The last supper (spam again...)

Christmas binge over, I wasnt that surprised to see that Little Chef is about to go the way of the sit down Wimpy and close its doors. The word is that its lack of evolvement in its offering has made it increasingly irrelevant given todays perceived desire for healthier lifestyles. Which is strange given latest projections for overweight / obesity published by the HSE, indicating that there's nothing more we'd like than to tuck into a plate of over priced, fatty food with a sprig of limp lettuce to make you feel better about what you're about to do to yourself.

Some brands don't need to evolve. Coke (and Pepsi) famously tried to tamper with their winning formula, and look where that got them (Malcolm Gladwell has a nice piece about this very thing in his "Blink" tome which is worth looking at for those with a penchant for product testing getting off to the wrong start). Other brands, however, become topics of public and political debate, fast food in particular, and see themselves having to evolve their product line to accomodate notions of what's right or wrong for us (there's always the off button, but people seem to forget this all to easily).

Can't concentrate too hard today, as the kids have just declared war on each other (again) and the seemingly innocuous task of designing a film poster has spiralled into a hate campaign though the language of scrawls.

Well done to everyone...

Quick on this, given I'm preoccupied with a post about Xmas that needs thinking out before I write it down, but noteworthy all the same. Two news stories jumped out at me today that affirmed my previous post about the pervasiveness and mass acceptance of You Tube and the like as a means of expression and communication.

First up - Social networks top Google search
Nice piece of reporting from the BBC looking at the popularity of community sites across the web, and their predominance of the annual round up of Google's searches of 2006. Compare this with their 2005 Google Zeitgest (how do you pronounce that? stevie t, any ideas?) and you can see the dramatic shift away from P2P, online music and World of Warcraft towards a who's who of "social computing" including wikipedia, bebo, video and MySpace.

Second up - We've all won the Time "Person of the year 2006"!
I knew I was under consideration, but I never expected us all to win. Anyways, hop along to the Time website here to get the full rundown, and at the same time go out, buy the magazine, and frame it (or send copies to relatives, although no doubt they'll be doing the same). Still, their point is noteworthy as it signifies the importance of user contributed content to the media mix. The role of user footage in breaking news stories is now absolutely crucial to news networks in getting under the skin of events as they happen, and the emergence of personal video blogs (search for serving US troops in Iraq) can offer far more insight than a 15 second bulletin on the nightly news.

Squeeze my nunchucks till the juice runs down my leg...

So, that stuff about Steven Seagal? Turns out the pony tailed avenger has a side line as a blues man with his band Thunderbox! He's touring his new album "Mojo Priest" and hits the UK in the new year, including a stint at the hallowed Fairfield Hall in Croydon (straight after a long run of the "Nutcracker Suite" - how appropriate!)
Many dates, many opportunities to right wrongs, beat up local drug dealers and teach the good fight through the power of twelve bars and E7, A7, D7 chord progressions. Croydon council are scrapping their ASBO program for 10 days either side of the 21st Jan as the local hooligans run for the cover of Purley Way and it's warren of super stores, sofa shops and DIY leather centres.

Right, the campaign to rebrand Channel Five as "the home of Steven Seagal" starts here.

Presentation done proper

I'm rubbish at reading instructions, hence my difficulties in understanding what "Squidoo" and "Lenses" are all about. Duh. This blog started out as a "lens", until I realised that what I wanted wasnt a simple list of useful things, but rather a running commentary about things I come across that could prove useful in the future. Well, this one is a cracker - "Best presentations ever".

If, like me, part of your job is to "sell in" other peoples brilliant work (and sometimes my own) then you soon understand how mediocre presentations can not only kill a great piece of thinking, but can damage your client relationships. Part of the battle is to show passion, interest and knowledge in your client, what they're trying to achieve, and how you think your agency's inisight can meet these challenges. The other part is "getting the puppets out" and giving them a good show to boot. You've asked you're client over, so you should at the very least show them a good time.

There are some great examples of well thought out and appropriate presentations in this list, from Martin Luther Kings stirring call to understanding and common unity, Malcom Gladwells "no slides" Blink presentation through to Steve Jobs introducing the world to a new computer called the Apple Mac (whatver happened to that?). I'm no fan of Ken Livingstone, but he once silenced a room of enraged critics by explaining the problems of local government with the politics of whose job it is to change the light bulbs in the street lamps outside your house.

I'm rambling now. Bit hungover having been at a wonderful party last night that included one dead goldfish (blender error), a resignation, an arrest, loud singing, dwarf porn and a very giggly conversation about what the hell Steve Seagal is doing in Croydon these days (something to do with pregnant 16 year olds, according to one of my companions).

