The Gypsy Mission

Reality Television and thoughts on UGC

2007-01-22T16:00:00.000Z

I’m finding all this Celebrity Big Brother stuff rather interesting from several perspectives. It could easily be argued that the unstoppable trend of User Generated Content in the web is a natural extension of Reality Television which started with BB.

One of the things I’ve been wondering about UGC is how to verify an uninformed opinion about things to an informed audience. Currently the Web is being somewhat self selective but as we move out of the early adopter phase (which I will argue unfairly, is biased towards intelligence) and move into the mainstream, there are all sorts of questions requiring answers as to whether UGC will have real meaning or if it will become a mire of bigotry and reactionary jingoism. The obvious warning is that a brand’s success or failure could be adversely affected by opinion which is not informed, and that is not a million miles away from what has just happened on CBB.

Whether Jade Goody was or was not overtly racist is largely irrelevant she certainly made another contestants life difficult and did so from a position of ignorance. The suggestion is also being made (with what appears on the surface to be some fairly good evidence) that producers and directors intervened to ‘stage’ a forgiving reunion and prime Ms Goody for her interview. I saw the eviction and there was not a hint of surprise on her face when she saw that there were no crowds to greet or jeer her, and that to me was quite telling.

So where does that leave the reality show that started it all and what lessons should be learned for the Web as more and more sites open themselves up to their audience. We have all seen the ‘fake’ UGC examples and how the blogosphere has turned against them, and outed them. TV took a turn towards dumbing things down a long time ago now and the ability for TV to make a celebrity of an uneducated moron seems finally to be backfiring. I can’t help feeling that web 2.0 has a few important points to take from this and that TV should also learn a few lessons.

Related Tags: Celebrity Big Brother, User Generated Content, UGC, CBB, BB, Jade Goody, Web 2.0

Seven Degrees of Viral Separation

2006-11-28T11:39:00.000Z

I get loads of viral messages every day. I read them quickly because im always looking for something that will inspire an interesting idea of my own. Most of them get deleted very quickly but I got one this morning that stood out.

The link is http://www.lost.eu/9629

The reason it stood out is because it is a game to prove the concept of seven degrees of separation and I quite like that idea. Most networking sites could provide a network 'spidergram' of connections but don't, so this one is setting out to establish how 7 Million people could be linked together through their various connections.

First prize for the person with the most connected network also gets £500 but out of 7 Million players that sounds like a lot of effort for comparative little reward. There are other prizes as well but the main point is to play the game and get networking to prove the theory.

Have a look, its actually very well done.

Google to take a stake in ClearChannel

2006-11-09T10:33:00.000Z

Reading Brand Republic this morning I found an interesting article on the latest Google move. Apparently Google may be set to buy into ClearChannel and take a stake. The full article is here

Way back in 1999 I was involved with a project for a client called AMFMi which was owned by Chancellor Media. The project gained a lot of attention and soon Chancellor was bought by ClearChannel.

The project involved redefining radio as a radio broadcast media form to a web based media form using application farms to deliver rich content to all stations in all markets and all areas. It meant that even a small minority radio station with a minimal audience had the capabilities to stream music, display the current tracks name and give listeners the ability to purchase either the MP3 or the CD, as well as delivering targeted local content from a national content delivery system. It really was Radio Utopia and would have set-up radio very well for the move across to digital. All in all it was designed to service something like 800 radio stations across America and include everything from Top 40, Rock, Gospel, Classical and Jazz. Unfortunately like a lot of projects it started to have to fight for funds after the economy turned and the bubble burst in 2001 and was finally (as far as I’m aware) killed off in early 2002.

It was a real privilege to be involved in that project which included some of the most forward thinking people I’ve ever met, and I’ve always wondered what would have become of UK Radio markets if the project had carried on and a model existed for UK markets to follow. I’ve had discussions over the years with UK Radio companies but my impression is that the differences in market conditions don’t breed the same forward thinking attitude here as it does in the US, and my experiences have been less than inspiring.

ClearChannel then in my view does have a forward thinking and innovative approach to its markets and so potentially getting involved with Google for Radio does seem to me to be a fantastic fit. It also opens up a few questions on the future of board advertising especially with the move towards Bluetooth enabled boards. I await what happens next with interest.

Related Tags: ClearChannel, Google, Radio, AMFMi, Chancellor Media, Billboards, Commentary, Brand Republic

Article on USabillity and online marketing communications

2006-10-11T16:46:00.001+01:00

It looks like its the month for magazine articles. I've also been asked to contribute on an article relating to usabillity in online marketing communications.

It's a subject I feel pretty strongly about and so my piece below could well put the cat amongst the pidgeons if it is printed.

The issue of usability has been ignored in online marketing communications for far too long. It is largely an ignorance issue with far too many people involved in the production of online materials either not understanding or ignoring the finer points of cross browser, cross platform, multi-resolution display and best practice HTML. Whilst they speed production up, visual design HTML tools can lead to bad habits forming and Microsoft’s Frontpage tool is probably the worst offender of all. People who code in HTML should be able to do so using nothing more than a text editor, and I definitely wouldn’t employ someone who could not.

Good standards of HTML are essential for producing web pages and HTML emails but on their own, they are not enough, it is also understanding the media from a design point of view. Far too many times, emails are designed in the same way as print ads, and then perform badly both for open and click through rates. It’s about thinking and understanding that your piece will be seen in a variety of ways, even without graphics loaded. At WDMP we don’t just look at how our emails look as text only and with graphics loaded but also with graphics not loaded and in all of the major email and webmail clients. We have achieved double the industry averages for our clients which proves that this approach works.

The next design issue concerns how much of the email you can see at any given time. Email clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird, have a summary display mode which shows a little of your email to the user and lets them decide whether they want to open it or not. It does depend on the resolution of the screen that you are working on but we can get a good idea of how much you can afford to tease the client with in that small space. Basically you want to get them to open it up, and that’s your sole goal at that point.

Once it is opened more content is available and here the primary focus is to make the user want to read all of it, whether it is displayed full screen or with a scroll bar. Its about teasing the user with your copy and graphics and bringing them in to your email to the point where your call to action is an obvious extension of the user’s activity.

It sounds simple but getting the finer points of this concept across to offline creatives who are used to permanent sizes and folds can be difficult and clients are not prepared to be used as guinea pigs.

All too often I receive emails that look great when I open them up at full resolution, but lose their impact in my summary window without graphics. The result is that I don’t open them, and this is true of a lot of users.

Of course this is a lot to do and a lot of clients also need educating that there is more going on, than creating ‘just a simple email’. Putting the extra work in to attain higher open and click through rates can increase the price of the work and so trust is a big factor. We have clients we’ve been working with for a while and they are very happy that we use this approach, but it can be a difficult concept for clients who don’t know you to grasp, particularly if you are up against a competitor who says these things can be knocked out in five minutes and cost a hundred quid. Our response is to look at what the client wants to achieve and demonstrate the ROI to them.

For Websites the issues are even bigger, because of laws concerning accessibility. There has been no test case yet and so the law hasn’t been tested, but there are still so called Internet design professionals out there who have no idea how to design usable and accessible sites. They are still stuck in the late 90s mindset of creating all Flash sites. What is hysterical is that some of them even think they are being innovative and clever. Personally I don’t think it’s very clever to commit your client to an expensive pay per click bill each month in order for search engines to pick up the site. I know a lot of people in the industry switch off when accessibility is mentioned or consider it a technical issue that they don’t understand but usable sites are accessible and everyone in the industry should be supporting these standards.

Flash can be an extremely powerful tool to use but for every flash element that is created there should be a non flash alternative. Hybrids of this nature are really the utopian dream and we worked hard to get this effect on our own site when we redesigned wdmp.co.uk recently. When you can demonstrate it to a client and show the benefits then it’s much easier to explain the ROI.

Planning your site correctly solves a lot of the problems and site maps and wireframes are key tools in making sure that you plan the navigation and don’t leave key areas hidden from users. They also ensure that you split up the screen and give weight where its needed. Placing a key piece of information below the scroll line in order to accommodate atmospheric graphics is just dumb.

Screen resolutions have always been the big issue with web design. A designer wants to use as much screen real estate as possible and at their best they do stand as pieces of art. If the user is baffled though or doesn’t understand quickly enough what they are supposed to do, then all that art is pointless. Clear instructions and intuitive ever present navigation are essential to any website. I still see sites around where the look and feel suddenly changes for a new section or the navigation changes its style, and sometimes disappears altogether. There’s no other way to say it, this is just bad design, and I’ll bet that the usage stats prove it.

All too often business to consumer sites sacrifice usability for design and its so unnecessary. The odd thing is that Business to Business sites tend not to make the same mistakes and my observation is that the best web designers have a mix of B2C and B2B experience or even purely B2B.

What it all comes down to is knowing the industry standards and how best to implement them. The pay off is that clients get sites which have high and regular usage which facilitates relationships. I’m talking as though this is a hard thing to do but it really isn’t rocket science. One of the best things about the web is that anyone can design a webpage and the single worst thing about it is that anyone can design a webpage, just because something can be done it really doesn’t mean it should be, and web professionals have a duty to understand the standards associated with their profession.

Tesco enter the Software Marketplace

2006-10-03T17:18:00.000+01:00

On another Note, Tesco have decided to enter the home software market with an office suite, anti virus and drawing program. The suite is going to be marketed as a budget product around £20 compared to MS Office which has a basic retail price of £199. I can't make up my mind if this is an incredibly clever or incredibly stupid move.

On the one hand going up against a Microsoft dominated marketplace could be seen as a foolhardy move, especially with an Open Source product also in the marketplace, and on the other hand the purchase channel for a perceived low spend user is understood by this segment and so it might just work. If it works there could be interesting responses from other retailers in the sector, perhaps even Sainsbury's becoming a channel for MS OFfice, or maybe even a low entry level version of MS Office appearing in Somerfields . I'm going to watch this one with interest because I freely admit to not knowing what will happen next. Tesco are used to picking fights with people but even they could take lessons in bullying from the Redmond boys.

Related Tags: Microsoft, Tesco, MS OFfice, Retail, Open Office, Office Suite

The Whys and Wherefores of Corproate Blogging

2006-10-03T17:14:00.000+01:00

I've been asked to contribute a piece for a magazine article on the whys and wherefores of corproate blogging.

My first effort needs editing down but I'm quite pleased with it as a first draft.

The blogging phenomenon has actually been with us for quite a few years and has only recently reached the point where it is accepted as a corporate tool. I started the first of my blogs in 2000 and I expect the early adopter blogging companies of today to become more sophisticated in their blogging use in the coming years with blogs for internal staff, blogs for customers, partners, suppliers and the rest of the world.

Currently there are two industries leading the blogging charge, technology companies and marketing/advertising agencies. This isn’t altogether surprising given that these two industries are the ones most affected by the Internet and Interactive Media. Close on the heals though is the entertainment industry with particular emphasis on film, television and music. There is a lot of debate currently as to whether a blog written to promote a film should declare that it is a work of fiction or not with the latest example being lonelygirl15, which also opens up the idea of video blogging. Another example which brought derision down on the company which made it concerned the video blog by Agency.com for a pitch for Subway sandwiches. In both cases the video blogs were recorded according to a script rather than being genuine accounts of what happened at the moment. It is the difference between a genuine reaction to something and an attempt at acting.

Blogging does open the doors to your organisation and make you transparent which is recognised by most as a good thing, but you don’t want to give your competitors an edge by tipping them off with sensitive information at least until your clients and partners have been fully briefed (most corporate secrets fail to stay secret after that point usually).

Of those that blog there are two distinct approaches. The first is companies who encourage their staff to keep personal blogs about their working life hosted by the company and therefore give a personal lens view of the organisation. No two lens views will be exactly the same but overall a picture forms of the orgnisation. Microsoft and Google in particular are very good at this, encouraging staff to keep personal blogs and also read each other’s, whilst also reminding staff of their contractual obligations not to make sensitive information public. The Mark Lens firing by Google following entries in his blog stands as a warning to all, but has not resulted in mass firings for those who do not tow the company line on their blogs. It did however make people sit up and raise a few eyebrows at Google, and the technology giant did seem to come off worse in the blogging PR stakes after the incident. It seems though to have been an isolated case with lessons learned and most companies choose to deal with any hiccups privately rather than with public disciplinary procedures. When Robert Scoble left Microsoft his exit interview was recorded on the Microsoft blogging ‘network’ for all to see and many of his comments reveal a lot about how blogging inside a large corporate is viewed by the people actually keeping the blogs. His interview is at :

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=213207

Within Microsoft a ‘blog smart’ ethos was developed but with over 2.5 percent of this enormous company’s staff blogging, it cannot be ignored that the perception and reputation of Microsoft amongst developers and customers has not been higher for over ten years. Much of this is attributable to blogging. IBM and Yahoo have followed a similar pattern with similar guidelines but interestingly enough their reputation in the marketplace has not increased to anywhere near the same extent. There will always be some who will question whether a company like Microsoft can ever be trusted fully to present itself truthfully given their history. I must admit I am one of them.

The second type of blogging company has an official blog in the company name, which designated members of staff can contribute to on a daily basis. Typically this is how smaller companies handle blogging. Some set this for senior management and department heads whilst others encourage the entire organisation to contribute. Wieden Kennedy’s blog “Welcome to Optimism” is a good example of this. They keep write-ups of pitches they have done, new work just released, company night’s out, late nights at work, new hires, and really show what its like to work with this extremely talented group of advertising people. It therefore serves as a recruitment tool but also showcases work to clients and prospects alike. A new prospective client gets an extremely good view of the agency and gains valuable information as to whether this is a team that they want to work with. The question though in these circumstances is whether clients really want to know what it is really like to work inside an agency or whether this is more truth than they can handle. Wieden Kennedy’s growth for the year seems to indicate that this isn’t the case and the rest of the personality of the agency is clear for all to see whilst the industry reads their blog hoping to pick up some tips on how they produce the excellent work they do.

It is difficult to say which companies in this area are handling blogging badly because there does not seem to be a right or wrong way to do it, only a choice as to how much you share and how regularly. There does however seem to be a lot of companies who are not blogging at all and seem to be oblivious to the tool which is surprising given the amount interest coming from clients. Certainly an agency that is not blogging shouldn’t really be giving advice to clients on the subject, and any blog by a company which attempts to hide it’s identity in favour of promoting it’s products is seen in the blogosphere as dishonest and those that have tried this approach have very quickly been out-ed with resultant damage to their brand.

Related Tags: Corporate Blogging, Blogging, Blogs, Marketing, Web 2.0, Advertising 2.0, Advertising, Film, Television, Music, Entertainment, Technology, Social Marketing

Lynx Sprinkler

2006-09-08T09:49:00.000+01:00

It’s not often that I’ll look at an ad and think that it is going to have a counter productive effect on the brand but I find myself doing exactly this with the new sweat everywhere ad from Lynx for their Lynx Dry product.

Now the ad was originally created in Argentina by VegaOlmosPonce and adapted for the UK by Lowe London and so there may be some International travel issues with the ad from the start but my biggest problem with it is that it doesn’t seem to have the same underpinning values of previous Lynx advertising which on the whole I’ve thought has been perfect.

Now it could be a generation thing but I remember being told at school that anti perspirants work by clogging up the pours and so they were actually going to make you sweat more not less, and the products you should be using were deodorants. At that time there were a lot of anti perspirants around and so finding a deodorant took a bit of doing, but that very soon changed. Naturally I cynically wonder if this all was conceived at a 80s planner’s desk but even if it did, it worked and sales of deodorants went through the roof.

It therefore seems very odd that this story is told of Mr Sweaty and the solution is an anti perspirant. It doesn’t fit what was ingrained. Second to that the whole Lynx Effect is missed, and a very somber girlfriend is still nervous to be around her man when he raises his arms. Not exactly the babe-magnet-towel-twirling-all-you-need-to-be-dressed-and-pull-is-Lynx message of their shower gel product.

I just think that this ad misses the core Lynx values and as such is neither pleasant to watch or reinforcing for the brand. I watch it and nothing makes me want to go out and buy Lynx Dry (admittedly I'm not the target marketplace but I always try and get into the mindset of the intended customer and on this occasion I'm failing).

Maybe I’ve been doing this far too long and looking way too deeply but that’s what struck me.

Related Tags: Advertising, TV Advertising, Lynx, Lynx Dry, Lowe London, Sprinkler, Anti Perspirant, Deoderant

Anti Extinction Mode and why its pointless

2006-08-31T11:42:00.000+01:00

I’m a big fan of Blog Maverick. In one of his recent posts he hits on a topic that infuriates me about the world. In it he takes the example of the Cinema industry and argues that instead of spending money to stop pirated films and downloading the industry should spend the money on improving and extolling the positive experience of going to a movie theatre. You see this attitude everywhere, from Politicians “Don’t vote for the other guy he’s crap”, to software companies “I’m patenting every syllable in the English Language so I can sue anyone who might ever make a complimentary product to me” to advertisers “Use our product its got a very tenuous link to a hot topic even though we can only suggest this rather than stating it overtly because then our ad will get banned”. I have to admit that I don’t go to the cinema as much as I used to and have missed several movies in the theatre recently that a few years ago I would have seen. My rationale is to wait for DVD release but if I wanted to I could just as easily pick up a dodgy download. Some of my cinema experiences recently have not been good, with dirty theatres, surly staff and audience members who seem to think its ok to chat during the movie.

It’s all rubbish really isn’t it. Everyone running around in anti extinction mode instead of evolving into a positive force for the future. It probably wouldn’t take too much to turn me and many others back into a regular cinema goer again, but the industry seems to be uninterested in doing these things.

I remember reading recently that climate change has had such an effect on the habitat of polar bears that there are now documented cases of male polar bears becoming so hungry the they have attacked, killed and eaten their smaller female counterparts. To my mind this is exactly the same response as the examples above, but we as human beings really should be able to reason our way to the correct conclusion that this kind of response has no real benefits beyond immediate gratification and is actually counter productive in the long run. Unfortunately for Polar bears they do not have our capacity to reason in this way, but politicians, corporations and advertisers have no excuses.

It will be very sad to live in a world without polar bears, and equally sad to wander through Leicester Square without seeing a cinema, but unless both entities wise up and develop effective responses which actually address their problems, both of these outcomes could become reality before long.

Related Tags: anti-extinction mode, Comment, Movie Industry, Polar Bears, Corproate Evolution, Evolution

Visions Visionaries and Evangelists

2006-08-31T10:25:00.000+01:00

There is a word that is being banded around a lot at the moment and I have to admit that I am extremely uncomfortable with it. The word is ‘visionary’.

To me a visionary is someone who without clues literally dips into the future and has a vision of how the world will be. It requires a huge jump of faith as the infrastructure required to create this vision doesn’t exist and largely needs to be thought up by the individual (at least at a conceptual level). None of this is easy which is why there are so few genuine visionaries around. Ten years ago was a time for ‘visions’ because all the things we take for granted now (database driven websites, traffic analysis, personalised delivery of content etc) either didn’t exist or were no more than glimmers. I can even remember thinking up how some of these things would be done myself, but it really was a time for visions then and many people all had the same visions at the same time.

