With a little help from my friends

Facebooks of this world 'are the future for fundraising' - so says Simon Collings, chief executive of the Resource Alliance, speaking at the recent International Fundraising Conference.

Article here.

Here be monsters

Ajaxtastic new web community thing here. Don't know what it does yet, but it has a member called Dragon Girl who lives in Dragon City! What's not to love?

Change the channel

Quick post this, but important all the same. Just had a play around on Joost and think it's the way forward for tv and the internet. Great choice of channels from beta, easy to set up and use. When you turn it on, it actually works, and the quality is great. Can only get better.

Take note BBC. The iPlayer is looking very poor in comparison. I still havent been able to get a program to download on it. Distressing as well, considering I paid for it (as did we all).

This will change how we consume and interact with TV, no doubt, and can only get better with time.

Colour me bad (that's bad meaning good)

Nice bit of Sony Bravia action going on here. Nothing beats some great tv advertising wrapped up in a lovely flash pastry with directors comments on top, and a side order of UGC.

All available here.

Talk, talk

Missed this, but hey. I've been busy trying to get my house sold, move up north, and learn the joys of working on the hoof. 3 have just launched a wireless solution that I've noticed peeking out of the side of many a harried commuters laptop, and I think I may have to invest.

Anyways, the point of this post is the evolution, from print to talk to twit. Useful if a client asks you where online communication is going, and a nice primer to get your own head around the changes in how we can not only talk to each other online, but make sense of all the needless chatter. Article is here, questions on a postcard.

All aboard!

Virgin Trains asked people for ideas on ways to improve their service, and Richard Branson is picking the best (and most voted?) idea to take forward and develop.

Nice idea, nice microsite, not bad all round.

Turn the heater on....

Nice bit of co-branded CSR interactive gubbins over here. I'll write something once I've had a play around.

Yard sale

Lots of talk amongst people over how social networks can be incorporated into the marketing mix. Two decent clips coming up.

The Hub - Comment on the dynamics of online social communities , and the most appropriate way to approach a brief that declares "I want something web 2.0". Kind of a guide to etiquette (and this is the trick) than a set of instructions.

Reveries - This is mentioned in the article above and refers to an idea for referral marketing using your Facebook profile. It's something Google have been doing for a while now, offering bloggers and the like the opportunity to profit from traffic to their site (see Squidoo as well), but this gives Facebook participants a revenue, and brands some insight.

Who knows. I met a guy once who told me that if he stood on the corner of Camden High Street and asked every woman who walked past if they would go out for a drink with him, the odds were that eventually one of them would. He's now a very rich man. The lesson? Saying something to someone (friend or stranger) is one thing. Being tenacious with it is another thing altogether.

Dont tell me, bell me

Have heard of this sort of thing being tried before, albeit with barcode readers being distributed to the masses so they could scan a code in their favourite magazine and have their web browser go straight to the appropriate site on the internet. This is much cleaner and simpler, and has apparantly worked well in Japan. Point your mobile phone at a poster and get access to more content. Lovely.

Now, where's my jetpack?

(Web) 2.0 + 2.0 = 4.0

Smart video piece from Seth Godin looking at marketing appropriacy, and how existing ATL "broadcast" models of advertising (basically, it's a numbers game) have been challenged by the need for clever and insightful ways of not only communicating with potential customers, but getting them to want to tell their friends about you. Makes some simple points about the value of marketing being aware of the context in which its used. Throwing paint over a building to show how much you get the importance of colour when buying a TV is one thing on a commercial, and probably get you a fair few "oohs" and "aahs" into the bargain. Trying to do it all over someones online social space will probably get you a thick ear (if you're lucky).

Who dat?

From the man who bought you Squidoo, comes the online answer to Who's Who.

Squid Who is an online compendium of anyone, who's anyone, for whatever reason, and created by whoever can be bothered. Dr Who? Well, he's not on there. However, the site automatically builds you a page all about him and gives you the chance to take ownership of it and manage it forever and ever.

Simple idea, fun, and very useful (if you do a lot of pub quizzes or are trying to secure a wealthy benefactor).

All roads lead to....somewhere

The new smart fortwo is in the midst of being launched, and Claydon Heeley (who I work for) have created a wonderful site to help get it into the hearts and minds of the masses. The timing of this couldn't be better, given right now half of you are no doubt stuck on the M4 returning from your numerous countryside domiciles in the drama that is the bank holiday weekend derby.

www.smartenlightenment.com features life coach and driving guru Dr. Tridion, who guides you through the moral maze that is UK driving and shows you the true road to enlightenment is as much in the head as it is behind the wheel. It's a brilliant piece of work, with a great performance from comedy maestro Matt Berry (Garth Marenghi, The Mighty Boosh, Saxondale, The IT Crowd).

