will probably ban you).

2. Get the length right: as a rough rule of thumb: more than 30 sec; less than 4 minutes

3. Experiment with executions; indeed consider a series with similar creative; awareness can build until you suddenly hit the jackpot

4. Don’t try too hard to sell: you can include your logo and brand name subtly; if the film is considered cool, the kudos will rub off on you

(By the way, branded viral games have their own set of rules; that could be a whole other blog post.)

There’s a another crucial ingredient of a successful viral campaign - seeding. In short, this means putting your film where it will be seen by people who will pass it on; they are the digerati, the movers and shakers (OK basically, cool people like us). It’s giving your viral film ‘critical mass’.

As with many branches of digital marketing, a whole mystique has grown up around ‘seeding strategy'. Specialist seeding agencies have sprung up, promising ‘to put your film where it will get the best possible start in life, at the heart of your target audience’. Needless to say these companies are rather tight-lipped about exactly how they will do this (well none of us likes to give away our intellectual property, after all!). To be serious, there is no doubt that very few films can go truly viral without at least a little judicious seeding but, as usual, there are no cast-iron guarantees.

Here are three virals that made it big- very big. Sure, all do the basics right but, beyond this, all of them just 'took off'; maybe yours will too!

• Will it blend? iPhone

• Transport for London Awareness test

• Honda Cogs

For this last, by Wieden + Kennedy (London), credit to: executive creative directors Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth, art director Matt Gooden, copywriter Ben Walker and agency producer Rob Steiner. OK it was shot (live) as a TV commercial, but it’s so good it works brilliantly as a viral film. Which all goes to prove that those old ‘traditional media’ skills are far from obsolete; increasingly we’re just going to be seeing the fruits of such creativity and production expertise in new and surprising places. Which is nice.

So go on; send your viral film out there into the big wide world. Reach for the stars. Good luck!

SEO: "seek, and ye shall find." (Luke 11)

2009-06-04T11:41:00.001-07:00

Anyone remember WebCrawler? Infoseek? HotBot? AltaVista? Lycos? As long as we’ve had search engines, we’ve had SEO (= search engine optimisation). And as Microsoft announces a UK roadshow to launch its new search platform, Bing, as a serious rival to Google, SEO is firmly established as part of the digital marketing landscape.

Indeed SEO or 'natural search' is a whole separate industry these days. It can be defined as: helping site owners to optimise their ranking in Google and other search engines when users search by certain relevant “keywords”.

The evolving role of the practice of SEO is currently a hot topic in digital marketing circles. Some are even suggesting its days are numbered as the search engines (especially Google) get wise to sharp practices to manipulate rankings.

To clarify: we are not talking here about paid search (= pay per click) e.g. Google AdWords, where one ‘buys’ keywords (via a bidding process) and Google displays one’s clickable text-only ad as a sponsored link in the Google Results page. (see the results at the top and right hand side of the Google Results Page.) The 'opposite' of paid search is organic or natural search which is the subject of this post.

Why does SEO matter? Look at the facts: 90% of all web sessions start with a search engine (Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, Ask Jeeves etc.) This figure has been increasing year on year as more and more people give up on bookmarking sites (far less actually remembering urls!) and rely on Google to find the site for them. So if you have a website, and someone 'Googles' the thing you sell, you want to appear (or be ‘ranked’) near the top of the listings and certainly on the first page. If you are not, people may never find your site and you won’t be very successful. In fact you risk being invisible, lonely and broke (to misquote Cory Doctorow). Received wisdom is that 62% of searchers click on a result within the first page of results, and approx 28% of all searchers click on results within page 2 or 3. Readers of a mathematical bent will notice that this leaves only 10% i.e. hardly anyone looks beyond page 3. (This raises the question: how many pages of search results do users really require? - which could be the topic of another blog post or indeed a session at an SEO conference!)

One more fact: Google handles between 75% and 86% (UK: Hitwise April 2009) of all search traffic depending on which country you look at; so for the purposes of this post when we say “Google” we mean “Search Engine”. Unhealthy? Maybe, but realistic currently.

Suppose I have a website which sells Golf equipment. Keywords of interest to me might be: Golf equipment, Golf gear, Golf accessories, Golf clubs, Golf bags, Golf clothes, Golf apparel etc etc.

I might wish to consider optimising my site for any or all of these “keywords” (which are often than not more than one actual word). One can achieve high rankings more easily for niche keywords: If you search Google for “Golf Equipment” you will get about 37,700,000 results. (in 0.25 seconds!) At 10 results per page that gives us approx 3,770,000 pages of results. If however one lives in the West Midlands of England and is looking for a professional to stuff your dead cat, and you search by “Taxidermists in Wolverhampton” one gets only 16,900 results but this is still 1,690 pages. Only a few sites make it onto page 1 and many excellent sites languish invisibly on page 500+.

So SEO is, these days, a major digital marketing discipline; but is it legitimate? i.e. both ethical and good business?

Let’s just have a look at the agendas of the various parties involved:

• Google: wants its search engine to be good at its job; i.e. it wants as many users as possible to have the best possible experience; i.e. to find a selection of suitable sites as quickly and as painlessly as possible. It particularly wants to direct users to site/s with well written and presented content that best deliver what they were looking for; in pursuit of this it tries to interpret their intention (which is not always exactly what they type in to the Google search box). If it succeeds, it will attract more traffic and make more money out of AdWords (its pay- per-click product).

• The Site owner: wants high ranking in search results whenever a user types in a keyword which it deems relevant to its business; i.e. they want to maximize quality and quantity of traffic to their site.

• The SEO consultancy/ professional: wants to do a good job for the Site owner i.e. get the site up the Google rankings, driving more traffic, pleasing the client and thus getting more optimization briefs and making more money.

Good site design and legitimate SEO helps everyone: users who search by a given keyword find a relevant site which delivers what they were looking for and provides a good experience. The SEO professional and the design/build agency should work together to make the site visible to search engines which pleases them since they are helping their customers (=searchers). The Google spiders (or crawlers) look at millions of web pages and assess their relevance to a particular search (yes, it’s amazing I know). It’s absolutely OK to help them by a little judicious signposting (like putting up a sign in the street outside your shop; effectively the site is ‘putting its best foot forward’) . Also, if you can get plenty of inbound links (i.e. other sites publishing links to your site) Google likes this: it suggests your site must be of high quality. It’s OK to solicit these links (e.g. if you are a florist, you might ask local chocolate shops if they want to link to your site). So far so good.

