Category Archives: Digital Strategy

25Jan / 2011

If you can’t make the journey quicker, make it more enjoyable.

I can’t remember where I read this, but apparently designers and engineers in Japan are more focused on making journeys more enjoyable, where as in the West it’s about trying to make things more efficient. Here’s a great case in point from SEGA found via SMH.

You could apply this thinking to anything. Take applying for a bank account or credit card online as an example. You can’t reduce the number of fields in the form and the annoying tech limitations don’t allow you to make it that seemless, so you are left with one option, make it more enjoyable. You can have this idea for free but yhy not stream some relaxing music? You would if you had them on hold over the phone.

Posted in Business ideas, Digital, Digital Strategy, Technology

Tags: , , , , ,

Permalink Leave a comment

02Sep / 2010

Marketing as platforms and applications

I’ve always believed that the single easiest way to get your head round digital and more importantly the direction of communications and culture type stuff, is to simply look at the vocabulary being used by the people that do the doing, not the thinking. This post on Savage Minds highlights a potentially better way of looking at marketing by comparing the techy terms like platform to culture and application to subculture.

It makes sense when you think about. You don’t really manage a brand in neat little channels anymore. Like in John Grant’s book, The Brand Innovation Manifesto, brands are really defined by a bunch of complimentary associations and experiences. John calls these brand molecules, but it’s essentially the same. You should be creating a platform, with a series of applications that allow you to keep moving quickly and effectively. Much like Starbucks has done

Don’t get me wrong, we don’t need anymore marketing words, but we do need to use more helpful ones.

Posted in Branding, Communications, Digital, Digital Strategy

Tags: , ,

Permalink Leave a comment

06Aug / 2010

Technological progress and addiction

Paul Graham has just posted this great read on the acceleration of addictiveness. Essentially the world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago and it’s going to get even more so.

Interestingly he puts this down to technological progress, which in his words means ‘making things do more of what we want’. Which is probably one of the most articulate ways of talking about all this stuff that’s going on in a digital world.

However it’s also this gem of an observation I love;

“What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin and crack have in common is that they are all more concentrated forms of less addictive predcessors….

“Checkers and solitaire have been replaced by World of Warcraft and FarmVille. TV has become more engaging, and even so it can’t compete with Facebook”.

Obviously when technological progress means things doing more of what you want, predecessors such as TV, that don’t evolve quick enough in the right direction, aren’t essentially keeping up with that new demand.

I wonder what ad revenues might look like now if all the TV channels clubbed together, backed web enabled TV and put them in the house of people for free ages ago? They’d probably be more addictive and looking a lot healthier.

Posted in Communications, Digital, Digital Strategy, Technology

Permalink Leave a comment

28Jul / 2010

Does the world need better Strategists?

Over at Naked NYC’s blog there’s a provactive post about whether the world needs Digital Strategists. As one, I actually agree with much of the post. I agree with the fact that de-centralising strategy is not a good thing.

However one thing that concerns me about some comments, is the air that digital strategy is somehow subordinate to traditional planning and it’s just a skill you can pick up by spending time on the Internet. Or that Digital Strategists don’t get brands or can’t generate insights as well as traditional planners.

I do believe that putting it in a silo is unhelpful, but lets not forget how it came about and why it still exists. As professionals who are paid to understand people/culture/media on behalf of brands the vast majority of planners have dropped the ball and not delivered. Hence digital strategists. You can’t blame people for filling voids and creating opportunities that you have allowed to exist.

My gut says that in the not too distant future digital strategists, won’t exist, but they will be running strategy or marketing departments.

Give the same problem to the best ‘digital strategist’ in the world and the best ‘traditional planner’ in the world and I’d have my money on the former.

So I’d re-phrase their post to ‘Does the world need better strategists?’

Posted in Advertising, Agency politics, Agency structures, Communications, Digital, Digital Strategy

Permalink Leave a comment

01Jul / 2010

QR Codes are only useful if they do useful things

I can tell you why QR codes haven’t really flown outside parts of Asia. Because they aren’t really used that well. Replacing a URL or showing another ad, is let’s face, not useful. This on the other hand is…

Via

Posted in Communications, Digital, Digital Strategy, Marketing

Tags: ,

Permalink Leave a comment

08Apr / 2010

The Future of TV from Razorfish

I don’t really see analog and digital as being this TV verus the Internet thing. But more related to how different people (mainly generations) think abouth stuff. There so much opportunity in TV that’s it’s only a matter of time before it starts to look more and more like the Internet.

This is great Razorfish presentation from SXSW Festival that essentially shows what TV is probably going to look like once the digital people get more and more involved. It was presented at Cannes last year but in this version Razorfish seem to have actually flushed out how the potential interface might look under various scenarios. (Start from about slide 12)

Posted in Communications, Digital, Digital Strategy

Tags: , , , , , ,

Permalink Leave a comment

04Feb / 2010

Be stupid and forget the single moment

I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes, mostly because it’s not just another UGC competition. They have really thought about what happens before and after the thing that a lot of marketing peeps probably focus on and that’s the competition bit.

Why do I like it? It takes an interesting position. It’s aimed at an audience capable of creating content that the rest of its actual audience will find interesting. It then becomes Diesel’s next catalogue. And not just any catalogue, it’s a music video catalogue.

We spend too much time thinking about the ad, the event, the email or the Facebook group and not enough about what happens before and after we create it. I don’t believe that thinking of communications as a bunch of single moments leads to interesting communications. When you scratch beneath the surface Diesel’s Be stupid campaign is more than just a UGC competition.