Some of them actually pursued those visions and created real tangible products and services which then gained market share and are now used the world over. That’s visionary. Me and everyone else who had an idea at the same time but didn’t make it real, or gain market share has no right to the visionary term. Instead we are evangelists. We look at the early formed visions of others and see the potential of how that vision can benefit us and everyone around us. We then take this message to anyone who will listen, and sometimes even adapt it in order to make it more relevant to our particular audience. This is a very cool thing to do and also requires skill, because meme’s of this kind require clever people to evangelise about them. It’s very cool to be an evangelist, but lets not confuse it with being a genuine visionary.

Related Tags: Visions, Visionaries, Memes, Evangelists, Comment, Innovation, Visionary, Ideas, Web

The Class of the New

2006-08-25T13:07:00.000+01:00

On a shorter post. Have a look at a book by Richard Barbrook called The Class of the New.

The book looks at who the great innovators in society are and have been over the years as technology advances with a particular line taken from Adam Smith towards the Internet and wired generation of today.

I was lucky enough to sit down and have a drink with this supremely intelligent character a few weeks ago and can receommend the book to everyone.

Object Based Sociality or your first box?

2006-08-25T12:26:00.000+01:00

'm actually off sick at the moment which has enabled me to catch up on a lot of reading that was getting put off due to pitches and all the fun work stuff I need to do to keep things rolling.

Consequently there is a lot I want to comment on:

This post from James Cherkoff pointed me at an Essay by Jyri Zengestrom in which he talks about Social Networking sites and why some work and some don't. His solution is for sites to be centered around objects in order to succeed and he calls these Object Based Sociality. Personally I agree with James that this is a horrible term and somewhat meaningless. My offer would be to call it 'toys' but thats another conversation.

The point is that the web in its earliest form was a group of communities with disparate people coming together and meeting in various villages online. Those villages had names like Usenet, and IRC and in their earliest forms brought people together based on topics of discussion. The stronger the topic of discussion was or the more niche and 'otaku' oriented it was the larger the traffic and greater the take-up became. This is why such seemingly impossible communities as alt.vampires grew to have such a huge presence online with many many subscribers contributing daily. On the other side of the coin alt.scuba (I could be getting the name wrong here but you get my point) became another highly sought after community with many people sharing ideas on scuba diving equipment and dive destinations which had not been possible pre web. Divers are not on average short of a few quid and also tend to be very obsessive about their hobby and so this ticks all of the main boxes for a successful community.

Meanwhile over on IRC people were getting together in virtual cafes to share life experiences in these little communities. Here though it didn't seem to have a toy to base things around instead it was more about entertaining each other in the best way you could with the best stories you could. To me this is sounding a little like blogging communities and Livejournal, but the IRC communities typically took this a few stages further with real time communication, friendships and relationships forming and all brought together under this virtual roof of a cafe. I don't think its exaggerating things too far to say that members of these communities were transplanting themselves and their online lives into soap operas and I am wondering just how much of today's reality TV schedules owes it's inception to these IRC communities.

My point is that human beings will naturally try and find something to talk about and so sometimes using a toy is going to be a false dawn and maybe even detract from what could have happened if things had been left alone. I also think that social gatherings change place by nature over time. Ten years ago I was hanging out on IRC, today I write a blog and am not sure if I even have an IRC client loaded on my machine (I checked and yes I do but I have never used it).

Social Networks if they are to stay relevant need to constantly adapt. Yes MySpace is the flavour of this month but in Internet terms this month doesn't last very long and so will need to keep adapting to what its users want, not what it wants to give them. 'Toys' will not be the answer to the problem overall, however letting the users create their own 'toys' will be. Music is currently a great toy and users are exploring this toy on MySpace very well, but what happens when people get bored of that toy and want another one? Im not actually disagreeing with Jyri through this, I'm just remembering watching children on Christmas day open the really big present and instead of playing with what is inside, they spend the next month playing with the box. Do you remember your first box?

Related Tags: Social Networking, Object Based Sociality, IRC, Usenet, Social Interaction, MySpace, Blogging, Toys, Web 2.0, Web, Marketing

Yesterday it was Google, Today its Apple, Roll on Ragnarok

2006-08-16T11:23:00.000+01:00

I can't help feeling that either the world is going a little bit mad at the moment or just has too much time on its hands spent in airport departure lounges with no prospect of actually getting on a plane with your hand luggage.

After I remarked yesterday that Google is threatening to sue people who use the company name as a verb, I read in today's Brand Republic that Apple is sending out threatening letters to companies who use the word Pod in their products such as the Profit Pod and the TightPod. Now to be honest I had never heard of either of these products before reading today's news and still can't find a Google search result (Ha! no sueing me you uptight bastards!) for the Profit Pod that isn't about Apples letter to them, so I'm guessing that this product isn't in any immediate danger of eating into Apple's millions. The TightPod on the other hand looks like a really good idea and I fail to see how anyone could confuse it with an MP3/music player.

I suppose there are farmers all over the world who are about to be sent cease and desist orders from Apple in order to protect their market from Pea Pods (hey its a very similar name if you ask me!), and sci fi writers who are going to have pay royalties to Apple for creation of their Kryogenic Sleep Pods. Actually maybe then the same farmers should counter Sue Apple on the grounds that it will confuse their customers from buying Granny Smiths (it's an idea!)

I don't often resort to pure abuse on this journal but certain multi billionaires in this world really should get the fuck over themselves and find better things to do with their time. Maybe then we might find a cure for cancer and relief from Colplay.

Related Tags: Apple, Copyright, Infringement, iPod, Power Pod, Pod, TightPod, Google, Cease and Desist, Stupidity, Losing the plot

I Google, You Google, He/She/it Googles

2006-08-15T09:04:00.000+01:00

I've been lucky enough to work from some really good companies over the years and also some pretty shoddy ones. Out of the good ones though there has usually come a ;point where people stop striving forward to grow and better the company and instead seem to develop anal ostrich disease. To elaborate a probably already transparent analogy companies start preoccupying themsleves with stupid things and end up with their heads stuck up their assholes.

I can't help feeling that Google's latest outburst really is losing all sense of proportion. To go to the trouble of actually sending out legal letters in order to stop people referring to Google as a verb suggests that the merry search gurus have run out of things to spend their money on. Not just that though, to my mind it's counter productive. How much value was there in a brand when people walked in a shop and asked to purchase a 'Hoover' or an Aspirtin or travelled on an 'escalator'. Most brands would give their vital organs to have such a strong position that people actually asked for their product by name instead of the type of product.

Way back in 2001 I remember seeing an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the completely delicious Allison Hunnigan solved an identity mysteruy by 'Googling' for the person they were looking for. How can that be bad for a brand when you have a prime time TV show referring to your industry by your brand name.

Google is possibly the greatest company that the world has ever seen, and it would be a great shame for such a fantastic company to disappear up its own asshole, when there is absolutely no need to do so.

Related Tags: Google, Googling, Comment, News, Attitude, Brands, Brand

Nokia's purchase of Loudeye

2006-08-10T18:36:00.000+01:00

The announcement a few days ago (which I saw reported in New Media Age) that Nokia is to purchase Loudeye is both bold and brave and certainly something that I think everyone should sit up and take a look at.

In the mobile music space you have iTunes sitting pretty with Napster version 2 looking to make an impact. Offerings from HMV and Virgin do not seem to be making much of an impact against these two (and specifically iTunes) whereas you then have the web2.0 offerings typified by Pandora, and the Kazaa p2p file sharing network that has recently pledged to go legitimate.

Meanwhile you have a sleeping giant in the form of Sony with their Walkman brand.

Nokia's bid looks to me like a concerted effort to remain a player in the overall entertainment mobile space which only really Apple can claim to have done anything approaching this scale. In many ways I'm a little dismayed that it wasn't Sony who put the bid in as then you would have the streaming content, the rights and the method of delivery all together in one package. Nokia have definitely decided to do something to shake things up and I hope that this move wakes a few other people up in the space, because at the moment there is an awful lot of people who just seem to be giving up instead of fighting for their marketplace, and to my mind that is a case of coming up with innovative ideas for the marketplace rather than simply looking at how to market whatever products they currently have.

My biggest issue is that music downloads seem to be focused very much on the 'single' and I don't see anyone taking the album seriously. That is a natural path to take when your market is the single buying teenage marketplace but that has never really been what the real music business was about. The great seminal works were always albums. People bought Rumours, not simply the Chain. They also bought Disintegration and not simply Lovesong. I think there is a massive opportunity for someone to own the album buying download space and make what I suspect will be some very impressive margins.

Its interesting that Radiohead used this argument against iTunes and refused to provide their content to Apple, and I can remember having this conversation years ago with Midge Ure when he pointed out that great bands were a result of nurturing which then led to enormous record sales at the third or fourth album. His argument was that somewhere out there was the next U2 and that the business was geared up to miss them because they couldn't produce quick wins.

These days with Myspace producing the next big thing I still think there is room for the album buying public to have a channel left open to them. I will be very interested what happens next.

Related Tags: itunes, napster, nokia, Loudeye, HMV, Virgin, Sony, Walkman, Download music, Music Industry, Comment, merger, acquisition

Agency.com's Subway Pitch

2006-08-08T15:59:00.000+01:00

Back in the boom of the last Internet explosion something happened inside most agencies. That something was that a lot of people's heads got a lot closer to their assholes and the aromas found there were declared to be of the finest bouquet.

The arrogance that led to this was something that a lot of clients were incredibly pissed off about when they were handed proposals with prices equating to third world debt and no ROI model to even attempt to justify the cost. It was literally 'take it or leave it and if you leave it your competitor will take it and you'll be out of business.' I can remember sitting down with a project manager who argued with me that 150K was nowhere near reasonable enough a price for 12 week project to show a profit.... Oh really? I hated that arrogance then and I have zero tolerance for it now.

So I'm actually sitting here wondering what it is about the Subway viral pitch release from agency.com that is really annoying me. I think its the very public arrogance of saying "Look at us, this is how we approach a pitch" and god help anyone who sees this as a masterclass. There does seem to be a need inside agencies to become celebrities and the rule I've held up to be true over the years is that when the film crews enter the office to start filming, its usually time to get the hell out because people will develop diva status afterwards and the part that is always lost is that the client is the boss and that we exist to serve their needs as best we can. That doesn't mean you have to become a slave, it just means that you should remember that we are a client led business. If clients trust you they ask your opinion, if clients feel valued they share insight with you, if clients believe in you, they will listen to what you have to say. That's called having a relationship with a client and no amount of glitz and glamor is ever a substitute.

I am aware that what I am watching is canned because the movie tells me, so the whole argument of user based content and being caught in the moment that YOUTube and Flickr exemplify is lost. We are back to the idea of a film roll to support a pitch and this is hardly new. Sure instead of the neat graphics and tripod precision shots of yesteryear we now have hand held cameras but you watch it and think to yourself how many takes did that shot take to get 'right'. I'm feeling like I'm watching a bunch of middle class parents from Long Island try and prove how Brooklyn they really are with very little success.

Just about every part of it seems insulting to me from the initial stilted dialogue (anyone who walks up to me and says corner office without explaining why is likely to get a double espresso hurled at their precise coordinates), to the false cheer leading high fives and the deliberately vague power words on the board. Come on guys if you really are going to live life in front of the camera at least have the guts to actually do it honestly. Your ideas would then have been preserved for posterity in copyleft (anyone who did try and steal them would instantly be found out because its been committed to film on the web doh!).

So of course what we then do is send some of the team off to Subway to work there and stop people in the street to ask them questions about the brand. Might it not have been more honest to stand in the store and ask people why they bought that sandwich and not another? I mean how arrogant do you have to be to ask some poor delivery boy what the best thing about working for Subway is? At a rough guess I'd say that most delivery boys would answer that they pay him and that he finishes in enough time to go and start his second full time job of the day. It's fast food guys, not Gordan Ramsay.

Its just so arrogant-agency-with-head-inserted-in-asshole that its untrue. I can only imagine how much Kleenex was required after this particular masturbation session.

User based content and and viral messaging is an important aspect of the mix these days but if you are going to extol your knowledge of these disciplines then go out and actually demonstrate it. Subway as a brand could very well benefit from viral and social media, but nothing in this piece persuades me that Agency.com understands either discipline or that they have the ideas to implement in order to produce an ROI to Subway. Fans will of course say that it has worked because I am commenting on it, but I am commenting on how bad it is not how good it is. None of this can possibly be of benefit to either Subway or their pitch so as far as I can see it fails at each point. Somehow it is just too perfect that Subway asked for no more than five minutes and the entire piece lasts for 9 minutes. That is too perfect on so many levels.

I guess the point Im making is that if you are trying to show how down with the kids and close to the street you are, its better to check your street cred ranking before booking air time.

Edit

Another Old timer, David Bently puts it better than I have

Related Tags: agency.com, subway, Pitching, Social media, viral marketing, Digital Media, Comment, YouTube

Alexa's ratings algorithms and systems

2006-08-08T11:41:00.000+01:00

I've recently become a bit of a fan of Alexa.com. Looking at trends and comparing competitors traffic levels has become a bit of a fun piece as part of my pitches these days.

Over on Recognized Design I found this post which is not quite as praise worthy, and questions the entire validity of algorithms like Alexa.

Not sure if I completely agree with everything being said. I mean data on its own is neither good nor bad and whilst the algorithm maybe suspect I have definitely seen some interesting trend patterns appear on the analysis i've done but I also take the point that a lot of it is largely guess work. I suppose the point is not to put your faith whole heartedly into things.

Noble Sales and Ignoble Sales

2006-06-30T11:18:00.000+01:00

It has been a weak of business development and pitching which has mean that the server has been feeling a little bit neglected, and I can hopefully put that right today at some point.

On another note though I saw over on Seth Godin's blog this post.

Now I've worked at the sharp end of sales, at the marketing coalface and even on the production room floor so I do feel qualified in commenting on this.

The problem is that sales isn't a bad thing, it is just all too often done badly by people who have no real bond to the company or the services beyond their commission cheque each month and even less regard for their clients and customers. I have seen it all too often and frankly I despise that kind of sales person with the kind of passion I usually reserve for traffic wardens, and London Transport.

The reason for this is because I think the real skill of selling is not winning the first order, but to keep my own phone ringing from existing customers so that I get the second, third fourth etc sale with little or no extra effort, and to my mind the only way to achieve that is by listening to what clients want and delivering that within a fair budget. All too often I’ve heard comments like “No matter what the customers problem, the answer is rip it out and put in new stuff” or “I’m a firm believer that you can sell any rubbish just as long as you tart it up enough”.

Now of course there are some environments where this kind of sale is probably desirable. These usually result in a single sale transaction between the customer and the supplier and the sales person is likely to be working somewhere else by the time that the customer needs to purchase again. In this model, the Car salesman, the insurance salesman, the ad space salesman, the door to door salesman and the estate agent are born. It’s easy to see why the caricatures of these people is so negative, but sadly its true that if the customer feels ripped off there is usually nothing that can be done about it and so these sales professionals are already looking for their next prospect.

All of these however are focussed on that single transaction for a product that has a long ownership life. It all goes out of the door when you are selling a service. For a start you don’t have those neat little crib sheets anymore showing you the advantages over competitors because there is no finely crafted product, there is only your own ability to listen and help the client define their needs and then come back with a solution that meets it. This is the truly great skill of selling, and it requires real knowledge both of the clients situation and of their business needs. So your not selling a vase anymore you are hearing about your client’s need to create a pleasing environment and then getting designs created to demonstrate the clients perfect idea of what a vase should be. This is when it gets tricky, because you not only have to get into the clients head of what they want but also be eloquent enough to describe it adequately in order for the client to give you the order.

Of course you could go and get it made for them but then you are incurring costs and if a particular vase costs thousands and thousands to make then you have to be careful about that. Similarly you have to have knowledge of the vase making process, how long it takes, where to source materials, the availability of a potter, and a painter who work and are experienced in the particular techniques required to make this particular vase for the client. All too often sales people assume that one is exactly like the other and carry on regardless.

This leads to setting the client’s expectation of prices and promises made on delivery timescales. If you are not sure of the answer, either find out or take someone with you who is sure!

For some reason though when the sales person comes back and talks about this great new deal they have signed it is always someone else’s problem to fix these misconceptions and inaccuracies, and because money is now at stake, the salesperson sides with the client with the result that either a sub standard service is offered by cutting costs or the company takes a swan dive on the margins. Oh and god help anyone in production who cannot stick to unrealistic deadlines which were promised to the client without anyone else’s agreement or consultation.

This is sales done badly

Sales done well is so very different. In that model records are kept of every conversation and these are open to anyone in order to follow the thought process of how the project came about. The sales person is either a senior production person who has swapped across to handle sales (and gained the additional skills to do so) or they are accompanied by a competent production person who understands the complexities of the tasks required.

The price and deadlines are set in consultation and based on full disclosure of the jobs scope. Sales and production are therefore working together for the benefit of the client and the client has an expectation set in keeping with the actual scope of the project. Now to me this is noble sales, and professional sales and it is undertaken by a professional who not only enjoys the thrill of the chase and the excitement of the kill, but someone who also loves their industry, is knowledgeable and who has respect for their clients. In short this is a salesman whose job is to make sure that their phone is constantly ringing with clients asking for repeat business. Anything marketing does on top is naturally a bonus. Oh and in that model it’s not just the sales person who can be asked when the project will close, it’s the client, because it is in their interests as well to get this moving. The day when that kind of salesperson can be replaced by anything mechanised is a few generations away yet.

The other kind of sales person probably should be replaced by website and as soon as possible.

Edit : It seems as though Michael thinks along the same lines as me

Related Tags: Sales, Sales people, Quick Sales, Noble Sales, Ignoble Sales, Nine things marketers ought to know about salespeople

Finding the SUN - The birth of a Sun Fire T2000 Sun Server - Day 5

2006-06-23T11:49:00.000+01:00

Day five found me with a plan attack to get things moving.

3 hours of manual reading last night revealed that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of console command. I was viewing it as a command which launched a mini application whereas it is more along the lines of a toggle between the System console interface and an information printout of what the server is doing. When I thought it had hung what was actually happening was that it was simply not reporting any errors or diagnostic information.

I was also having problems logging in on telnet as root on the main server login which was giving me all manner of frustrations.

A word with people far more knowledgeable about these things than me revealed this as a security measure which prevents root logging in via telnet.

The solution was therefore to create a new user from SC and then telnet in and log in to as this user and then run the 'su' command to make changes to the IP setup using 'ifconfig'.

The only fly in the ointment was that I had been unable to find a mini network hub capable of stacking with others to give me the full number of network ports I required, but my logic told me that if I had inadvertently configured two ports to have the same IP address that as long as I only connected one at a time, I should still be able to telnet to it and my experiences yesterday proved that I could.

Unfortunately today when I telnet into the Network SC port I can see it, replacing the cable to the network card I configured doesn’t seem to result in anything. Ping proves that the port is not broadcasting and all packets are lost. Nothing has changed and even a reset reveals no change. I have no idea currently why this worked yesterday and not today. Could it possibly be that telnet attempts using root somehow disable the port if it is tried too many times? I honestly cannot think of any other reason.

