Xmas soft launches at Proximity

Ssssshhh.  Our Xmas card website has been quietly launched.   You can find it here:  www.bigkidscalendar.com

Every day in December, Proximity people will be doing silly things to raise money for the children at Great Ormond Street Hospital. They need your donations to inspire them!

Apple Ad Enforcement

Apple, are filing a patent that forces users to answer questions about ads in order to keep using their computers.

The idea that Apple feel they can force people to watch ads so they can use their products (which people have paid for admittedly at a discount) seems:
1) extraordinary
2) on the surface at odds with their brand.... Maybe they should change their name to Microsoft II
3) that if you dig beneath the surface of Apple’s brand in line with how they think and work (though they are offering you a choice)

For more read this - http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/apple-patent-suggests-adsupported-os-on-the-way-1821655.html

giffgaff – the first people-powered mobile network launches...

Giffgaff is a new mobile network that launched today http://giffgaff.com/ (O2 is behind it somewhere).

Giffgaff is an old Scottish word that means give/take. And this is reflected in the business model whereby a lot of the customer servicing is outsourced to the members in return for PayBack – discounts on tariffs and various rewards. So, interesting point of difference here.

Apparently a vast percentage of calls to customer service are for menial requests – account balances, phone settings etc. Outsourcing this to you and I, rather than India, mightn't be such a bad thing.

Their biggish launch idea is pretty cool too. Check out the tools for hire: http://tools.giffgaff.com/

One to watch...

Buy nothing

Amazero is a cute Amazon rip-off discouraging rampant consumerism over the festive period. Scroll down and some of the recommendations are quite amusing.

It's a shame haven't taken it much further as I'd like to read the review for Chesney Hawke's Other Hits album.

http://www.dothegreenthing.com/buynothing

Anyway, I'm off to the shops.

Gucci Eyeweb v's Burberry Art of the Trench

In recent weeks, two major luxury fashion brands, Burberry & Gucci, have taken the plunge and launched social networks built around their brands and products. It’s not a new idea by any means – But it is the first time luxury fashion brands have used social media in this way. Indeed, both Gucci and Burberry heavily promoted these sites at last week’s IHT Techno Luxury conference in Berlin (hosted by the Suzy Menkes - All tweets on http://www.wednesday-london.com/)

Burberry focused on ‘The Art of the Trench’ and partnered with well known Fashion blogger, Scott Schuman from ‘The Satorialist’, (one of my favourite blogs) to create a collage of photos specifically all about the trench. The site is interactive, fun and features their customers at the fore front of their brand. By launching this site, Burberry further cemented ownership of the luxury trench.

Gucci Eyeweb debuts Gucci's newest eyewear collection, as well as an online tool for users to share their party photos and comments. With sections for New York, Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin and London, the uploaded photos are shown reflecting in the lenses of a pair of revolving sunglasses. Personally, I found it really difficult to see why on earth I should go further than the homepage – I found it difficult to navigate, clunky and actually quite insincere. The site is populated with a mix of sometimes tacky images that seem to have nothing to do with the Gucci brand at all. It leaves me asking myself - what is the point in this ?

Burberry definitely outshines in this instance, but they need to create reasons for users to return. They say this will be achieved by bringing in new curators and creatives to populate the site with interesting content. We shall have to see what Burberry works on next for the 'Art of the Trench'. Gucci may want to consider what exactly it is hoping to achieve, and go back to the drawing board.

I think this represents two very distinct outcomes with social media : Gucci heard about something called social media whereas Burberry remixed and embraced it. Personally, I really hope that usability is the next “thing” for fashion websites - For every good Burberry site, there are a hundred Gucci sites that require you to think entirely too much for something that should be entertaining.

My name's Adrian and I responded to direct mail

The Sunday Times. They mailed me, promising free delivery by 7.30am. The idea of reading a paper in bed was good enough, but the additional incentive of 6 bottles of wine swung it.

So I phoned them on a Saturday morning, and got my first delivery next morning (it actually arrives at 2.30 am, don't ask me how I know this).

Then a few days later, a Welcome Pack directing me to activate my online registration for even more goodies. (Nice example of D loves E).

And then the crate of wine - not just the 6 bottles of red promised but an additional 3 nice whites too. Expectations well and truly exceeded.

Not quite sure how they are going to make money out of me yet, but it's a response Rupert, none-the-less!

It doesn't happen often, does it? Anyone else had a good direct mail (with a bit of digital) experience lately?