The problems occur when SEO practitioners and/ or site owner Webmasters attempt to deceive the search engine spiders (and therefore ultimately the user) by employing a range of techniques to manipulate the Google rankings (including any or all of: spamdexing, cloaking, doorway pages, keyword stuffing, invisible text, deals with link farms +++).

Ever since Search was invented, unscrupulous SEO experts (known as ‘black hat’ operators) have been trying to manipulate it, i.e. to get people to visit sites under false pretences, taking them to sites which were not what they were looking for; the result being an unfair advantage to the site owner and/or confused/ dissatisfied visitors, a scenario which benefits no-one except the black hat guys! If they succeed, they achieve an inappropriately high Google ranking and ultimately can even take the user to a site that wasn’t what they were looking for. Of course it isn’t always as cut and dried as this: in many cases, the user would be equally satisfied by any one of a number of search results, and techniques may be used which give a good site a ‘helping hand’ in the listings. There are grey areas: like how many times can one legitimately include a given keyword in one’s content: 3 times in a page makes the site relevant, three times in a sentence looks sinister and may lead to Google penalizing or even delisting your site.

Of course, there is one obvious question which we haven’t addressed here (space doesn’t allow): who decides which SEO techniques are OK and which are ‘black hat’? which can get your site demoted in the listings or even banned? Of course currently it’s Google who decides. 'Baddies' clearly operate in this space so some sanctions are necessary; but should a single company (even our buddies at Google) be given so much power?

Effectively the black hat SEO specialists are engaged in an ever-shifting battle of wits with the search engines and the (secret) Google algorithm is certainly much more sophisticated at picking up dubious SEO techniques than it was 10 years ago. eg. stuffing in loads of invisible keywords used to be much more prevalent (and effective!). Even legitimate SEO has evolved with the Search Engines. Metatags (invisible to users but viewed by the spiders) used to be very important; less so today. Indeed, if you read a book on SEO dated before 2004 (say) I respectfully suggest you may be wasting your time!

As part of an ongoing mission to fight spam and improve user experience, Google is apparently implementing a series of changes to the algorithm (it doesn't announce these). In the future, as Google moves towards behaviour/ intent based search, it is possible that each person who conducts a search for a particular term will get different results based on their interests, search history and even their location. As a result, SEO will need to evolve. One possibility is that link building will become far less important in the future of SEO because Google will determine the ‘value’ (= relevance) of a website based on how visitors engage with it. This would imply that the ultimate goal of site owners should be to provide compelling content that entices visitors to read, share, bookmark, and so on.

Another possibility is that search engines will in future provide user-controlled rankings. Users might have the chance to vote for sites they like and sites will get ranked based on such votes. (The model would be similar to Digg and Reddit). Of course, search engines will need to ensure that votes are genuine in order to prevent black hat SEO specialists from manipulating the results.

Google and the other search engines are raising the bar in SEO. Initially, this will make it harder for SEO professionals but the end result must be good. Spammers and 'black hat's will have more difficulty succeeding in their unscrupulous efforts and search engine users will be provided with content that is more relevant.

As always, the aim of webmasters and SEO professionals should be to appeal to humans not machines. Your site should certainly be optimized (to give you a fighting chance in the competitive marketplace) but your priority should always be to meet human needs and provide solutions. Considering the direction that SEO is going, human actions and behaviour will ultimately determine rankings. Your SEO success will depend on your ability to engage people through great content and shrewd social media marketing. This is as it should be.

The internet has transformed our lives: at work, at home and increasingly on the move. The Web is becoming richer and more complex every day. To cope with the mind boggling amount of data it offers, we need increasingly sophisticated tools to make sense of it: to 'organise the world’s information'. Unscrupulous operators will always try to manipulate the search engine spiders (or crawlers) to gain a higher ranking but they must be prevented from doing this; it’s in the public interest, as well as that of Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, Live Search/ Bing and not least genuine SEO professionals, that the user can find the 'right' site as rapidly as possible every time.

If one believes that Advertising (assisted by agents as 'paid advocates') i.e. promoting the benefits of a product or service to the target audience by all appropriate media, is a legitimate activity in a free society, then it follows that SEO is OK and indeed desirable: it helps honest merchants reach their willing audiences. Indeed, Google doesn’t want to kill SEO; and even if it ceases to be such a dominant player in the search world, other search engines are likely to want to work with ‘honest’ SEO professionals rather than against them.

So current rumours of the imminent death of SEO are much exaggerated. As long as search engines publish free lists of ‘relevant’ sites, SEO will exist. Naturally (sorry) like everything in the digital world, SEO will need to evolve and adapt. It will do so. Intent and behaviour-based search will grow. Social search (e.g. via Twitter) will enable users to ask questions to aggregated groups of real people in real time. Not so easy for site owners to optimize! Watch this space.

Mobile: marketing on the fourth screen

2009-05-18T03:15:00.000-07:00

"Mr. Watson - come here - I want to see you." (A G Bell 1876)

My family and I just saw Coraline in 3D at our local cinema – it was absolutely fantastic. (Yes, it’s reached Europe at last!). The sound was great; no interruptions; totally immersive and escapist. It wouldn’t have been half the experience on TV. That got me thinking about screens: big and small.

Apart from our wrist-watch (maybe another blog post!) the smallest screen most of us regularly look at is our mobile phone (=cellphone). Apparently 7 out of 10 people now sleep next to their mobile phone (not sure how many of these phones are turned on).

It is generally (although not universally) agreed that the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. He was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876. The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. In 1879, the Bell company acquired Thomas Edison's patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union. This made the telephone practical for long distances; it was no longer necessary to shout to be heard on the receiving telephone. It’s hard for us to imagine today what a change in people’s lives that was: to actually hear someone’s voice when they were physically many miles away. Bell envisaged that the telephone would be used for important things (like fire alarms or by Heads of State to discuss whether they should go to war or not) rather than for trivial chatter. But hey, you can’t win ‘em all.

But that was of course only the beginning. Today we have the iPhone: Touch screen, Voice, Music, SMS, Mobile Internet plus upwards of 30,000 apps. To mis-quote Fatboy Slim (and before him Virginia Slims cigarettes) in terms of telephony, "We’ve come a long way baby".

Today there are 1.3 billion fixed landline phones in the world.