All in all this gives me something of a problem because I don’t know how to configure it without first accessing it. There must be a way, I just don’t know what it is. Looks like its back to the books.

Later:

At the time of writing the piece above I was well and truly stuck, but a breakthrough came along with a bit of luck.

Whilst flaying about blindly on my system console and switching between SC and console I was suddenly confronted with a Login prompt. Thinking about it now I do get what the console command does and my woes would have been sorted out a lot sooner if I had got this. The console is the same as any other terminal with the exception that it displays diagnostic information, consequently whilst trying to enter a command I suddenly got a Login prompt and all became clear to me.

I was then able to get in and use ifconfig to work out what wasn't working. Now I knew that in a unix system everything is basically a file which relates to a device and in order to work, the device has to first be initialised and loaded before it can be given settings at which point it works. It therefore wasn't surprising to find that the problem with the network card was that it wasn't initialised. I'm not sure how it had managed to get uninitialised but I’m guessing if there was some kind of conflict or error during a reset then that could have done it. Anyway what I was then able to do was search out the commands to initialise the card and then to give it its new settings.

I tested it and low and behold I could connect to the network card. The problem still remained though that I couldn’t log in as root over telnet. Going back to the system console I then decided to create a new user . I checked and the user was created and then used the passwd command to set a password.

Success! I was able to telnet in as the user. Taking Graeme's advice again I decided to setup secure shell access by first editing /etc/ssh/sshd_config to set PermitRootLogin yes . Naturally this first required a refresh of commands for the vi text editor

Another check meant that I could ssh as root to the server and telnet as the new user.

This means that I am finishing my first week with a T2000 with a working base system. People with experience of these things will no doubt achieve the same thing in a single day but as I said in the first of these posts, I am far from being a techie and have never had any kind of machine as big as this before so to be in this position at the end of week one is a major achievement in my book. I have definitely cocked up but I'm kinda on top of where I’ve cocked up and by cocking up I’ve been able to learn what went wrong and how to fix it. All experience whether good or bad is good.

Now on to application setup.

Related Tags: Sun Fire T2000, Test Drive, Sun, Sun Micro Systems, T2000, Sun Fire, Try for free program

Finding the SUN - The birth of a Sun Fire T2000 Sun Server - Day 4

2006-06-22T16:07:00.000+01:00

I spent the day yesterday out at client sites making some money for the agency yesterday and so today has been my first day when I can turn my attention back to the server.

To be honest it has been a very puzzling and perplexing day.

We had a network company in to dop some manintenance and establish our new larger internet pipe today which meant everything had to be turned off. The problem is that after Ive turned the Sun Server back on I can't seem to run console -f again, which I need to do in order to configure it for the new IP addresses. Whenever i do I get a message saying that connecting to the console will delete my connection and am I sure I want to do this, which is very odd

Im looking online for resources but currently after power on I cant do anything else that will let me configure it.

Related Tags: Sun Fire T2000, Test Drive, Sun, Sun Micro Systems, T2000, Sun Fire, Try for free program

Finding the SUN - The birth of a Sun Fire T2000 Sun Server - Day 1

2006-06-20T14:28:00.000+01:00

Out of the box - Day one

When I got the call from the front desk that the new server had arrived, I will admit that I looked at my coffee cup and wished it had something a bit stronger in there. At the same time I could hear Angelina Jolie whispering inside my head that this was too much machine for me.

I’ve never been one to back down from a fight though and so this David went to confront his Goliath. Waiting for me were two boxes, one with two power cords (how nice of them to supply an extra one for a monitor I thought), and one box containing the beast itself. The larger box proved a good deal heavier than its size led me to believe but after careful lugging to a vacant desk and a mental note to visit a chiropractor I started to unpack it.

Inside the Ikea inspired (this is a good thing) packaging awaited a highly attractive server a minimal documentation pouch giving a list of online resources, a couple of Cat 5 cables and several adapters that mystified me.

I had a feeling that I should let the air flow around the machine and so rightly or wrongly decided to balance it on three points on the sturdy packaging rather than placing it flat on the desk. Looking around I located USB ports for a keyboard and mouse and started to look for a CRT socket. This is the first point where my lack of experience with purpose built ‘proper’ servers was exposed because there isn’t one.

Deciding at this point that I needed help and thought that experience based help would be a better bet than simply reading the online manuals alone and had a Google for

“SUN T2000 getting started”.

Throughout this trial I’m going to be saving my searches and online resources on My Del.icio.us so if anyone reading this is looking for resources please feel free to check there.

The search resulted in me finding Graeme and his Getting started With a Sun T2000 entry on his Notes from a Messy Desk Blog.

Sun have obviously been taking notes on the experiences of people with the trial because there was a discrepancy between Graeme’s experience and mine.

I had worked out after attaching both power cables to the back of the Sun Fire (ahhhh that’s what the other one was for) that it was probably a bad idea to go ahead and connect it to the mains and so was slightly worried when he mentioned that I would need a console cable which was not supplied, and should contact a Sun reseller to get one.

For those people who will need to contact Sun during their trial and are used to the less than efficient responses of other corporations I can whole heartedly endorse Sun. The phone rang and was then answered immediately by a human being who was armed with knowledge. Slightly shocked I explained my question and asked whether I could use the cat 5 cables supplied or if I would need to obtain another cable. Notes were taken and a promise to email back was made. Somewhat surprisingly the answer arrived by email within half an hour. I could indeed use the cables supplied.

In true heroic story format I had a bit of a Flashback to my youth when my own personal Obi Wan Kenobi (Jonathan Semple) taught a keen 18 year old about setting up a system console on SCO Unix using serial cables. Suddenly the adapters supplied made sense and so I fitted one end of the Cat 5 cable to the system console port on the Sun Fire and the other end to the 9 pin serial to RJ45 adapter I then found out that my modern Sony Vaio laptop didn’t have a serial port. Of course this also led to the realisation that I didn’t need to have the USB keyboard and mouse connected to the Sun Fire either and disconnected them.

The serious point to make is that setting up the Sun fire is probably best achieved with the addition of whatever old desktop you happen to have laying around, as this is more likely to have an available serial port.

Loading up HyperTerminal I took Graeme’s advice again and set it up to connect through Com1 at 9600 bps with 8 bits 1 stop bit and No parity and also no flow control whatsoever (yeah let it flow free man!). In today’s modern world the whole concept of serial communication is probably going to be alien to a lot of people, but trust me, it really is a piece of cake if you stick to the settings above.

I was now ready to switch on and so after taking a mental brandy I plugged in and the machine quietly came to life and presented me with green lights and a whole load of diagnostic information in HyperTerminal.

This is actually a good point that if nothing appears in your terminal window then you’ve done something wrong and should check that you’ve plugged the cable into the right serial port and have the settings correct.

At this point you will see a system prompt and what the machine wants is its IP Network settings.

Probably like a lot of small agencies we outsource our network to an external company who support Windows boxes only, and so I had to go and ring them to get a vacant private IP address, which took longer than 3 minutes and resulted in the machine dropping my connection to terminal. Reconnecting didn’t help and I couldn’t find a reset switch on the box and so I elected to unplug and re-plug the cables into the mains which didn’t seem to have an adverse effect on the box and then enabled me to set my network settings with the following commands.

setsc if_network true
setsc netsc_ipaddr
setsc netsc_ipnetmask
setsc netsc_ipgateway

I was also kind of inquisitive and so went through the process again to enter more settings including the management port as a networked resource using ‘setupsc’ and then ‘resetsc’

Of course I also realised that I was going to need more IP addresses than just the one and so called our IT company again (a conversation worthy of an entry on its own – “Exactly how many do you think your going to need?”). The bare minimum I suggest is two, one for the management console and one to connect to make the machine available to the rest of the network, but you should also note that the serial network management port displays more diagnostic information than the IP address connected port does and so having some sort of access to a serial console is still a good idea.

Armed with all this experience and having already set passwords for the various access methods I took my courage in both hands and typed ‘poweron’

I think I already mentioned that I was setting the machine up at a vacant desk in the office. Ours is not a large office and so everyone else around was treated to the two fans blasting and masking the sound of the air conditioning, any attempts at telephone conversations and destroyed any hope of people more than 4 feet away hearing what you say to them. I’m not kidding, this is not a quiet machine and in hindsight I should have put it away in a rack in a room before doing this.

Once in there was no stopping me and so after promising to buy everyone affected a drink later, I ran ‘console –f’ where the rest of the computers configuration was set.

To be honest this did give me a few problems. I had chosen PC Console as the emulation type in Hyperterminal and i’m thinking I set this incorrectly because the menus I was presented with selected the option above the one I actually set, which led to a certain amount of fiddling about as I corrected my time zone from Australia to Europe.

Things like the computers name seemed to go without incident and so I entered ‘Rosco’ after Rosco Tanner because he was a big server (Big Server.. gettit?).

What did give me problems was setting up a name server. Our network is a bog standard Windows network without frills and so after my attempts to set-up ‘none’ failed I had to work my way through the list before I found an option which didn’t lead to an error preventing me form going any further. Finally I set it to DNS and entered our basic DNS details although this did later result in an error when Rosco couldn’t find himself listed in it (predictably). I’ve made a mental note to establish local DNS for the office so this should sort itself out through the next few days. Basically though this was job done for getting a server established and so I entered ‘shutdown’ which took the machine back to single user mode and then ‘poweroff’ to give everyone’s eardrums a break.

It was now time to set Rosco in his rack in the computer/filing/box room.

Now I’ll freely admit that I never had a Mechano kit when I was a kid but even with that caveat I found assembling the rack mount the most difficult part of the job. At one point I had one detached arm connected to the server and some sort of telescopic light saber swaying precarious as I attempted to fix the other side. Eventually I found a release button which detached the remaining arm but to me the instructions supplied were not intuitive enough. Success was only really achieved when I got one of the junior account executives to help me steady things as I screwed them into the rack. Having said that, once this was done, the machine slid in without problems and seated very comfortably and securely in place.

Cables were re-attached but the dual requirement of a network port for the machine and a network port for the management console was something I hadn’t considered prior to the machine arriving and only one spare one was available. There wasn’t room for another machine and so I used the serial management connection to plug into the back of the Windows server in order to free up the single port to connect it to the network. Currently I have to use the windows box if I want to do any maintenance on the sun box and cannot do so over telnet. I’ve made a mental note to buy one of those mini stackable network hubs from PC World which should sort the problem out.

That was really day one completed, and a well deserved beer was removed from the agency hospitality fridge.

As a side note some of you may be wondering why i'm running this as an internal machine when the applications I want to run are clearly designed to be public. The answer is that firstly the machine isn't configured to be public yet but the main reason is because those wodnerful people at BT have not (after 2 attempts) been able to configure our asyncronous internet connection correctly, and therefore I just don't have the badnwidth yet to test anything and won't until Friday at the earliest.

Related Tags: Sun Fire T2000, Test Drive, Sun, Sun Micro Systems, T2000, Sun Fire, Try for free program

Finding the SUN - The birth of a Sun Fire T2000 Sun Server - Introduction

2006-06-19T13:08:00.000+01:00

A little while ago I commented on a post from James Governor which I initially thought was only open to the select few very well connected technical gurus.

It concerned Sun literally giving away servers. Well the truth is (certainly initially) not quite as glamorous but the prospect still remains that SUN are very keen for people to see how incredibly good their new servers are and therefore running a trial review system whereby companies receive a server for 60 days and review it on their blogs. The hook being that if you write a particularly informative review, that they may let you keep it.

This is actually the perfect server for the Interactive Mix applications I am currently setting up and the recent campaigns we have run and so the temptation proved too much for me and I contacted SUN. I’ll admit that I didn’t hold up a lot of hope in being included in this scheme but to my surprise we were accepted and this morning a brand spanking new T2000 arrived.

At this point a rather large intake of breath is required, because this is a whole lot of machine and I am very far from being a techie. It’s true that 20 years ago my first ever job was as a Systems Administrator on a NCR tower range running SCO Unix and that I very badly wrote some code that ran on the Internet until 2002 but I have always considered myself as a Marketing chap who has an understanding of computers rather than any kind of computer guru. In fact the last time I did anything remotely technical professionally was 1998 and so this kind of machine is several shades beyond my comfort zone.

Now I’ve always thought of myself as above average intelligence but lacking in any common sense whatsoever (ask any of my ex wives!), and so I thought that this series of write-ups could potentially show how literally anyone with a brain can get one of these working and take it out of the Jesus creeper domain and onto a business based footing. My hope is therefore to show that you don’t need to have a dedicated techie to do this, just someone who understands computers a bit and is prepared to look for answers.

In this way I’m hoping that the appeal for what should be a truly outstanding machine will widen and find its place offering business solutions to SME companies as well as the larger corporations with an IT Department swelling in numbers.

I have no idea how I’m going to get on but I will record all of it here.

Related Tags: Sun Fire T2000, Test Drive, Sun, Sun Micro Systems, T2000, Sun Fire, Introduction, Try for free program

What is Web 2.0?

2006-06-19T11:52:00.000+01:00

It’s an interesting question that was put to me today. I’ve been talking a lot about Web 2.0 but have never actually written a definition myself which encapsulates what it was and identifies the key aspects of it. I was asked the direct question this morning and so below is my stab at defining the new web order.

Web 2.0 is a move away from the first web model where there were a few publishers and many consumers of information. For example a company created a website and lots of potential customers looked at it. The barriers to creating a website (better looked at as content) were too high for most users in this model, and lets face it your average AOL user can just about cope with email so HTML was going to look like PhD physics to them. What I'm driving at was that in order to publish information in the first web model a user needed to understand markup language, have some grasp on image creation, layout and also hosting before they were going to be ready to take on gathering their thoughts together to publish.

Web 2.0 takes the view that every consumer of information should be able to be a publisher as well. This is purely subjective but in my view there are several key sites and technologies that make web 2.0 available to the masses

Picture phones and digital cameras make it much easier to gather graphics together now, and this is as true for video content as it is for still photography. This is completely personalised graphical content and therefore is very focused on the user.

Flickr.com is a very easy to use and highly configurable way to make photographs available across the web.

Youtube does the same thing with video content.

Blog hosting sites, Livejournal and Myspace provided extremely easy to use layouts and publication mechanisms that even the tabloid reading masses could get their heads around.

These sites (obviously there are others) should all be viewed as Web 2.0 projects and the cornerstones of the web 2.0 publication method.

The essence of web 2.0 is therefore encouraging content not simply from brand owners but from their customers, which is why I bring the essence of Web 2.0 for business down to the phrase that "Web 2.0 enables companies to have a closer relationship with their customers than ever before" and "brands have the opportunity to create personal relationships with consumers". The key to this is user content and the creation of discussions online about products and services offered by companies. A classic web 2.0 is AOLs 'Discuss' project about the very fabric of the Internet itself.

The problem with all this content is that with everyone publishing there will be an absolute wealth of it out there. The problem is how to categorise it and how to consume it.

Consuming the content is achieved via a syndication model and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the model of choice for the Web. No conversation of Web 2.0 is complete without a section devoted to RSS and RSS readers.

In the old model, a user searched for a website and entered via the homepage through a browser. They then navigated to the section they wanted and found the content. Some websites were updated regularly and were read regularly by consumers but the same navigation model was used to check for updates. What I'm getting at is that this is a lot of wasted time spent on looking and checking for information when the information itself is the valuable item.

RSS enables a site to be syndicated and RSS readers monitor sites for updates automatically and then alert the user to this. The user is then able to scan headlines to see which individual pages they want to read. The point is that individual pages are read as they are added and updated rather than navigated from a homepage. It saves time and therefore is significantly more productive.

This however does not solve the problem of categorising the content. Blogs account for a great deal of this content as they are the largest publication method. Google therefore created its blog search engine which ignores all other content and concentrates only on user based content.

The biggest and most respected tool for categrosing this content is however technorati.com. It uses the concept of tagging to add short descriptions of what each piece created is actually about. Tags are added to the bottom of the content with short descriptions and keywords. This is then categorised by Technorati and can be searched. Similarly it relates blogs sharing tags to each other in what are known as clouds. The idea is that if two people are using the same tags as each other then the chances are that their content is quite similar and therefore readers of one will find the other relevant.

There are obviously new methods and improvements to categorisation coming along all the time, and many of them are led by users themselves. One concept which is highly useful is called ‘Declarative Living’. Quite simply this is a discipline whereby whatever you are reading and the sources you find are published for others to see. The logic follows that if people are interested in what you are saying, they are also likely to be interested in your sources. This is achieved via Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML). Every RSS Reader has a listing of blogs sites and sources which the individual user reads. These can be exported as OPML files. Any good RSS reader can import an OPML file and so publishing your OPML file for others to download and import into their own RSS reader's list is a very good idea. The concept was first introduced to me by James Governor who also has a blog you should read. Google him or look for him in Technorati. My own OPML file can be found here.

There you go, introduction to Web 2.0. That’s procedurally how things work with a little bit of technical information as well, together with identifying the major players as viewed by Aaron Savage. The real question though is what does this all mean for business. Advertising is the medium that is having to adapt quickest to this but others will follow.

Related Tags: web 2.0, Explanation, Definition, Declarative Living, RSS, OPML, Technorati, Blogs, Blogging, Livejournal, MySpace, Publishing, Consumers, Consuming

BBC offer News Alerts via RSS.

2006-06-14T10:17:00.000+01:00

Emphasising my return to blogging form, I'm really impressed with how the BBC is embracing and rolling out the Web 2.0 model.

This article on today's Brand Republic highlights their latest offering which is BBC news offered via RSS. The improvement over the old service is that users specify what alerts they receive based on categories rather than receiving absolutely everything.

For those who remember Pointcast this is a massive step forward to the idea that you receive the news you want without being deluged with news you have no interest in whatsoever.

You can subscribe to the various feeds from http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/minimotty/

Related Tags: BBC, News, RSS, Web 2.0, Web2.0, News Alerts

Are RIAs taking enough notice of usability?

2006-06-14T09:35:00.000+01:00

A report has crossed my desk talking about how much of the excitement regarding Web2.0 projects is based around Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Now I'm somewhat taken aback by the fact that certain corners are only just now waking up to the idea that highly interactive applications can be developed on the Internet but that is another story. The main thing that struck me was the discussions relating to AJAX frameworks (I don't think you can call AJAX a technology in and of itself).

There is a great deal of work being produced at the moment using AJAX frameworks to constantly pass messages between the client and the server in order to produce intuitive and adaptive interfaces based on human behavior but the report concentrates on a danger that standards are not being adhered to by these new developments and that user's needs are not being met.

This is interesting and does highlight pitfalls which are appearing with new technologies. My overriding thought though is if you change the year to 2002 and change these technology to FLASH you could pretty much have printed the same piece.

The bigger story in my view is that as new technologies come on board this always results in a period of hysteria when early adopters and standards bodies stop thinking about each other and also stop talking to each other. Early adopters want to push the envelope and standards bodies want to absorb the technology into an existing and understood framework.

