09Jul / 2010

A tale of two buttons – Fan versus Like

So according to this article Facebook is serving 3 Billion ‘Like’ buttons a day. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook did a smart thing launching the like button. It spreads its seed across the web because it’s obviously much easier to like something than it is to be a fan of something. I might admit to the fact that part of me likes prancing about to a bit of Culture Club, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan. It requires less commitment.

From friend to friend it works, but from a brand’s point of view I think I kind of preferred fan as a benchmark, it made you work harder. ‘Like’ lowers the standards (which are already often low), resulting in the interaction being weaker and inflating the numbers. I’d go even as far as saying it’s the closet equivalent of some sort of standard volume metric in social.

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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

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13May / 2010

Why the elections are no better than deciding the Xmas number 1?

OK, so apparently the Greens should be in Downing Street and not Mr Cameron/Clegg. At least that’s what might of happened if people voted for policies and not a few man brands.

I’m not sure how I missed Voteforpolicies.org.uk during the recent UK election but I love it! It essentially helps you understand whom you should vote for by showing you all the major parties’ policies (without logos or spin) across a variety of areas such as the economy, Europe, crime, education etc.

Not only did it tell me that I too should of voted for the Green Party, but people are a) too influenced by preconceived notions of a party/candidate, b) the media’s coverage and bias towards the old guard and c) not really bothering to find what parties intend to do when they get into parliament. It’s just a popularity contest mixed up with the Nation’s cultural vibe at the time of voting.

According to the 290K completed surveys the Green Party should be in. Not only that the two parties that have power would have been the third and fourth choice.

What’s even more fascinating is who you end up voting for by policy. I even ended up voting BNP for education who had a great policy of giving free University places to people who have worked for a period of time in the community. Who would have thought it!

In a recent Guardian article they stated that Parties didn’t utilise social networking effectively but to be honest I don’t think people did enough to find out, potentially using social networking, what each party stood for. It’s really like picking the Xmas number which is normally some Xfactor douchebag or Bob the bloody Builder. I’d have liked to have seen a Rage against the Machine. Maybe in 4 years time.

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12Apr / 2010

A 2.5 year old encounters the iPad for the first time

Guilty as charged. Another lazy Youtube post but this is pretty neat even though I’m not convinced it’s the first time she has used it. What I also find interesting is that despite all these technological developments, it’s essentially bringing us full circle to a father and daughter sharing some time together.

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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)

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18Feb / 2010

The Brits, musical mashups and digital sales

In no particular order and by no means probably that coherent, some interesting things happened in music this week.

First of all we experienced some nice recombinant culture in action and how good the final, unexpected result can be received and quickly spread through t’internet. I’m talking about Dizzee Rascal and Florence performing at the Brits. We saw two artists, who have recently covered two old dance tracks perform a duet live that mashed the both of them up.

Now this is a potentially a royalties nightmare I guess but they managed to get it up on iTunes within 5 hours of the performance finishing. Well done. It also appears to be unofficially up on Youtube. Here it is.

The other closely related news wasn’t just that Lady Gaga won a heap of awards this week, she is proving to be a bit of an expert when it comes to the business side of digital as well as promotion. Here’s an extract from the Wall Street journal highlighting why Lady Gaga gets it:

“Lady Gaga’s towering digital sales, almost all of them iTunes downloads, only tell part of the story. In fact, much of Gaga’s audience got her music for free, and legally. They have listened to free streams—by the hundreds of millions—on YouTube and the other online services that Gaga currently leads, according to research firm BigChampagne. On MySpace, Gaga has had 321.5 million plays. By contrast, singer Susan Boyle tallied only 133,000 plays, despite scoring the No. 2 selling album of 2009.

Gaga isn’t giving it away for nothing—musicians typically earn fractions of a penny each time a song is streamed on Yahoo, for instance. While most artists stand to profit more from high-margin CD sales, being embedded across the Web can pay dividends in exposure and the loyalty of fans”

So where did Dizzee, Florence et al miss a trick? Well kudos for getting it up on iTunes but they didn’t close the loop and get it on the web first guiding people to said iTunes. They just didn’t learn from Chris Brown’s success piggy backing on the back of the now famous JK wedding entrance. Apparently digital sales jumped from 3,000 to 50,000 in the first week as a result of just advertising it on the content.