Ooh look, it's nearly lunchtime!

How green is your avatar?

These puns are getting out of control. Regardless, today was a funny old day, beginning with a bit of an outburst and ending in a fit of giggles (accompanied by bad French impressions using poor but appropriate french). The turning point of the day (where things that seemed bad become things that were just there) was this article, looking at the ecological impact of Second Life, and whether virtual people burn up more electricity (and release more CO2 gas into the atmosphere) than real people. At first I wandered how much time these people have on their hands to be coming up with this stuff. By the end of it I wandered if "grndhse07" really needed to be around considering the damage he/she/it was doing to the real world.

Still, it's those damn cows that are the real culprits. Bovine boom boxes, each and everyone of them!

Look in the box

I've been catching up on the latest series of The Apprentice USA (god bless TV Drive). It's a great series, defying all the traditional perceptions you could have of reality tv and their usefulness to the viewing public other than as an arena of mawkish ridicule. What's interesting for me about this show is that many of the tasks involve some kind of marketing project, under much stricter timings than even we usually work under.

The task this week was to create a DIY clinic for Home Depot, the largest home improvement chain in the USA. If you havent seen them before, its where somebody demos a product and tries to engage customers to spend more money on something they didn't know they needed until they tipped up at the store. One team (Net Worth) decided to have a show and tell on how easy it was to construct a mobile kitchen island (i never knew what they were until I saw it, but they're a bit like this). It looked kind of ok (if you like that sort of thing), but despite the fact that the team weren't really into the task, the concept itself was complicated to understand, took forever to demonstrate, and didn't invite or allow for any kind of audience participation. Whatever, the team went along with it and eventually lost the task.

The other team (Magna Corp), was led by Craig, a quiet guy and very different to the rest of the candidates in that his day job was as a part time fireman, as opposed to a corporate lawyer or real estate developer. His suggestion was that they show people how to build a box that could be used to store toys. The team were very unimpressed, saying the idea lacked creativity and saw no opportunity to deliver something that would have the punters in awe at their marketing acumen. Whatever, the team went along with and eventually won the task. Here's why...

• Building a box is something we can all do with a bit of guidance. The demonstration was actually more of a workshop, and people readily joined in once they got over their initial fear of constructing something from a few slabs of wood and some screws and hinges.

• The box is just a box until you get it back to your house and personalise it. Then it becomes a piece of furniture and part of your home. Much of the audience had children with them and they were shown that with some paint and a bit of imagination the boxes could be customised until their hearts content. The kids duly joined in and much painting, hand printing and stencilling commenced, to the delight of the parents who started thinking really hard about how much they could do with something like this in their home.

• Finally, they called the boring old "box" and much more fancy "trunk", giving an otherwise fairly utilitarian piece of wood some warmth and personality.

The team leader was duly recognised as a bit of a visionary, but the criticism of him was fair. He wasn't able to communicate to the rest of the team that a simple box can be a great way to get customers to engage with the team and in turn Home Depot's brand.

Thanks a lot...

Found this on YouTube, a nice film where a guy went around and asked people what they were thankful for. The reason for sticking it down here isn't so much because of the video itself, but for the fact that people seemed willing to engage in its making when asked to respond to the question "What are you thankful for?". A sign, maybe, that YouTube has entered into the modern consciousness not just as something they read about, but something they actively engage in as a participant to the film making process.

Need a lie down now.

Show and tell

Quick one this, as I meant to post it the other day and got awfully snowed under with work. Digg Labs have gone the Google route by showing us alpha / beta phase projects that may or may not have any real word use. They've opened with a couple of beauties in the form of Swarm and Stack
offer new ways of showing the proliferation of their news stories.

Even Microsoft have their own "labs" program now, under their Live initiative. Let's hear it for the big fella at the front!

Window shopping

Business have an article in todays online edition, reporting on Ralph Lauren's new "Window Shopping" display. Won't go into too much detail (you can read all about it here), but the gist of it was to bring together a very traditional brand with new "early adopter" ways of interaction. "We also saw the interactive window as a way to reinterpret the Ralph Lauren brand," …one that is often associated with traditional, preppy clothing…in a very modern way".

Here's the nugget of information to take away with you. "The appeal of a holiday window is that it is lower priced than direct-mail ad campaigns or a TV ad, and can reach a wider audience of shoppers that wouldn't shop at certain stores during other times of the year," observes retail analyst Dana Telsey of The Telsey Group.