On the one hand unless people are prepared to push things as far as they can go then the new tech will take longer to mature, and on the other the danger exists that bad practices will become the standard and will result in a very typical FLASH type argument with opposing armies gathered. One holding the view that the technology is worthless and should be outlawed, and the other holding it up to be the language of their deity of choice.

I’m not too sure what the answer is because I think both attitudes have a lot of merit. Maybe we need a safe use and play use policy so that some projects are understood to be non standard but aim to push the boundaries of the technology itself whilst others ensure compliance and show early quick wins for organisations. The two parties do however need to talk to each other, and the glue that could bind them both together is the user and usability.

I've been involved in several projects over the years that were not just bleeding edge but positively splattered in the new areas they were exploring, and I will freely admit that in some cases (FLASH for instance) we missed out on basic points concerning usability and the longevity of a site, but in so doing we did find out very quickly what the technologies were capable of which placed us in a very good position to know when it was good to use and when it was bad to use.

The point I am making is that it may be a little unfair to criticise the early adopters of RIAs as these people will work out where the boundaries are for the rest of the development community to follow. As long as a sense of usability is kept, then things won't drift too far astray and even if they do, people are still learning things, which doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.

Related Tags: Report, AJAX, Comment, FLASH, Web 2.0, Web2.0, Development, Application design, RIA, Rich Internet Applications

Where's the Gypsy?

2006-05-06T11:37:00.000+01:00

I've recieved several emails asking what has happened to the Gypsy Mission and it is true that i've been very quiet recently, but two complex campaign launches and an office move has had an adverse effect on blogging. There has been so much happening and Ive really wanted to comment on all of it but just never been able to find the time. To be hoenst there wasn't time to find. One campaign however is now launched and is available.

Today and all next week, ebookers is giving away free flights as part of a joint promotion with the Daily Mail.

Checkin2win is a prize draw which selects a random winner each hour to receive two free tickets. All you have to do is register each hour in order to be in the draw which starts at 10:00am today. You can also increase your chances of winning by referring a friend to be included in the draw as well.

http://checkin2win.ebookers.com

http://www.ebookers.com/dailymail

Hopefully now the decks have been cleared and I can start to comment on all the things that have happened over the weeks as well as the new things.

Is the Future Bright or is it Dull?

2006-03-27T15:47:00.000+01:00

Ive been asked to write a prediction of the future for an article. The following is very rough and definitely needs work in all departments but as a first attempt I'm actually quite happy (particularly considering it was written at speed due to two impending pitch deadlines). I must give a few credits to Mike Butcher, as I've nicked a couple of his gags from another predictions piece he did a few years ago, but it is mostly mine. Anyway, first draft:

In the future, the key word will be convergence. By 2011 media and the way we interact with it, will have changed significantly.

The power available to users has led to the development of hand held, combined mobile phone and computer in one, with Apple’s i-phone (launched in 2008) leading the field. These small handheld devices work with an earpiece and a small screen although trialling has already begun on a project chip inset into a special polarising lens oin a pair of glasses (referred to by Apple as the i-Lens) to provide a Heads Up Display (HUD) as large as a persons own desktop monitor. It is this product’s launch which most consumers cite as a reason why they would upgrade to Apple’s newest product the i-wrist, although the ability to hack another person computer to see their HUD without their knowledge (known as HUDJacking) remains a security concern.

All major towns, cities, roads and train lines now offer wireless broadband access for these devices, meeting the Information Everywhere marketing claims of the various service providers. A series of bolt on Bluetooth devices are also available. These include monitors and keyboards and Library Pods. Library Pods are large (500 Terabyte) disks which scan the various news and entertainment content providers for the latest programs. The then synchronise user specific content with each persons i-Phone. BitTorrent (newly listed on the NASDAQ) licenses its Peer to Peer sharing solution to all of these distributors in order to enable subscribed users to download the entertainment they want as fast as possible. All content is available as Text, Audio, Video or any combination to facilitate the needs of all users.

Access is via a subscription service with the BBC (newly merged with British Telecom) separately funded via a compulsory Airwaves License in the UK. The airwaves license provides free access to the network and also free access to communicate directly with any other user on the UK. Overseas consumers may also subscribe to BBC content and therefore enjoy reduced rates to contact UK consumers. The BBC is unique amongst content providers in that it does not advertise and is also the corner stone of the UK network. It’s ability to attract overseas subscribers has also bolstered its revenues although most overseas users consider the BBC to be too expensive. The UK consequently has the most expensive access to media of any western country.

The reason for this is that all other content providers subsidise access to their network via self profiling for advertising purposes. Users therefore choose to give as much or as little information about themselves as they wish but the more information they give, the cheaper their access to both the Content Providers content and also for access to the network. Currently only the top 10% of the population could reasonably afford not to receive adverts however over 99% have elected to follow this trend and receive specifically targeted ads during syndicated programs which they choose to listen to, watch or read. It is therefore possible to bring the cost of accessing the network down to little more than the cost of the Airwaves license itself. Ads are also permission served based on location with billboards recognising users who fit their profile and deliver highly personalised and tailored content as part of the ad. This has brought a wealth of interest from local advertisers as well as national and International brands.

The ads themselves come in many forms, from static and animated content alongside text content to fully interactive ads during syndicated video content, where the user interacts with the ad itself which closely resembles smaller versions of computer games from the previous decade. The vast majority of content is now syndicated with new content advertised during shows which have already been subscribed to. Very accurate viewing figures are now available dependent on download which together with the voluntary profiling of users has enabled highly accurate conversion metrics to be produced, many of which disprove many of the assumptions made in the past.

Two content types offer live feeds as well as syndicated content.

The first of these is provided by the various news services. In this the BBC stands as the champion of unbiased quality journalism and is one of the two largest companies in this space. The other is Fox News which champions the new, more popular form of journalism known as Viewpoint Journalism. These offer news and current affairs services which are loosely split by political stance and ideology, and provide consumers the ability to watch the same content but with a commentary position which closely matches their own based on self profiling. These are available in a user defined language and for every political viewpoint possible as well as Local, national and global content, although concern exists over availability of the far right fascist viewpoint expressed by the new Fatherland Russian News channel. This content is again interspersed with relevant ads.

The other form of content which offers this service is sport with all consumers able to watch live or syndicated matches from anywhere in the world. Ads are again displayed along with individual subscriptions. These rank among the highest subscriptions available.

Against this background is the User Content Service whereby any user can contribute their own and others commentary on current affairs or simply their own thoughts. Personal content is added in all formats such as video, text and audio this method of information delivery has grown to be a highly respected source of information. Some users built their own audiences which rival any of the main content providers and overall user content outnumbers professional content by 3 to 1. User Content was first to report the civil war in China, and the first to break the news of widespread corruption in the conservative government’s arms sales to Russia affair. Overall user content is considered the place where news stories begin and then are picked up by the professional press, and most news content providers employ a team to trawl through user content every day looking for leads.

The last of the printed press is due to disappear at the end of the year with only The Sunday Times and The Sunday Sun remaining. Most other news organisations have either been bought by the BBC or have re-launched themselves as glossy periodicals. It is suspected though that many of the user content providers are actually employees of these publications who want to bring an issue into the public eye.

Users also have the ability to splice the live content with their own entertainment and music in particular is very popular in this format. It is so popular that some shows have listeners which reach into tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands.

For a user with an audience they are also able to display ad slots which are filled automatically by the Google Advertising Network. This network is the largest in the world and displays relevant ads to match the individual users profile in the allocated slots. This is the most highly form of targeted advertising available and is often backed up by high conversion rates which earns money for the user and Google.

On one of these show’s, this morning someone listens to reports on the business news that Apple is to be relisted as an apparel company and that BitTorrent has just broken the record for an IPO. Following this is commentary by an unknown user on political developments in the Far East and Russia and this is followed by a personalised ad for a holiday abroad in Turkey where the user last went 4 years ago. Finally the traffic news relating to the specific journey the user takes is broadcast followed by a track form one of their favourite bands.

Related Tags: Predictions, Media, Future, Content Providers, User Content, Technology, 2011

Ship lost at sea with project brief on board

2006-03-23T09:51:00.000Z

I read the following article this morning on New Media Age. Not every body is going to be able to see it because it is a subscription service but to paraphrase:

P & O Cruises has announced today the relaunch of it's redesigned website.

"A spokesman for P&O Cruises said the aim of the site was to be innovative enough to attract new customers yet simple enough for Internet novices to navigate.

The new site offers a video tour of each of the company's five luxury liners. It also has separate sections to cater for first-time cruisers and those who have holidayed with the company before."

Now I know quite a bit about this project because over the Christmas period 2003 I and 4 other agencies pitched for the business. I remember it being a very tight schedule and I worked late on Christmas Eve along with the Creative Director to get it finished.

The description above is very much like the brief I responded to. We were actually eliminated during the second round and from what I gather the winner was later told that they would not be awarded the deal either. 2 years have now gone by and as of a few minutes ago the site is not launched which means that the PR piece has gone out before the site went up.

One of the things I say time and time again to clients is that a website is interactive not just for users but also for the company. It is easy to make changes and additions to it and this actually has a benefit as customers will come back to the site to see the new features and information (obviosuly you need to tell them about it).

Taking the view that the website is like a piece of print where every last detail has to be perfect prior to launch delays the site, and in this case it seems that severe delays may have occurred. In the meantime the site is going to be launched with what looks to me like a 2+ year old brief and in the meantime other companies have come along and created a more vibrant image of a cruise company (The excellent work for Royal Caribbean done by Positive Thinking comes to mind) has placed P&O further down in customers minds than was necessary. Obviously I have issues with the website (I usually will) but the point is that the consumer's perception of what a cruise is, has been challenged and probably changed through the media communications and has been made more appealing.

To me this is a clear example of people who get it (Royal Caribbean) and people who don't (P&O). Media has moved on dramatically since the brief was given out and yet the brief has remained stagnant and in development for over two years. Agencies can only help clients who are prepared to let themsleves be helped and the rate at which media is changing the worst thing in the world anybody can do right now, is nothing.

Somehow I suspect that a company in Southampton hasn't heard this message yet.

Related Tags: Web 2.0, Websites, Design & Build, P&O Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Positive Thinking, Clients, People Who Get it, People who Don't get it

If Sky is doing it then It must be right

2006-03-22T12:57:00.000Z

I've said in the past that digital TV in this country was ill conceived in its execution.

I saw absolutely no point in trying to create another web and the red button was never a decent way of interacting with anything. What I wanted was truly interactive content where televisions were actually computers and you could take part in the show or ad you were watching as well as providing feedback. The big problem was that programs were scheduled, and that gave the whole thing an insurmountable problem. Well just as Radio is being usurped by Podcasts, broadcast TV will be usurped by IPTV, and the most encouraging information I have yet seen has come through just now from Brand Republic, with Sky's announcement that it will launch its Broadband TV service. This means that the platform is in place, next will come the markup standard and then clever agencies and production houses can start to create their content.

Add to that an article from the register today about ITV rejecting a takeover bid and this is starting to look like a fairly imminent reality. The only thing that has surprised me is that Freeview didn't pick up on this first, as I would have thought that they were the ones ideally placed to lead the way on this.

Related Tags: Sky, ITV, IPTV, Broadband, VOD, Television, Advertising

I've been published

2006-03-22T12:21:00.000Z

Apparently I have had one of my pieces published in Marketing Magazine this week. I think its my letter relating to the River Island site launch, but I'm not sure as I haven't seen this weeks copy yet.

Related Tags: Marketing, Marketing Magazine, River Island, Accessibility

First Armadillos and now Wombats... Whatever Next

2006-03-22T12:10:00.000Z

I spoke last week about armadillo marketing. Well today I heard about WOMBATs. A WOMBAT is apparently a Word Of Mouth Believer and Transmitter which is very much like Sneezers who pass on a viral message.

Viral marketing is of course very much linked to the concept of Advertising 2.0 and so the concept of identifying targeting and creating a WOMBAT is something that is appealing to me greatly.

I found the term used on the UK Netmarketing list and as far as I can see it doesn't appear anywhere else.... but it definitely should.

Related Tags: Advertising, Advertising 2.0, WOMBAT, Sneezers, Viral

What is a website to do

2006-03-21T18:52:00.000Z

Ive been asked to contribute for another article on the web, this time looking at design and build.

My piece is still way too long but is included below.

Its interesting going thorugh my thought process, because the aims of what a website should achieve haven't changed, just the ways to accomplish them. Anyway this is my first draft which will change. See what you think.

The commercial web in the UK took off in 1996 which is ten years ago now. Back then a few of us were talking about building relationships online and electronic commerce online but most of the actual sites were simple brochures delivered online.

A lot of companies have spent a great deal of time and money on the presentation of their site but many still lack those all important strategies which engage their audience and prompt a potential customer to begin a dialog with them.

I sat down back in 2000 with a major FMCG manufacturer and we talked about whether people were really going to buy peanut butter from their website in the future. At the time their feeling was that people were going to, and so setting up eCommerce was a good idea. I wasn't convinced and today you still can't go to their site and purchase a tub of peanut butter. Instead you can go to tesco.com or ocado.com and purchase it there. It's about looking at who your actual customers are and realising that they may not be the same as the ultimate consumer of the product. It has never been the case that a large FMCG had their own store where people purchased goods, instead they operate through a distributer who sell to large supermarkets and small shops who in turn sell to the consumer.

For a brand it is about making a decision whether you want to support your existing sales channel or compete with it. Companies that do sell direct such as Dell have a clear business model, they know their customers and so implementing eCommerce is a logical and natural step for them. Amazon proved that a direct selling brand can be built but out of the thousands of .com eCommerce companies who tried to set up not too many of them have seen it through to today. Amazon and Dell took the view of providing information and tools which customers found useful to support their buying decisions. PC World understood that whilst the web is an essential tool which consumers base a buying decisions, the actual purchase mechanism is just as likely to be offline as it is online.

That is really the key point, a website should be about an organisation's customers, and most websites forget this. Your customers will use the web to interact with you and make buying decisions, but ultimately consumers do not like to be forced to purchase in a particular way, they see this as a personal decision and so choice is important to them. Lead with your products or services and how they benefit your existing customers. Show the features and advantages of your products but always link them to the customer. The ubiquitous About Us section has a place in the site but generally visitors will be engaged more if the information they see first is about them and relevant to them. Hearing about the company's history does tend to be of lesser importance to most customers and so give it less prominence in the navigational architecture.

There should be one of two aims for every website.

a) Sell products directly to customers
b) Build relationships with customers.

The first option is obviously leaning towards eCommerce operations but it is only really suitable if your company sells directly to consumers offline, It isn't going to be applicable to every company by any stretch of the imagination. What might be however is setting up Extranets for your large customers to be able to manage their orders with you, and track their progress. Its about making you easier to do business with.

Most companies should be ensuring that their website is focused on building relationships with customers and the other important stakeholders, and this is again where a solid strategy will help. For publicly quoted companies there is a lot of value in separating your corporate site from your customer site as these audience segments are usually interested in different things. So the corporate site is aimed at investors, recruitment, press and media. The customer site is then free to concentrate on providing the relationship building mechanisms that will retain existing customers, and attract new ones.

We are also seeing a dramatic change in how media works and your website should be flexible enough to accommodate this. In days gone by you would promote your products by purchasing the widest reaching mass media method you could afford and advertise that way. Your message would then trickle down from the top to the bottom so that everyone heard of your product and went out to buy it. What we are now seeing is a fundamental change in consumer behavior where mass media is not having the same effect and is even beginning to be distrusted by consumers. We are seeing wholesale reductions in mass media revenues whilst digital viral and direct marketing are taking more of the marketing pie. This is because consumers now would rather base a buying decision on their own research or on a friends recommendation than on a TV ad, which suits the digital medium very well. Consumers today are more likely to be commenting publicly on your products than ever before with their blogs and on bulletin boards so harnessing this power is very important. Web 2.0 is upon us so every corporate site should be implementing RSS and inviting consumers to comment on their products to spread through these social and viral networks. It is important now, more than ever before, to ensure that the benefits and advantages of your products are understood, and consumers are getting very informed so they will know if you are lying to them. Transparency is therefore seen as a distinct advantage by today's consumers.

Accessibility has been a legal requirement of website design now for several years and yet the vast majority of sites fail the most basic tests. It is therefore important that companies select suppliers who do understand that accessible and usable design isn't just for people with disabilities but improves the likelihood of ordinary consumers making buying decisions. Its just financial and common sense. I therefore hope that the enormous inaccessible completely Flash based sites become a thing of the past, as they were usually a waste of money. Flash has its place, but it isn't the main tool in website development.

Many of these things are going to require a lot of courage but if you harness the power of the social networks then your products will be welcomed by the marketplace and your brand message will have the kind of penetration you used to dream of with a return on investment that will keep your shareholders very happy. The worst thing of all that brands can do right now, is nothing.

This generation of websites should not be seen as a cost center but as a profit center and so planning and setting goals is very important. I developed a methodology for digital communications called The Interactive Mix, which is centered on what a digital presence needs to achieve for the organisation in terms of the bottom line, and plans everything from this point in terms of Driving traffic to the website, Acquiring customers in order to establish relationships, Converting customers through tools that facilitate buying decisions and finally Retaining customers through regular updates and communications. And these four key aims should be the cornerstones for the websites built throughout this year.

Related Tags: Article, Website Design, Design & Build, Marketing, Advertising, Relationships, eCommerce, eMarketing, Sales Channel, Buying Decisions, Interactive Mix, Web Strategy, Extranet, Internet, Blogs, Blogging, Web 2.0, Social Networks, Social Marketing, Accessibility

SEO Contribution to a Press Article

2006-03-20T17:43:00.000Z

I was asked this morning for a contribution on SEO for a trade publication, which got me thinking about the ideal SEO offer to clients. This is what I came up with.

Not since the youthful days of Lester Wunderman, has the industry seen such a radically new idea as Search Engine Optimisation. Fundamentally marketing and advertising are changing. It used to be the case that building a brand was accomplished by booking space on the biggest mass media platform you could afford and wait for the message to trickle down from the top. The theory was that by scatter bombing as big an area as possible you would reach all the consumers that would be interested in buying your product. Actually the scatter bombing analogy is very accurate to what is happening. Sure you were likely to hit the key targets but you were also going to reach a lot of people who didn't care about you or your product.

Vietnam taught the US military that scatter bombing wasn't the best way of winning a war, and as a result they now offer smart bombs which apparently knock on the door and ask if the target is in before exploding, and all this is recorded for posterity on video. Search marketing offers the same kind of efficiency and the same benefits and SEO means that any buyer sees your message at exactly the time that they want to make a purchase. That's the Utopian dream of business, right? Mass media's hold on advertising budgets is loosening and Search Marketing increasingly offers a greater return on investment. It is a new technique and consequently the search market is still growing up. Currently there is much talk about what is and what isn't ethical SEO.

Google's advice to Webmasters concerns the content of a site and much of it is to do with good web design practice and writing good copy (the latter of which is often overlooked by many web designers and clients during a project).