950 million mobile phones were sold last year alone.

There are an estimated 4.1bn mobile phone subscriptions.

It is estimated that 74% of all mobile phone subscribers send and receive text messages on their phones.

There are more mobile phones than registered automobiles in the world today.

Not only is the growth of mobiles changing society in developed countries, but it is also dramatically changing the lives of people in developing countries. For instance in Kenya 1 in 3 adults owns a mobile device.

Within the next 5 to 10 years it is predicted that as much as 90% of the Earth's population will be actively using mobiles.

***A LITTLE HISTORY***
(you can skip this bit if you don’t find it as fascinating as I do).

The first mobile ‘phones arrived in the early 80s and were the size of a large brick. Above you can see Martin Cooper of Motorola with the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X which was originally launched in 1983.

Despite the bulk, it was an incredible and liberating thing to be able to take your telephone with you; unfettered by fixed lines and cables and even by the need to connect to a car battery as with previous ‘car telephones’. At first these devices were purely telephones without wires and there were problems with battery life, signal and sound quality.

The mobile phone started life as the two-way radio (or mobile rig). These were installed in vehicles e.g. taxi cabs, police cars and ambulances, although were not strictly ‘mobile phones’ as they weren't normally connected to a phone ‘network’. Although the earliest ‘mobile’ phones were installed permanently in vehicles, later versions, e.g. the transportables (or bag phones) could also be carried and used as mobile or as portable two-way radios.

The earliest true mobile telephones were dubbed ‘first generation’ mobile telephones, also called 1G. These devices were also called cellular mobile radio telephones, and were based on analogue signals.

Second generation (2G) mobile telephones were introduced in the 1990s. 2G mobile phone systems were different because of their use of digital circuit switched transmission and the introduction of advanced mobile phone to network signaling.

The birth of 2G systems saw telephones move from bulky 1G telephones to smaller hand-held items, which were much more portable. This change was made possible through technological developments including more advanced batteries and energy-saving electronics.

2G phones offered text messaging, initially on GSM networks and eventually on most digital networks. The very first machine-sent SMS text message was sent in 1991 in the UK. The first person-to-person text message was sent in 1993 in Finland. SMS messaging has become the communication method of choice for millions and many people now prefer sending SMS messages to placing voice calls.

The invention of 3G (third generation) technologies permitted network operators (e.g. Vodafone) to offer their users a wider range of more advanced services. These included video calls and wireless internet. Handsets with larger screens (first mono then colour) were launched to handle these new functionalities.

3G networks enable network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency. Services include wide-area wireless voice telephone, video calls and broadband wireless data, all in a mobile environment. 3G networks are basically wide-area cellular telephone networks that evolved to incorporate high-speed Internet access and video telephony.

Ever since the birth of 3G mobile phone technology, people have been talking about 4G. This technology will point to the future of mobile phones, creating the most advanced handsets and services yet. Services to be developed include live streaming of radio and TV programmes to 3G handsets with content owners including Disney recently announcing that they'll be offering these services.
***END OF HISTORY BIT***

The iPhone, with its touch-screen functionality, has changed the game and set a new standard. Apple’s iPhone is an internet-connected multimedia Smartphone. Since its minimal hardware interface lacks a physical keyboard, the multi-touch screen provides a ‘virtual keyboard’ when necessary. The iPhone functions as a camera phone (also including text messaging and visual voicemail), a portable media player (equivalent to an iPod), and provides Internet connectivity (with email, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi). Apple announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007, after months of rumors and speculation. The iPhone was introduced in the US on June 29, 2007 before being marketed worldwide. Time magazine named it the "Invention of the Year" in 2007.

So where will the development of mobile telephony end? Of course it won’t; so maybe we should ask instead: in what direction should it go? And what are the implications for marketers?

Today, more and more people are performing a wide range of daily functionalities through their mobile phones. In major parts of Asia and Africa mobile phones have completely replaced landlines as the major form of communications, since they require less infrastructure investment and are cheaper to operate. In Scandinavia and Eastern Europe parking your car involves paying for the meter via a mobile phone. In Israel there are more mobile phones than people and in addition to texting and calling, people are using their mobiles to shop, search, pay, play as well as communicate with the rest of the world.

Mobile applications will take another major step forward with the recent introduction by Google of the Android mobile operating system. Open source functionalities will open the market up, in the same way that open source programming did a few years back for Content Management Systems, Design and programming functionalities. The inevitable proliferation of widgets, tools, functionalities and channels will drive the market for new and better handsets.

So what are the mobile phone designers aiming to achieve? I suggest a number of things:

To produce a device that feels good, and looks good
- in many parts of the world and in many consumer segments, the mobile is a status symbol which says something about the owner. Young people often define themselves by their Mobile brand and its (interchangeable) cover. The jury is out on how small handsets can (and should) be; there is a trade-off between functionality and size/weight. Full 'Qwerty' keyboards, predictive text, touch screen, flip up lids? Business or gaming? Individual consumers also have specific priorities/ requirements.

and delivers on functionality
- voice, text, camera and mobile internet. Coming soon: video/ movies. Also QR (quick response) or 2D codes (on printed items e.g. magazines, flyers, posters, even buildings) will allow us to click on the code (i.e. scan it using the phone’s camera) and go straight to a mobile website (this technique is already widespread in Japan and S. Korea).

We now await the iPhone 3.0…

For marketers, Mobile devices present new opportunities and challenges. The mobile device is ‘always on’ (albeit sometimes on silent) , and most of us carry it with us throughout our waking hours. We can receive calls, voicemail messages, SMSs, emails, Facebook updates and Twitter streams. It is a very personal device; it is shared with no-one and we normally access it “in private”. It is even more interactive than our PC (voice is a powerful functionality!). On the downside, screen and keyboard size are limited.

UK Mobile Ad Spending doubled in 2008 (IAB = UK Interactive Advertising Bureau). This has big implications for the media industries in general, and advertising in particular. The recent big growth opportunity in advertising has been ‘online’ i.e. internet advertising (which now accounts for about 10% of the total global ad spending) and which has recently been gaining share at the expense of traditional mass media ad spend, with TV and magazines hard hit and newspapers really struggling. Let’s remember though that mobile is still only a tiny sliver of all interactive ads and represented only about 1% of the total global ad spend last year.

