The Renegade Lush

Hegarty inspires Cannes with 'difference'

2011-06-24T17:05:00.002+01:00

The legendary John Hegarty enthralled Festival goers this afternoon with his simple, but inspired presentation on ‘growth needs space’. The BBH creative leader said that brands that want exponential growth need space, and to get over their inertia and obsession with doing the same as everyone else so as to “embrace difference”.

He proved the point with examples past and present – Levis Flat Eric, the hilariously naughty Axe Clean your Balls and the more recent Yeo Valley Rapping Farmers film for the dairy brand’s organic range (I love the dancing owl). The screening of BBH’s current Gold Lion-winning Google Chrome film It gets better practically received a standing ovation from the packed Debussy auditorium.

BBH’s philosophy that ‘when the world zigs, zag’ should inspire any budding creative in any communications discipline to break with convention and do something different.

Cannes apps -- sex, booze and advertising news

2011-06-23T17:57:00.020+01:00

For years there are none, then suddenly they are like London buses… Cannes apps. Some produced on a stroke of genius, others because some crafty capitalist publishers feel they can make a Euro or two off you.

Gutter Barometer
“You didn’t miss it but it’s back anyway” The Gutter Barometer first reared its drunken head last year. Updated from 2010 with added Carlton Terrace as well as the Cannt bar in London, the original was inspired by the legendary 72 Croisette watering hole.

The app tracks your GPS location and you creep up the Gutter Barometer by spending the most time at either the Gutterbar, on the Carlton Terrace or in London at the Cannt Bar. Just download the app and sign in with Twitter. Done. This pointless marvel is the brainchild of Creative Social and Dare.

Gutter Barometer

Take Me I'm Yours
Getting right down to the heart of the matter – helping friends get laid – is a spanking new tool developed for the Cannes' lonely: Take Me I'm Yours.

TMIY - the app that says what you really mean. It’s in its infancy so the more people to use this, the more people will get laid.

Take Me I'm Yours

Instacannes
You work it out – I know it’s cool but I dunno what to do with it. It's an evolving snapshot of the Festival with continually updated Instagram images of the goings on at this week's extravaganza. Enjoy the fun from afar. Another Creative Social production with thanks to the efforts of developer Syd Lawrence.

Instacannes

Campaign app
You’d have thought the UK industry ad bible would have done this years ago, but better late than never, the free mobile app supports its presence at the Festival and promises to be the hub for all future Campaign content. For the festival the app serves as an interactive, real-time pocket guide to all the usual (and unusual) goings on. Built by Propeller Mobile.

Campaign Cannes

Official Cannes
This is the official app for the 58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Keep all the information you need about the Festival in your pocket: the latest news, photos and videos live from the event, a full city guide and an interactive Festival programme - what is happening when and where; Speakers: read about who is speaking at the 57 seminars, 20 workshops and 10 master classes; handy Cannes city guide: find out where are people staying, where can you take your clients out to eat and what the coolest bars are. Check locations from our maps and call to make reservations straight from your phone; and of course news: daily updated stories about what’s going on at Cannes Lions, including scoops on shortlists and winners. Powered by PHD and Pontomobi.

Official Cannes app

Feed the Lions
Not an app but worth a mention is “Feed the Lions” – an online platform where feeds and social media content regarding the Cannes Lions 2011 festival are collected and shared in a single overview. Made by Tribal DDB Amsterdam.

Feed the Lions

Google’s Eric Schmidt is the Twitter Man of the Hour

2011-06-23T16:54:00.000+01:00

Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, honoured as the 2011 Media Person of the Year, was the most central figure on Day 4. His Try to Say Yes philosophy and Google’s new invention, the self driving car, were among Twitter users’ favourite topics.

Author and innovator Edward de Bono, another prolific panel participant, also received a lot of Twitter visibility with statements such as “Our biggest problem is NOT climate change. It is poor thinking.”

Twitter users also gravitated to topics such as Facebook’s strategy to make advertising social, as well as Leo Burnett’s notion of populism being “the new effectiveness.” The Scramble for the Online Advertising Industry Begins

On day 4, the Cannes Lions coverage in the blogosphere, online and print media encompassed high-profile announcements rather than news about competition winners.
Among the eye grabbing announcements was Facebook’s new ad unit, created by Leo Burnett, that would alter the way brands and people interact.

In an attempt to rival Facebook, Google announced they will buy more companies to boost their presence in the growing online display ad sector. Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Google, gained prominence by discussing not only Google’s strategy but also several industry predictions such as the near future of commercial mobile wallet systems.

Coverage of competition winners while minor still captured attention – particularly Cheil Worldwide’s entry 'Homeplus Subway Virtual Store' for Tesco and Digital Kitchen’s campaign for the new Cosmopolitan Hotel launch in Las Vegas.