Dizzee and Florence

Chris Brown

The moral of the story? Don’t try and control it, feed it.

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10Feb / 2010

adidas dunks a good Youtube experience

This is a pretty neat idea from adidas using Youtube to deliver its basketball content. Rather than just spurting it all over the web then wiping their hands of it adidas really thought about the context and how they could use Youtube in an interesting way.

Essentially in one section videos are only unlocked once the latest has been viewed a certain amount of times. Genius. The others allow you to control or influence the video. Simple but better than the usual spray and pray or TV on the web approach.

Another great find from Rubbishcorp

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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.

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12Jan / 2010

‘We’ is the magic number

I’ve mentioned it before but the concept of marketing to networks rather than targeting audiences hasn’t really become common place just yet. The world is obviously rife with various campaigns in Facebook and on Twitter but by understanding how they work it will change the way you approach everything from research, product development and also communications.

Mark Earls looks like he is getting close to a new research method around understanding the more insightful ‘We’ rather than the misleading ‘Me,’ but a couple of really simple things have come to my attention that highlight my point.

The first is Groupon, a website that offers a different product everyday at a low price. The catch is you only get it if enough people commit to buying it on that day. The second is from Dell who has already reported making $6m from Twitter alone. It’s called Dell Swarm and is essentially bulk buying. The more people you get in your group to buy the same product the lower it is.

If you think about it this could change a host of marketing tactics, even the lowly bribe or give away. Instead of starting with a big round the world trip in a Winnebago, you just have enough for push bike that you have to pick up from Skeggy (no offence to the people of Skeggness). The more people that enter, the closer you get to the big prize. It completely changes the way a group works together and how the giveaway spreads. Traditionally there’s no incentive for me to invite other people to sign up for a giveaway as it actually reduces my odds of winning. In the ‘We’ giveaway the odds might get worse but the reward goes up if I get other people to take part.

Think about Obama, he was all about the ‘We’ and not the ‘Me’.

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16Dec / 2009

This year’s thoughts on marketing next year – Marketing to networks

The reason I love working in digital is because it’s about people. That sounds contradictory to some I know, but it’s the truth. Technology has made us more social, smarter and more efficient than ever before. It’s given people the opportunity to do stuff rather than just consume stuff. And most importantly ignore brands that are being irrelevant and uninteresting. That’s been the reality over the last year, poor brands have been found out and the best ones flourished.

Which leads me to network theory (and the point of this post, sorry for the rambling prelude) is probably the most interesting thing I’ve been trying to get my head around in the last 12 months. I certainly don’t pretend to be an expert but it adds some rigor and science to a subject filled with a lot of hot air.

I also hate to break it to some people but social network theory has been around long before Mark Zuckerburg was a glint in his Dad’s eye and it’s also not about things that only happen online. Without getting too scientific I’ll just provide the main links for further reading in 2010, if you haven’t done so already in 09.

Malcolm ‘The Law of the few’ Gladwell vs Duncan ‘The big seed’ Watts

The Strength of Weak ties by Mark Granovetter

Social Object Theory – People share things that are interesting, sometimes that’s an ad

Power Laws and Black Swans

Sociograms – Helps map the flow of information and the strength of influence.

The difference between Sarnoff’s law, Metcalfe’s Law and Reed’s Law.

The maximum flow problem. This is something you can’t fix, but it’s good to know what we are doing wrong.

If you are on an International Flight with Qantas and can’t be bothered to read you all this you could watch this.

After reading, or watching all of this, you will probably find out a few things in time for next year.

- How ideas spread are just as important as where they are seen.
- Facebook and Twitter are the tools that networks of people use, not networks themselves.
- Social networks exist on and offline- All networks are different
- Media is connected and not complimentary to one another.
- Your research and the way you segment are probably flawed
- You are spending too much in paid media

The Communications Room

Category Archives: Digital

QR Codes are only useful if they do useful things

Why the elections are no better than deciding the Xmas number 1?

A 2.5 year old encounters the iPad for the first time

The Future of TV from Razorfish

The Brits, musical mashups and digital sales

adidas dunks a good Youtube experience

Be stupid and forget the single moment

‘We’ is the magic number

This year’s thoughts on marketing next year – Marketing to networks

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