Today is my last day at Mediacom.
It's my last day of running an account team, my last day media planning & buying and my last day within a big organisation.
Today is also new beginning.
As of Monday 29th June i will be joining the team over at The Population for what promises to be a bit of a radical change!
I started working in digital media in early 2003 when i joined a small start up search marketing agency based in a shoebox office situated above a carpark entrance, opposite a busy railway station in Surrey (UK).
Each time the carpark lever was raised to admit or discharge a car the loud, creaking, crashing noise would bring the office to a halt.
All conversations, both face to face and phone, were forcibly overpowered by the painfully slow rise and fall of the mechanical monster that ruled our working days....
Then there were the 'fast trains' which would come powering through the station at supersonic speeds shaking our desks and collapsing our flimsy filing systems within seconds, not to mention the foghorns that were sounded to announce their arrival (as if the minature earthquakes were not enough).
But apart from the noise, i do have fond memories of the shoebox.
Such as the hilarity that would ensue should someone want a toilet break (think Tetris but with human bodies and swivel chairs) and the team effort put into redecorating our 'environment' with a group shopping trip to Ikea to pick out a painting for our one bare wall.
After 6 months of success we upgraded from shoebox to stable-sized offices where we expanded from a team of 4 to 7. Now everyone had sufficient elbow room and we could go to the toilet without the need for others to abandon their tasks to aid us in our need for a synchronised exit (although anyone eating curry during the weekdays was not easily forgiven for it...)
For 2.5 years i watched the company grow from strength to strength and felt i had played a significant part in the achievements and advances we had made.
But alas, it was inevitable....London was calling.
So, with a feeling akin to chopping off a limb, i left for the bright lights of the City and i never looked back.
I joined a big full service agency within the digital department and called Carnaby Street my place of work and play.
I moved to Sydney late 2007 and continued working within a big media agency (Mediacom) as an account director across key finance and automotive clients. I worked with a wonderful team and learned a huge amount in a short space of time. I was also bitten by the social web bug and started to become interested in new communications strategies above and beyond what has always been done. Mediacom fully supported me in all avenues of interest and i was able to spearhead the social web movement internally with great success. My new interest drove me into research and i became a voracious reader of all new-media blogs, news and innovations. These new blogs led me to The Population and the rest, as they say, is history.
So now i'm back to a start-up agency from whence i came which is both comfortingly familiar and bizarrely nerve racking at the same time.
The Population, in my view, are at the leading edge of the digital space and openly embrace new solutions to traditional problems and non-linear thinking. To top it off they've got a great team of super-intelligent people.
So i'm switching from a big organisation in a high-rise in North Sydney to a team of 7 in a studio in Surry Hills.
I'm also leaving behind the comfort and process of a big company and downsizing to a non-heirarchal structure in a non-siloed environment.
It should prove to be a BIG change for me.
I'll miss Mediacom but the excitement of a new challenge is spurring me on....
So, naturally, i'm going to document it.
I am going to write a bit of an on-going journal about the differences between a big media agency and a small start-up strategy agency.
It will cover my personal experiences learning new approaches, being with a new team and it will hopefully de-bunk some of the smoke and mirrors which many people assume is part of a strategy agencies repetoire...(contrary to popular belief they don't all run on bravado...)
So Monday is my first day and i'll let you know how i get on!
Over and out.
Diary of a transition: New Beginnings
HSBC need to concentrate on customer segmentation....
WOW - thanks HSBC, i just have a one question...
Who or what are the Hawks and how or why should they be relevant to me?
On further investigation i have discovered that they are some sort of sports team (football, rugby?...i don't care).
This cements the fact that this is not relevant to me, in fact it's utterly irrelevant....I am not a sports fan whatsoever.
I would suggest that they start to do some customer segmentation to ensure that they hit an audience who actually gives a shit about the Hawks and start to become slightly more efficient with their EDM (and DM for that matter).
The sheer fact that they have mentioned my name in the email doesn't make it personalised or customised to me, in fact i would call it spam.
Just a thought.
Advertising doesn't create advocates
Buzzword #17,327: 'Advocacy'
Everybody talks about it, every brand wants it and every marketer claims to be able to deliver it.
But what is advocacy?
There thousands of differing definitions but specific to brands and consumers we can describe an advocate as:
A customer who has favourable perceptions of a brand who will talk favourably about a brand to their acquaintances to help generate awareness of the brand or influence purchase intent.