Facebook Offers Advertisers Word of Mouth On Steroids

2011-06-23T16:43:00.001+01:00

Facebook Global Marketing Solutions VP Carolyn Everson took the stage in the Debussy Theater at Cannes for the last session Wednesday where she shared with delegates some of Facebook's advertising initiatives for marketers. Topping the list was Sponsored Stories, a new product which leverages the power of word of mouth by placing a Liked page in the right hand column of friend's pages.

In terms of the power of word of mouth, Everson noted research that showed 75% of new parents would rather get recommendations from friends on Facebook than anywhere else and 74% who make purchase are influenced by friends. And 68% are more likely to recommend a product if the ad is on a friend's page. Hence leveraging these recommendations are what power Facebook Sponsored Stories.

It's all part of Everson's effort to get marketers to think of Facebook as not just a place to place display ads but a full blown word of mouth platform that can spark conversation.

Many case studies were shared but the gist of the presentation centered on making delegates aware of Facebook's strength as a marketing platform akin to word of mouth on steroids.

Everson also touted Facebook Studio, a community where marketers can learn, view other's work, share their own work, avail themselves of the many resources Facebook has to provide marketers to make advertising on the site easier and to get new ideas.

She closed by announcing the formation of the Client Council, a group tasked with helping marketers and agencies work better together towards creating programs that avail themselves of the many social advertising opportunities Facebook has to offer. McCann Worldgroup Chairman and CEO Nick Brien and Coke Integrated Marketing and Communications & Capabilites SVP Wendy Clark are the group's first two members.

With thanks to Adrants

Eric Schmidt Talks Revolution + Consumer-Driven Innovation

2011-06-23T16:34:00.000+01:00

Yesterday afternoon at the Lions, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt sat with VP-Google Creative Lab Andy Berndt to discuss innovation, imagination and the internet.

Schmidt kicked off the discussion by pointing out the internet is a special kind of business because it is highly Moore's Law-driven: "If you take a country that's got 40% internet penetration, and you see it in the next five years, broadband penetration will be up to 80%." Your business just doubled and you didn't have to do anything -- this doesn't happen in any other industry.

The idea that your business can be expanded as a function of users broadening your market, as opposed to you taking steps to expand in the traditional sense, is something we are still grappling with.

"The implications for this consumer-driven phenomena are not well-understood," Schmidt said, pointing out that the Middle East's current ongoing social media-driven struggles for democracy are a good example of the unexpected fruit such phenomena yields. This is just the beginning of users' muscle-flexing.

With thanks to Adrants

TV heavyweights baffled by Twitter and Facebook

2011-06-23T16:22:00.001+01:00

Piers Morgan hears that Aaron Sorkin hates Facebook, David Simon loathes Twitter and Eric Schmidt loves Super Bowl ads

Piers Morgan at Cannes Lions said a tweet about his CNN show with Charlie Sheen gained a ratings boost.

Aaron Sorkin, the writer of The West Wing and The Social Network, is not a fan of Facebook. David Simon, the writer of The Wire, doesn't like Twitter. And Google, the online search advertising giant, loves Super Bowl TV ads.

The pair were meant to be discussing the topic of the "golden age of television" but it was their responses to a much broader chat about media – elicited by interviewer Piers Morgan – that proved far more interesting.

(Sorkin's favourite TV show: The Office, Simon's: Game of Thrones).

It was Morgan who alerted the audience to the bizarre fact that the pair, two of the most pre-eminent screen writers in the US, had never met before walking on stage at the Cannes Lions.

"They've been chatting away [backstage] about mutual projects they could work on," said Morgan. "Imagine. Wouldn't that be great."

Sorkin said that he only created a Facebook profile "to find out what it was all about" as he was writing the screenplay for the Academy award-winning film The Social Network.

Describing himself as "just this side of luddite", added he had "barely heard of Facebook, I'd heard of it in the way I've heard of a carburettor".

He said he came off Facebook (which he compared to the computer Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey in the difficulty he had in actually "killing" his profile) "because of a couple of stalker-like people".

While Sorkin admitted to being "impressed" with Twitter, Simon chimed in to voice his concern about what new technology has done to the "high end of journalism".

"I worry about where we are headed," he said. "You can find out everything faster reading a headline, I worry."

His concern is that the race to cover news meant consumers were not getting the full picture.

"You cannot in a Twitter feed or in 24-hour news coverage explain the complexity [of some issues]," he said. "Drugs ... that's an essay, a four-part series ... I'm worried about high-end journalism."

Jeff Bewkes, the chairman of CNN-to-Marie Claire owner Time Warner, echoed the rising issue of the information scramble the internet has created.

"It is a real problem at CNN ... even in magazines," he said. "You've got to run things quickly in order not to be stale news."

However, Morgan – an avid Twitter user who has 885,000 followers since signing up ahead of the launch of his CNN chatshow in January – stuck up for social media, providing an example of the growing power of technology by highlighting the impact of a tweet on the viewing figures of his interview with Charlie Sheen.

He said that CNN had analysed the viewing figures immediately after he sent the tweet and reckon that 500,000 extra people tuned in because they had seen it.

