I’m not really in the mood for creating any top ten lists of 2008 or future gazing into 2009. That can all wait for the New Year. So in the meantime I’m topping up my Xmas spirit with the weird and wonderful world of Youtube. Enjoy and have a great crimbo.
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Posted in Digital, Divergence
Battle of the Bonds
I sometimes feel like I’m the only one who isn’t impressed with Daniel Craig as James Bond. Not only does he look too much like Jim Carver from The Bill, I feel like he has become this weird Bond, xXx hybrid.
So it’s good to see that Brosnan, who is by far the better Bond, kick his arse in this mashup. Hat tip to Stan for this.
Posted in Divergence, Uncategorized
Do recessions make agencies lazy?
When budgets are cut during tough times it’s always a bit disappointing. You can’t do exactly what you’d like, but in my opinion – it sorts out the men from the boys. What frustrates me even more however, is that smaller budgets breeds laziness. In meetings with other agencies over the last month I’ve heard people complaining about only having a couple of mill to spend. Yeah, it’s not the biggest but I’m pretty sure if you gave that to an entrepreneur they would wet their pants and make it work as hard as humanly possible.
According to the people in said meeting, you have to go for ‘maximum reach with such a tiny budget’ and ‘not get too cutesy as consumers won’t understand and miss the call to action’. Whilst I don’t think this is reflective of most agency attitudes these days, it does worry me that people are reacting this way as times get tougher. Agencies have a responsibility during this period to prove their worth and substantiate why they exist in the first place, not just save energy because we aren’t getting paid what we were. As society gets, err, well, more social. If we aren’t careful advertising spend could become an operating cost to clients who appoint community managers, conversation designers, or even Twitter Salesman to market its business. Case in example is Dell who has reportedly made $1m from Twitter alone to date.
Perhaps it’s not laziness, maybe it’s size? Complacency? Even a form of survival panic. Whatever it is I feel we need to push clients to become more relevant and more distinctive and not waste what budget you do have on buying as many eyeballs as possible and hoping a supposed ‘USP’ sticks. Come on people, a bit of optimism and hard work will get you through.
If (INSERT JOB DESCRIPTION) created a brand?
I’m always fascinated with the sheer diversity of opinion when it comes to defining a brand. There’s not an off the shelf approach any more that’s for sure. I’m also curious about whether people with experience are in deed the best people to do this job all the time?
Here’s an interesting post via Ed Cotton that refers to an architect by the name of Frank Gehry designing a new shoe for JM Weston.
I’m a massive fan of transformation design and anything that looks at an old problem through different lenses. Just a a thought experiment what would happen if say a a shoemaker created a new social network? I know, Shoe People. Sorry that gag is for my UK viewers.
Project 100 – Marketing in the social media era?
Jeff Caswell has an Age of Conversation esque project on the go and has kindly (stupidly) let me contribute. Without spoiling the surprise my article is titled ‘The first rule of marketing in social media club’. You can see how Project 100 is coming along at the blog.
Posted in Communications, Digital
Will the Whopper be the Burger King # 2
Obviously it won, that kind of goes without saying but I actually really like where this little mini documentary went. Whilst it would have been a pointless waste of money if it got too intellectual on us, it did also address a bigger topic than which burger is the tastiest.
Conventional wisdom would lead us to believe that Burger King should not be forcing ‘American burger culture’ on these communities. That was my instinctive gut reaction. But think about it for a bit. One of the most fascinating and enjoyable parts of my travels to similar places is how curious they are about my culture, as I am theirs. We wrongly assume that we should leave the last remaining ‘pure cultures’ to themselves and refrain from introducing such goods as if they wouldn’t be interested to see what possibilities are out there. But surely it is up to these people to decide what they want and what they don’t want from other cultures, as do you and I.
After all the guy at the end clearly states that whilst he liked the Whopper it doesn’t beat Seal meat. Seal meat I hear you cry, how dare those barbarians, send in Greenpeace. Different strokes for different folks and a thought provoking little snippet. Perhaps we should get some New Yorkers eating a McSeal burger and see how they react.
Posted in Communications, culture
Will the Whopper be the Burger King?
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this campaign yet. Half of me likes the boldness of it but then the other half thinks about some of the rumoured and not so rumoured exploits of said companies in underdeveloped communities across the world, who have never tasted said burgers.
Influence versus popularity
In the last few months Twitter has undoubtedly reached a critical mass where it’s actually interesting to follow people for even the most vocal cynic. And whilst there isn’t much of a business model yet, it’s certainly proved that it’s going to be around for a while. Obama effectively used it in the election and more recently the tragic events in Mumbai showed that it’s an insightful source and a rapid distributer of news. So this post isn’t proclaiming the death or hate for any kind of social tool but more about my growing concerns with how they are used and more importantly how influence is defined and measured,.
One of the big things that I find frustrating is the misunderstanding of influence versus popularity. So after some Googlelizing I came across this great post from Shel Israel that pretty much sums up the dark side of social media and highlights why numerical metrics really only measure popularity as opposed to influence which is somewhat of an anomaly at the moment. Here’s an exerpt…
“Suppose I were a political blogger and I had an audience of just three followers. Those followers were very engaged because they read everything I posted. They commented often. They took what I said and quoted me to other people in other conversations. But there were only three of them. Therefore I would be ranked lower than chopped liver in all the ranking systems. The catch is that those three readers were the President of the US, and the heads of China and Russia”
Don’t get me wrong there’s a valid element of communicating with friends and peers but there seems to be a growing number of ‘influencers’ and ‘social media consultants’ who have found an art of saying something without saying anything at all. I often find myself falling into the social media popularity trap. However reality takes hold and I have to ask myself am I really contributing anything to the conversation or merely smoring (social media whoring) my sorry ass! Sorry, negative post over.
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