12-11-08

Snuggie – the blanket with sleeves!

I don’t know if it’s a bad thing that I’d actually quite like one of these and everyone that I show it to seems to feel the same way. I could then ‘use my laptop without being cold’. Maybe they should have been given out at Le Web?!

UPDATE – I’ve removed the video as it autostarts and I’m sick of it. Visit the site to check it out.

Jokes aside, I think Loic’s response was great today. A perfect demonstration of confronting a problem and saying it as it is, quickly, honestly and from the heart.

11-27-08

Video in video

Wow. This is a little crazy. Those clever Stanford types have created some software that enables video to be embedded within another video. Like in-game advertising but for real world video that (from the video below) looks as though it blends pretty seamlessly with the original content. Question is though – do we want our content blended with adverts? Or are there other uses for this? Whatever, it looks pretty cool to me.

10-19-08

The Ladders Experiment

This popped up on my Twitter stream recently – an ‘experiment’ in which $100,000 is put on display in public in the US and the resulting action is captured by a collection of hidden cameras and microphones. In a nutshell, some people just point and stare and others take more extreme action and try and get at the cash with brute force. Overall, it’s rather entertaining and certainly got my attention (and a post/link hey?). It’s like one of those blue sky (euuugh) style ideas that comes up in a brainstorm actually got implemented.

BUT – the film bizarrely doesn’t show you how it ends. And you can’t easily share the film or embed it – other than emailing it to a friend. It appears to be on YouTube (see below too) – but this isn’t linked to on the main site, which I find a bit odd if you want to remove all potential friction that might stand in the way of something going a bit viral. Anyway, enjoy it if you haven’t seen it.

10-07-08

Joining up the dots: Part 1

So, the global economy is experiencing a spot of bother.

Yet online advertising spend in the UK is on the up.

But, advertising itself looks to be pretty doomed these days. So doomed that it’s even starting to point fun at itself.

And over half of social media campaigns implemented by Fortune 1000 companies will fail.

Press releases are starting to feel even more out of place in today’s world of real people and resistance to corporate speak. So much so, the industry is beginning to parody itself and the language we use.

Yet the web is growing all the time and brands want to be a part of it. So what do they do?

1. Make sure that any social media/digital campaign it implements matches the needs of its community as well as itself.

2. Don’t fall into the trap of letting perceptions of short term ‘results’ override longer term, more meaningful ROI from a whole load of effort.

3. Keep focused on innovation and making its products/services better, in all respects (eg customer service).

Just a quick thought as all the dots begin to join up in my mind. Anything to add?

05-30-08

Honda: Live ad

Fair play. After much talk recently on this here blog of advertising, here’s a great one from Honda – a LIVE advert featuring sky divers broadcast on Channel 4 from Spain. Over to Jai & Wal to tell you about it. I’d love to see more live online adverts and stuff. It’s been done I think, but back to ‘data is the new advertising’ . . .

Yesterday evening at 8.10pm Honda and Channel4 broad casted a live advert. We understand it’s not the first live commercial in TV history, but it’s bloody great. It fits very well in the rest of the Honda Accord campaign Difficult is Worth Doing. The ‘real’ advert, also about skydiving formations, will break this Sunday. We’re curious what W+K has up their sleeves.

05-21-08

Thinking Micro

I went to the Chinwag Micro Media Maze event last night to talk about micro media and web stuff. The panel was really good and included Umair Haque (Director, Havas Media Lab / Bubblegeneration), Gerd Leonhard (Media Futurist, Author, Entrepreneur), Mitch McAlister (Product Director (Europe), MySpace), Miles Lewis (SVP, European Advertising Sales, Last FM) and Neil McIntosh (Head of Editorial Development, Guardian Unlimited). Steve Bowbrick also did a great job of chairing the thing and keeping it all ticking over nicely.

We didn’t really talk about micro media that much though. Instead with the heavy music bias to the panel, talk was a lot around music and the future of content on the web – which ultimately boils down to the same old argument of ‘consumers want music free and everywhere, the industry wants to be paid and control distribution’. In particular I thought Miles from Last FM (in the true spirit of transparency, openness etc) gave away some great insight into Last FM and the struggle faced by people pushing boundaries with technology. And, Umair too delivered some fairly strong opinions on what we should be doing with the web, advertising in general and as agencies to make the world a better place.

I was going to write up some notes but Ben Matthews has some good stuff up already, so I’ll just add the following little thoughts:

1> 3% of traffic to Last FM comes via the homepage and more than 40% comes from widgets (with 55% predicted by the end of the year). Evidence of brands being distributed around the web. Setting up home in one place and spending all your money on some nice curtains, a swanky drive and a big impressive hallway might not be the best thing to do now. Time to become micro and distributed – part of the flow of data and value around the web.