"One tweet which cost me nothing," he said. "It was a fascinating example of the power of a social network to influence television."

Simon also argued the rise of high-end shows such as The West Wing and The Wire was "raising the bar" in the creativity of ad campaigns.

On the topic of new ground in TV advertising, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, speaking at the following session, told how he thought "hell had frozen over" when he was told of a plan for the search giant to run a TV ad in the Super Bowl.

"In the decade I've been at the company I'd never seen the value of that [TV ads]," he said, causing the Cannes audience of ad industry types to squirm in their seats. "I thought someone had a screw loose."

He was, however, happy to be proven wrong – "the board loved it" and Google ran the 60-second spot for Chrome in a prime slot during the Super Bowl, probably costing more than $5m (£3m).

"Was it a good business investment? We looked at incremental search traffic ... and it paid for itself," Schmidt said. "At the end of the day we took a Super Bowl ad and turned it into an ROI phenomenon."

Schmidt went on to talk of what he called the "Fab 5" – Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and possibly either Twitter or Netflix – as digital and technology "platform" businesses that other companies can use to build their businesses on. Farmville-maker Zynga for example has become massive by ponying up with Facebook, he said.

"The source of real wealth for shareholders is not just one of these consumer companies but a platform to build on," he added. "In our industry there has never been four companies [Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon] of that scale growing at those rates."

While media and the business community has marvelled at the explosive growth of these companies he warned more is to come: "New ones will emerge [growing] even faster than the ones I named," Schmidt said. "Don't be surprised."

With thanks to the Guardian's Organ Grinder

Mixing it up with SoDA and Creative Social

2011-06-23T11:21:00.007+01:00

Wednesday at Cannes got off to a bright start with news that one of our clients, Perfect Fools, had as of Wednesday evening bagged no fewer than five Lions at this year’s Cannes Festival, including two silvers (in Promo and Design) and a bronze (Cyber) for the Converse Canvas Experiment, as well as silver and bronze for Skittles Updater, produced by PF for TBWA London.

That morning I met up with IQ CEO Tony Quinn for a briefing on SoDA, the Society of Digital Agencies, which was hosting its Cannes 'unConference' that afternoon. unConference is a conversational-style of conference where Tony would encourage the audience to lead the debate about a range of digital agency-related issues and concerns.

Prior to unConference was the Creative Social lunch at l'ecrin. The Socials include digital creatives from all over the globe who essentially meet informally several times a year in different cities to simply meet and mull over the business as it is today and share inspiration.

Down at the unConference and mixer where Tony moderated some inspired debate on the subjects facing top digitals - topics ranging from driving the standards of creative excellence to promoting innovation amidst an increasing sea of patent trolls.

SoDA encourages us to download its newly released White Paper entitled "Patent Infringement Risk - A Rising Challenge for Digital Agencies" which expands on one of the conversation topics at unConference.

The day rounded off with a stop by Havas’ Social Cafe and play with it’s Minority-Report-esque social influence tool that tracks who, what and where the Cannes conversations are – freaky. Time for a beer before the Massive Music party....

Dolphin delivers as Lions burn

2011-06-23T11:18:00.001+01:00

Having stumbled from a Greek wedding the day of my arrival at Cannes Lions 2011, following an epic 13.5 hour journey involving buses, Dolphins, taxis, aeroplanes and more taxis taking in towns and cities including Skiathos, Athens, Zurich and Nice, it was with relief I arrived in one piece at Cannes for the annual Festival Pu Pub.

Taking in the atmosphere surrounding the Palais on my way to the Old Town to meet clients for an evening drink, there was a major commotion with hoardes of people rushing to the harbour side to witness a yacht fire.

Nothing stokes the senses like the smell of burning luxury, but the drama was enhanced as the burning boats was surrounded by yachts full of worried sailors trying to manourvre their million Euro vessels away from the sinking ship. Thankfully the fast action of pompiers soon put the flames out to cheers from the crowd.

The red-faced yacht owners were further embarrassed as within minutes the news was all over Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – remember folks, boats, booze and BBQs don’t mix.

Surprise, Facebook Is In Trouble Again

2011-06-10T08:11:00.001+01:00

With thanks to Erik Sass at Media Post

Like Groundhog Day and taxes, it's becoming an annual (if not semi-annual) ritual: Facebook quietly introduces a new product or service with sweeping implications for customer privacy; people finally notice; controversy ensues; everyone forgets it ever happened.

The most recent controversy is taking place in Europe, and it concerns Facebook's use of facial recognition technology to help categorize and organize member photos. The new feature, which went live in the U.S. in December, was quietly activated for overseas users earlier this month, and it has generated a predictable backlash.

In an interview with The Register, British security expert Graham Cluely clued Facebook in: "Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission."

Cluely also drew Facebook's attention, for what must be the millionth time, to the fact that its security settings are kind of obscure: "Most Facebook users still don't know how to set their privacy options safely, finding the whole system confusing. It's even harder though to keep control when Facebook changes the settings without your knowledge." He concluded: "The onus should not be on Facebook users having to 'opt-out' of the facial recognition feature, but instead on users having to ‘opt-in'."

