Tag Archive for 'Society'

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Street View of you

Published on Thursday, April 2, 2009 in Photos, Tech, Unusual and Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

So I was reading an article on the BBC about Google StreetView, how people had been ‘caught’ by the Google van. I remembered when I was working at LBi in London, I was not far from Brick Lane, on the phone and saw a Google car with the multiple cameras on top. I was on the phone for about 10 minutes and the car came past twice. So a few days ago I decided to check out where I was standing to see if I could see myself. When using Streetview to turn around the corner from Commercial Street I couldn’t see myself but going down the road the other way there I was, as seen below. My face has been blurred even though I didn’t even ask them to do so…

John Garner on Toynbee Street

Streetview on Toynbee Street

Mad Men lessons in Twitter

Published on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 in Brand, Marketing, Society and Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

For those of you who follow the series ‘Mad Men’, you may have heard about the twitter story around it where characters from the series appeared on Twitter. After having been closed down by the company AMC behind the series as they were not endorsed, they were then reinstated after the following outcry from fans.
The fans behind the twittering ‘Mad Men’ discuss in an article on CNet their experience and the lessons that can be learnt from it. Two interesting quotes from the article:

First, she [Carri Bugbee] said, producers should strive to reserve the Twitter accounts for all the characters in whatever show or film they’re making. “I can’t believe that any of us would have to say that,” Bugbee said, adding that for fans, “if you have a favorite TV show, you could probably go reserve (any character’s) name on Twitter” even now.

“Ross said there are further lessons producers and marketers need to draw from the “Mad Men” Twitter experience. Perhaps most important, she suggested, advertisers need to “stop siloing.” In other words, they need to understand that to get their message out, it is necessary to spread it across a wide variety of platforms”

Update: take a look at an interview of Carri Bugbee’s interview on Ad Age

The place of premium products during the recession

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 in Business and Society. 0 Comments Tags: , .

P&G are getting good results on premium products (see article on Brandweek) but at the same time private labels are winning market share.

Is the Internet as safe as we think…?

Published on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 in Society, Tech and Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Is the Internet itself safe, with more and more internet users each day? Should the ‘deep internet’ be interconnected with all it’s hidden information ?

In a time of recession it is clear that gloomy ideas are more common and a very interesting article on nytimes.com discusses the difficulties of the current Internet system as we know it and love it. There are serious security issues with the way Internet enables attacks to be carried out via the Internet on systems, and even how whole sections of the Internet can be throttled through malicious attacks. Defenses or rather ways that it is being patched are referred to as a Maginot Line approach.

There are currently over a billion internet users since December 2008 according to comScore World Metrix. This survey in Canada (in French) shows how even though Internet is starting to dominate the media world, people are still far more likely to trust TV as a source of information than the Internet.

And even though you think that Google is giving you good results this article on the NY times explains that what is called the ‘Deep Internet’ is holding out on our friends at Google, or is it the other way round… Search engines only cover a small part of the Internet with numerous services and data that is not indexed. But this joins the initial paragraph in that it is probably better that way, since the information is often highly sensitive and should not be available to just anyone…

It’s cold outside

Published on Sunday, March 1, 2009 in Advertising, Business, Marketing and Society. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Articles are flowing about how big companies are cutting away at their budgets, if they are not cutting then they are renegotiating costs with their agencies, here and here…
The article on AdAge explains how companies are also taking a look at consolidating:

PepsiCo last week reported a 43% drop in fourth-quarter profits on write-downs and restructuring and a 9% drop in full-year profits. During Coca-Cola’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Feb. 12, CEO Muhtar Kent said the marketer has slashed its agency roster by more than half. “We have consolidated, ” he said. “Agency numbers have gone down by more than half, and I think we have driven a lot of efficiencies in our marketing, our market-research costs.”

The survey in the above emarketer article indicates cuts are increasing in the various marketing and advertising areas.

The survey also demonstrates it is not always about cuts in spending but also about reallocation of Ad spending. We are seeing during this time of recession that ROI and the ability to provide hard data about ROI is important. There is a distinct move of money from TV to Digital and big companies are putting their money behind the idea that there is a better return on investment in digital media.

Being more efficient with money that is available to spend on advertising is therefore very important. You see so many catch-up campaigns where companies are just trying to better their competitor without looking about being innovating and really thinking about what will allow them to provide interesting and hopefully even innovative services to their customers. There is great article from the creator of the subservient ‘chicken campaign‘, not really innovative or providing an interesting service but as memorable ads go this is right up there with the effective few.

But even though it is cold outside, paying attention to clients needs does pay off and companies that are doing a good job in this arena, like Google, are getting top scores.

“Since new customers are harder to come by in an economic downturn, firms need to pay even more attention to building loyalty with their most important customers,” wrote Bruce Temkin, author of Customer Experience Correlates to Loyalty.

Companies that have a good brand, that people will trust and who also advertise efficiently are highly likely to come out of this recession far better than the others…

Note: there is a new article on emarketer (20 March 09) concerning a Myers Publishing survey providing a new view on how ad spending will evolve.