The conversation about unethical practices is long and involved, but can be encapsulated in a phrase. If a surfer enters a search term and the results lower their satisfaction then the chances are that unethical tactics have been employed. This should be avoided at all costs as the success of the whole search model relies on the user's satisfaction with the results they get.

This neatly covers the most common unethical practices such as keyword spamming, where long lists of repetitive and non relevant keywords are strung together. Another technique is hiding content which the rest of the site doesn't present to make it look more attractive to the search spiders. Google and the other search engines are getting very hot on these topics and very public removals have been made in the last few weeks. Action of this nature which at times has been over zealous is however understandable because their entire business model depends on the surfer satisfaction ratio remaining high.

The other side of SEO is about promoting your clients site on other sites and is very close to the offline offering of PR agencies. Its about ensuring that any online conversation about your client's industry includes a reference to your client and a link to their site. So industry publications, press articles and discussion boards are very useful to increase page ranking. These technique were so efficient that Google stopped including many blogs in their main search index when they created their Blog Specific index, however the value of blog specific search engines is going to grow and this avenue should not be overlooked. Spaming blogs with automatic comment programs though is unethical and this technique should be avoided on the grounds of reducing surfer satisfaction. Sending relevant bloggers information on your client and their products is ethical and many bloggers are highly receptive to approaches from companies so that they can write up their own reviews.

The ultimate penalty for infringing the SEO ethical practices is removal from the index which means that you, your products and services will be completely invisible to the Internet audience and therefore have to rely on other forms of promotion, which will invariably cost more than well executed SEO. In most cases SEO will provide benefit to clients and a return on investment. In a few cases the offer is either too weak or too complicated to define through copy or keywords or the results are needed too quickly for SEO to be suitable and in these cases there are online and offline alternatives to SEO. As with every aspect of media it is about aligning the needs of the client with the most suited solutions.

My opinion is that SEO practitioners shouldn't simply be looking at an existing site and seeing how to blast it up the rankings, they should be analysing the needs of client's customers and adjusting/adding content which is relevant, clear, complete and valuable for them with specifically targeted keywords. This should then be presented in the most efficient ways for the search spiders to find. It isn't about turning a sows ear into a silk purse, its about going to the haberdashers and getting silk and thread to create it.

SEO takes time, so the results won't be immediately obvious and clients should be aware of this. The results also should be monitored because search is not a static business. This means that SEOs should be talking to clients about ongoing relationships to monitor and update the content keywords and rankings each month. SEOs who guarantee top ten listings in hundreds of search engines with results within two weeks are either lying or they are employing unethical practices. They could also mean Search Engine Marketing which is a different, but related, kettle of fish.

For short campaigns SEO is probably not going to be quick enough to produce excellent results and alternatives should be sought but for websites and web presences with a long shelf life, SEO offers the most cost efficient way of promoting your business.

Form and function - Designing for Print and Web

2006-03-17T13:48:00.000Z

I've been working with creatives recently who come from a very solid print background but don't have masses of experience with the web, and it has been a real education process for me.

I had heard of teams of creatives with their sketchpads and then creating boards based on the sketches that were then inked in, but I had never seen it before.

These people are highly creative and work in teams of a designer and a copywriter to collectively come up with the concept.

Its not usual for a producer to get involved too much with this process and it is seen very much as the creative domain. I completely see that this is an ideal way to deal with print.

The web is an interactive medium and the type of projects I usually deal with feature online applications and high levels of functionality in addition to presenting brands online, and this world isn't immediately obvious to a creative.

Where this leads to is the old form and function debate, and I am starting to see where and why the camps became so divided.

Form says that fantastic creative is what engages the user and that any functionality can be accommodated later.

Function says that there are clear objectives which the user must complete in order for the campaign to be a success and so any form should be secondary to this goal.

My view is that form and function should work hand in hand and the best web projects prove this. If one takes on more importance than the other then a balance is lost.

How then do you implement that in a traditional print creative team?

Going back to basic web principals, the first thing is to create an information architecture and a workflow of what the required user experience is (such as purchasing a product or giving up information. This will give you the elements that are required on the site, and can be placed on a loose wireframe. At this point the creative concept will be developed and the workflow elements can be made concrete so that the design adds emphasis to the aims and thus form and function will be married together.

So the task is to teach the creatives I am working with about information Architecture and wireframes.

Of course there is also Cross Browser Cross Platform compliance, understanding screen resolutions and adaptive heuristic design but this will do for starters.

I will probably be writing more about this as I start to develop presentation aids about it.

Why Online Shopping Mall's are a bad idea

2006-03-16T18:53:00.000Z

One of the projects that I have never been keen on and has kept raising its head on so many occasions is the idea of the online Mall.

These sites were probably most famously personified by the seemingly deceased Berkeley Square Online Shopping Mall (and nothing to do with the original companies with the same name).

Now to my mind it was a losing idea from the beginning and here is why I think that.

Back in the days before Mass media, superstores and out of town shopping cities, there was a guy who made stuff. He stood outside his shop and announced to everyone that he had stuff, and as people came into his shop he looked after them and gave them a very personal service. People travelled to his shop in particular because he had the best stuff and he remembered their names, what they bought and made good receommendations to them. He was very specialised in what he had and didn't try to make other things because someone else already had other stuff and did a very good job of selling it.

As time went on, the concept of the town centre develoepd where people congregated in the middle of town and brought their stuff to a market. It made sense because customers could buy more stuff in a shorter space of time and didn't have to travel from one remote shop to another to buy all the stuff they needed. Consequently all the people who made stuff could also sell more stuff at the market because that was where all their customers were. Obviosuly there were still stars of the market and they made a lot more money than people who didn't have quite so much stuff. It is after all one of the laws of competition that someone wins and someone doesn't.

Fast forward again and the winners needed bigger premesis to sell all the stuff they had, which first became the town shopping centre and most recently the out of town shopping centre. The out of town shopping centre developed because people needed somewhere to park their cars whilst they bought all the stuff they needed.

The problem was that as the shops grew bigger and sold more stuff the service got more and more impersonal, but that didn't really matter because lots of stuff was being sold.

Ok Freeze!

Now comes the web where anybody can browse at leisure over the stuff they want. They don't need a car for it, they are looking for good quality stuff at good prices, and some online stores are offering very personal buying experiences. The sites remember who they are, they remember what was bought, they suggest alternatives and give all the help a person could want. In other words they go back to the original shopkeeper who knew his customers.

All the advantages that super malls and out of town Hypermarkets had don't apply online. Instead its all about the personal service and the individual brand recognition. Why then would you first go to an online super mall brand and then choose your favourite brand to buy from? Results have proved that people won't. Instead they will go directly to Amazon, to EBay, to Ocado, and to your favourite niche brand who sells that fantastic thing you cannot do without.

The issue with Online Malls is that they are not the first page a user sees when they open the browser, and to succeed, they need to be. The first page is going to be MSN, Google, Yahoo etc.

An online Shopping Mall also just became the worst business proposal in the world now that Google have announced that they will create an eCommerce specific Search engine.

So throw away those ideas guys.... it didn't work, was never going to work, and never will now.

Edit 17th March

Ef points out that Yell.co.uk are currently running a bunch of radio ads about how you can access a 'virtual shopping mall' (my words not theirs) from their directory service 118… so not only can you find 'whatever you’re looking for in one place' but you can also buy some of it online from Yell…

Strange take on the idea that rather than having it all online you’ve actually got a 'shop itinerary' (my words again) for where to go to get stuff – is this new or just a new advertising slant on the old “how do I advertise directory services?” question.

I think there is going to be some interesting developments here as Google and others turn their attention to the concept of Local Search - "Help, I'm in Peckham and I need a plumber quickly. In that arena, Yell would seem to be well placed to answer that question, but a bigger qwuestion for them is whether they have the thinkers to come up with a remarkable solution to accomplish this before Google march in and take their marketplace. Yahoo would also do well turning their attention to this issue rather than trying to bribe users to search on their site

It can't be Thursday already

2006-03-16T18:48:00.000Z

Wow! Where has the week gone.

My presentation on Monday went very well indeed, so well that I've got several briefs that have landed on my desk for actual projects. It has been burning the midnight oil and so busy that my blogging has also been a luxury I couldn't afford.

All in all I am very pleased with the response to The Interactive Mix, Advertising 2.0 and Web 2.0 ideas that I put forward with a very big nod towards Seth Godin and his books for giving me the courage to put good solutions forward instead of running with the herd.

I can't really say too much more at the moment except that in a few months time I expect to have some good newly launched projects to talk about.

Internet for everyone

2006-03-13T14:14:00.000Z

This is old news from last month but I've only just seen it.

Information Week printed an article on the results of a poll which concluded that the Internet in the US is reaching a ceiling on connected households

Apparently 36 percent are not online. Of these:

4% cite Cost as the reason
31% Said they didn't need it
18% said they weren't interested in anything on the Web
8% percent said they weren't sure how to use the Web

Im actually really encouraged by these numbers because for 49% it is merely a matter of finding the right application to get these people plugged in. Whether its VOIP IPTV or something else we haven't even considered yet, if these unconnected households are sold the benefit of one application then there is nothing else in their results which would prevent them.

Education is obviously the answer to those that are not sure how to use the web which only leaves 4% of p[eople who cannot afford it due to cost. Of course that could incldue people who would change their mind if a perceived benefit was attached to it.

Overall thoguh I am veruy encouraged by these figures and would love to see simialr ones for the UK.

Presentation Day -22 Hours

2006-03-12T16:15:00.000Z

I don't generally work at weekends, and resist it at all costs usually. It's important to me to keep as far as possible a healthy work/life balance, which given my normal hours Monday to Friday means I would probably go nuts very quickly if I did work most weekends.

This weekend is different though because tomorrow, I am presenting to a major retail operation who has links in their products to technology.

In my presentation, I am going to be explaining to them about the Advertising 2.0 model and how The Interactive Mix can position them for the new marketplace. My solutions are remarkable in accordance with the Purple Cow and there is every good reason why they should go for it. If we win it, it will be one of the most exciting projects I've been involved in for many years. Consequently I am very nervous. I really want this to work, and I am pretty sure that they will not have heard any of the things I'm going to say before. Obviously because of these things, there is every chance that they will be scared of what I am saying and do something else.

I'll no doubt write it up afterwards.

The Devil made me write it

2006-03-12T16:01:00.000Z

So in light of all news Google at the moment where This article in Business Week was gauging the recent google gaffes, and this presentation traveled across the web at light speed, I am sat here wondering

Just how long will it be before Seth Godin gets offered the job of Google's Group Marketing Officer.

He quite obviously is the man for the job. His ideas combined with Google's ideas would be a force to be reckoned with, and could create the standard for all business to follow.

I wonder........

What does your Blog Host say about you

2006-03-12T14:25:00.000Z

This is only really a semi serious post but I would like to get it down and out into the Blogosphere.

I've noticed that the whole idea of which blog host you use, seems to be getting some kind of class system associated with it, and I am likening it to the newspaper industry.

For instance, Typepad blogs seems to me to be regarded as the broadsheet newspapers (So a Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal) with in depth analysis and quality journalism, whereas Blogger (my host) seems to be more along the lines of a Daily Mail or Daily Express. Livejournal and MySpace seem to me to be looked at more along the lines of The Sun and The Daily Mirror (with occasional accounts that are definitely more in line with The Daily Sport.)

Now when I chose my Blog host I had a look and thought to myself “hmmm Google owned, must be good.” and so set one up. I was also aware that a few people I knew also had Blogger accounts. As soon as I started reading other Blogs though, I definitely started to feel the class system at work on the Blogospere. Now naturally there are exceptions to this, but overall I am detecting a segmentation of writers, and weight put to them based on their blog host.

If correct, all this begs the question, that if someone wants to be taken more seriously with their writing, then should they swap blog hosts, and if they do, what kind of impact that has. Does a Sun Journalist have issues moving from the Sun to the Sunday Times, and does the readership take them seriously (on both sides) if they do?

So, how many people have swapped over, and what experiences have they had (if any) of doing so?

I am reminded of a phenomenon from ten years ago when the commercial web was just starting up. In those days people gathered on IRC chat rooms and just talked about things that interested them. It was an International audience and so gave the opportunity to exchange social and political ideas from different perspectives. We felt like (and probably were) pioneers, creating something new.

Way back then however there was a snobbery associated with your Internet service provider, where the cool kids were using Demon, Earthlink and Netcom accounts (Netcom in particular was cool because they enabled you to dial in to a local number whether you were in the UK or the US). If however someone was using an AOL account, and wandered in, chances were they got a hard time, because it was considered that anyone on AOL was probably stupid and had nothing to contribute to the debate.

It was probably unfair in most cases, but it did exist, and I am wondering whether the same kind of thing is happening on the Blogosphere, either consciously or unconsciously.

Armadillo Marketing

2006-03-09T15:05:00.000Z

On the 6by7 blog I found an article on Armadillo Marketing. It's an absolutely fascinating read and has set me thinking.

The concept of a communication that exists for no other person other than the author is something I've seen (and been guilty of) a lot on personal blogs. When I set this blog up I wanted it to be a commentary on the industry and include my own thoughts and ideas on the industry, which I hope is therefore going to be of interest to others in the industry. I am therefore coming down on the side that this isn't an armadillo which has relieved me, but the lack of readership that I have definitely made me question whether it was.

I've kept another blog for years over on a blogging community and on it, I muse and rant about things in my life. Most of it is protected or viewable only by friends who know me well, which means that some of it is of interest to them because our personal lives cross over. I wouldn't want most of that to be public and so I seperate out my professional life from my personal life life.

There are however many people on these communities who'se posts seem only to be there for their own reference and do not have any meaning to any of their audience. I have observed that these people often follow a rant with another rant complaining that nobody cares that they have ranted. It's an interesting condition in an individual and so it should be worthy of analysis in a communication.

I am going to start to look out for Armadillo marketing pieces and those that I identify I'll link to here. Somewhere I suspect there will be a link between the armadillos and the lack of effectiveness of the communication.

An obvious example is a website. Years ago I used to think that websites had to be about the organisation, but I have come round to the idea over the years that a website needs to be very much focused on an organisations clients and customers.

Consequently a Fashion Brand needs to focus on who buys their clothing and to offer communications relevant to them. Some might call this a lifestyle brand, but maybe the success of lifestyle brands is in identifying the customer and creating communications which are about them. This then creates a direct relationship between the brand and the customer which leads to that customer becoming an ambassador for the brand and spreading the brands message.

The reason this is interesting me at the moment is that I am in the process of suggesting a very radical rethink of an agency's website. I suspect that at the moment it is in danger of becoming an armadillo and needs to radically move away from this.

Why its important to be remarkable

2006-03-09T13:57:00.000Z

This has been linked to across the web and so I don't expect many people will be seeing thisa for the first time, but just in case.

Seth Godin was the author of The Purple Cow, and his latest book is 'All Marketers are Liars'.

Reading his books changed my perspective on a lot of tihngs and ensured that I became a fan.

This link is to a video recording of a presnetation he gave.

Seth's point is that most advertising and marketing sets out to fail in the new consumer marketplace, and that the way to avoide failure is to be remarkable.

Get the ehadphones out, set it going and prepare to be inspired.

It had to happen

2006-03-08T18:38:00.000Z

Brand Republic's article has announced that Internet usage in the UK has overtaken TV viewing.

This is the first time that has happened in the UK and is probably a huge sign on the wall that traditional Above the Line media has changed forever. The whole point of mass media was that it well errr went out to the masses. The masses now are however jacked in, not tuned in.

Maybe now we can all pick up where 2000 left off.

Advertising planning and and how they relate to the Interactive Mix

2006-03-08T12:16:00.000Z

Today I am having what I hope is one of those defining moments.

I am creating an advertising plan for a prospect and working from some predictions that they have supplied to us. Its a standard media plan which is split between Google, Banners, etc.

The columns supplied are as follows per campaign element:

Advertising spend
Cost per click
Number of quotes
Conversion rate
New Customers
Cost per new customer

Within this there is a straight correlation between the number of quotes achieved against the cost per click. The problem with this is that it is a huge step to take from the number of Google ads to the number of quotes, and takes no account of the usability of the system. Actually a better way of phrasing that is that it does not recognise the value of usability, the engagement factor of the ad or any of the factors that a user is greeted with once they click through. The point I am making is that the media plan does not demonstrate any value to the client of the factors which create a good user experience after the initial ad

The Interactive Mix is focused on the entire user experience, and so in my plan I have added in additional factors. The ones I've used are as follows:

Advertising spend
Cost per click
Visits
Engaged User Conversion %
Quotations attempted
Abandoned Quotes Dropout %
Number of quotes Completed
Conversion rate
New Customers
AOV
Revenue
Cost per new customer

In this the initial click through rate is gradually eroded away based on the usability of the site, and accessibility of the information, and because it is shown as a series of percentages the actual value of this can be demonstrated to the client. So if the site has high usability it will perform better, if the quotations are competitive they will convert better. I don't know how many planners and Buyers for online take this approach but I suspect it isn't a standard. It also is a fairly common charge that online advertisers don't understand the effects of usability on their business, which supports my suspicion.

For my purposes this clearly demonstrates to the client the importance of the whole experience and therefore how a budget needs to be divided up in order to achieve the results they need. I can follow the plan with a quotation for the functionality build of the system and for each push back on functionality I can feed that into the plan to show how it affects the bottom line conversion and revenue generation. With all the facts to hand, the client is then faced with some very simple choices, and the entire relationship then focuses on achieving the numbers with budgets that set themsleves.

Naturally I am very keen to hear from other planners and buyers to see whether I have made a discovery or whether I am simply following an established industry practice.

Email Tax, Charitable Resistance and Why The Web Wins

2006-03-07T09:52:00.000Z

Following on From My Previous post about AOL and Yahoo's plans to introduce an Email Tax, I Found a Follow up article on Brand Republic today.

Charities seem to be the first to show their resistance to the plans and have set-up a website with an open letter to AOL expressing their dissatisfaction. AOL appear to have climbed down a bit but it is clear that this issue has a fair few miles in it yet.

My feeling is that if email becomes too expensive for the marketplace then the marketplace will invent something new. After all, neither AOL nor Yahoo invented Pop3 or SMTP, and whilst they have a massive market share of email users, the power of the web lays in its choice and in its Open standards adopted by corporations.

If Yahoo and AOL users don't like paying for sending emails or find that their inboxes dry up because people no longer email them, then an obvious conclusion is to open a Gmail account, and if everyone starts charging for sending emails, then someone will invent a new method to message.

In the pub on Friday we sat down and thought about it and came up with Permission Mail (PMail for short). In that model you have a two tier scheme of people you add who send to you directly and everybody else who is treated with some suspicion, until you say they are ok. Everything would be published as an Open Standard to enable all ISPs to adopt it if they so wished, and so that developers could create clients for it.

This is part of the reason why closing down Napster, Audio Galaxy and a whole host of other file sharing networks hasn't stopped peer to peer file sharing, quite the reverse. If something is taken away that the marketplace wants, then someone just creates a new way of doing it. Internet companies like AOL and Yahoo should have learned that by now and the fact that they haven't definitely moves them towards the 'doesn't get it' corner which is a shame.