Posted in Advertising, Communications, Digital, Digital Strategy, Strategy

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink Leave a comment

26Nov / 2009

Marketing like Viagra…it’s not big and it’s not clever

Some brands are getting it right…others on the other hand are still marketing like those dodgy Viagra pills. And just to clarify when I say getting it right, I’m talking about brands not using social media to just pretty much spam a heap of people.

Starting with the ones that are getting it right, Ikea recently used Facebook’s photo tagging function to give away products from their show room. They created a profile for the store manager and he uploaded some photos of the show room. The first people to tag an item with their name on won it. Awesome..the full details are below.

The second is Toys ‘R’ Us who rewarded friend’s of the brand’s fan page by giving them exclusive mystery deals. Simple, but nice and it’s also solicited.

Now for the ones that that don’t. I’ve mentioned Moonfruit before and despite what some people think, it is not a shining example of using Twitter, but Westfield has almost topped it launching its ‘Win a $10,000 Gift Card’ promotion through Facebook. Essentially you update your status by saying ‘All I want for Christmas is a Westfield Gift Card’ and you get entered into a prize draw, whilst spamming your friends at the same time.

The main differences are…

People want the Macbook not Moonfruit and people want the $10K, not the Westfield Gift Card. It’s a meaningless relationship that have got people wanting and talking about the wrong thing, unlike the Ikea and Toys ‘R’ Us examples. The latter’s products and brand experience are part of their communication.

Moonfruit and Westfield have also got the mechanics wrong. Larger groups benefit with Ikea and Toy ‘R’ Us, not just a handful of individuals. They are essentially marketing to networks of people rather than just applying prize draw tactics learnt in the ‘push’ world. You need to be more inclusive rather than exclusive marketing to networks.

You could argue that Moonfruit and Westfield are playing a numbers game which might be true. These promotions wouldn’t have cost much to execute and less than a 0.5% conversion might make them money, but it is still seen as unsolicited spam, albeit indirectly through my friends. And let’s be honest, if I start getting a friend spamalanche, I won’t be using FB et al that much. This might work for Viagra, but do you really want to market like that?

Posted in Communications, Digital, Digital Strategy

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Permalink 1 Comment

24Jul / 2009

The top 5 ways to enjoy Twitter and avoid the Twitter cult

Number one is stop titling blog posts, with top ten lists. I thought I would do this to get some reach and make a point. But before I finish the list, here is a minor whine, it’s not the cult of twitter that’s getting a bit tedious, I like Twitter, it’s the twitter cult that bugs me.

Now is it just me, or is there this weird group of fanatics growing that think they are influencing the whole of mankind in 140 characters? Seriously, it’s like a cult with chapters and stuff. Yes it’s important, rapidly growing, but let’s get some perspective and just a touch of rigour around some of the claims being made

- Apparently a marketing campaign is only successful unless the cult says so. In fact the cult is becoming a whole new segment to target your campaigns at. Think of Skittles and Moonfruit.

- MJ was officially dead only when the cult said so

- The cult has even delivered democracy to Iran through turning their avatars green

- Most recently they have single handily ruined Sacha Baron Cohen’s life by saving the world from his latest film Bruno

It’s this last one that pushed me over the edge and the media has to take some of the blame for link baiting the cult and feeding the beast. They title things in really sensational ways, even if it’s not related to the point they are actually trying to make. Why? They know that the cult will see it in their RSS reader, take in the first 4 words, then incorrectly Tweet about it claiming another victory for social media over evil and artificially inflate the impressions for advertisers. Get down to the 3rd or 4th paragraph of both of these articles, here and here, it isn’t really just about Twitter, it’s about today’s speed and potential effect of communications, Twitter is a small part of this.

The most salient quote of these articles is this: “Film marketers look at weekly declines in ticket sales to judge fan buzz. In recent years, those “drops” have widened significantly as communication has speeded up thanks to the internet and, more recently, social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook”. Backed up by this research.

So to get back to finishing my list…

2 – Crunch some numbers before you join the cult. A bit budget I know but using socialmention.com, for every negative comment about ‘Bruno’ on Twitter, there are 3 positive ones. So why didn’t sales rise if the cult is so influential? In Oz Bruno’s first weekend has done over 50% of its nearest funny rival The Hangover that has been running for about 6 weeks.

There is at the very least only about 600K active people on Twitter in Australia, and that’s being generous. There is nearly 6m on Facebook. If something influenced sales it was the latter

3 – Look at the wider context of Twitter and the way people use it.
“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values” Mcluhan The 60s some time

4 – Compare Apples with Apples. Bruno is a higher cert than Harry Potter and even Borat in some countries. It’s even school holidays. Bruno is almost cult in itself and has a smaller potential audience.

5– Follow interesting people not the cult, your experience will be much more fulfilling.Use them as a filter for great content, not bombarding you with crap. It’s the people that influence you not the tool.

Sorry about the rant!

Posted in Communications, Digital Strategy, Strategy

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Permalink Leave a comment

21Jul / 2009

A free tool for planners working in social media – Sociograms

2884460677_a244f9be9a
A sociogram is not a social media consultant supplementing their income of an evening; it is a visual representation of a network, that identifies the flow of information and the varying strength/relationship/reliance on one another. It’s useful predominantly because it gives you an indication of the actual relationships, on and offline, rather than the one size fits all preconceived notion around ‘influencers’.

I also say planners, because social media experts are well experts, so they will know about this already. I used to draw sociograms all retro, with a pen and stuff, however this week I came across a budget, but helpful little tool that makes it as easy as. Enjoy.

Posted in Communications, Digital Strategy, Sociology

Tags: , , , , ,

Permalink 1 Comment

Twitter

My del.icio.us

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,192 other followers