How the Internet sees You

MIT Project 'Personas' profiles your digital identity by data mining online content and topic modelling that content to create clusters of words relevant to you. It ultimately presents you with a 'persona vector' that visualises how the internet sees you.

Check it out here

RNLI win at LIAA

Yay!  Deb, Soni and Chris pick up two gorgeous winged angels at the LIAA earlier in the week for RNLI.  A Gold for Digital, and a bronze for Innovation.

Another nice one.


 

Is the internet dying? Yes, If we believe Google Trends!

I have noticed something very strange lately. It started when I saw the TV-ads for Yahoo, I thought it was insane to air ads for a website. A bit later I saw a chart somewhere on the interwebs that showed a steep decline in traffic for Yahoo. I wondered how Yahoo's main competitor MSN was doing, so I started researching a bit with the help of my dear friend Google Trends.

After a while I noticed almost a pattern in the traffic decline of major global websites, all starting around September 2008. Portals, news websites, video sites, shopping sites and even adult & dowload sites are all hit. Check out the graphs in my presentation!

The Internet Is Dying

View more presentations from NicolasMoerman.

I'm looking forward to hear your conspiracy theories, thoughts and possible explanations. Adrian Hoole & Jamie Chadwick are convinced about the correlation with the recession, Nick Meyers on the other hand believes it's: "The end of the destination web and the rise of the social web" and I'm betting on that horse too! But what do you think?

Oxford Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Wondering what other new words were considered for the New Oxford American Dictionary 2009 Word of the Year?

Check out the link below.

http://blog.oup.com/2009/11/unfriend/

Social Media ROI: Socialnomics

This Social Media ROI Youtube video is made Socialnomics author Erik Qualman. This video showcases several Social Media ROI examples along with other effective Social Media Strategies.

The video is an excellent followup for my post about Social Media ROI and Andrian's last video about the world turning digital!

Another one of those 'look how the world's gone digital all of a sudden' films

You've probably seen it all before but some nice, fast paced stats hidden in here. Not sure about watching TV on the toilet but I can see the logic. Ideal for those of us with increasingly low attention spans (all as a consequence of the world going digital?).

Post Office redesign goes live

The final phase of the Post Office website refresh has gone live.  Nice one.

Free Sky on yer iPhone

Sky and O2 are offering free access to Sky Sport etc from your iPhone for 3 months. Limited to the first 150,000 people – so get in:

http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/skyoffer.html

Augmented Planet Event

On November 11th I attended an event by 'Augmented Planet' organised by Lester Madden. Yes, its about Augmented Reality and this event included speakers Myles Peyton from Total Immersion, artist and designer Chris O'Shea and my partner James Alliban.

I was blown away by the further thinking examples and demos by everyone. Myles Peyton showed an example of a fun and clever ground breaking application for Transformers 2. The user would face the webcam and a 3D mask of Optimus Prime would be superimposed onto the users head. You could turn your head in different directions and the mask would follow. Great fun for kids AND adults!

Another incredible example was the 3D Live K'nex box. Users can catch a glimpse into solving the puzzle, or simply watching the live 3D animation (with sound) appear on top of the box. See their website for more videos.

Chris O'Shea too was inspirational with his interactive work. One favourite of mine was his 'Audience' piece, an installation with rAndam Interanational and Deloitte Ignite Festival at the Royal Opera House. An installation consisting of 64 head size mirror objects. Each object moves its head in a particular way to give it different characteristics of human behaviour. See video. When members enter the space the mirrors turn and follow an interesting passerby.

Truly inspirational stuff!

Putting size into Perspective

A very simple tool that you can drag to see the size of things ... they get pretty small.

View size tool.

87 Cool Things - Experiments in Digital Creativity

Andy Berndt, MD of Google Creative Lab and Tom Uglow, Creative Lead did this great presentation at Advertising Week 2009 in New York last month. Their presentation guides you through the ways consumers, companies and Google itself are using technology to create new ways of engaging and interacting.

Many of the experiments in ‘87 Cool Things’ highlight mashups, interactivity, unique data usage, and the fusion of virtual worlds and reality, all in combination with Google tools.... Check it out there's some truly amazing work here

https://sites.google.com/site/experimentsindigitalcreativity/

Wired Italy's vision of tomorrow's world.

According to Wired Italy this is the future.