Sounds good right? What brand wouldn't want that?! Having a brand advocate is invaluable. Someone who will promote your products, personally recommend them to friends and colleaugues and who, in all likelihood, will be a repeat purchaser...
Therefore creating advocacy within your customer base is nirvana for all brands, and the best part is that nirvana is achievable, just not via one avenue.
Ad agencies, media agencies, social media consultants, PR executives and mediaowners are all spouting 'miracle grow' strategies for creating advocates for their respective clients.
To be honest, a few months back, i was spouting the same rubbish which went something like this: "social web", "jump in", "dialogue", "be part of the conversation", "creates advocacy" blah blah blah.....
Having actually stopped talking and started listening, learning and understanding i've realised that there is no 'miracle-grow' strategy for advocacy.
Advocates must be earned, and cannot be bought via advertising or by one or two online conversations on Twitter.
If we go back to the definition of advocacy we can break it down into what it truly means to be an advocate.
There are 3 key defined areas which are outlined below:
1). A customer who has favourable perceptions of a brand
2). who will talk favourably about a brand to their acquaintances to help generate awareness of the brand
3). or influence purchase intent.
Translated, the above points mean:
1). I like what the brand stands for, i understand their positioning and messaging and it is relevant to me and resonates with me
2). I like their products and the experiences i have had with the brand, so much so, that i am comfortable recommending them to friends
3). I would buy from them again as they are reliable and deliver on the brand promise they defined in point 1
So where does advertising fit in?
In my view, only really point 1.
We have the ability to convey what the brand/product is, what it stands for, what message we want to get across and where people see the brand and how often...
We do this via creative messaging, media placement, social web interactions and PR....
But to be clear here, we are not creating advocates, we are merely facilitating an initial connection, a lead or a sale.
We're only one third of the advocacy journey (i.e. we can't take them the whole way).
Points 2 and 3 are outside of the control and influence of advertising and/or marketing.
They are about the product or service itself.
Advocacy is built on the basis of a good experience and an experience can be had with multiple touchpoints, all of which can have a bearing on brand favourability.
Some examples are below:
Touchpoint 1: The website - is it easy to navigate and clutter-free with short forms and little demand for personal details?
Touchpoint 2: The shopfront - is it easily accessible with friendly staff, clear pricing and a simple purchase process?
Touchpoint 3: The call centre - are there short waiting times, easily navigated choices and helpful people to speak to?
Touchpoint 4: The product - does it meet expectations, is it good value for money and does it deliver on the original promise made by the advertising?
To create advocates, brands must deliver a good experience (preferably a GREAT experience) in all of the above areas plus advertising and marketing messages.
So who does this well?
Brands deliver on the above promises in varying degrees of success but perhaps one of the most accomplished in this area is Apple.
Apple deliver on all of the above at either a good or great level.
* They create innovative and exciting advertising and messaging which resonates with their core audience
* They have shopfronts which are seductive with big white spaces, funky music, fancy gadgets and super-helpful staff
* They have an easily navigated website which remembers you and your preferences adding a personalised, customised edge to your experience
* Their version of customer service is cheery, fast and individual
* Their products are leading edge, aesthetically pleasing and dependable
So they have brand advocates and a gold star from me.
Apple have achieved nirvana....but not via advertising and marketing alone.
They delivered a 360 degree brand experience.
Now lets take a look at CBA (Commonwealth Bank Australia)....
In early 2008 they released a daring new ad campaign, something which had never before been attempted by a bank in Australia. It recieved mixed reviews, but the point of the advertising was to push their new tagline: 'Determined to be different'
So the advertising said one thing but what about the other touchpoints?
Now CBA didn't go out will the sole purpose of selling more products (at least not overtly), they went out with a brand message which was to dictate who they were and what they stood for.
They didn't have a great track record when it came to customer service but then not many banks do....
With the new 'determined to be different' tagline there was a pressure to deliver on the new brand promise across all areas, otherwise the threat of empty words could result in more harm than good for CBA.
They didn't turn around their customer service overnight but they looked to 'determined to be different' as an aspiration which became an internal mantra for staff and, bit by bit, CBA delivered.
They altered their customer service, they changed perception and they achieved their goal of slowly creating advocates (or as many happy customers as they could considering they're a bank).
Once again, they didn't create these advocates solely through advertising.