Broadening your marketing horizons

Good article showing how companies are using online tools (social networks, blogs, social search and online video) as a marketing channel and invaluable customer service channel. It's refreshing to see that companies have utilised these new conversations as a way to take their presence out of the boardroom and into the hearts and minds of the people that matter most, their customers.

Customers will stay with a reprobate business as long as that business goes over and above to rectify any grievances, or behaves in a way that demonstrates they really understand their role in their customers lives. Web 2.0 gives brands the tools to enable that to happen.

Bourne to be wild

This is great! Take the afternoon off work and spend it setting up spectacular stunts using VW's finest in tribute to the new Bourne film. Look out!

There's an ongoing debate about the true value of user generated as part of the marketing mix (see Fosters Laidback Legends and Land Rover's Go Beyond campaign for recent examples of UGC in search of real value - and send me some positive stats if you have them!). The thing is, UGC has been alive and kicking for well over a decade in the gaming world, from early MUD's through to the latest multi-million pound blockbuster games (see Half Life and its various iterations for a case in point). The point is, if people like it and they find it easy to use, then they'll interact with it and contribute to it.

This campaign site give you a simple 3D environment in which you can create your own stunts and save them to a gallery section. The more you interact with it, the better it gets as you come to grips with the physics driven environment and the tools on offer.

It's a neat idea, well executed, and has resulted in a lot of online news coverage as well as much chatter amongst the bloggers and bookmarkers.

People help the people - talking to social networks

Recently came across a new addendum to those old favourites SEO and SEM. SMO (or SNO) is a means by which you can begin to utilise social networks, blogs, UGC as a marketing channel, without pissing off those you're trying to connect with.

Imagine if you were sat at home one night and someone knocked on the door and asked you if you wanted to buy a dog? You'd probably keep a cold bucket of water to hand (or maybe a baseball bat). Then, imagine if you had a load of friends round your house and one of them mentioned, over truffles, that they knew of a dog in need of a good owner, and how they knew you loved animals and would be the perfect match. You'd thank them, invite fido round for a meet and greet, and take holidays in the UK for the next 10 years. Well, it's the same principle with marketing to large communities online, with advocacy, insight and discussion the building blocks of a good social network marketing strategy.

Anyway, there's been some good discussion on the topic across a number of blogs:

- O'Reilly offers a good overview here
- A good article from Entrepreneur.com relating SMO to being part of an overarching PR channel mix
- Some older (six months is a long time in this business) comscore stats on the demographics across social networks, particularly with reference to age. Don't be fooled into thinking social networks are a young persons playground.

Access for everybody (some more than others)

Always useful to see how the chavs are measuring up to the toffs when it comes to the internet. The OxIS has been going for a few years now and provides a useful breakdown of internet access across socio / demographic and attitudinal lines. You can get it here.

On a related matter, stumbled across this site, which is perfect for when you're arguing with a client about how big their website should be and what browsers it should work across. This is the sort of information we all know instinctively (hmm, I feel a 1024 x 768 coming on), but it's nice to know someone has taken the trouble to document this stuff proper and make it available to all of us.

Putting on your game face

Link to a good article on facebook apps. I'll update this later.

New landscape, new ways of measurement

Nielsen Net Ratings have announced their adoption of dwell time as their new lead metric, replacing the long standing page view measurement. For sometime now, pageviews have been a bit bogus, and it's conversion (eg click through and eventual sale) that has been of most interest to brands and agencies alike. After all, what use is 5million page impressions if only 500 click through and bother to take a look at what you're selling / showing.

Dwell time takes into account the abundance of richer user interfaces. With the likes of AJAX allowing for more seamless, non-linear actions online, page refresh becomes a bit meaningless if the use is able to do everything within one space far more effeciently.

Rich media agencies have used this metric for some time now, with total time of interaction being a fair reflection of total brand engagement within a piece of online advertising. This takes these principles into the service areas, online stores, news portals, and gives companies a lear steer on where their customer services could be improved and optimised. Or summat.

How much is that doggy in the window?

Good article from the NY Times about the increasing importance of customer service within online retail. It throws up the ongoing debate between clients and their respective agency as to how much they should be investing in their online channel, and how greater investment can reap greater contribution to the bottom line.

Some brands have "got" this for some time now, noticeably John Lewis, whose website is now their largest store, with the necessary level of ongoing investment to reflect this.

All your face are belong to us...

If MySpace is Tesco, and Facebook is Sainsbury, does that make Bebo Morrisons?
Solid article about latest Nielsen Net Ratings figures for social networks here.

One thing that's struck me about the social networks is the brand loyalty and "switching" taking place as people find not only a social site that they like using, but that hooks them up with their friends and people they'd like to be associated with. There was some talk recently about the social divide of social sites, with MySpace being the more popular in terms of number but seemingly more down market and for the hoi poloi.

Have no comment to make as yet. Work to be done.