We can expect the national mobile ad spending numbers in advanced European mobile markets to echo UK numbers (Spain, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Ireland etc) and the other European markets (Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland etc) to follow a little later.

There are markets where mobile advertising is far more advanced than in the UK both in the types of ads, as well as in the proportion of the national ad spend. Japan and South Korea are clear global leaders here; Spain is well ahead of the UK as Europe's most advanced mobile advertising market. There are also ‘unlikely’ countries where the proportion of national ad spending on mobile is far ahead of that in the US and UK - India for example. In India the reach of internet based interactive ads is very limited, so from very early on, the Indian ad industry has reached for the mobile as an interactive channel; India has been very successful in developing advergames for mobile.

Nokia has famously dubbed the mobile phone “the fourth screen”.

Should content providers and advertisers seek to replicate the internet experience we have at our desks for mobile users? I suggest not.

After all, why do we still go to the movies? Big screen, great sound. Great all-round experience (better 3D and tactile sensations may be next). We don’t, in general, eat our dinner in the cinema and we can’t pause the movie to go to the bathroom. Equally, our laptop can go with us on the train or to a client’s office. I suggest for the foreseeable future, there will be distinct roles for Cinema, TV, PC/laptop and cellphone.

In the future, these devices will no longer be called 'cellphones'; they will be 'handhelds' or even 'communicators' (well it was good enough for Captain Kirk). Of course they are already computers; indeed today's high-end Smartphone can surpass the performance of a mid-range laptop computer of only 5 years ago. 4G networks promise ubiquitous fast mobile broadband connections, opening up all kinds of new mobile experiences.

So let’s not force mobile into a box labelled 'mobile internet'. Mobile is different and should be approached differently: used for what it is good at. On a small screen, people don’t want to read large amounts of text and, for my money, they won’t want to watch movies. Quick clips and small chunks of text: news headlines, weather forecasts, sports scores and pop videos being typical items. And let's not forget LOCATION. By definition, these devices are used on the move; location dependent content is highly relevant.

Advertising on mobiles should also be different from TV or PC-web: consider the user experience and situation and don’t ask people to do anything fiddly or requiring a lot of reading; a short mini-clip or an ‘awareness banner’ with a single click response is about the limit. Mobile is good at short messages- chunks of content. ‘Click to call’ is very powerful. So is anything dependent on location (where are my friends? The nearest restaurant? Subway station?). Mobile is great at some things and less good at others; as marketers we need to understand this and work with it. There is room in most people's lives for a range of screen sizes; we expect something different from each. After all, if mobile devices could do everything, we wouldn’t need laptops. Or cinemas.

"If you had come to me a hundred years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half my correspondence by means of it, but I don’t understand it. Think of that little stretched disk of iron at the end of a wire repeating in your ear not only sounds, but words—not only words, but all the most delicate and elusive inflections and nuances of tone which separate one human voice from another! Is not that something of a miracle?" Sir William Crookes, 'Pall Mall' (Jan 1903)

In many ways the mobile phone is miraculous. However: (and you may call me a dinosaur if you wish) I'm not planning to watch Coraline on my iPhone any day soon; thanks anyway (and that's not just because the 3D glasses would be a pain to carry around with me).

Video/ audio piracy: you hum it and I'll share it

2009-05-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

Do you download music? If so, do you pay for it? Amazon, iTunes Store and Napster, among others, sell music downloads; simple to use, fast and legal. However it is estimated that 95% of music downloads are illegal. (IFPI 2009)

Recently four directors of the Swedish file sharing website, The Pirate Bay, were arrested, found guilty of ‘aiding and promoting copyright theft’ and sentenced to jail. There are powerful interests opposed to file sharing of music, TV and Movies.

In a simpler age, Sir Paul McCartney sang "You never give me your money". But in fact millions of people did, and plenty are still doing so; he recently pronounced the Pirate Bay verdict to be fair. However in a previous interview, Sir Paul (almost) admitted he would have ripped off music by Elvis and his other heroes if he’d had access to today’s technology back in the day (and I don’t think he meant that would only have applied to a few ‘scouser scallys’ either...) Herein lies the dilemma; is theft of IP the same as stealing money? Or a car? Or a DVD? Just because it's possible and un-policeable, should the copyright owners (music labels, movie studios, artists et al) give up and find another job?

Indeed, why should everything on the internet be free? Shouldn't talented people be able to earn a living by entertaining others? If not, who will choose to be: Actors/ Producers/ Musicians/ Journalists? Next time our mate offers us a memory stick/ DVD loaded with pirated content in the pub, should we pause to consider whether we may be stifling the career of the next Lady GaGa (actually, on second thoughts...OK bad example.) MySpace Music, and new sites like Spotify, Last.fm (as well as smaller rivals e.g. Deezer, Qtrax) are rewriting the rule book. Many questions remain: will advertisers support the new legal sources of free music? Will consumers accept some ads as their price for getting their favourite music for nothing? Will the premium services sell?

Of course the music labels were in a difficult situation; the technology moved so fast that they lost the initiative and lost control. So did they give up or fight? The former was commercial suicide and thus not an option. But how to fight? The internet is not going away. File sharing will only get easier. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is both universally hated and fraught with difficulties (e.g. how many computers can you download the protected track onto? If 3 computers, is this admitting that you and 2 mates can have the song for your 79p? What happens if your laptop is stolen or your hard drive crashes?) So, perhaps the best alternative model is that you pay once then the music is yours forever. The retailer (e.g. Amazon or iTunes) is tacitly accepting that you will share with your mates but at least ONE of you has paid! DRM-protected music is now effectively finished, with both iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 download service abandoning it. Some would say the Music Industry, under pressure from market forces, has at last accepted reality.

Strange things are happening at the moment. Madonna has done a ‘360 deal’ with concert promoter Live Nation; recorded music sales are way down the list of the ways she will make money. Radiohead invited us to decide how much we wanted to pay for In Rainbows (I still feel uncomfortable about what I paid, but I don't think I should, having paid top-dollar for their previous albums). Lily Allen, Kate Nash and the Arctic Monkeys broke on MySpace and YouTube. will.i.am happily gives his music away and makes money from touring and merchandise.

As we have noticed, there is a recession right now; indeed Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney each just lost £60 million of their net worth. But we shouldn't worry about these Rock Knights. They've made their money and they can make more from touring, advertising, publishing, sponsorship and merchandise.