The visualisation was created by Destiny Design. It presents a future where we will see: global conflict over climate goals and impacts; alternative currenices (carbon accounting, mobile minutes as currency, a social stock exchange). Also, DIY medicine with medical ATM's and human-animal communication. I have to admit the idea of human-animal communication, and digital body swapping scare me.

You can take a look at the high resolution version over on Flickr. And, for a more recent vision of human-animal communication see below...

Seriously, have you thought about how much time you spend each day reading and responding to emails?

And do you think we're more efficient now than we were back in say 1995 where email wasn't common place?

I argue that email has made us more inefficient than ever!

And it seems this is the conclusion of researchers at Loughborough University who've studied it.

“The study concluded that email messages do have a disruptive effect by interrupting the user,” Dr Jackson said. “It found that most employees had their email software check for incoming messages every five minutes and that they responded to the arrival of a new message within six seconds. A recovery time between finishing reading the email and returning to normal work also existed. On average two and a half minutes was spent on each email received, including the interrupt recovery time.”

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/theview/aw08/email/

So what?

Given that most businesses are based on a consultancy model whereby people are charged out by the hour, surely this is something we all need to consider...

New Guinness TV ad

http://www.bringittolife.tv/live.php

It used to be good for you, then being without it wasn't good for you, then you had to wait for it. And now? Now, you can bring it to life!

Find the new strategy writ large on this predictably expensive looking new execution due to hit the tele for the first time tonight. Timeless treat or transient turkey? You decide.

Personally, I prefer my idea of 'The Thinking Man's Pint', supported by the fact that Guinness is statistically proven to be the drink of choice of Planners everywhere (except when they're drinking cider, lager, wine, real ale, spirits or alcopops).

Now, why does a pint of Guinness set me back £3.80 or more? And why can I only drink a max of 5 pints of it in one night. And does that make it good value? Or am I just thinking too much...

Interesting experiential outdoor ads near Tower Bridge

Taken with my iPhone this morning (she said with a cheeky grin)

Clever new tailored advertising

Well bugger me. The other day I was looking for bike parts on Wiggle.co.uk. I got there, not through a link, but by just loading it up fresh in a new window. Then only a couple of days when I was in Facebook, I noticed that there was an ad for Wiggle and it was tailored to me. It was advertising all the things I was looking for on the ad.
I presume it must be that they are now sharing cookies. Very clever indeed. Especially considering the two sites are not obviously linked.
Frankly, it's about time Facebook stared doing stuff like this. It's got all that info and has always been so useless at targeting people's interests, etc.

Richard
www.nicework.webeden.co.uk

Today is a big day for Digital TV (and Convergence?)

Today, 11 million viewers in the Granada TV region will no longer be able to receive BBC2 via an analogue TV receiver.    Digital TV and set top box owners will need to retune their digital receivers later today.  There is a series of road shows in the area to support viewers. 

Interestingly image quality had been one of the touted benefits of Digital TV, but this has fallen by the wayside as more choice and interactivity lead the way as benefits of change. 
http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/what__and__why


Layered content is a trend to watch out for .... 'Convergence' being the term reborn.  In 2000 it was impossible to go to a digital event without at least half the attendees banging on about convergence.  But its all getting a lot more real now. 

For  example, Wikipedia content to back up a documentary, or VW content over Top Gear...  the trouble is of course, that most of the set top boxes out there are dumb, and not networked....

Funny to look at this post from '07 on 'predictions for the year'....

http://digispag.blogspot.com/2007/01/next-big-winners.html

Is planning impotent?

Over the next two months, PSFK will be hosting Redscout’s SPUR video series. It will explore the intersection of brands, strategy, innovation and the world of account planning. They hope to spark a lively discussion, and inspire those working in the field.

In episode one they discuss the indentity crisis of planners. The more we talk about planning the more we realize that people outside the industry just don’t know what it is (or necessarily care). Planners want to impact real business and creativity more directly.

Google Sidewiki, comment on the websites you visit in real time.

Google Sidewiki (launched 23 Sept 2009) allows people to leave comments on the websites they visit, for others to see. This is good news and bad news. Good in that we can now comment on the sites we love, which in turn is good for marketers as nothing beats authentic word of mouth recommendation. However, what if someone (or some group) maliciously launches a campaign against a competitor, flooding their site with negative comments? It could be bad news.

What do you think: good, bad, or both?

The ROI of Social Media

ROI in social media is often confused with metrics. This brilliant, witty slideshare presentation illustrates this clearly. A great weapon against the social media gurus!