I am not under any illusion that PMail will actually come into being as a project led by me, it won't need to, but if the marketplace decides that it needs a cheaper method of communicating than email, then this idea will rapidly form in the minds of several programmers and the problem will be solved.

It's an old adage but once again.. "The Web Wins".

But please remember, you heard it here first folks.

A few notes on LInux Softeware

2006-03-04T11:56:00.000Z

A few posts cuaght my eye that give tips on using the LInux applications I am growing to love

Using Open Office Writer with Scribus for DTP.

CMS for Linux

Wiki software

Take 2 on RSS, Podcasting and the Radio Advertising Industry

2006-03-03T13:46:00.000Z

I sat and thought a bit more about the news in my previous post and shared my thoughts with some colleagues. My second version is included below:

I’ve been banging on a bit about how Interactive media is changing the advertising game, and two articles today highlight exactly what I am talking about.

The first one is in Precision Marketing

It talks about RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Podcasting and recognises this medium as a growing trend, which is making radio figures look very tame.

Compare this to a piece on Brand Republic today

The Radio industry is trying to arrest the decline of advertising sales for their medium and is considering offering commissions of 15% to agencies who do advertise.

This sounds more like the cart being put before the horse and then entering a chariot race to me. The whole point is that the way consumers are consuming the Radio medium has changed. They don’t want scheduled programmes, they want them to be consumed at a time which suits them. They also want it delivered digitally, which means that you could conceivably have a worldwide audience. Compare that to Capital Radio’s listening figures.

There is an irresistible change happening, and the answer is not to offer commissions to agencies because it isn’t the agencies who are driving the change, it is the consumers. If radio wakes up to the idea that they need to syndicate their content and offer it as a Podcast, then they have a chance to stay in the game (advertising for Podcasting is currently behaving as though its on steroids). If however they continue to flog their dead horse then someone else will come along and occupy their space.

The current likely contender is Last FM.

Its software creates a personalized streaming radio station based on the digital music you already listen to, shares your playlist on the Web, and suggests music from other closely related playlists. So you get all the music you like, none of the music you don’t like and you are self segmenting yourself to make yourself look very appealing to advertisers.

Think about this if you want to introduce a new band to the charts, and compare that to how promotional activity works now.

Agencies who wake up to this are going to make a fortune, media owners, unless they wake up to this, are going to die, and it is all being driven by the consumer from the bottom, up. That’s a very different world from mass media where everything worked from the top, down.

Our challenge is actually quite simple. If we embrace this wholly, we are going on a climb, the likes of which the industry has never seen.

Podcasting Killed the Radio Star

2006-03-03T12:22:00.000Z

The Buggles noted that Video killed the Radio Star back in the early 80s and according to Brand Republic this morning, the radio industry is working on proposals to reward advertising agencies financially for advertising with them, and commissions of 15 % are being touted.

To me this sounds very much like putting the cart before the horse and entering a race that way. The whole point is that consumers are changing the way that they consume the medium which is why the advertising industry for Radio is being hit. It is also being challenged by measurable and more effective mediums, and that isn't going to change no matter how much cash they give agencies.

An agency surely has a duty to deliver the best results to clients, and currently radio as a medium is not considered to be the best choice.

If the Radio industry really wants to arrest the decline in advertising sales they are going to have to take a very long hard look at it and work out how to evolve it quickly to provide a model which is effective for customers.

Creating radio content which is syndicated seems to me to be a good idea, and Podcasting now is more listened to than any radio show in history according to an article in Precision Marketing today.

I am watching several of the mass media owners try out absolutely futile attempts to breath life into their parrot at the moment, when what they really need to do, is bury it, and get a cat.

The Next Net Top 25 Pop Pickers

2006-03-02T14:17:00.000Z

I've found an article about the predicted winners of Web 2.0, in a The Next Net 25 series.

In the middle of last year I asked a group of people who all worked in the Web whether they knew what Web 2.0 was. With one exception, nobody did. In some ways this was a releif to me, because I hadn't sorted things out in my own head, but I had at least heard of it, and of RSS, and starterd to think about applications and technologies which would benefit media and advertising.

For that reason I didn't find too many surprises in the Social Media section and I have been a Six Apart customer for about 5 years now. Webtop was very interesting indeed, and the field of filtering looks like its going to be a battle ground worthy of watching.

Where I had some of the biggest surprises was looking at VOIP, although thats partly due to when I spoke at a conference in SF back in 99 about the Internet and every single speaker other than me was banging on about VOIP. Consequently I heard enough to last me a decade and have largely ignored the area ever since. Looks like my decade is now over because there are some very exciting things going on. Fonality and Vivox were my favourites.

Perhaps predictably there isn't a Brit company in sight, which is a great shame because we do have some fantastic thinkers here. I's commented on James Governers observations before and my own experiences in trying to raise cash haven't exactly been inspiring, so maybe the Americans are just better at it than us. Somewhere though there is a kid in a basement in New Cross, or Camden who has come up with an idea just as good as any of the ones mentioned. So how will he go into the Dragons Den and find his funding to change the world. Actually having watched the program, I'm wondering if anybody apart from Doug Richard (an American) would recognise a ground breaking idea even if it was presented to them.

I'm not sure about all the other Brits of course but personally, I hate second place, although that could always be the New Yorker in me screaming.

Edit:

Looks like my short VOIP love affair could already be over, as I had this article in the register thrust in my direction

Newest Google Cooltool

2006-03-02T13:19:00.000Z

"From today, searches on Google Scholar will include links to the British Library’s document delivery service.

Search results will be matched against the Library's holdings and where a match is made, users will have the option to obtain articles held via the British Library’s online document ordering interface, British Library Direct."

Article ganked from NetImperative

Related Tags: News, Google, Google Scholar, Search, Articles

Changing the Advertising game

2006-03-02T10:57:00.000Z

Once again James Cherkoff has encapsulated in a phrase something I have been trying to convey to people for a while.

His latest post makes some excellent points about how Web 2.0 will affect the advertising and marketing industry, and comes up with some interesting quotes from people who do, don't and maybe one day will 'get it'.

My favourite quote is from Richard Sambrook, a super-senior BBC newsmen,

"The increasing use of user-generated news material to a sports game in which the crowd was not only invading the field but also seeking to participate in the game, fundamentally changing the sport."

Related Tags: Web 2.0, Web, Advertising 2.0, Marketing, James Cherkoff, Modern Marketing, Interactive Mix

No man is an island

2006-03-01T12:51:00.000Z

It's not often that a site launch (unless it's one of mine) will get me animated, but the launch this morning of River Island's new all flash site has managed to get me very animated.

I hate it, and this absolute travesty of web design is a complete and utter waste of River Island's time and money (assuming they did pay for it) in my opinion.

Looking at the site, the same thing could have been achieved using HTML and graphics, so where is the compelling argument for Flash? Oh and just for fun, pull the site up in Lynx, and then say how great the functionality is. Search engines won't find the content, due to the complete lack of actual searchable content in the pages so SEO is a non starter as well. I am reminded so much of boo.com, with this. Corporate firewalls are certainly more open to Flash content than they used to be, but surely the point is to make your site viewable to as many people as possible. Limiting yourself when their is no real reason to, just doesn't make economic sense.

Now the big one. This site is completely illegal and anyone with a disability who wants to make a quick buck is more than likely on the phone with River Island already pointing out that they are being discriminated against online.

I've said for years that the best thing about web design is that anybody can do it, and the worst thing about web design is that anybody can do it. Its not just about knowing techniques to use, its about knowing which techniques are best suited and why certain techniques will not provide a good user experience... Oh and you should also know the law governing your industry.

The Disabillity Discrimination Act has yet to be tested in this country but the wording is suitably ambiguous that unless the agency informed the client that the site contravened accessibility laws then the agency could be culpable. As I say, this is not tested so I am not sure of myself, but it could happen.

If I was the designer of this site, going by the very high profile launch that it has achieved, I would be checking my insurance and looking for a good lawyer. I might also buy a book on web design ;-)

Related Tags: River Island, Flash, Website, Accessibility, Usability, Design & Build, ROI, Web 2.0, Web, Advertising 2.0, Retail, eCommerce

An ALternative Way to End SPAM?

2006-02-27T12:52:00.000Z

A little while ago I wrote about the proposed email charges from Yahoo and AOL.

Well our roving reporter (EF) in the field, uncovered the following article in IT Week.

So IT week would have us believe that digital certs are the way forward (which in itself is no bad idea), but there are many organisation but some organisations that don't allow encrypted content emails - which includes digi sigs.

Nice idea but needs work and more buy in from the large corporations.

Of course all this assumes that YAhoo and AOL were actually trying to combat SPAM in the first place and not simply trying to come up with a new revenue model. Of course I am nowhere near cynical enough (or highly insured enough) to suggest this was the case.... No sir, never would those words spew forth from my lips.

http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/comment/2150192/spam-menu

Numbers, Signals, Folders and Monkeys

2006-02-27T12:45:00.000Z

so we have 37 signals, we now also how 43 folders - what's next 12 monkeys??!

anyway http://www.43folders.com/ seems quite cool in its own way and the lead article on the 24th February antitled 2 ways to make RSS readers smarter offers some very interesting thoughts.

- have a look ;)

I suppose there's still always the classic 99 red balloons ;)

(With thanks to Ef for sending this one in)

Now Thats what I call Marketing

2006-02-26T15:34:00.000Z

Over on Russell Davies' Blog I've just found an incredible campaign using the Interactive Mix and the ideals of Advertising 2.0. Its using Blogging as a review tool for Mobile Phones.

The Solution is of course remarkable, simple, totally in keeping with the march of new technology and working from a ground up marketing basis. Absolute genius! I can't wait to see the results.

Why Advertising Sucks: Simple truths. Why people work in and stay in advertising.

2006-02-26T15:01:00.000Z

One of my favourite Blogs has to be Why Advertising Sucks. I feel as though I know this person and shared Cosmos on Maddison with them. The latest pearl of Wisdom from this great head is Why Advertising Sucks: Simple truths. Why people work in and stay in advertising.

Read it and weep, smile, laugh and nod, all at the same time.

Advertising 2.0

2006-02-26T13:22:00.000Z

Over on the Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion Blog, I found this entry with a link to a white paper written by Paul Beelen regarding advertising, marketing and the way in which technology is affecting it. HAving just gone through it over coffe and toast (rough night last night), I'm seeing a lot of things that are interesting, and which are completely complimentary to my own theory of The Interactive Mix. I hope to have more on this later in the week.

Linking to James Governor

2006-02-24T15:33:00.000Z

Im settling in to a new office and missed this post on James Governor's journal.

My favourite quote is :

"My key argument in the last blog was that ten years ago nobody would have believed that Linux would be used widely in the enterprise. Open source was something for sandal-wearing university students.

But the costs of supporting a proprietary industry were being borne by customers."

Given my own recent move from Windows to Linux I can do nothing but agree. As a desktop it provides all the tools that most users need, at a dramatically reduced cost of purchase. So far my cost of ownership has been about the same as Windows. Sure I have had to click around looking up things and ask for advice on Blogs and lists, but I would have had to have done that if I had switched to a Mac.

I honestly think that this is a year when Linux as a desktop should be taken very seriously by the rest of the industry. After all I've never owned a pair of sandals in my adult life.

Oh and apparently he can also get hold of free Sun Boxes.... Yes please James! Have you got something that I can run the largest viral campaign ever on?

Print isn't dead, its just sleeping in the sunday corner

2006-02-24T14:29:00.000Z

ON Brand Republ;ic Today I found an article entitled An Element of Doubt over Digital says The Time Editor. It appeared in PR Week.

In it Robert Thomson puts the case for Print Media and it definitely made me smile.

He argues that Digital doesn't have the same in depth analysuis as print but accepts that editorial teams for print and digital are being merged. He also accepts that when a big breaking story happens it is digital which gets it first and obviously most of the follow up (London in July last year proved that, and I think that the Death of the Princess of Wales was reported first online, beating CNN by a second or two).

So where is prints advantage? From my own experience I kept hold of a copy of the Standard this week (found on the train seat rather than bought) because there were some interesting reviews on new eating clubs in London, but I cant think of anything that the actual news told me which I didn't already know (apart from Barcelona apparently beating a London side at football).

Finally Thomson points out that the Sunday's are the safe house for pruint, but seems to have missed the point that having been driven away from the daily market, that it can only be a matter of time until home use reaches critical mass to begin an assualt on that as well.

All in all I've been surprised by the fleet Street's attitude over the years. Back in 99 I was arguing that print and digital should be used hand in hand, to drive traffic between the two of them, but its gone beyond that now. Readership of daily newspapers is reaching critical levels and advertising revenue is down dramatically, both from large consumer ads and (perhaps most importantly) from classifieds. Craig's List may come to town and kill off 'The Sun' yet. Now I am actually a fan of The Times and Sunday Times so it will be a shame if when they finally do 'get it' they find that it is already too late.

So the book opens on when we will see the first three pound daily newspaper. Answers in a comment.

Remarkable and taking chances

2006-02-24T13:51:00.000Z

Its an interesting situation when a client comes to you with a brief and in it you see the opportunity to make their commmunication truly remarkable. Im talking about exceeding their expectation by 200%/300% and having ther opportunity to add a few magnitudes on top of that. In so doing you will be creating the most successful campaign of its type, and even re-defininhg the effectiveness of the medium.

All it takes is the courage to do it. Naturally it will cost a bit more than you were hoping to pay, but think of the rewards. Being ramrkable takes courage, and some people don't have the courage, but we have seen time and time again, how just running with the herd is actually asking for failure. So playing it safe become more risky than being remarkable.

Then your brilliant idea (which will keep until the right client comes along) decides that your pitch is too expensive and that they would rather run a campaign that is likely to lose money.

Such a shame

I am of course still referring to The Purple Cow again which everyone should read.

Musing on a Brief.

2006-02-21T18:29:00.000Z

Am currently working on several briefs

One of which concerns a charity organisation concerned with the well being of a particular demographic. The demographic is supported by carers and is also of interest to medical professionals.

My idea is to make the site the central resource for information and to support this by providing blogs to carers, and people who the charity is designed to help. I'm thinking this also needs to be backed up by some form of promotion, and I suspect search is the way to go. The site needs to be about the audience, not about the organisation.

What I need is a phrase to encapsulate the attitude and aims of the new site.

Everything needs to be ready on Friday.

Time to muse on this over a pint. More tomorrow.

The Constituent parts of the Interactive Mix

2006-02-20T11:16:00.000Z

I've talked quite a lot today about the need for The Interactive Mix and why it is good for both clients and agencies, but I haven't talked about how it works.

Interactive Media is different from traditional media in that it can be the means whereby a relationship begins with a customer, but it also can comprise the method whereby a decision to purchase is made and also the method of purchase itself. Interactive Media therefore can exactly follow the model where a prospect becomes a customer, and this is the basis of The Interactive Mix which then packages Interactive Media Services in a highly strategic way to clients, in order to meet their needs and requirements. It consists of:

Drivers
Acquirers
Converter
Retainers

Drivers
Drivers, promote interest from non customers to begin a dialogue with them focussed on the brand or product and its benefits.

An interactive driver can be:

An email
An interactive ad
A search result
A text message
A viral game
A viral campaign
A Bluejack
A Podcast
A corporate Blog or blogging activity
An offline communication

The purpose of a Driver is to drive traffic to an Acquirer or a Converter.

Acquirers
An acquirer is a method of initiating a relationship with a customer

It requires the customer to give up information in return for an experience of the brand or company

It further requests from the user whether the relationship can be carried on beyond this transaction. It therefore carries on the relationship beyond the first transaction.

An interactive acquirer can be:

A website
An initiated email
A mobile short code
An MMS request
A WAP site
An interactive TV site
A landing page
A viral response
An offline campaign such as Direct Response

The purpose of an acquirer is to provide a cost effective acquisition of prospects to Convert to customers, but more importantly, to initiate maintain and extend a relationship with a prospect and therefore build awareness of your company and brand with your audience.

Converters
A converter is the place where the customer makes a decision to purchase, but can also provide the opportunity to purchase if required. This distinction is important because consumers will purchase in the ways that they feel comfortable not the ways that they are told to. Customers of Amazon may therefore be surprised that some people in this world still do not like buying online, however their research and decision to purchase may very well be conducted online and Converters provide a highly cost effective way of reaching that audience.

It appreciates that different customers wish to purchase in different ways, and is flexible enough to accommodate this

A converter can be:

A website
A WAP site
An MMS or 3G service
An iTV site
An affiliate program
An offline point of sale

Converters therefore control the decision to purchase but can just as easily drive the customer to another Converter method for the purchase to actually take place

They can influence this choice by presenting the customer with the advantages of each purchase method.

If necessary/required these can provide incentives to preferred converter methods.

Retainers
A retainer continues the relationship with a customer to provide them with the maximum opportunity to remain a customer.

This can include repeat purchase, cross purchase and up sell.

A retainer can be one or a combination of the following:
A Customer Relationship Management program
An Affiliate program
A Web,/mobile, or interactive TV site activity analysis
A permission email program
A permission text program
A permission MMS campaign
A referral program
A viral campaign
An offline CRM program
An incentive, loyalty or rewards program

The role of retainers is to help customers return to Acquirers and Converters in order to continue the relationship and maximise the sales potential of each customer.
It also provides opportunities to enlist existing customer’s help to acquire new prospects.

Adaptable and measurable

The Interactive Mix’s strength lays within its measurability and adaptability
It works on a cause and effect basis where each cause creates a response from a customer or prospect
This means that as long as the effect remains within the Interactive Mix, then it can be accurately measured immediately
Immediate results enable immediate assessment
Interactive Media is the cheapest method to make changes to.
Those changes can be instant
If results are therefore not in line with expectation they can be analysed and (if necessary) changed
To ensure that results are optimum

The Interactive Mix can include any aspect of the traditional Marketing Mix at any point

The Interactive Mix is not isolated from traditional media

It enables any offline component to be included in its framework at any point.

It is therefore complimentary to offline media and provides choice to clients.

I see this point as being key as it therefore enables offline agencies to adopt the model in their offering, which makes it applicable to both offline and online agencies.

The Interactive Mix Mantra

We work with our clients to define what they want to achieve
We plan how to achieve this using the elements of the Interactive Mix
We manage the implementation of this plan either alone or with chosen partners
We accommodate traditional media activity
We measure the plan’s effectiveness
We analyse, adapt and change in response to unforeseen or unexpected results
We deliver results to our client’s business

These points sound to me like the kind of things that an agency should be offering to its clients, and also the kind of things that clients have been longing to hear from their agencies.

If I can, I would like to persuade people out there to adopt this model and work with me to refine it based on their experiences. Maybe then we can create the standard for Interactive media that i think our clients and the industry deserves, but why would you want to do that? Well here are the reasons I came up with:

Advantages
The Interactive Mix as an offer places the focus on results for clients
It therefore encourages clients to think about bottom lines
It places our decision maker at board level, not a junior manager or a marketing assistant
This speeds up the sales process and encourages buy-in from the client
It ensures that our solutions are strategic decisions for clients which makes budget approval easier for them
Our offer is more accountable and more measurable than offline and more strategic than most online offers
We can make a hard ROI business case to board level prospects
It places us as managers and experts, at the top of the food chain of suppliers

Obviously I would love to hear from anybody interested.