Amen! Of course, the unfortunate fact is that Facebook counts on its users' ignorance and apathy (and probably leaves its security settings a bit byzantine) in order to get traction for its new services. But even if the company isn't really concerned about user privacy, there are better ways to go about introducing new capabilities like the facial recognition and tagging feature.

Facebook could dispel some of the criticism with a more transparent approach -- and without necessarily having to make the new service opt-in. For example, how about simply sending a clearly labeled message to all users advising them of the new feature and including a link to opt out?

Aimed at copywriters, but good advice for all disciplines...

2011-04-05T16:38:00.002+01:00

40 Questions You Need to Ask Every Copywriting Client

You’ve connected with a prospective client and you’re at your first meeting!
It’s an exciting time in the life of any freelance marketer or copywriter.
Unfortunately, this is also the moment when the seeds of disaster are often sown.
Instead of having a detailed discussion about the project at this initial meet, hungry copywriters often slump into desperation mode. At the first mention of a payment of any size at all, you’re sticking out your sweaty hand ready to shake on any deal you can get.

Remorse sets in later, when you figure out the project requires ten times the workload you imagined.

If you accepted a flat project fee — always preferable to naming an hourly rate — you realize you’re earning less on an hourly basis than you’d get working the counter at McDonald’s.

Avoid this unpleasant scenario by learning all you can before you agree to take a project. There is a lot to know to really nail down what a copywriting assignment will entail.

Here is a list of 40 questions to ask a prospective copywriting client:

1. Can you please define your project? You might imagine a company that’s called in a copywriter has an idea what they want. Much of the time, you would be wrong. They’re hoping you can help them figure out whether their best new piece of content would be a white paper, a revised landing page, or eight blog posts a month. If they can’t figure it out even with your help, try to find a small initial project they’re willing to greenlight to get things moving.

2. When will you be ready to get started? If the answer is “next fall,” you know this is just a meet-and-greet. This client isn’t ready to assign anything, so politely wrap it up as fast as you can and ask if you can stay in touch.

3. When do you need this project completed? Between question two and this one, you learn the timeframe — how long you’ll have to do the work from start to finish. This is one of the most important metrics I use in setting my bid. If the timeframe is short, remember rush work should always pay a premium rate.

4. Is there a hard deadline by which materials must be delivered? For instance, if what you’re writing is to be handed out at an upcoming trade show, there won’t be any wiggle room.

5. Have you worked with freelance copywriters before? Pray the answer is yes. Training a client who’s new to the whole process will be time-consuming.

6. What is your budget for this project? Try to get the client to name a figure, or at least a range. Getting them to speak first on price will help you avoid radically over- or underbidding. If they won’t bite, mention a broad range and say, “I’ll be able to deliver a more precise project quote once I know more about your needs.”

7. Who will be my editor? This is the person you’ll spend the most time interacting with, so try to meet them and get a sense of whether you’re compatible.
8. How many people at your company will be involved in this project? Many executives or departments on board can mean an ugly scenario in which your work is reviewed by multiple managers or department teams. This is usually the enemy of good copy, and can make consensus on a final version hard to achieve.

9. If multiple executives or teams are involved, who has final approval? Push to define where the buck stops. Otherwise, it may stop with no one, or you may find yourself enmeshed in a power struggle may between several executives who each think the project is theirs.

10. Will I be interviewing people outside the company? If so, find out whether the company will provide contacts or you’ll be expected to dig them up yourself.
11. Who will come up with the topic(s)? A corporate blogging project where you need to generate a dozen ideas a month takes far longer, and should cost more, than one where you’ll be handed a monthly topic list.

12. May I see your existing marketing materials? One of the best ways to cut the time you spend on a copywriting project is to read existing materials to learn what their marketing team likes.

13. Oh — you hate your current marketing materials? If current materials are loathed, it’s even more important to get a look at it. Ask managers what’s not working for them, so you can avoid putting more of the same in your copy. Also, identifying crappy existing copy opens the door to negotiating additional project work.

14. Will what I’m going to write be used with your existing materials? If your brochure is going to have one of their existing fliers tucked inside, you’ll want to know that from the start.

15. Who, specifically, is the target audience for what I will write? If the company doesn’t know, beware.

16. How much can you tell me about this audience? Extract every detail you can, down to what brand of coffee their customers drink. The more developed your picture of customers, the easier it will be to ‘talk’ to them in your copy.

17. What are the most important problems facing this audience? If the company is fuzzy on this point, talk to sales staff about what they hear from customers, or arrange to spend a day going out on sales calls.

18. Have you done any market research on your customers? If there’s a study sitting around, get it in your hands.

19. How, specifically, does your product or service help solve their problems? The answer to this question may deliver an instant outline of the points you need to cover.