There is something much bigger going on here than the current recession. It’s the new up-and-coming acts who might just find it too tough to break into the mainstream i.e. to make it pay so that they give up and as a result less new music is made and all we are left with is the Knights’ back catalogue, Sir Cliff’s latest Christmas Single (on mp3 and vinyl naturally) and the winning song from the latest TV talent contest.

Currently, what has happened in Music currently shows few signs of happening in TV/ Movies. The movie and TV studios are currently fighting tooth and nail to stamp out piracy; they want you to go to the Movies, buy the DVD, or at least rent from someone who has bought it. Maybe they will move their position once people stop buying DVDs as they have done with CDs. Until then DRM is very much alive as regards video content. DVDs now come with an anti piracy warning; “You wouldn't steal a car...handbag...mobile phone...piracy is theft” etc. Strong stuff.

Throughout history, technological change has caused upheaval and conflict, as established structures, industries and personal fortunes are threatened and even wiped out. The Luddites fought against mechanization of the mills. There was a powerful lobby defending the canal industry when it became threatened by railways. However machines and railways won. Today, Newspapers and Travel Agents are struggling as consumer habits change. The internet has compelled the music business to re-evaluate its business model; once again technology has forced changes in the economy and indeed in society. Maybe the movie business is next. As we all know, the internet is a powerful agent of change and it seems certain that we "ain’t seen nothing yet".

Branding: 'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.'

2009-04-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

(aka ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’)

Marketing Week has just been redesigned (for non-UK or non-marketing readers, it’s a magazine and of course a website). That got me thinking about how much things are changing in marketing right now.

A few years ago I wrote a book about marketing. Here is a short extract. (well it’s my blog after all).

“The marketing world is changing fundamentally...Direct Marketing, Sales Promotion and Advertising can never again be viewed as discrete, non-overlapping disciplines…marketing communications must, in addition to being creative, also be relevant…this requires targeting…individuals can supply information about themselves which assists the advertiser’s efforts to direct relevant messages.”

I was arguing that general (‘image’) advertisers could learn from the DM people as regards to creating a dialogue with the audience and using data intelligently to target appropriate marketing communications.

A far more illustrious author, David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy and Mather and one of the original ‘Mad Men’, once wrote in the same vein (but more succinctly):

“One day all agencies will be direct marketing agencies.”

Since the great man committed this to paper, there has certainly been a massive change in marketing, namely the arrival of the internet. After the ‘false start’ of the first internet boom, marketing on the web, online, digital, call it what you will, has come back big time, as was inevitable. For marketers, it offers many of the most powerful features of traditional TV, press and radio advertising, combined with the convenience of being able to make an immediate response without the need to clip a coupon, post back a reply card or even reach for the phone (this inherent responsiveness was one of the key qualities of DM which Ogilvy admired). A response can be immediately rewarded with relevant additional information. DM people used to dream about such media! Today’s online display advertising can include rich media, with the user in control of expanding the banner, playing the film, and turning the sound on or off. i.e. this is something like TV advertising with a supercharged remote control. But we're not just talking about buying ‘space’ on websites. Indeed, the new social media are offering fresh marketing opportunities which are currently little understood. And as we carry around increasingly powerful computing devices in our pockets, mobile marketing is looking likely to be the ‘next big thing’.

These changes have already had structural repercussions for the marketing industry which are not over yet. Client companies have created ‘Head of Digital Marketing’ roles. Specialist digital agencies have grown up, profiting from the ever-growing ‘niche’ that is digital marketing. Traditional agencies, some moving a little more slowly than others, have tried to get into digital by parachuting in digital ‘experts’, with varying degrees of success. All are reviewing their business models. They are aiming at a moving target, since digital marketing is itself changing at a bewildering rate. How can a Marketing Director decide what % of the budget (already under massive pressure from the CFO and CEO) to invest in Social Media? Or Virtual Worlds? Or Mobile? Has Twitter peaked? What will replace it? Or is it the new Facebook? Some technologies and brands will fall by the wayside; others will prosper. How to select the winners and subsequently demonstrate ROI from each element of the (digitally enhanced) marketing mix, separately and in combination?

Agencies of all colours will naturally seek to present themselves as the clients’ counsellors, offering to guide them through the changing media landscape; but will the clients believe they are indeed unbiased expert advisers? Meanwhile the technology keeps moving forward. There are new developments seemingly every week and no-one can afford to be left behind (or even to appear to be!). We are living in interesting times.

Yet in many ways things haven’t changed that much. As of old, agencies love to introduce labels, in order to carve out a specialism which affords them the closest they can get to a (hopefully profitable) USP. Hence today we have specialist digital agencies and even specialist SEO, Affiliate and Mobile agencies. Many are thriving, even in the current climate. Clients on the other hand, are generally less excited about how their agency tags itself and more concerned with getting the job done. Same old same old…

People are talking (recently) about Integrated Marketing . But of course this isn’t new either; (see my quote above). It’s always been the Marketing Director’s job to orchestrate integrated marketing; the challenge today, as always, is how to achieve this. As ever, there is a range of possible solutions. There is undoubtedly room for ‘full-service’ digital agencies (AKQA has just launched a media department). There is also a role for specialist Search, Affiliate and Mobile consultancies. Digital agency Glue London is now doing some ‘above the line’ advertising for its clients. Traditional media, although under pressure, still accounts for more than 50% of most marketing budgets. In today’s digital marketing world, there’s still room for a range of agency specialists in offline and online disciplines so long as they respect each other’s roles and work together for the greater good of the brand.

Let’s just pause to remember why we are spending clients' shareholders’ money on marketing communications: two giants of 20th century marketing were in no doubt:

David Ogilvy told his staff: "we sell - or else."

and Raymond Rubicam, founder of Young and Rubicam, famously said:

"The only purpose of advertising is to sell. It has no other justification worth mentioning."

If we replace ‘advertising’ with the broader term ‘marketing communications’, I suggest this is still a useful mantra for today’s marketers. Maybe not immediate sales. But soon. And of course we can only sell effectively if we are targeting the right people with engaging messages; indeed digital marketing increasingly offers powerful techniques to enable us to serve the right message to the right person at the right time (see behavioural targeting)…

Both Ogilvy and Rubicam preached about the need to define what your brand stands for: i.e. establish its brand essence (or USP, the 'Unique Selling Proposition' first articulated by Rosser Reeves) and then communicate this to the defined target audience: creatively, confidently and consistently over time. Easy to say and challenging to deliver: no change there either.