Just one other thing, I know that some people might just want to take this model and run with it themselves, which is fine, but if you do that I would ask that you give me credit as the creator and would also request that you give me feedback on how it works for you. The more people who do adopt the Interactive Mix as a process the better the feedback will be and so therefore the better we can make it. This needs to be a live project, as Interactive Media itself is live and constantly evolving, that's the main reason why I have opened up the copyright of the idea. It needs to become a freely available meme to move throughout the industry. So, if you like this approach please link to it in your own Blog. Go forth and propagate!

Related Tags: Interactive Mix, Marketing, Advertising, Advertising 2.0, Web, Internet, Web 2.0, Strategy, Agency, Website Design, Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, Banner Advertising, Email Marketing

The Interactive Mix Vision

2006-02-20T11:14:00.000Z

In my previous post I talked about why there is a need for The Interactive Mix and why it would benefit clients and the industry as a whole. The ‘Interactive Mix’ seeks to simplify the buying process for clients and to focus on the important issues. By asking the important questions the Interactive Mix accomplishes the following:

It gives an excellent picture of where client’s brand and products are, and where they want them to go
We take this information and formulate a plan which will deliver the results client’s want, within the budget that has been set.
It can include one, more, many or all elements of the interactive media services that are available.
We then deliver these services to clients
In house
In partnership
Through managed relationships
We will then measure the results achieved against the plan
To make recommendations on how to maximise the benefits, and minimise any risks

The interactive mix is
Client focussed
Solution oriented
Emphasizes listening and understanding of clients needs
Provokes thought
Encourages creative solutions to business problems
Is focussed on ‘the idea’ and the correct implementation of the idea
Delivers a plan which can be measured
Provides flexibility to change things if results are disappointing
Gives clients the freedom to outsource management of their interactive mix
Encompasses combined media campaigns
Is therefore responsive to the real world
Minimises risk
Emphasizes the importance of adding to the bottom line

Oddly enough these benefits focus on exactly the things that clients say most interactive media agencies are lacking in. Listen to your client folks.

Related Tags: Interactive Mix, Marketing, Advertising, Advertising 2.0, Web, Internet, Web 2.0, Strategy, Agency, Website Design, Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, Banner Advertising, Email Marketing

Today’s decision makers have a lot to contend with.

2006-02-20T11:09:00.000Z

When I look around the marketplace at the moment, I feel a lot of sympathy for decision makers inside client organisations. There is so much choice in the marketplace and yet in my view a lot of organisations are not helping their prospective clients make the right decisions and most of the reasons for that seem to me to be with the agencies themselves.

I'll explain what I mean by that. Agencies in the marketplace today are loosely split between traditional offline Advertising agencies and online media agencies.

Most (not all but definitely most) offline agencies see the web as an advertising medium. They offer campaigns designed to drive traffic to a point of sale or point of offer, however at that point their interest and skill set ends. They therefore offer extensions of their offline campaigns online.

Online media agencies tend to specialise in particular areas of the online world such as Search Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Web Design, Web Development etc. Their offer to clients tends to be tactical in nature. They therefore place the focus on soft issues such as brand presentation.

One of my big bug bears is that there seems to be a need to complicate the offers are and Interactive Media is starting to use as many acronyms as the computing industry. Hands up all those who think that is a bad idea. Every sales person and Account Director wants to push their own solution to the decision makers whilst decision makers themselves have very little information to go on in order to make the best choices for their campaigns.

Currently digital marketing is in vogue, but typically there will be one supplier knocking on the door and talking about SEO, and other one talking about SEM, a third asking about design and build and yet another talking about metrics and measurement. There are so called 'integrated' interactive agencies out there but its not an exaggeration to say that each one of them has its own definition of what 'integrated' actually means.

The problem is that very few metrics and processes are around to assess suitability of which interactive media will work with which campaigns and which products, and meanwhile the poor client has to make decisions on which their brands futures will rest.

This isn't an ideal situation and one which I would like to change. The marketing industry created an approach and a process for itself with the Marketing Mix, and it is long overdue that the Interactive Media industry did the same thing, and so Over the last few months I have been working on a process for interactive media agencies which I have called The Interactive Mix.

My observation is that Everybody is talking about technology and explaining how media works, and the questions they are asking are not designed to help the client:

Do you want a website?
Do you want a top Google listing?
Is your site optimised for search engines?
Have you heard of the benefits of email marketing?
Have you heard of the DDA?
Is Usability important to you?
Would you like a viral campaign?
Who is your mobile audience?
Who is your online audience?
Who is your interactive TV audience?
Can we show you what iTV does?
Would you like to have 5000 page impressions delivered?

Nobody is actually asking clients the important questions:

What do you want to achieve for your brand?
What ROI are you aiming for?
What is you target to increase sales this year?

Related Tags: Interactive Mix, Marketing, Advertising, Advertising 2.0, Web, Internet, Web 2.0, Strategy, Agency, Website Design, Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, Banner Advertising, Email Marketing

Yahoo and AOL to charge for emails

2006-02-16T14:09:00.000Z

I received an email today which stated that Yahoo and AOL have announced that they are to start charging for emails sent to their email addresses. I actually hadn't heard anything about this but sure enough The Register reported it on the 6th February.

The idea is that they will have a business class delivery which bypasses SPAM filters and regular free delivery which will go through SPAM filters and possibly have links and images removed, which the two companies announce is an attempt to combat SPAM (and make a very tidy profit).

The writing is obviously on the wall for all email hosts to do the same thing.

I'm really not sure what I feel about this. On the one hand I know that SPAM is a problem for a lot of people, but a paid for email service to guarantee delivery is surely against the spirit of the web, and against the forces that make it such a global success.

One thing we do know about the web is that whenever something comes along that the worldwide web audience doesn't like, then some bright spark invents a way of doing things that circumvents the offending criteria.

So are we looking at any of the following:

One of those 'we might do this, oh look at the publicity we have got' articles?
A desperate attempt at revenue generation from companies past their best?
The end of email?
A paid for service where every business communication will incur a cost?

Obviously the impact on business would be significant and may very well change the way we communicate online. I wonder what it will do to SPAM.

Blogging about Blogging in my Blog... Dude! Meta!

2006-02-14T12:00:00.000Z

I'm seeing some interesting figures, hypotheses predictions and analysis appearing this morning concerning the Blogosphere

Technorati's SirFry Alerts has produced a two part State of the Blogosphere Report, which concludes that a new Blog is created every second. There does appear to be a tail off of activity after three months of blogging but it does seem to be on the rise as a habitual activity, with the Blogosphere now 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago.

Part one of his report is here, and part two is here.

Over on Steve Rubel's Blog he has gone through the article which appeared in New York Magazine about blogging entitled From Blogs to Riches.

Now I am really impressed with Steve's commentary on this. Americans have a tendency to over analyze everything, and the temptation must have been there in the wake of the Super Bowl to go into view rates, and other such data. Steve however takes a much more informed position and calmly and quietly explains his view that the numbers can mean what the New Yorker says they mean, or they could mean something completely different. He brings out the analogy of a billboard chart so a great band comes along has a few hits and then goes quiet to work on their next major work.

I like this approach and of course RSS feeders make that a very easy thing to implement, but the main point of the article highlights what types of Blogs succeed, and they cite accidental tourists (those who stumbled into blogging), blog networks, boutique bloggers that find a niche and stick with it.

My interest is to apply the principals of the Purple Cow to the stories in the article. It asks why a college kids celebrity gossip site doesn't do as well as the professional celebrity gossip site it modeled itself on. Duh! First off he was copying an original which had a dedicated reader base, and secondly he didn't try to differentiate it at all. He gave the same news so that there was no reason for people to defect. Now there's a brown cow if ever I saw one.

The article itself has obviously caused a lot of comment and is well worth a look, whether you agree with it or not.

Have you paid your PC License fee?

2006-02-14T11:17:00.000Z

Another story which is nearly a year old but gathering momentum concerns the BBC and the government waking up to the idea that digital could threaten the way people access television specifically through broadband and using computers instead of television sets.

The article appeared on the Register.

Now I know more than one person who does not own a television but routinely uses their entertainment centre PC to play video games, watch movies or hook in to digital TV via a TV card, and they can of course claim legitimately not to posess a television if there is a knock on the door.

To move that though to a blanket PC tax which is given to the BBC sounds like a very long leap to me. I mean the BBC didn't invent the Internet, nor are they guardians of the web. True, they do have a very good website but a lot of people have good websites.

It does start to look like yet another example of large organisations who don't understand what they are dealing with trying to make a buck out of the Internet and holding back its overall propogation throughout the UK. I'm seeing this in the same way that BT refused to give out free Internet access points on dialup in the early days, which led to me and many other early adopters paying enormous telephone bills. Meantime our counterparts in the US were getting their standard local call rates (usually a flat fee), and consequently the Web in the US had a much larger percentage audience than the UK for ages.

Broadband is the most exciting thing that could have happened to the UK for Internet and braodcast media and it's fast spread through the UK will mean that companies can create ever more appealing applications for it. If the audience growth is slowed down, then the profits will be later. Similarly someone else from overseas will develop the applications and them launch them here removing what could be a British success story. Why don't people get it? The essential thing is to get absolutely everyone on broadband as quickly as possible, so that British companies can create money for Britain. Anything that slows that down is shooting the country in the foot.

Of course the problem of how to fund the BBC doesn't go away, and possibly paid for content or opening them up to advertising is the answer. Other alternatives would be to tax PC Cards rather than the PC itself, or Digi Boxes, or directly tax the feed provider such as NTL and Sky. but this particular suggestion really isn't the answer.

Concerning Cows and Viruses

2006-02-13T14:17:00.000Z

Following on from Sir Martin Sorrell's comments at the tail end of last year and his predictions for this year regarding above the line advertising, suddenly everyone seems to be questioning the effectiveness of media as whole and demanding much more solid numbers of its effectiveness. Of course ATL will have a bit of a problem doing that a lot of the time, but I think Sir Martin is missing the point a bit.

It seems to me that Above the Line Media isn't so much having a hard time, as evolving into something else. The Lastminute and Honda ads are living examples (going by their download ratios) that people are prepared to search out good advertising creative but it is happening at a time when the consumer chooses, not when the broadcaster chooses. In July last year I was asked by a well known Direct Marketing Agency about the emerging media types. They obviously wanted me to talk about Podcasting and Blogging but as far as I am concerned, they were part of the mainstream (or at the very least established into the early adopter bracket). Instead I talked about billboards which blue jacked your phone or enabled you to gather more content via MMS. I note that Channel Four have produced the first of these ads. Another format I talked about was to have have Bus and Taxi screens carry content which was delivered via wireless depending on where you were on your journey (Local search anyone?).

Apparently these ideas were too off the wall for my audience and quite a few people looked at me as though I was from Mars (which is often an understandable response).

Digital Television was ill conceived in this country with its red button, dial up, home version of the web, structure, and this is why I think the red button is having so many difficulties. What is needed is real interactive content linked via broadband.

Content which is remarkable enough that consumers 'want' to interact with it, and can do so quickly and efficiently to gain a real experience of a brand and create a relationship between the consumer and the product. The current Red Button isn't going to achieve that. What I think is needed is for a new platform to come along which is based on broadband and a golden opportunity exists to do this on Freeview, which is where my money is going for the dream to become a reality (It will not have the price prohibitive access point and therefore provide a much better viewer ratio, plus it is early enough to plan ahead and have this service based on broadband and therefore offer a zero cost response to the consumer. Once that is offered suddenly the idea of tracking becomes a lot easier to manage, thereby fulfilling the requirements of advertisers to measure effectiveness)

Ive finally got around to reading Seth Godin's The Purple Cow, and in that he writes of the need for marketing communications to be remarkable and for products to be remarkable. This approach is totally in keeping with the points above. His point is Purple Cow advertising is the only option left, as Brown Cow advertising will be invisible to consumers and therefore not even worth pursuing.

I also remember seeing a piece in Last week's Marketing Week which talked about the rise of the independent agency as a creative force together with it's predicted fall.

Over on WK London's Blog (who are one of these ascendant independents) they countered this by saying that their independence underpins their creative talent, and Honda would seem to agree. They note on their blog that their business is now about creating work that people 'want' to search out through a series of media and watch, rather than to passively absorb it between Coronation Street, which actually gives their work a lot more power.

I've always thought that viral fell into this category as well. Work which people think is so remarkable that they 'want' to pass it on. An interesting point on the Chinwag UK Net Marketing List this morning highlighted how bad most viral marketing was on the Viralmonitor list.

I think there are going to be times when a client spends money on a campaign rather than investing in something which will work but surely its our job to educate them on this (totally understand the need to get cash in through the door argument only too well, but....).

I'm not one of those who thinks that there has to be a direct link between budget and creative result, but a lot of what you see on viralmonitor does look like people took the money and ran a lot of the time.

So a lot of brown cows out there on interactive media as well, and most of them have a nasty case of mad cow disease, but every now and then something purple does come along.

Has Slashdot predicted the end for Yahoo?

2006-02-13T01:00:00.000Z

An article on Slashdot reports on Yahoo considering giving free music giveaways to users who make it their homepage, and muses on how companies faired when they tried this during the boom. They correctly conclude that the vast majority of these companies went to the wall or straight inot the dollar store sales bucket, but they do also find an example of one that was sold to AskJeeves.

Whatever the result of Yahoo's considering this it does however give a message (in this humble commentators opinion), that they acknowledge how tough things are getting for them.

Personally I don't want an Internet without a Yahoo but they have had a lot of years to smell the coffee and have not reacted whilst Google built a better search engine, Microsoft built a portal empire and the advertising world grew up.

Come on guys, surely you must reqalise that a few Britney singalongs is not going to sort out their flagging position as an ad medium of choice. Time to think a bit outside of the box methinks

2006-02-12T17:49:00.000Z

I noticed This commentary on the Brand Republic Site. Its a piece about a London Undergorund Campaign. The piece begins:

"London Underground is seeking to tie up with a ready-to-eat breakfast foods brand to run a media and sampling initiative to minimise delays caused by travellers with empty stomachs falling ill."

Now I'm all in favour of out of the box thinking, but as somone who has suffered the tube for decades I cant help feeling that making improvements on the network to run more trains and not have quite so many of us standing nose to armpit in conditions that is outlawed for cattle and pigs would be a much better way of reducing the likelihood of 'being taken ill' on the tube. They decided last year that it was impossible to introduce air conditioning on tubes whilst it has been in place in New York for donkey's years. Good old London Underground, proving that you can spend money and achieve nothing.

Linux - Not just for Geeks But Now For Everyone

2006-02-10T13:19:00.000Z

At the beginning of the week I did something momentus, and installed Linux Fedora Core 4.

It all came about because the hard disk failed in my laptop. That was replaced but I didn't have a backup of all my software (data was backed up). Over the years I had misplaced the copy of Windows that came pre-installed, although I did have the registration code still on the underside. A replacement disk was going to cost almost as much as buying it new and then there were other factors such as not knowing exactly where my disks were for other applications as well. The choice I had was whether to attempt to crack an installation or look for an alternative.

Looking around, copies of Windows are rife to download but not the version which matched my registration code. I'll admit to being tempted to knock off a copy but I soon found out that the new safety guards on Windows Pro make that impossible. I therefore decided to look for an alternative. Ive now been able to build a stable full featured system and finally able to get back to doing some proper work on the business plan.

Overall impressions are very very positive. I have a Word Processor and Spreadsheet client in Open Office although it does seem to be less stable than it was under Windows which is odd. The Word Processor has crashed on me several times although its always able to recover my document so no harm done there, just a bit annoying. The type of files I create though have been known to bring Word crashing down as well so perhaps its just me pushing the boundaries. I like OO because it can edit Word files in the native Windows format, and the same with the spreadsheet and presentation tools which edit excel and Powerpoint files natively.

There is just one thing which annoys me about the WP, which is that it doesn't seem to allow you to mix your own colours for fonts and bullet points. Given that you can do this using the Presentation tool I don't think it should be that difficult to add it in on the WP, and it is annoying when you are creating branded documents to be limited to colours which are fairly close, but not quite the same as the logos you are using. Oh and it also seems to be temperamental about how it handles images in the Header bar, which is also annoying but as long as it does so eventually and long enough to print a PDF its not the end of the world.

To counter this I've also downloaded Scribus which is a Desk Top Publisher tool. It is very powerful considering its weight (but I'm noticing that Unix apps are just generally lighter than Windows apps), and seems to give me all the layout tools I would want. My only gripe with it is that it doesn't seem to handle bullet pointed text which is a major omission. It does enable me to create a new text style which incorporates a graphic for when I use bullet points so it can kinda do it with a bit of fiddling. Its not in the same league as In Design or Quark though.

As a Photoshop clone I am very impressed with the GIMP under Linux. I had used it under Windows and found it about as stable as your average 17 year old goth chick. Under Linux however this is a completely different story with layers and some nice effects. Admittedly I don't use it in the same way a heavyweight designer would but for my needs it is perfectly fine. Ive also found a drawing package called Inkscape. Now I was never a heavy (or even regular) Illustrator user, and Its very early software (v 0.43) which probably accounts for the difficulties I am having with it. It installed apparently without a problem but is not too happy at running. For the number of times though that I used Illustrator, I can definitely wait for an update.

The RSS client I've used so far is LifeRea, which I think is short for LifeReader, and this is absolutely fine for my uses. Very much like Feed Demon under Windows which a lot of people use.

Now for the fun stuff. I have managed to find just about everything I need to establish an agency's systems and services, including Accounts Packages to help with planning and actual P&L (GNUCash). It is brilliant and already being used to refine my P&L plan forecast. There is also a tool for Time Management (GnoTime) which handles automatic billing based on time spent on a project, and Paymaster which handles actual payment and provides some very good accounting features which apparently then feed into GnuCash. Project Management is handled with an MS Project clone and in my tests it has everything I would want, nothing I don't want, and is very stable. I love it, and cannot think why MS turned their tool into the bloated creature that it is. Ad Servers, Opt In Mailing Servers, Search Bidding Tools, eCRM, all these tools are available a plenty and it is actually going to take me a while to decide on what will work best for me. Thanks to some good advice I am looking for Postgress and web based solutions to run alongside Apache, maybe even with some kind of thick client but that isn't essential (or actually desirable).

My one disappointment is not being able to find a real Contact Management tool. Most people seem to think that an address book is contact management and don''t seem to understand the relationship between a Company, its prospects within that company, individual contact numbers, and the tasks, meetings, emails, contact reports and notes associated with each prospect. Some kind of sales opportunity management is also desirable. It all comes down to a fairly complex relational database behind it which understands task lists, and apparently nobody has attempted to write one. At least not that I can find on SourceForge or Freshmeat.net.