20. Can you provide me with five descriptive words that define the values you’d like me to convey about your company? This little exercise is invaluable to get prospects to crystallize their corporate values so you can clearly communicate them in the copy.

21. Who are your major competitors, and how is your company different? This is your chance to learn that essential element your copy will need to highlight — the client’s unique selling proposition.

22. How will this material be distributed? Online content has a distinctly different format than print, so find out if links need coding.

23. Are you looking for a graphic designer on this project? If so, stand out by offering to tap your rolodex, and possibly also score a project-management fee.
24. Do you have any multimedia needs for this project? In today’s interactive age, you may need to integrate QR codes, video, slideshows or other interactivity into what you write. Understand all the moving parts up front. If you have experience with these tools, you should think about raising your fees.

25. May I show you some of my writing samples? Bring a portfolio or tap your website as a way to stand out in the client’s mind compared with other writers.

26. What is your preferred method of communication? If the answer is IM or Skype, be wary. Customers with a fondness for IM may want to message you instantly — around the clock.

27. What is your expectation of my availability? This is another way of teasing out whether 24/7 communication is expected. If you cherish your weekends off, make that clear and set your boundaries now.

28. Are you looking to lock down my time exclusively? Some clients want you to drop everything and work only for them until their project is completed. You may or may not be able to clear those decks. This question can also bring up whether the client might put you on an ongoing retainer if they like this first project.

29. If my piece will be published online, may I get a credit that’s a live link to my writer site? This is especially relevant if you’re blogging or writing articles for a company. Those bylines can be a great source of new referrals, so it’s worth asking.
30. Does this project require a nondisclosure agreement? Get clarity about what’s top secret, so you don’t screw up and blab something confidential.

31. Will I be allowed to use this piece as a sample in my portfolio? If you’re ghostwriting for team members and the company wants that fact kept confidential, it costs you a sample — so the assignment should pay a premium.
32. Are there any restrictions on who else I can work for in your industry? Especially beware of any noncompete clauses that extend beyond the term of your project.

33. What is your payment method? PayPal is increasingly common — but that service charges a fee that can be nearly 3 percent. If a company can pay through PayPal, in my view, they can pay via direct bank transfer at no cost to me.

34. How soon can you get me a 50% up-front payment to get started? Maybe you could accept 30 percent if you really love the project, but don’t start work without an up-front payment.

35. Let’s review the payment terms for the rest of my fee. Don’t leave this one vague, or the client may pay you six months after you finish work … or never. Right here is where a lot of cash-flow headaches are born. Ask for net 30 days from when work is turned in, or better yet, net 15.

36. My fee usually includes two rounds of rewrites. Does that work for you? I know many copywriters who stick to this rule, and any additional desired edits are extra. I personally take an “I work until you’re thrilled” approach. But it’s worth considering how to structure your contract, especially if you’re smelling a “gang edit” scenario.

37. Let’s determine the time limit for this project. Sometimes, a first draft gets turned in and then you never hear from the client again. In this scenario, your final payment will never trigger unless you’ve built a cutoff date into your contract, at which point all work is considered finished and your check is due.

38. When do you need my bid? If the project is complex or some questions remain unanswered at the end of the first meet, put off bidding until later. Go home and think it through, wait for the rest of the facts to trickle in, and then give your quote.

39. Are you meeting with multiple writers? This company might be thrilled to find you and ready to hire — or they might be emailing a list of the first 50 writers they saw on a Google search. If it’s a cattle call, you may want to put less energy into trying to land the business.

40. If you’re considering turning me down based on price, could you let me know so I can consider rebidding? If you’re worried about whether you’ve bid too high and you really want this client, this question could keep you in the running.

What are the questions you consider crucial for your clients? Do you have a varying version of one of mine? Leave them in the comments below and let’s talk!

Reproduced without permission and a blatant copyright infringement, probably.

Please don't sue me, Carol Tice, the author... Carol shares tips to help writers earn more at her Make a Living Writing blog, and was recently named one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers.

Grab her free report, 40 Ways to Market Your Writing.

One day we may hire her... and we'll make sure we have all the answers

marketing that isn't marketing

2011-03-10T17:10:00.001Z

Reproduced from Fast Company... a cool article about utilising Twitter

“It’s marketing that isn’t marketing,” said John Bernier [1], the social media maven at Best Buy [2] whose dev team brought the stunningly effective Twelpforce [3] to market in July of 2009. Since then Twelpforce has responded to near 28,000 customer inquiries via Twitter, enlisted 2600 employees to share their knowledge, and paid for itself many times over via extensive PR coverage, enhanced brand perceptions, and potential savings to the call center.

Setting a new standard for Marketing as Service [4], Twelpforce is worth studying, both for its lightning quick development process and for the surprise benefits of this highly innovative program. While this article is based on two extensive interviews with Mr. Bernier, one at the New York 140 Characters [5] Conference and the other by phone last week, he is quick to note that this was “clearly a team effort” that went well beyond the marketing department. In fact, it is the cross-disciplined nature of this effort that makes the following 7 insights all the more instructive.