So Good Luck to Marketing Week (and of course marketingweek.co.uk). Today, more than ever, marketers need to keep up with the news and to share best practice. As marketers, we all believe in strong design in order better to communicate high-quality content. As many famous long-lived brands (including Heinz, Nescafé, Kodak and Brylcreem) are well aware, this requires periodic refreshment. And of course there are lots of new things for us to learn about- especially in the digital space. Today’s digital marketing certainly requires a raft of creative and developer ‘craft skills’ unknown to David Ogilvy and those sharp-suited, immaculately Brylcreemed ‘Mad Men’.

However: just because it’s new, doesn’t mean it’s any good; or right for the brand, or a better use of budget than ‘old’ techniques. So let’s embrace digital, reaching and engaging our target audience in their increasingly online lives BUT let’s not allow these wonderful and exciting new technologies opening up seemingly every week to dazzle us and to distract us from the fundamentals of branding and marketing as espoused by Messrs Ogilvy and Rubicam. These principles are unchangingly valid and will still hold good when we have at our disposal marketing channels we can’t even imagine today.

These are a few of my favourite things (2)

2009-04-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

- Cool Digital Stuff (no credit or liability sought or accepted).

You know how it is. Sometimes, in fact often, one comes across something in the wonderful world of the web which is just too good to keep to yourself. Yes I am aware that many will have seen these before. But if one person discovers something here and gets joy or inspiration from it and shares it then... Well you get the idea. Enjoy.

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Serious stuff

Those in digital marketing need to be aware of what ‘normal’ people are thinking. Here are two points of view:

savetheinternet.com

and an article from Privacy International

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Creative stuff

Just great

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Lastly, two takes on some interesting new (ish) technology

Microsoft Surface

and the spoof version

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Microblogging: might as well face it, you’re addicted to Twitter

2009-04-13T10:43:00.001-07:00

If we do something which we enjoy, it's entirely rational and indeed human to seek to repeat the experience to achieve the same gratification again; especially if one feels able to afford the money and time required and it apparently does no-one any harm. To some extent we are all susceptible; but when and why does an acceptable habit/ hobby become an addiction?

Of course it’s a matter of degree and it comes down to this: some people just have addictive personalities. If you have a basic susceptibility, you can choose from alcohol, narcotics, the slots in Vegas, Grand Theft Auto, porn, rewatching Season Four of Friends (“soooo much sharper on Blu-Ray”) repurchasing (again) the entire Beatles back catalogue (“sooooo much clearer with the new digital remastering”) or buying the new Manchester United 'Away Kit' for the boy (“he’d be bullied at school if he didn’t have it”).

Twitter is certainly the new social media phenomenon: its traffic has grown 900 per cent in just one year, politicians, celebrities, athletes and business leaders have made headlines with their tweets.

Twitter received four million unique visitors for the month of February, up from 123,000 from the same month last year. It's made a massive jump from 14th most popular social-networking site on the Internet to No. 3, behind Facebook and MySpace (for now).

And so it was inevitable that as Twitter took off, it would touch certain people who are natural addicts and yes you guessed it, they are now ‘Twitter addicts’. To use the slightly ‘naff’ jargon of the Twitterati (oops! there I go myself) they are Twitterholics. And yes, also inevitably there are online forums and websites to help such people.

The more light-hearted online mentions of this subject include 5 tell-tail signs:

• You name your first child @babygirl1 (and, naturally, you tweet during the birth)
• Your Mom joins Twitter in order to contact you
• You complain when your kids don’t ‘retweet’ you
• You never say or write anything using more than 140 characters
• You start to ‘unfollow’ people in real life (believe me, they don’t like it!)

On a more serious note, Tweeters can find themselves neglecting their responsibilities and suffering accordingly (family , friends, schoolwork , job) which is a good time to admit that you are spending too much time on Twitter and resolve to limit one's ‘tweet time’.

Many people I know are on LinkedIn for business and Facebook (or MySpace) for social interaction; most successfully separate the two and project suitably different personas in each; after all, we all dress for work (even if it’s polo shirts and chinos rather than white shirts and dark suits depending on where we work and whether our job title contains the word ‘digital’). With Twitter it can be difficult to tell where social stops and business starts and having two separate Twitter accounts is a step too far for most mortals.

I suggest each of us should decide why we are using social media including Twitter and set ourselves objectives; i.e. ask "what are we seeking to get out?" This is a necessary first step to evaluating against what we are putting in and so checking that the balance is working for us.

The reality is that sometimes it's necessary for us children to finish our homework before we go out to play. Of course it gets a bit more complex when the homework is actually blurred with play. In reality, few of us can be Madonna’s tour manager, the chief designer at Ferrari, or the lead technical developer on Oblivion 2 /The Elder Scrolls V and even if we are, we still need to compartmentalize and juggle our lives; work/ business/ home/ family/ friends. Twitter and other social media tools can be part of achieving that healthy balance. If we get it right we should be HAPPY.

OK that’s more philosophy that you usually get from this blog. Must get back to doing something useful…

So by all means follow me on Twitter ; just keep it under control, OK?

Data privacy: 'I am not a number; I am a FREE MAN!'

2009-04-08T01:19:00.000-07:00

(No. 6 in The Prisoner, ITC 1967-1968)

In the UK, Internet service providers must now keep records of emails and online phone calls under controversial new government regulations which came into force this week.

In the internet age, does our right, as citizens of a ‘free’ society, to enjoy privacy inevitably conflict with the responsibility of governments to keep us secure and with the objectives of marketers to sell us products and services?

As internet marketers, we have an ever growing arsenal of analytics tools available to monitor and study visitors’ behaviour on our site, where they came from and at what point we lose them. Behavioural targeting offers the ‘silver bullet’ of directing our message with minimum wastage.

As consumers, we are increasingly leaving a trail of internet footprints revealing much about our online habits and thus about ourselves. Should this worry us?

What will be the end-result of this growing lack of privacy? What happens when everything we do is monitored and recorded?

In 1949, English novelist George Orwell published his most famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The nightmarish vision of a society controlled by a totalitarian regime which monitors every citizen 24/7 and consequently knows everything about them has given the English language several phrases, including 'Room 101' (the worst place in the world) the 'Thought Police' and most memorably 'Big Brother is Watching You'.