In some ways I understand this as most places I have worked didn't understand this concept either. What I'm after is an open source clone of Act! and apparently it doesn't exist. The closest thing I've found is a project called Mozart, which was abandoned a few years ago and is actually aimed at Lawyers, but it does have the concept of Prospects/Clients, Cases/Projects, Tasks and Documents/Notes. Its not ideal but it is the closest I have found. Problem is it needs MySql to run where as everything else uses Postgress and I am wondering whether two databases running on my little laptop will be too much strain for the old girl who will be 5 at the end of this year. Of course investing a few hundred quid in some more hardware will solve this problem.

Firefox is of course taking care of my web needs and Thunderbird for Linux has imported my mail from Thunderbid for Windows without any problems. I do however love the look of Evolution and anyone who likes Outlook would be right at home as it is a complete clone (without the slow performance of large mailboxes). If I could get my existing email into it I would do so without a second thought, although there would then be the issue of getting it out of it if I needed to move to another Platform. Thunderbird at least provides a very convenient and transportable mail format. Currently I am using KORganizer as my scheduler with Thunderbird Email although this was supposedly to be used under KDA desktop and Im using Gnome so this might give me a problem. Not sure if that is or should be the case so if anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them

A final word on the Desktop. There are two supplied desktop management packages, Gnome and KDA. I started off with Gnome and it did take a bit of configuring to get it to how I felt comfortable using it, but it does seem stable and fine, without being outstanding in any way (although I have no idea why the Firefox Icon on the background is 3 times the size of any of the others). It was also the desktop I started with and so a lot of the applications I downloaded may only run on Gnome which is why I'm sticking with it.

Having now seen KDA, I regret my Gnome decision as KDA has a much more intuitive and familiar feel to it. Instead of a Start button on the left hand corner it has a Red Fedora hat which is quite cute but after that, any Windows User would feel right at home going through the menus and launching programs. At some point I'll have a look and see if all the programs I am using will run under KDA, but I suspect that things like GnuCash and GnoTime will have problems.

All in all I am extremely impressed. I had known all along that Linux was a server system of choice for anyone Internet related, but it now looks as though it is a perfectly reasonable Desktop choice as well. For someone like me handling Account Management and dabbling a bit in Design with Presentation Graphics and such it is a perfectly reasonable system. Heavyweight designers would no doubt find the system's limits but they would be on Macs by choice, not Windows so it is a mute point.

Suddenly Linux should be cause for concern for Microsoft in terms of security (no more MS attacking virus), reliability (its Unix!), power (Its Unix!), but now also in terms of preserving your investment in older equipment, which Linux runs on quite happily but which Windows would be much too heavy for, and most importantly in terms of the available applications for it. I am running the type of applications which on Windows if I bought them on the open market would require an investment upwards of £4,000. The cost of these projects on Linux.... £0.

Per head thats a massive saving for most companies and a god send for start-ups. Support is available via the various forums and as Microsoft makes its software more and more difficult to pirate, I suspect that the choice of many will not be to try and crack it, but instead to legitimately install an alternative, and Linux now is a very real alternative.

Its interesting, that if a replacement disk had been easy to get hold of, then I would still be on Windows. As it is, Microsoft has lost a customer and Windows is minus one seat. I am wondering how common an occurrence this is and whether this policy may actually work against Microsoft. Macs are moving to Intel, and Linux has come of age. My feeling is that Linux is going to play an ever increasing role on the desktop. It definitely is no longer purely for Geeks, but for everyone.

2005-12-23T13:54:00.000Z

One of the enjoyable parts of sitting down and planning a company is that you get to choose the type of company you want to create. From my perspective that means sitting down and working through the mechanics of an agency to see how the various cogs fit together to create a precision instrument.

I’ve experienced lots of different agencies now and seen different functions take the lead. Creative, technical, commercial, project and financial have all led the organisation in the examples I have seen and each espouses its own right to lead.

The one that scares me most is to be financially led. Now don’t get me wrong, all companies need to have sound financial planning and control to succeed but I have a problem with a creative agency that is led by finance. I’ve used this quote before but it was Robert Liederman who said that “A creative agency, lives and dies on its creativity”. That might sound like a bit of a so so statement, but my experience is that when finance runs a company that creativity is stifled, and in its place is a mass market, quickly produced work, which definitely makes a profit but is as creative as someone explaining basic arithmetic. To me that looks like a perfect example of diminishing returns and definitely not the reason why I entered this industry.

The logical step is therefore to lead with creativity, and it is true that most of the time, clients buy the creative work. Without excellent creative any agency is on the back foot when trying to win new business, however creatives will often have a precious view of their own work and will not be able to divorce themselves from their creative offering in the context of a client’s business requirements. You need creative, it is the corner stone of any agency offering but it needs to be tempered. There is also the point that creative doesn’t necessarily have to mean artistic, and one of the best designers I have ever seen used to have a favourite saying that “We are all creatives”. I agree with that whole heartedly.

There was a move a few years ago to move the Web offering to a technical discipline and many agencies went this way at the expense of their creative team. I don’t think that there can be any argument now, that was a short term market move that didn’t last long and is now completely superfluous. Rightly or wrongly, if someone has a web requirement, the decision to proceed with a supplier will not rest on technical alone, and perhaps there does seem to be less value placed on this within the marketplace. The sad fact does seem to be that programmers are cheap and can always be found. Genius will always be rewarded in any discipline but the web is not the area where a programmer will be able to command the same high fees as banking application development.

In some ways this is a turnaround for me, as I was involved in some of the first great web applications that were launched, but the fact remains that we were underpaid for the technical achievement we produced, and I think the perceived value to clients remains unchanged. I have however thought that there was as much creative skill involved in technical as technical skill involved in creative. I think that is what differentiates excellent agencies from simply the ones who run with the herd. It is the creative approach which is taken and the way those creative thoughts are implemented, irrespective of the discipline.

Project Management has many meanings in agencies and there was a move a few years ago to expand the role to include client management as well. I have always been of the mind that project managers should be allowed to concentrate on the delivery of the project, and timelines in the web have always been aggressive which makes this a very challenging task. It’s usually the most difficult task in an agency and so protecting project managers has real benefits to the workings of an agency.

What I mean by this is that if a project manager becomes embroiled in managing the client relationship as well, it can affect the delivery of a project. There is also a very strong argument in my mind which sees benefit in bringing a third person to the table (or back to the table) if there is an issue with the relationship throughout the project. This is why I don’t believe that Project managers and Account Managers/Directors should perform a joint role.

Let the Project Managers concentrate on delivering the project and watching timelines. This is also why I don’t believe that pricing of a project should be left to Project Managers either. My observation is that Project Managers do not have the business skills to be able to tell when pushing on price is a good thing or not, and also do not fully comprehend the effects of supply and demand on price. Another former boss of mine once said “If I’d listened to Project managers on price I would have never closed a deal” and my experience backs this up.

That’s not to say that Project Managers should not be involved in Project planning, they should, along with technical, creative, copywriting, production planning and every other department involved in the project or campaign. The difference however is that these people should be talking in terms of time and resource availability, not price. The ultimate responsibility for price and therefore profitability should rest with the Account Managers and Directors, because they have the bird’s eye view of the business. You really cannot teach someone to be able to smell the beginning of a deal and there is no substitute for that sixth sense that all good Account Directors have to tell where the price point is where a client will say ‘yes’. That can be even if the project needs to be delivered at lower day rates than the published rate card, and it can often be the soft issues in a project where the real value is found.

All this leads me to my conclusion that a successful account handling department is the core of an agency, backed up by excellent creative, and efficient project management, but led by the business goals, which means the account handlers.

Peeping above tha parapet

2005-12-22T13:55:00.000Z

Peeping above the parapet

I went a bit quiet there for a bit. Dear readers do not however have to fret or worry that this is a permanent state.

The merry go round of the industry has once again claimed a design house with the demise of Butterfly Effect despite my best efforts to

a) Keep it going
b) Find a buyer for it.

Ultimately the parent didn't want to put the investment in that it required or let me complete my rescue plan.

It has been a very intense couple of months and my efforts were very much taken up by trying to save the division and it was this that took me away from blogging.

In its place is a firm idea in my mind to launch a new agency that uses the strategy that I was going to implement with the new Butterfly. So far I have had excellent feedback on it and the business plan is well underway. I'm not quite ready to talk about this publicly yet but it is an approach to customers which is firmly aimed at offering a firm ROI offer across the various Interactive Media disciplines. More on that another time.

Does you does, or does you don't get access

2005-10-20T13:05:00.000+01:00

I've just had an interesting conversation with one of the most experienced designers in the industry. He was talking to me about accessibility and the various standards which exist together with how to implement them. He challenged me to find a concrete piece of evidence that explains in full and complete terms exactly which tags and checkpoints need to be included in order to satisfy A, AA, and AAA compliancy. Now I know I have read these, and accessibility is one of my pet passions so off I went to find them. Fifteen minutes later I’m still sat here trying to find them. Given that this is a legal requirement, surely this information should be at fingertip access. It's not that I don't know what the guidelines and requirements are (I do), I just can't find a quick Google reference that I can print out and hand over. Surely this is very wrong.

If anyone can point me at this resource of course I would be interested to know.

Think Global, Act Google!

2005-10-20T11:33:00.000+01:00

So Google has to drop the Gmail brand in the UK. I do find it amusing that an International Internet company can launch a brand without checking that it is available worldwide. You see this particularly with American companies and if I was uncharitable I would say that it was because a lot of American companies consider the world to consist of the US, Canada and Mexico. Of course I am not uncharitable and so I won’t say that at all.

It takes a special kind of arrogance to march into a new country and just demand the ownership of something in that country, purely based on the fact that you own it in the US. Surely a better approach would have been to properly research this before launch. Actually that's a given, and it would definitely have been better to research this before launch and the fact that it wasn't means that someone didn't do their job properly. We have been living in a world of global brands for a long time now, and this kind of thing should be second nature to any company. Google are apparently still talking to the courts and the size of the UK company which owns G-Mail does seem to be at least worth a thought inside Google HQ as to whether to buy the company in order to get the brand, but the underlying point here is that everyone should be thinking global when they launch a product on the Internet. The world is a big place and due diligence is a pre-requisite.

Where are the thinkers this time around? and where did they go?

2005-10-11T16:31:00.000+01:00

It’s possible that I am giving this too much thought, but there is no denying that we are on the crest of another golden time for the Industry. Looking at the New Media Age Top 100 Agencies list there is definitely money around and that all important feel good factor is back.

There should however be lessons learned from last time and looking around, I’m not completely sure that they have been.

At the time of the last boom many of us had entered the industry from related industries between ’96 and 98, but we had also experienced the recession of the early 90s and our plans and aspirations were tempered against that economic background.

The team I joined has now passed into Internet folklore but the main thing that made Bluewave great was that there were a core group of people who had a lot of enthusiasm, complimentary skills and each was a thinker. We spent hours (after hours) sitting with a pint in one hand whilst we conversed, discussed and argued about what was going to happen and how each new invention or trend was going to fit into our overall business model. It gave us a sense of team which was pretty formidable but also gave each person an equal stage on which to put their thoughts and make their points.

The sad thing is that a lot of those people have now left the industry, either through choice or disillusionment through the lean times of 2002 / 2003. You cannot blame them really, but my point is that the industry is poorer for loosing them, and doubly poorer because in their stead are a group of people whose main criteria for being there was that they were young and work cheap. Things have picked up again this year and the same people have been promoted, but do not have any experience of how things were when it was going well. My observation is that very few them are ‘thinkers’ in the same way that the first generation web wizards were. I agree with an observation made on Alex Barnett’s Blog that ideas are cheap, but unless thought has been given and the idea conceived, there is no opportunity to implement it well.

Whether the Web Design industry realises it or not, it has lost a lot of thinkers. Using the same example as above, others of those thinkers have gone to software companies, which is also a loss, as software companies (with possibly the exception of Sun) have no interest, other than in selling software.

What I find myself wondering is what it would take to lure back those who have left, and whether we are going to see gatherings of thinkers in services based companies emerging through this new golden age, or whether it is going to be purely about churn and doing what was asked of you, rather than what will work best.

Sun and Google in bed together, but is it love or just sex

2005-10-11T15:05:00.000+01:00

I’ve just been pointed at the Sun and Google Strategic Partnership announcement. Now this might be old news to some, but there are a few things of interest here.

http://wcdata.sun.com/webcast/archives/VIP-2166/

First off there is quite clearly an Old Sun boys love in going on, and how much of that is hype, is anybodies guess, but these guys are thinkers and have proved time and time again that thought when implemented well, leads to things that can change the world.

What Microsoft will make of this is open to suggestion but one of the quotes I’ve seen on a British discussion list attributed some not to complimentary comments to Microsoft’s Steve Balmer.

I first heard the concept of a replacement for desktop applications run as thin clients via the web about 5 years ago. Now I’ve always believed in the thin client and so its natural that I would support this view, but the real question is how it will be implemented. Google are the experts at implementing web based services so if this is the case then Microsoft’s dominance could face a challenge. Of course the real question is whether this will be better for the customer or not.

I’ve used Open Office and it is very, very good (although I also note that I am currently typing this in Word for Windows so draw your own conclusions from that as well). Also a while ago I saw a piece attempting to predict what the web would become and what it would contain which featured Google very prominently.

I’m thinking I would be giving this more credence if Steve Jobs was on stage as well, and it does seem to have been staged so that Sun could rattle a few sabres rather than signifying something significant. Time will tell.

Another point that was made was the idea of looking at the web and services available online as an API which is of course the basis of Web 2.0 which I am seeing more and more reports and predictions on. It was curious though that when I walked around the office and asked a completely unrepresentative sample whether they knew what it was that nobody had a decent answer. Of course when the same question was asked in a pub with some deep tech friends of mine were around, it was a completely different story and a very good conversation ensued.

Edit: This is how the New York Times reported the announcement

For Sale?

2005-09-26T16:58:00.000+01:00

With all the merger and acquisition activity going on at the moment it has set me thinking what exactly makes up the prices that are being paid. Anything has a value which is dictated by how much people will pay, simple supply and demand, but what elements are making up the prices people are paying at the moment.

The various methods of valuation are of course well documented, but there are so many synergy based valuations going on at the moment it is starting to look like the bubble is back.

For an agency, current clients is the obvious thing that people will pay for as well as historical performance, and profitability. All these things obviously have a value which would be fairly easy to put a total price on.

Value of kit is so easy now to work out that its probably taught in schools so that’s not an issue either.

What about the value of the portfolio though. This has the ability to demonstrate a track record in a particular sector and therefore open up new avenues for a prospective buyer. Surely though in the context of Interactive Media a portfolio loses value over time as work becomes less current. How should you measure that? It can’t be the same as on a piece of kit as that loses value to the point of zero but a portfolio has to be able to keep some value as it is work which has been done and therefore is a track record, which whilst it diminishes over time, is still relevant to some degree.

Surely that should be looked at in terms of the staff that created it and whether they are still there. A seasoned team that is used to working efficiently together has to have value as it is a well oiled machine capable of turning around projects quickly efficiently and (presumably) profitably.

This also begs the question about strength in depth and individual weakness within the team or parts of it. How much value is lost for instance if the design team is efficient but the technical team isn’t or visa versa. Is it as simple as just working out the percentage of billings and apply that ratio?

Finally what are the intangible elements. How much value can be allocated to the potential of a business in a burgeoning market. Similarly, is it right to put a price on things purely based on potential and isn’t this the same mistake that was made during the Internet bubble in 2000? Is speculation therefore always what its really about?

Random thoughts but worth me getting them down, even if it is only for later reference.

Edit. Unknown to me when I wrote this, my former colleague Alex Barnett has also been putting his thoughts down relating to the bubble and current valuations. He also has a few more links discussing the topic

Proof of Concept

2005-09-23T13:58:00.000+01:00

..... and I suppose the speed with which my previous post of the day got spammed by someone advertising their (unwanted) offer of a business opportunity is proof of concept in a way of how blogging can be used as a marketing tool. Of course this is the worst kind of marketing application for the medium but it does prove a point. My friend and old colleague James Cherkoff was right and anyone wanting to speak to someone who is on the crest of this wave (and who doesn't subscribe to the spamming technique) should check out his company, Collaborate marketing.

It was never about the technology

2005-09-23T13:52:00.000+01:00

A while ago I saw this letter in New Media Age from Catriona Campbell of The Usability Company. It highlights a topic I’ve been giving great thought to over the last year or so. I replied and even though it didn’t get printed in the magazine, I copied Catriona in on the reply and it started a dialogue between us. My letter is below:

I read with Interest Catriona Cambell’s letter in NMA 31/03/05.

She is correct when she says that an agency is made up of a series of specialists with different skill sets. Once upon a time we all stuck to those specialities and every body built up large and impressive client lists. Then the bubble burst and swathes of people were laid off leaving skeleton staff levels. That is really the point where general new media people were required, and this situation saw some people through the lean times of 2002/03.

Many agencies are still looking to follow this generalised model but the marketplace has recovered somewhat from those lean times. In its place is an expectation that any interactive work undertaken should be done so at a bargain basement price. We should therefore be wary about adopting long term business strategies based on short term market forces.

Anybody who has been around a few years will admit that market prices were too high in the past and are too low now. As trust and demand returns to Interactive projects amongst clients, then market forces will right themselves. I’ve been using the analogy of a suit for as long as this industry has been around to show the various offerings that different companies have when it comes to a website.

Everyone needs a suit, some people go to a budget high street retailer and pay less than £100, others get a designer label suit for £600-£1000, then some want the tailor made service of Saville Row. All you have is a suit, it’s made of cloth and it has arms, vents and buttons, but you get what you pay for. People make decisions about you based on your suit and how long it lasts depends on the cloth and the tailoring but also on you and how well you look after it. Clients are beginning to realise that they cannot ask for Saville Row quality at High street prices because the agencies they are going to will go out of business by supplying this, or will make the obvious cuts in service and not deliver what the client wants.

The danger with any educational accreditation is that it will be out of date by the time its gets approved, and in this industry all any accreditation will signify is how competent someone is with last years techniques. It was never the technology that made New Media new, it was the creative thinking. Somewhere on this roller coaster that point is being lost.

At the end of the day quality does speak, and quality of design is eternal. Robert Liederman hired me two decades ago as a teenager and he said something then that has rung true in every aspect of the media “A creative agency lives and dies by its creativity.” That great old man is much missed by this world, he wasn’t talking about interactive agencies, but he might as well have been.

Aaron Savage
Business Development Director
Butterfly Effect

2005-09-23T01:18:00.000+01:00

I am perhaps an embarrassingly late entrant to this type of Blog. A vast number of my peers and colleagues have been keeping records of their professional thoughts in their careers for many years. The truth is that I have kept online records but these have been focused on my personal life, friends and the things that I have encountered which have just struck me as funny and this type of record has passed me by. What changed was that I got back in contact with 2 former colleagues recently and they persuaded me that Blogging your professional thoughts was an essential aspect of a professional life in the web, and so this is the result.

Oh and just a word about the name. For many years now I have lived as a professional gypsy, moving Internationally from country to country settling for a few years, working hard and learning about the nuances of different International markets, and it has become a bit of a mission of mine to see how the Web works not just on a worldwide scale but also how it is perceived and used locally...... hence 'The Gypsy Mission'