1. Recognize the Need

Most marketers know to look for an unmet needs but few find them, especially in the chaos that was Twitter in 2008. “We saw widespread use of Twitter among employees,” noted Bernier, “and our customers were talking about us on Twitter.” Putting two and two together, the Best Buy development project team created spy.appspot.com [6]to monitor the conversation online and to formulate an engagement plan. This was a critical first step on the road to meeting “a need in a time and place when customers were asking for it,” as Mr. Bernier so aptly put it.

2. Follow the Leader

At about this time, Barry Judge [7], CMO of BestBuy was emerging as a major voice on Twitter. “Our leadership started to get very visible with customers, and that set the tone for the rest of the department,” noted Bernier. “Barry was the catalyst, giving us the green light to go experiment, so we had the luxury of leadership buy-in,” Bernier gratefully added. All that said, Barry Judge alone couldn’t answer all the customer questions himself, and it quickly became clear that they needed to find a way to tap into the tech expertise across the organization.

3. Build it Fast

Around April 2009, Bernier’s team was told that Twelpforce was a go and would even be featured in a TV spot in July. They essentially had two months to build a system that could monitor customer inquiries on Twitter and allow multiple employees to respond from one account. The risks were huge and “not a day went by that I didn’t think this might not work,” sighed Bernier. Nonetheless, using open source software and “the cloud,” they were ready for a “soft launch” in June by which time 600 eager employees had already volunteered to test the system.

4. Unleash your Employees

Unlike traditional customer support services, employee access to Twelpforce was not restricted to a select group of highly trained agents. In fact, the genius of Twelpforce is that it tapped into an existing talent pool that welcomed the chance to share their knowledge in their spare time! “A geek squad guy might have a break between sessions or it could be a ‘Blue Shirt’ in-store at a slow moment, either way,” noted Bernier, “this talent was ready, willing and able to help out. Because the system was designed to tie each response to an individual employee, each Twelpforce rep could feel a personal sense of pride in their participation.”

5. Expect the Unexpected

After the initial 600 Twelpforce testers, an additional 2000 signed on, and while not all are active, those that are have found some extraordinary side benefits. First, it helped create a new internal network, “broadening their relationship with other employees who shared a common interest,” beamed Bernier. Second, it served as on-going training program as Twelpforce reps researched questions and read the range of answers. Because it became clear that some questions couldn’t be answered in 140 characters, the development project team also went to work on a tool that enabled longer, more sophisticated answers.

6. Support the Big Picture

Though it could have been a big risk to feature Twelpforce before its merits were established, BestBuy took the chance with good reason. Seeking the well wishes of early adopters and tech influencers, you can’t simply talk the talk. You have to walk the walk, demonstrating your passion for technology and leading edge know-how by applying innovations like Twitter, innovations favored by the technorati. Being able to translate this passion into better, faster service as BestBuy did with Twelpforce is an even bigger coup since this is clearly a weak spot for discount-driven competitors like Wal-Mart, who are far less in tune with the latest innovations.

7. Reap the Rewards

While on the surface, Twelpforce could be perceived as a short-term marketing ploy, it is in truth more like a vein of gold that has just barely been tapped. Twelpforce offers “real time pulse measurement” noted Bernier, “so we could use the feed to adjust banner ad copy”, to reflect trending topics like iPad accessories, new game releases or localized out-of-stocks. In order to help Best Buy “Examine the past to predict the future,” Bernier and the dev team are currently creating an even more robust monitoring system, once again in a highly transparent manner and which you can see in its infancy at bbyfeed.com [8]. As Bernier puts it, “The evolution of Twelpforce involves the story of data.”

Final note: Customer satisfaction among users of Twelpforce is actually higher than c-sat ratings of Best Buy among the general population. These higher ratings translate into increased purchase intent as well as the likelihood to spend more per purchase. Not bad for a program that was built in two months under the premise that “If we were going to fail, we wanted to fail fast.”

Links:
[1] http://twitter.com/bernierjohn
[2] http://www.bestbuy.com
[3] http://www.twitter.com/twelpforce
[4] http://thedrewblog.com
[5] http://140conf.com/
[6] http://spy.appspot.com
[7] http://twitter.com/bestbuycmo
[8] http://bbyfeed.com

New York Times outs major US retailer for link spam

2011-02-14T16:57:00.004Z

A very interesting story broke this weekend involving JC Penney (a big US retailer with 1000+ stores and $17.8 billion in revenue) and the New York Times. The retailer was basically outed for apparently using TNX to set up thousands of links on very low quality “spam” sites.

It seems that the campaign worked so well the site was ranking for pretty much everything, until the NY Times outed it and the site was moved down to 60th or worse for all the queries after Matt Cutts got involved. Search Engine Land and TechCrunch also covered the story very well.

J C Penney immediately sacked their SEO agency SearchDex who had been managing the campaign since 2004. It does seems strange to me that an agency who had worked with a client for so long would suddenly start building a load of spam links, unless serious pressure to improve results had been applied from the client. The links had been in place for around the “last three to four months” according to Google.