I'm going to suggest to my clients that they invest in £1million robots, and we march them down Oxford Street to scare potential customers into their shops.

Does that include VAT?

Interesting article (arent they all?) about the "ten worst internet acquisitions ever". These articles pop up from time to time, and the tone is akin to a bunch of kids standing in a circle laughing at the new kid who fell over and broke their nose. However, they open up the great debate as to how these decisions were made in the first place. At the end of the day, it has to be about corporate and strategic fit, and not about strategic first mover speculation. To contrast this rogues gallery, have a look at this posting, discussing the reasons behind Tucows purchase of Kiko. A problem, needing a solution, that someone else had already built but lacked a stand alone business model.

What's your favourite band? - our survey says

This is a great article about record companies adoption of marketing intel to better target and sell their wares. There's part of me that could get all indignant about this, but there's a more sensible part of me that hasn't yet come to terms with the fact that this has been going on since Elvis gyrated his way onto the world stage and had people (aka ABC123's) queuing round the block. Launching any music act is an expensive, time intensive and often unrewarding proposition. Talent is a pre-requisite for longevity but over and above that, insightful marketing is essential.

All well and good, but there's a nice quote at the end from Martin Fry (ABC), who comments that for many bands, creativity is a case of "death or glory", and that an artists failure can be as important as their successes.

Anyways, you always thought it was the 50 quid male who was keeping the charts going. You're wrong, its the MP She, 33, and she shops at Asda! Who'd have thunk it.

Spin spin sugar

Interesting article from the esteemed Brand Republic, looking at new trends in PR to capture the burgeoning "Climate Crisis". Not much more to say. Just nipping off to turn the heating on...

Eye in the sky

Nice to see technology developments being talked about in relation to real world applications, and not an excuse to sell more coffee. This article, from the BBC, looks at the impact of mapping technologies, and how operations as diverse as the US tax dept, sewage workers and SWAT teams are adopting them to improve efficiencies, both in time and labour. Never thought I'd read about touch screens helping onsite police squads map out vantage points for siege situations, because a mouse just doesnt cut it in a cramped police car. Must be all those doughnuts...

What's your favourite band?

This is a neat tool which in time could turn into something really special. It uses Google Talk to monitor what you're listening to on your computer and then uploads the data to a listening chart. Havent seen much activity on it since I last looked, but this technology mashed up with MSN Messenger or Apple Talk and you'd have something to shout about. Given how the downloads chart is now taking over the mainstream charts, some kind of "listens" count could supercede the "radio plays" count.

One product, many uses (well...two)

This is something that I came across from an article that struck me. Horlicks, which in England is marketed as a beverage to aid a restful nights relaxation and sleep is marketed as "The Great Family Nourisher" in India. Completely different audience (UK - Old people and me, India - Mothers and Kids) and different branding, identity, values and personality. Same product! The power of branding - brrrrr

We're in love with her and we feel fine...

This is brilliant. In fact, its downright creepy and inspired all at the same time. Think of it as a map of how blogging people feel all over the internet, updated constantly, and eminently customisable. Coke (or was it Pepsi - I always get those two mixed up) tried something similar a couple of years ago, which was meant to show a weather map of emotions across the UK (warm feeling of sympathetic empathy across the southern regions, mild pressure present for the rest of the country), but it was a dog to use and ended up crashing my computer. This, however, is well devised, beautiful to look at, and a never ending source of constant enquiring. Where else could you see the thoughts of women in their 60's who were feeling handy when its cloudy in santiago, chile. A true gem of ingenuity. I'm feeling it,friend, I'm feeling it...

Get on my land!

parkatmyhouse.com is a neat site that I heard about on the radio last night. It allows people to post their personal parking spaces online and offer them for other people's use. Great idea for those who refuse to give up on the car (if you live in London), and a great antidote to the high cost of parking. The sites easy to use and uses Google Maps to show different parking options (public and private) and rates.

Bringing playtime into worktime

Ok, slightly misleading heading, but this is an interesting article nonetheless, especially if you work with b2b clients, or have clients looking to bring learnings from their consumer web activities into their own enterprise operations. Everyone's looking at web 2.0 to change the relationship between end users and web applications, and this article looks at underlying issues and how emerging technologies can meet them.

Snap, crackle, pop - Eaton rifles

Allegedly the daddy of world band radios, please stand for the Eaton One. I must admit, I always preferred the neat little fold up models that used to be advertised in the back of the Sunday Time colour supplement sometime around 1983. The SONY ICF-SW100 in silver would do it for me.