They used advertising to position themselves but then carried through on the promise across multiple customer interfacing touchpoints.
Ultimately our job is as the initiator of interactions, we can also have a role in CRM but mostly we create and place messaging, however, the age old saying that "we can lead a horse to water but we cannot make it drink" is especially relevant here.
We can lead a potential customer to a brand but we can't force them to like the product, or buy it. We can't ask them to turn a blind eye to crappy customer service or to recommend a shitty, unreliable product to their friends.
I think we should reframe our promises of advocacy creation to our clients and start to put some of the responsibility back onto them.
We're marketers, not miracle makers.
Do you wanna be in my gang?
Today, a colleague of mine asked me for a recommendation on which blogs she should be reading to learn about social media and the social web.
As she's just getting into this space i wanted to make sure that i'm giving her good suggestions with easily digestable content which helps her to understand the space and the latest innovations as well as help answer any questions she may have.
......and i made a quite shocking realisation...
Why is this? For the simple reason that the blogs, the content and the authors are really quite cliquey in many cases.
We've been preaching about the decline of critical mass and the rise of niche, in-depth relationships between brands and consumers but i fear this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Many of us now move in small 'social media' circles, spouting the same 'social media' arguments and lingo and we're losing touch with the outside world and what it means to be a strategist or a planner or a marketeer.
I, for one, am going to try and broaden out my content and make it more reader-friendly...
I may fail miserably but it matters to me that i keep an open mind and don't fall into the social web trap of running around in opinionated, ego-driven circles....
A brilliantly simple video about the strength of advocacy
This video is excellent.
It simplifies the process of the creation and value of brand advocates.
Show it to your colleagues, show it to your clients, show it to everyone.
What happens to your Myspace page when you die?
According to Yahoo Answers, the microchip in our heads turns it off!
Content is king
Marketing and the social web can be viewed as polar opposites.
On one end of the spectrum you have monologue based mass market messaging focused on no one in particular.
At the other end you have dialogue based small groups of people deep in conversation they find relevant and interesting.
It's a quandary.
How do we combine these two polar opposites to make both happy advertisers and happy customers when both environments are so very different?
There is a pattern which has been seen in all of the successful social web forays we have seen by brands, it's just that it hasn't been readily identified and singled out just yet.
That pattern is content.
Content as a strategy must remain central to any activity executed within the social web. But 'content' is an ambiguous word, it could mean anything, so let me give you some examples.....
Queensland Tourism 'Best Job In The World': Content was video applications for the job, a Twitter feed, a blog etc. All relevant amusing content which created interest and repeat visits. Also the promise of $150k and living on Hamilton Island for 6 months was a bonus which created the viral element and instant popularity....it was still content which drove the momentum.
Kit Kat Chunky Cookies & Cream: Their content was an online/mobile game called Chungastruck where players could play against their friends, they also had video episodes featuring a character called 'Hans Fagerlund' played by comedian Jordan Raskopoulos who was an expert Chungastruck player. The video content was funny and entertaining while the game kept people engaged and spreading the word.
Bigpond on Twitter: CRM based rather than campaign based and very successful. Their content is regular open communication. So simple but effective.
UBank: Again this is not campaign based - they created a Youtube channel with mini webisodes explaining and simplying financial situations such as the economic crisis. It's not neccessarily the most exciting or entertaining subject, but it's value adding...
What the above examples point out is that a brand's social web strategy isn't really a strategy if a content plan isn't at the center of it.
To give a further example, i don't follow people on Twitter who don't interest me or who don't add value to my Twitter experience. I won't follow glamour models, get rich quick schemes or those who follow for the sake of following....
Would you? There aren't many people who would follow or befriend someone on Twitter or Facebook if they didn't have something interesting to say or to add.
As a brand, if you want followers, friends or (nirvana) advocates then you must be creating entertaining, informative, useful and engaging content.
If your content is all of the above then a social web strategy should follow suit pretty easily....
Vintage Wilkinson Coffee Ads - I'm drawing comparisons...
I just love these early 50's muppet adverts for Wilkinson Coffe.
Apparently these were made and directed by none other than Jim Henson!
The ads had to be 10 seconds and no more which was a bit of challenge but i think the content is hilarious (if a little violent).