The fact that Google didn’t catch this sort of spam is a big PR nightmare for them. They should be buying links from all the major link sellers every day and removing the ability for the link sellers to pass PageRank every time they find a new one. Missing something like TNX is a major error.

Another worrying point is a major newspaper deciding to start outing link spam and forcing Google to take action.

Nobody wants to use spam links but if everybody else is doing it and not getting caught then people start to think it’s OK. Google has been telling retailers not to use link spam for years but the longer people can see blatant spam working the harder it will be for people to resist trying it out.

Alain De Botton hosts #bibhappy @flamingolondon

2011-02-02T11:43:00.003Z

Alain de Botton

Flamingo London is holding its next Big Ideas Breakfast at Kettners on 10th February.
The guest speaker is Alain De Botton, writer and founder of The School of Life and Living Architecture.

He will take the audience on a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture and change the way we think about our homes, streets and ourselves.

His theory is that the places and experiences a brand creates, rather than its image, make connections with today’s consumers.

It’s never more important to consider the spaces in which a brand lives and understand the relationships those spaces help build.

The second speaker is Alfie Spencer, Head of Semiotics at Flamingo who will take the discussion further to examine how Alain’s theory can be applied to brands in real life.

The event is now fully booked but non-guests will be able to tweet questions and follow the event via @FlamingoLondon and #bibhappy.

Also check out the write up from the day which will be available at Flamingo News

Wine via your USB port - C'est Incredible!!!!

2011-02-02T11:23:00.003Z

Wow! This gadget is amazing -- a USB tap that pours wine straight from your laptop via a USB port. Genius!

Read more -- and buy -- about this revolutionary accessory at USB Wine

MINI unveils world's first slow motion film

2011-01-27T09:40:00.008Z

On 14th January Renegade kicked off a global seeding campaign for MINI's first slow motion 3D film. A technical 3D world first, the 90-second spot sees the MINI family do battle with a five-tonne monster truck, which is designed to leave 3D-hungry audiences on the edge of their Cinema seats.

Set at night in the floodlit Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, a sell-out crowd of eclectic and rowdy monster truck fans are silenced when the 1,800-horsepower truck – nicknamed No Mercy – takes to the air in an attempt to jump over a fleet of MINIs.

In sensational 3D slow motion the crowd takes to its feet as their jaws, hotdogs and beverages spill to the floor and the 66-inch tyres skim tantalisingly close to the roofs of the four-strong line-up of: MINI Cooper Convertible, MINI Cooper Clubman, MINI Cooper S and MINI Cooper S Countryman.

As No Mercy hurtles through the air and the crowd cheer, it’s not clear whether the flame-emblazoned four-wheel cannonball will complete its trajectory. The action slows down in painstaking frame-by-frame 3D detail the second the truck takes off, leaving the crowd looking-on in horror or joyous anticipation as the day-glo orange and blue rocket makes its leap of faith amid an explosive barrage of pyrotechnics and a rock opera soundtrack.

Slow motion close-ups of the driver and crowds’ faces add to the suspense and drama, leaving viewers wondering whether the MINIs are crushed or the truck completes the jump.

Responsible for the nail-biting epic was Robert Jitzmark, the acclaimed Swedish director, who employed a crew of 120 people, including one stunt driver, six 3D technologists and scientists who were on hand to calculate the truck’s chances, and film with a 21st century 3D rig. The set required 30,000 cubic yards of sand to be imported and the entire shoot from preparation to jump took six days to complete. A mix of stadium lights and special helium-filled balloon lights helped enrich the 3D quality.

Veteran stunt man Russell Steeley was behind the wheel, a monster truck driver who nearly ended his career as soon as it started. The first time Steely jumped he thought he broke his back: "I landed so hard, it knocked the wind out of me," he said. "I sat after that to let my back heal." Some drivers might reconsider their dedication to monster trucks. But Steeley spent six months recuperating and then got back in the truck.

MINI’s Amsterdam-based advertising agency, BSUR, is the creative engine behind the film. Executive creative director, Jason Schragger was at the jump and explained the inspiration behind the story. “MINI is a pioneer of automotive design and driver experience. Digital 3D is so new that we worked with its pioneers to ensure MINI vs Monster is an exciting and immersive experience. What we have filmed is a game changer – 3D is the future of screen entertainment and the future of advertising.

“This new 3D technology makes you really feel like you are in the crowd and are part of the jump. When you see No Mercy actually flying, you experience every detail, it’s better than being in the stands and you can’t help but gasp when the truck lifts off and skims the MINI family, which look eye-poppingly stunning in 3D. 3D is immersive and puts viewers at the heart of the action.”

While TV technology can’t yet deliver the same 3D experience, a high definition, 2D version of the film has been rolled out globally on- and offline.

In less than two weeks Renegade'seeding campaign has generated nearly 100,000 YouTube views. The three teasers and trailers that we seeded a week before the launch have each surpassed 20,000 views each -- another world first for MINI.