1984 has come and gone but 25 years later, many fear that much of this ‘Orwellian vision’ is coming true. The Government and ‘Big Business’ know more about us than ever before. The internet revolution has further complicated the complex set of issues surrounding the collection and manipulation of personal data about individual citizens by Government and corporations.

Most of us accept CCTV cameras as a necessary evil since we believe they will protect us from crime (or because we don’t really think about it!). But how much solid evidence is there that CCTV has brought about changes in the way that criminals behave i.e. that it has, in fact, made people more secure or safe? And what is the cost? We are being watched and potentially permanently recorded when we go shopping, park our car, wait for a train. Again, is this a price we are happy to pay?

Does the British Government need ID cards to combat terrorism? Many would suggest that those capable of coordinating a terrorist attack in the UK re not going to be defeated by ID cards. They would be able to obtain fraudulent ID. And what of the effect on the privacy of the rest of us, who are no threat to the security of The Realm i.e. people who won't buy or fraudulently obtain a card? Wired.co.uk reports that the British Police have identified a number of children at risk of being 'radicalised' and presumably of becoming terrorists. So what action is it reasonable to take against or 'to help' them?

Some would say that the only way of preventing all terrorism, or all child abuse, is to create a society where no-one can ‘get away’ with anything. And in that scenario we would all be living in a prison i.e. we’d be back to Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Cory Doctorow, the author and 'electronic freedom frontier man', maintains there is a false hope in these scenaria. "You can't get to the guilty by persecuting the innocent."

There is a real danger that in today’s digital society both authorities and brands may be accumulating increasing quantities of data for which there is no practical use; i.e. we are collecting it out of habit, or just because we can.

Meanwhile, Google is developing new mapping/ geographical imaging/ location-based products. They seek to be the most comprehensive search engine and reference source, so that their revenue stream continues. The more people use these tools, the more people are drawn to Google, which is good for business. They are already inevitably coming up against privacy issues, especially with Street View and Latitude.

So what does all this mean for internet marketers?

In my experience, most consumers will happily share a certain amount of personal data so long as they are fully and clearly informed how it will be used and stored, and they can see a benefit to them in providing it.

This of course depends on the context, whether they TRUST the brand/ company and whether they believe the company has a valid reason for requesting the information.

In today’s digital economy, marketers must recognize that the consumer is in the driving seat... it should be more about making sure that the information on a product is accurate and available when required, than trying to sell people stuff via old-school interruptive techniques. As soon as a company asks for contact information, people get suspicious - indeed there are websites out there designed to help you avoid revealing your true identity or email to companies.

These are not easy issues.

Companies need to be respectful of the privacy of their customers, and avoid asking them to register unless they are offering the customer something of tangible value in return - more than a stream of product information. For example, if a hayfever remedy brand sets up a support group for people with hayfever and provides high-quality unique content on a dedicated website, that would be a good use of people's details, whereas collecting emails to send monthly promotions for their latest product might not (and indeed is likely to be counter-productive). Increasingly the majority of consumers are internet-savvy and are prepared to trade data for added value (e.g. exclusive content or special offers); they just require a sufficient incentive.

As marketers have increasingly powerful targeting techniques at their disposal, TRUST becomes even more important. Trust is difficult to earn and easily lost. Privacy concerns are very real and brands need to understand and respect them.

As we know, the internet has already changed the world; and it’s not done yet.

My favourite Blogs

2009-04-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about working in a lively office is the water cooler stuff; someone saying something that makes you laugh, cry, THINK. Today the office can be global and you can chose your water cooler mates. Pretty cool eh?

I read these because each of them gives me something different and each frequently transports me to another world (in a good way). I urge you to check them out and decide whether they speak to you; I hope so.

http://farisyakob.typepad.com/ (this guy really knows his stuff)

http://neilperkin.typepad.com (aka Only Dead Fish)

http://mashable.com/ (always something new and thought-provoking)

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com
(OK it’s a 'magazine', not a blog. But why split hairs? Just read it, will you?)

http://caliinsecondlife.blogspot.com
(This woman invented virtual worlds. Or something.)

Awareness or response?

2009-04-02T09:18:00.000-07:00

At the risk of stating the obvious, advertising is changing.

Today I saw an ad on the London Underground for Abbey Bank (part of Santander group). They currently probably wish they were still a Building Society like good old Nationwide (whose current advertising seems to be suggesting they are too boring to take any risks with your money). However this is by the by.

I don't remember much about the ad but I did notice the call to action:

“Visit your local branch or abbey.com”

6 words.

Hurrah! At last we seem to be freed from "www". Not to mention "http://".

Didn’t take long, did it?

If one types "abbey.com" into Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, one duly gets straight to the Abbey Home Page. It also worked on my Blackberry. Job done.

Admittedly, at Oxford Circus, I couldn’t click on a 2D code to view the mobile website for full information. Indeed I couldn’t even get a mobile signal on the tube. But these things will soon change. Indeed if your brand is well known and you’ve bought all the right urls, it could be argued that you don't even need to promote the website on your ads; people will find "abbey.com" anyway.

There was a time when certain ads were deemed to be ‘image/ awareness’ and others ‘direct response’. The Ad Agency Art Director fought bitterly against cluttering up the former with as much as a phone number (frequently creating a work of what Elvis Costello has termed ‘useless beauty’), while the latter was delegated to a junior team and often ended up as a cluttered mess, pulling response at the expense of the brand image.

Those days are gone. Today, thanks to the internet, every marketing communication can create and reinforce brand image and promote response/ dialogue via whatever medium the consumer prefers.

Today, all ads are 'above the line'. And response drivers.

Virtual Arm feels real

2009-03-31T11:25:00.000-07:00

Fascinating story in New Scientist.

For those of us interested in Virtual Worlds, the exciting question is: "What happens when people start to believe their virtual body (i.e. their avatar) is ‘real’?"

When one first enters Second Life (for instance) one of the interesting things is the freaky feeling of interacting with someone, one-on-one, in real time and yet of having no idea what their real name is, how old they are, whether they are male or female, what they actually look like or even where in the world they are (really) sitting as they type on their computer. However you soon get beyond that; as advertising agency planners say, you “suspend your disbelief”. You actually feel you are your avatar (and that other avatars are ‘real’). This is reinforced when fellow residents of SL compliment you on your new hairstyle, trousers or trainers, or give you note-cards or gifts. They seek your opinions and react to you as a fellow resident. Relationships are formed. Naturally enough, it all starts to feel consistent and ‘real’. And soon you are living (at least part of) your life as your avatar.