The ads starred the cheerful Wilkins, who liked Wilkins Coffee, and the grumpy Wontkins, who hated it. Wilkins would often do serious harm to Wontkins in the ads -- blowing him up, stabbing him with a knife, and smashing him with a club, among many other violent, but funny, acts.
Ad number two:
Wilkins: ''Care for a cup of Wilkins Coffee?"
Wontkins: "No, i don't drink coffee"
*BANG - Wontkins is shot in the head*
Wilkins: "This has been a public service announcement"
Ad number three:
Wilkins: "We're here to persuade people to drink more Wilkins coffee?"
Wontkins: "What's the club for?"
*SMACK - Wontkins is clubbed over the head by Wilkins*
Wilkins: "To get their attention"
Ad number four:
Wilkins: "You getting on the Wilkins coffee bandwagon?"
Wontkins: "No"
*Wontkins is run over by the Bandwagon*
Wilkins: "You either go with Wilkins or you just don't go"
I can't help but draw comparisons with these hilarious ads and the attitudes of marketers.
Whether traditional or digital, it doesn't matter, we're constantly clubbing each other over the head and it's our way or the highway.
Ridiculous but true :-)
Twitter Love Story: Tweets bring two homeless bloggers together
Twitter is amazing and unusual in that it has opened our eyes to new things we would potentially never have experienced before.
Such as breaking news stories before even the media has gotten hold of the information, coverage of a Moldovian revolution, inside details about the life and loves of Stephen Fry and, more recently, a topless shot of Lindsay Lohan....?!
It's truly a special place....
Now following all of the above, a little Twitter romance doesn't seems especially out of place, there are even Twitter dating sites popping up such as MyTweetheart.com and Twitterbirds.com, but there is one recent romance on Twitter that has captured the hearts of Twitterers worldwide....the transatlantic love story of two homeless people named Bri and Matt.
Now, you might be thinking, how the hell does a homeless person have access to Twitter or the internet or even a computer?! Well, as it turns out, using internet cafes they can access just as regularly as we do.
Mark was made homeless during March of 2008 following a sequence of events which were largely beyond his control. He had worked all of his life, he was a homeowner and did not have alcohol or substance abuse issues. He was computer literate and was a writer and a blogger who used Twitter.
Mark began to write about being homeless on his blog 'Homeless Tales' and also started to monitor Twitter using Summize to alert him (via RSS)to any tweets containing 'homeless' or homelessness'. And this is how one homeless guy got to meet a homeless girl on the other side of the Atlantic and fall in love.
In March 2009, Mark was alerted via Summize to his usual tweets containing 'homeless' or 'homelessness' and became aware of a Twitterer called @tGGtH with tweets such as "“If a turtle has no shell is it naked or homeless?” and, “Just saw a homeless guy with a cell phone. WTF?”
The connecting URL to @tGGtH was http://girlsguidetohomelessness.com/ - tips for surviving homelessness. You may be homeless, but you do not need to be a bum!
Mark started to read the blog and discovered what he described as "a young, intelligent woman, newly homeless and whose writing I found highly engaging and witty. She was following exactly nine people on Twitter and had just received her very first follow - me".
@tGGtH was also known as 'Bri'.
Bri was alone and homeless in a trailer with no heating, running water or cooking facilities living in California. Mark was living 5,000 miles away in Scotland but, as Mark had often done with other homeless people, he felt the urge to reach out to her.
Within a few hours of their first tweets they were exchanging direct messages which would soon progress to email and then instant messenger. Before they knew it, they were conducting an online affair, though niether had ever met in person, and found themselves falling in love.
After a few months of online conversing, Mark made the leap and travelled to California where he remains currently, but only for another 2 weeks before he must make his way home to Scotland.
They both work but financially it has been difficult for them and they have spent most of their time staying in a small, cheap motel.
Soon Mark will be back in Scotland and Bri will return to her trailer situated in a wal-mart parking lot.
However, they have such a positive outlook that they say "Those few niggles aside though, we are both blissfully happy and madly in love. Most importantly, thanks to Twitter, we are together".
Such a lovely heartwarming story.
You can find both of their blogs here which is where you can read about the rest of their story:
http://homelesstales.com/
http://girlsguidetohomelessness.com/
UPDATE:
@tGGtH found me on Twitter! How nice...
FACT: You can't truly understand the social web unless you're in it
A study released today called 'An In-Depth Look Inside the Twitter World' stated that of people who identify themselves as social media marketers, 65.5% have never posted an update on Twitter....