2> People look at their mobile screens an average of 25 times a day and 95% of the time their mobile device is less than one metre away. Blimey. We all know that the mobile web is going to blow up this year, but in what other ways is this going to impact on our lives?

3> Gerd said that ‘data is the new advertising’. I like this thought a lot. It reminded me of the concept of spimes and got me thinking about providing value to people though data control, manipulation and enhancement.

4> Everyone agreed that we should be doing more stuff that genuinely makes people’s lives better. I thought to myself about what would happen if advertising disappeared overnight. What would happen? What if all that money spend on advertising was re-channelled simply into making products and services better, in order to make people’s lives better?

5> Twitter or micro blogging wasn’t really talked about. Yes it’s a bit yada, yada but I really do think it’s demonstrating the power of thinking small. Neither were new micro advertising formats (like Pistach.io) even though there were blatently some really smart people in the room (including a guy from Double Click I chatted to before kick-off). Or the fact that the whole world is getting smaller while brands seem to still be thinking big all the time.

There’s so much more to come in this space, it’s incredibly exciting. The fact the event was crammed last night was a definite sign of that. Now we just need to start thinking and acting micro. Because as we all know, being small usually means you can move quicker and with the web, speed is everything.

Update – missed Jemima’s post which contains some great quotes and some rather more succinct analysis.

[Picture thanks to Little People]

04-29-08

£12 a year on Twitter? Vote!

Just a thought, but if everyone who used Twitter regularly paid £1 per month for the privilege, then Twitter would get get £2.4 million ($4.7 million) a year. And that’s based on the stats from Techcrunch that claim 200,000 active users and 1 million registered users, so if anything that figure is low.
The current growth rate is massive too so six months down the line, who knows what that figure might look like.

Or another way of looking at it is to charge 1p per message sent on Twitter (3 million are sent every day apparently) and rake in £10.95 million ($21.6 million) a year. This would work out to be £4.65 ($9.17) per month though to a user sending 15 tweets a day, which again is apparently the average amongst the 200,000 active users. That feels too much, but really probably isn’t given what you actually get compared to other stuff on the web – think of the costs of the texts alone. £1 mind . . .

So, rather than chuck ads at me or think of another way to monetize the service just ask me up front and I’ll pay. I’m sure others would too.

Anyway, just a quick not very well researched thought initiated by this I think . . . but if I do hand over the money, please Twitter can you make sure it works and pretty please look after my data. Thanks.

Would you pay £12 a year to use Twitter? Vote below or here

[Photo Credit - starring Skipper]

01-13-08

Actions/words

Umm, haven’t we agreed all this already? (via Open/Anthony)

Without developing the detail right now, let me suggest that traditional models of advertising where vendors pay for messages to be delivered to prospective customers will be challenged longer-term by various forms of collaboration marketing and advisory services where customers pay trusted advisors to recommend relevant products and services….

Unfortunately, this short-term advertising revenue growth has had a narcotic effect and made a lot of online businesses lazy. Longer-term, I anticipate that most businesses online will have to make money the old fashioned way – by offering products, services and experiences so valuable that people will actually pay money for them. Those who begin to develop this discipline today will profit in the long-term.

This year, I’m really looking forward (me included) to more action and less words from everyone. It’s about time we put all our shared thinking into practice, stopped just agreeing with each other and do as we say/think. I know that Stephen is feeling the same and Will blatently agrees, so come on, let’s make that resolution, if you haven’t made it already.

As Hugh said (and so did Robert Stephens of GeekSquad) advertising is increasingly becoming a ‘tax you pay for unremarkable thinking’.

I really like this idea and will be trying my hardest from here on in to help brands I work with think remarkably and execute on amazing things. Or am I just adding more words and no action . . . !?

01-10-08

ASCII Art on Google Adwords

I love this. Incredibly simple idea, but one that someone else had and did first – Sixt. And guess what, the ads apparently never ran because of the Google terms and conditions . . . the idea itself is the thing that everyone’s talking about, fuelled by the mocked up ads created for people (like me) to share.

Via here via here.

12-23-07

Whopper Freakout

UPDATE: think it isn’t as good as it seems as Graham pointed out.

OK, quick one for Christmas. A gift from me to you.

Latest from Burger King – a great idea executed well that uses its own customers to deliver the desired message. A lot better than “I’m Lovin. it”. You simply cannot simulate brand passion like that.

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