So I don't find the New Scientist story at all incredible. Perhaps this experiment points to the future of social media. To a world where we will spend increasing amounts of money and time on our avatar as a means of self expression; reaching out to others and interacting without human limitations/ constraints/ responsibilities i.e. living our virtual lives as fully as our real lives.

In a sense we will truly be our avatar. So of course we won’t like the idea of anyone twisting our virtual arms. It's enough to induce (real) muscle spasms…

Google: they know where we live!

2009-03-27T02:31:00.000-07:00

These are unusually tough times for Google. The company, which is not accustomed to announcing bad news, is cutting 200 jobs in sales and marketing, (following the 100 recruitment jobs earlier this year) the biggest round of layoffs in the company's history. Meanwhile a group of British MPs is up in arms about the new Google Latitude mobile tracking technology and various consumer groups have noticed Google’s share of the search market (79% globally and over 85% in the UK).

Now what's all this fuss about Google Street View? And why is Google doing it?

Well perhaps it sounds like more of an invasion of privacy than it really is: after a successful launch in the US, Google has sent out vans to drive round the streets of 25 UK cities (covering over 22,000 miles!) taking still pictures of houses, shops and inevitably cars and people going about their everyday business. They’ve stuck these images together, constructing 360 degree views. Google has committed to blurring faces and car registration numbers and if you still think you can be identified and you’re not happy, you can complain and they will blur you more and even ‘wipe out’ your house if you wish. I predict the fuss will die down, as it largely has in the US.

As for why Google is doing it, there is only one possible answer; location, location, location. This is related to digital marketers’ holy grail of behavioural targeting; the general idea being to serve you advertising messages e.g. clickable banners, SMSs, Bluetooth alerts etc which are relevant to what you are doing, the mood you are in, and yes, even where you are (or plan to be). For me, this is a good thing. After all, isn't relevant and useful marketing the best sort? Don't most consumers tell us they welcome such helpful information about products and services?

Years ago I worked with a Dutch guy called Harold Goddijn; in fact our agency designed the logo for his start-up company. He didn't have much money but he paid us (on time) and said thank-you (= a good client). He told me with utter conviction that ‘location will be the next big thing in marketing’. Well it's taken a few years for the technology to catch up with the vision but TomTom is now Europe’s leading manufacturer of ‘Sat Nav’ systems (with 2009 forecast revenue over €1.5 billion) and Harold is deservedly a billionaire.

For my (somewhat lesser amount of) money, the UK Information Commissioner was right to ‘green light’ Google Street View. Despite its current difficulties (and these are unusual times for us all!) Google has, in its short corporate lifetime, consistently innovated and pushed the boundaries, at the same time creating what is arguably the world’s coolest brand with very little traditional marketing and promotion. Street View is only sharing images you or I can capture perfectly legally if we have a digital camera (on a 7 foot stick) and enough time to walk the streets of UK cities.

So if a service called something like 'Google Near Here' is next, then bring it on!

These are a few of my favourite things (1)

2009-03-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

- Cool Digital Stuff (no credit or liability sought or accepted).

You know how it is. Sometimes, in fact often, one comes across something in the wonderful world of the web which is just too good to keep to yourself. Yes I am aware that many will have seen these before. But if one person discovers something here and gets joy or inspiration from it and shares it then... Well you get the idea. Enjoy.

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My daughter still hasn’t forgiven me for sending her this link. I really like the shadows.

http://www.onemotion.com/flash/spider
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Great Digital marketing case history: I wish I’d done this!

http://www.aislondon.com/indigo
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This is completely crazy; but inspired. Best on fast connections with the sound up full.

http://www.bio-bak.nl

TFM&A 2009 - a delegate’s tale

2009-03-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

I recently attended the TFM&A show at Earl’s Court. (It stands for “Technology for Marketing and Advertising”, in case you’re wondering.)

I thoroughly enjoyed it; I caught up with some friends (both real life and Twittermates) ex-colleagues and clients and came away with sufficient ‘nuggets’ to justify the time invested. I only have one complaint and it’s a biggie…

As in previous years, the organisers chose to make admission both to the show and to the seminars completely free.

The predictable result was queues all round Earl’s Court 2 for the seminars and keynotes, even ½ an hour before they started. The keynotes were excellent (Danny Meadows-Klue, Kevin Eyres from LinkedIn and Rory Sutherland from Ogilvy were all predictably informative and inspirational) but the crowd control issues were alarming. The staff on the seminar doors were loudly advising delegates to “send an email of complaint” as they turned them away with no more than a piece of paper bearing a url to access the PowerPoint of the presentation they were not able to see in the flesh. I almost felt guilty waving my VIP badge and slipping into the “Fastpass” queue. Almost.

I suppose that’s what you get for putting on a free (to bona fide trade visitors) event about Digital Marketing in Central London in 2009 featuring high-quality speakers. Maybe the many exhibitors appreciated the traffic that the free seminars attracted to the event; unfortunately most punters left one seminar they had fought to get into and apparently felt obliged to go straight into a queue for the keynote, 1 hour later, for fear of not getting in; i.e. they had no chance to visit the stands! There were some interesting variations on the overall theme of overcrowding: I had no trouble getting into the CRM, Mobile and Web usability sessions (even after they’d started). As for anything whose title included “Social Media” or “Analytics”, forget it. Geeky looking Digitalistas were fighting like Hell Knights from Doom 3 in their efforts to barge their way in. Delegates were squatting on the floor in the aisles to listen to Rory Sutherland, much to his amusement.

I found myself thinking there had to be a better way.

Admittedly I'm a digital marketer, not an event organiser. It’s certainly good to see the digital industry in such rude health and of course the web is all about inclusivity and open source and all that but I actually think many delegates would have been prepared to shell out a few quid just to get a seat and to be sure of not having a wasted journey. And no, a virtual event is simply not as rich as a real life experience. (There - I've said it.)

Or am I alone in thinking the paid-for model might work better?

Meanwhile I'm off down the Gym to ‘bulk up’ for the next industry event; it seems that digital has never been so physical…

Mike Berry

Hello World

2008-07-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone.

Here it is.

My first post.

Hard to know what to write, really.

One feels it should be something momentous.

Err...

I'll get back to you.

Mike