Like some others, I find this is slightly odd.
An excerpt from B&T's top 50 marketing bloggers shows that some key figures in digital marketing believe that it's essential to be part of the landscape that you are promoting to your clients...
Iain McDonald, managing partner at Amnesia (whose blog ranks 17th), had taken the unusual step of asking all staff to get on to Twitter in September 2008.
"We've immersed ourselves in social media," McDonald says.
"We believe that the only way to really learn is to get your own hands dirty. We follow the debate and having the debate is healthy as far as I can see."
I am a firm advocate of immersing yourself in your craft - do you agree?
Please stop asking me to convert my digital plan into TARPs!
Time and time again i am asked by those 'upstairs' to translate my digital planning into TARPs.....
Today is different......it's time someone stood up and said that the concept of benchmarking digital & traditional with a common planning metric is a total load of shite....whether TARPs, impressions or reach, it's still pointless.
contrasting...
Digital media planners don't truly appreciate the job traditional media does and can go off on a tangent planning and evangelising digital-only campaigns but going digital all at once is unrealistic for most clients.
Hence we get trapped on a merry-go-round of painful, ego bashing conversations, resulting in neither party moving forwards (how many of you have experienced that? I know i have....)
But all it takes is a little bit of education and mutual respect.
Digital is unlike any other medium that's come before it, and benchmarking it against traditional media will never suffice.
As an example, a key bone of contention between 'trads' & 'digis' - my own denomination, feel free to use it ;-) - in agencies can revolve around the revenue models.
Some clients are still billed on a percentage of media spend rather than a retainer or project basis, therefore it's in the agencies interest to spend, spend, spend the client's money when they get the chance....and rightly so!
However, digital as a medium doesn't always require big bucks.
In fact, digital can often be cheaper than traditional media due to the measurement capabilities which subsequently help to increase targeting, optimisation and effectiveness.
Pin-pointing effectiveness leads to refining activity and spending less money to achieve your objectives.
Great!
Not great.....with declining ad spend comes declining revenue if you're still basing your income on percentage media spend.
The other bone of contention is labour...
Digital is incredibly labour intensive with various assets, technologies, maintenance, measurement, reporting and engagement.
It is by far the most labour intensive medium in advertising history.
We, as digital planners, now have multiple roles moving from media planner to creative to production to analytics and even customer relationship management.
Traditional media planners do a tough job but it is far less hands-on than digital.
So from a traditional planners point of view, digital could negatively impact on revenue generation, it's a fad - not everyone in the world has a facebook account and it and it's only a piece of the pie...
True....
From a digital planners point of view, traditional is unneccessary and boring, we work our butts off for minimal reward in comparison to ' trads' and digital will one day rule the world so what is everyone waiting for?
True.....
We are all correct in our own way.
But ultimately we need to go back to education and mutual respect rather than fighting a war of words over whose job is more important, which channel is more valuable and whether or not digital will kill traditional media outlets.
We're so very different but also completely the same.
Our combined goal is to produce better consumer experiences with our clients brands and products....that goal should be channel agnostic.
Digital should not neccessarily replace traditional media but it should form part of a well balanced strategic plan, but a strategic plan need not have one form of measurement.
So please....lets all get along, understand each others differences and respect each others work...
But for gods sake, don't ask me to convert my digital plan into TARPs ever again.
The state of the Twittersphere....
I came across a great study by Hubspot today entitled 'The state of the Twittersphere'
The report centers around the activity of people of Twitter such as; dormant accounts, average tweets per day, average number of followers etc and gives a great overview of the usage of Twitter today...
Below are some of the main highlights i have picked out:
Twitter user base stats
In an effort to quantify exactly how many dormant accounts exist, they labeled users as inactive if they satisfy all of the following conditions:
• Fewer than 10 followers
• Fewer than 10 friends
• Fewer than 10 updates
By this definition, 9.06% of all Twitter users are inactive.
• 24.14% of users have a bio in their profile
• 31.32% of users have a location in their profile
• 20.21% of users have a homepage URL in their profile
• 45.12% of users have tweeted at least once
• 47.29% of users have at least one follower
• 44.50% of users are following at least one account
Though they have noticed that those users who are actively using Twitter do so on a regular basis.