Snap, crackle, pop

I've been a fan of SW radio since I was a little kid, and could spend hours slowly tuning through the SW band to hear weird and wonderful reports from around the world, some of them in english. 2 hour discussions on the viability of long term tractor manufacturing by a comrade out in the farthest reaches of Georgia, in a disturbingly convincing American accent were not uncommon. Anyways, there's a testament to this obsession on the internet (about time guys - where you been) that offers a neat "best of" podcast round up of broadcasts from all over the world. See also this great article which bought it to my attention by those interesting people at Wired (they'll go far they will - just you wait and see).

Priceless monitor of world chatter, although I'd always recommend investing in a proper "world band" radio (see next entry).

Who needs advertising? We do!

Henk Potts is an equity analyst for Barclays Stockbrokers and has written an interesting piece on how media consumption habits are changing and how advertising models are having to evolve. Outside opinions are generally the most useful, and equity analysts opinions are usually blunt and to the point.

My other avatar is a level 23 Tax Man class

Interesting article about the US Congress having a look at economies in Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMO). There's been some brilliant stories recently about the real world value of virtual currencies in the likes of World of Warcraft, Second Life and Eve Online (the latter getting notable attention following a scam pyramid scheme, earning its perpetrator millions in "in game" currency).

Better class of problem pt 2

As some background reading, here's an earlier article from the FT with some insight from YouTube's founder Chad Hurley. It's refreshing to see that even as recently as last week, he's looking at how exactly they can build a profitable revenue stream from the 100m videos served every day, and the 50m+ people who drop in to view them.

Better class of problem

So, regarding previous aside about how YouTube make their money (other than their recent Warner Music deal). This is an interesting article from the FT around the business logistics of making revenue from large swathes of the internet audience. 50 million people coming through your shop doors every month and we're still thinking how we'll make money out of them? "Better class of problem" as my old boss used to say.

blub 2.0

Interesting article about the likelihood of another dot.com boom and bust. This has been on my mind recently, more so since Google bought out YouTube (how do they make their money?). Still, I'm not so sure the conditions are as wreckless as they once were. All of the clients I work with see their web presence as a revenue stream, pure and simple. If it doesnt earn its keep, they fix it so it does. Venture capitalists, or larger companies seeking acquisitions, are looking at online start ups in exactly the same way, demanding straight answers to the most fundamental questions:
- Who are you targeting with your business?
- How do you plan to this traffic to your online channel?
- How are hoping to convert these visits to sales?
- How much will this cost to set up over the next five years, and how much return will i see over the same period?

To be honest, if people arent asking these questions, then I guess they're looking for trouble

One interesting footnote that struck me the other day was reading an article about social networking sites, where they referred to "Rupert Murdch's MySpace". I wonder how much that's worth?

Never forget - it's your customers, stupid!

I'm always intrigued by misaligned marketing / production decisions that are made by people who you'd think would know better. In this instance, its EA Games, the largest game publisher on the planet, who have decided to stick spyware into their new premium release Battlefield 2142. The application monitors users web browsing habits and IP / location details. When the user fires up the game, they get served appropriate advertising "in game".

One of the biggest and most influential PC games magazine in the world has already declared its disappointment, and it will be interesting to see if a patch either removes the application altogether, or at least makes it an optional extra.

It remains to be seen what the consumer response will be (the forums have lit up already), but I wander if EA conducted any user research before they decided to go in this direction?

Todays advertisement is bought to you by the letters....

A mate of mine sent me a link to this, some brilliant ads the Muppets did for a coffee brand sometime back in the 60's (guess that would be pre Sesame Street). Simple and great.

Empires built on human detritus

And (rant almost over) here's a company that specialises in printing toilet paper with your brand. Don DeLillo's "Underworld" had a point after all. Enough now.

Speaking too soon

See, my last point about "what will they think of next..."? Lo and behold, not only are they advertising on toilet paper, but its claimed to be 10 times more effective than advertising in the yellow pages. Bill Hicks was right all along...

One persons play time, another persons marketing opportunity

In game advertising is a growing trend, and sadly inevitable. Indeed, whole agencies are being built purely for the placement of brands' products into peoples gaming experience.

Whilst I find this a little disquieting (what next, selling media space on toilet paper?) I'm guessing that with increasing development costs this has become a necessary evil. Lets just hope we dont end up with "Lawyers for you" running up to defeated StreetFighter contestants and declaring "Had an accident that wasnt your fault? Been injured by a flaming headed GOD of WAR and seeking recompense for your decapitated arms and disfigured internal organs?" etc etc etc