• The average user tweets .97 times per day
• The average user has tweeted 119.34 times in total
• The average user has a following-to-follower ratio of .7738
Stats on Tweets
When we look at the content of tweets that are posted by users they see that users are frequently using Twitter to interact and communicate with other users rather than just answer the "What are you doing?" question.
• 1.44% of all tweets are retweets
• 37.95% of all tweets contain an "@" symbol (mentions)
• 33.44% of all tweets start with an "@" symbol (replies)
They also see that many users are reaching the 140-character limit in an attempt to get as much content as possible into every update.
Top 20 Geographical locations
Because the location field on Twitter profiles does not contain any structured data (Twitter does not require people to separate city from state or province, etc.) it is hard to do any detailed analysis on this data.
However, the list of the top thirty most common phrases people type into their location section on their bio shows that Twitter seems to be popular in major English-speaking cities.
The top 20 locations are as below:
London
Los Angeles
Chicago
New York
San Francisco
Toronto
Atlanta
Seattle
Boston
Austin
Sydney
San Diego
Washington, DC
Melbourne
Portland
Houston
Vancouver
Dallas
Brooklyn
Philadelphia
Sydney is no. 11 !!!
You can read the study in full here: http://blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/sotwitter09.pdf
How to turn around an awkward conversation
I'm in a bar on a Thursday night waiting to get served by a red-headed goth waitress with a nose ring and star tattoos adorning her exposed gut when i meet 'Dave'....
Zoe: Yep.
Zoe: How very perceptive of you....
We've all been there.
It's horrible to be stuck in a conversation that is going in the wrong direction.
An incorrect flirtation, awkward silence or simply nothing to say can signal danger ahead and in most scenarios you'll make an excuse and walk away never to speak to them again and only remember them as the passing freak in the night....
But it doesn't have to be that way.
...Meet 'Matt'
Zoe: Hi.
Matt: I'm Matt.
Zoe: Nice to meet you Matt, I'm Zoe.
Matt: So what do you do?
Matt: I work in the ad industry too, how bizarre! So what brings you here tonight?
Matt: Cool. Can i buy you a drink?
Zoe: Yeah that would be great, thanks.
Matt: So what kind of advertising do you do?
Zoe: Digital basically...
Zoe: Yes i am....you?
Matt: Me too! I'll have to follow you...So what do you think about Twitter?
And so the conversation moves to a mutually happy place where they both feel involved and comfortable....(i.e. not awkward)
Now flip this situation from a Thursday night in a bar between two people to an online environment between a brand and a consumer.
Big ask i know :-) but try to imagine it becauase it really is that simple.
Social media, social networks and socialising online is the buzz of the moment and clients are desperate to jump on board and be part of trend...
So desperate in fact, that they go running up to these consumers and try to start conversations which invariably turn out to be painfully awkward because of an incorrect flirtation, awkward silence or simply nothing to say.
The consumer then runs away, never to speak to you again and they will forever remember you as the 'passing freak in the night'...
But if you're interesting, entertaining and have something to say (like Matt) then you could start a beautiful, mutually beneficial friendship.
All you need to do is think of your consumers as people, not consumers....have human conversations, entertain them, compliment them, involve them, be interesting, have a topic of conversation, laugh together and have fun with it...!
As a wise man once said "you're only as a good as your last piece of content"....or your last conversation topic/content.
Be a 'Matt' not a 'Dave'.
(* Conversations with Dave and Matt were based on real life scenarios but names were changed!)
What 'Cloud Computing' means for you, me & our clients...
- I upload my photos and videos onto Facebook & Flickr
- My emails are all housed within Gmail
- My CV is set up within Linked In, as are my business contacts.
- I publish my blog and house all my blog content within Blogger.com.
- I save my favourite blogs, news and updates within my iGoogle page.
This is known as 'Cloud Computing'.
So what?
Cloud Computing has been talked about for years, the concept is not new or particularly ground breaking, however, whilst it has been a topic of conversation for IT geeks, tech nerds and everyone within silicon valley for the past few years, it's only now that it is starting to spill into the advertising and marketing arena.
Why?
......because now consumers are jumping on the bandwagon, whether they know it or not.
As a consumer, it doesn’t matter whether you have a PC or a Mac or a mobile phone or a BlackBerry – or any new device that doesn't yet exist – you can get access to the cloud.
Cloud computing is liberating people from their computers as now they can access everything, anywhere, anytime...
Already, some people leave their laptops at home when traveling on business since their smartphones carry the load.
In 5 years time this will be the norm as mobile devices, powered by cloud computing, wifi and 3G offer as rich experience as today's computers.
Essentially cloud computing is a driving force behind device convergence and currently the Smartphone or iPhones of the world are leading the way....
So how mobile savvy are you? How accessible is your brand? How many touchpoints do you offer? Are you available anywhere at anytime?......I doubt it, you might have a website, a call centre and a branch but do you have a .mobi site too?
Too often, mobile is an afterthought rather than the focal point when it comes to digital marketing but that shouldn't be the case.
Change the way you see mobile and reframe the opportunity because mobile internet usage and convergence is moving at a lightening pace, made even faster by the release yesterday of the iPhone which has subsequently lowered the cost of the original iPhone to $99 (US) - aka a lower barrier to entry to become an iPhone owner....
We all know that iPhone owners interact more than 5x as much with mobile internet and services than other phone users, however, this trend is widening out to incorporate Smartphone owners of any model. With the cost of these models falling as a result of the rapidity of new releases, soon they will be ubiquitous...
So maybe you should be ubiquitous too....?
Ten years from now, we will laugh at people who still take laptops on business trips....
Gaming consoles the saviours of broadcasters?
The claim made by Steve Spielberg that Project Natal would open up the world of gaming to a wider audience, outside of the usual suspects, has already reached the ears of the broadcasters and they are buying into it, and now responding.
Today, Sky (equivalent of Foxtel) in the UK have launched their TV-on-demand service 'Sky Player' on Microsoft’s Xbox Live platform.
This move is significant and will help kick-start a rush of content owners and broadcasters keen to get on board the growing games console market.
From October 2009, Xbox Live will offer the Sky Player, including live pay-TV channels such as Sky Sports and an on-demand library of programmes, movies, news and sport.
The deal will allow Xbox Live users to sign up to a number of subscription packages, to be revealed closer to launch, as well as watch programming on a pay-per-view basis.
The move is part of Sky’s continuing strategy to extend its services across multiple platforms to reach a wider audience and grow its customer base above and beyond the traditional TV set.
Sky follows the BBC, which has already launched its iPlayer on the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3, but it’s the first broadcaster to move onto the Xbox Live platform, now tipped to grow dramatically as a result of Project Natal.
These significant partnerships come as broadcasters push on-demand services from the PC to the TV, and industry experts predict games consoles will be the next platform to drive this content as more are connected to the internet.
Last year 12.2m Xbox consoles were connected to the internet, and this is expected to grow by 36% to 16.7m globally in 2009.
This represents huge opportunities for content companies and broadcasters looking to extend their reach and boost monetisation in the face of declining standard TV audiences and advertising spends, they now have the chance to monetise on-demand services on a much larger scale....
A quote from Andy Taylor, digital media director at production company All3Media, said, “Games consoles are the next natural step for broadcasters looking at other ways to get their on-demand content onto TV.”
Ultimately, broadcasters wants to get content to viewers wherever they are, whether that’s TV, online or Xbox....
Great quote from Seth Godin
"It’s easy and hopeful and exciting to start something, but challenging and often painful to finish it"
Project Natal is unveiled....
Microsoft has unveiled it's new Xbox user interface aka Project Natal at the E3 gaming conference in the US.
The interface can be likened to the Wii....but on steroids.
The point of note is that the interface recognises and responds to the movement of a players entire body, as opposed to simply hand and wrist movements.
It also has voice recognition, motion sensors, responds to players moods based on tonality and has the ability to interact at a human level...
This is the stuff that science fiction writers have only dreamed about and it works!
Project Natal has the potential to revolutionise game playing and will, no doubt, expand the reach of the gaming world beyond just nerds and spotty teenage boys...this has mass appeal....
So what could it mean for advertisers???
A few things that are already jumping out are the possibilities for fashion brands - Microsoft demonstrated a personalised avatar with the players exact proportions and colouring trying on dresses on the Xbox in the privacy of her own home..
And what about Movies?
Steve Spielberg has even been raving about it and promoting it....
He currently designs games for EA and now has the freedom and creative license to take his games to another level - could this mean no more cinemas with movies screened on consoles?
Imagine watching movies, shopping, looking inside a car at a virtual dealership, viewing houses etc...all in the privacy of your own home and with the ability to share these experiences with your friends?
This is exciting!