Shock... OMG! Wolves beat Chelsea... Aha!

2011-01-05T22:20:00.004Z

Can I contain myself? can i stop myself busting like a water pipe in sub zero temperatures NOOOOOOOOO. Wolves lifted themselves off the bottom of the Premier League thanks to an Own Goal and a hard fought sterling defence.

Carlo Ancelotti claimed he was "lucky" to still be in a job before this game but good fortune only lasts so long. The Chelsea manager will do well to hold on to his position after his side suffered a defeat that exposed the brittle confidence within their ranks and the alarming depths to which the Champions have fallen.

Ancelotti had stated beforehand that Chelsea "will win" but there was no sign of that belief in his players on a sobering night for hungry Wolves. The Italian had barely had time to get acquainted with the touchline area where he spent most of the evening looking a lonely and dejected figure when José Bosingwa put through his own net. Chelsea had 85 minutes to turn the game around but there was to be no reprieve for Ancelotti or his beleaguered players.

To put Chelsea's slump into context, Wolves came into this game bottom of the table but with a better record over the last six games than the champions. Ancelotti came in search of a remedy but within five minutes he was wearing that familiar pained expression.

Having seen Petr Cech make a splendid save to turn Ronald Zubar's speculative 35-yard shot behind, the Chelsea manager looked on in disbelief as his side conceded in shambolic circumstances from the corner that followed. Ashley Cole failed to cut out Stephen Hunt's inswinging kick at the near post and the ball drifted into the six-yard box where it bounced off Bosingwa's left shin and into the net.

It was a calamitous start and one that Chelsea struggled to recover from during a fractious first half when Wolves spent long periods defending but rarely looked in serious trouble of conceding an equaliser. The visitors had no shortage of possession but it was a measure of their lack of penetration in and around the Wolves penalty area that Wayne Hennessey had only one save to make before the interval.

That chance came after Zubar, who was otherwise impressive, tried to take a short throw-in close to the byline. Didier Drogba read the full-back's intentions and nodded the ball into the path of Florent Malouda, whose fine centre picked out Salomon Kalou. The forward's prodded shot wrongfooted Hennessey and looked to be heading for the bottom corner but the Wolves keeper, Hennessey, managed to instinctively stick out a right-boot to block. It was a fine stop.

Otherwise Chelsea huffed and puffed but made few inroads into a Wolves rearguard that has kept only two clean-sheets this season. Chelsea were struggling to keep their discipline at times and John Terry was fortunate not to be penalised when he clipped Hunt around the head as the two quarrelled off the ball. Hunt, who has history with Chelsea after his clash with Cech during his Reading days, should also have been cautioned for a poor challenge on Malouda.

Wolves' only other decent opportunity before the break came when Zubar picked Cole's pocket with embarrassing ease – a moment that epitomised Chelsea's travails here – and released Kevin Doyle. The Republic of Ireland international has been sidelined for three weeks and it showed in his tame shot that was easily gathered.

Chelsea should have equalised eight minutes after the restart. Frank Lampard's exquisite backheel set Kalou free on the left-hand side of the area but with only Hennessey to beat the Ivorian dragged his shot wide.

It was no surprise that it proved to be Kalou's last contribution of the night after another disappointing display. Ancelotti introduced Nicolas Anelka, who was dropped from the side that drew 3-3 with Aston Villa on Sunday, in his place as Chelsea's anxiety began to deepen. Malouda headed straight at Hennessey and Drogba pivoted before drilling against the post as Chelsea tried to crank up the pressure.

Wolves were working tirelessly to keep Chelsea at bay, although they might have added a second in the 71st minute when Hunt's free-kick clipped the top of the crossbar. Back came Chelsea as Malouda held off Christophe Berra only to spear his shot beyond the far post. The chances, however, began to dry up in the closing stages as Chelsea's belief wavered and Wolves spirit grew. The final whistle was greeted with delirium in these parts.

Humperdinck classic re-written as social media anthem

2010-12-21T16:11:00.011Z

Renegade Media has unveiled “Please Retweet Me” - a social media anthem - to raise awareness of the killer disease, meningitis, for the Meningitis Trust.

We took the original 43-year old “Release Me” classic by Engelbert Humperdinck and re-wrote the lyrics, then got a local 30-strong choir to perform it.

Sung by the Drybrook & District Male Voice Choir — average age 60 — “Please ReTweet Me” is already taking YouTube by storm with more than 13,000 views four days after its launch.

The Hump's original lyrics have been replaced with major social network and iconic digital brands including Facebook, MySpace, Google and Twitter. There's even reference to Apple and Android.

The song’s ending, “Facebook me, Facebook me…”, directs viewers via PleaseReTweetMe.com to the Meningitis Trust Facebook page, where they can find out more about signs and symptoms, along with background to the campaign and a downloadable singalong song sheet.

Every year 2,500 cases of bacterial meningitis are reported in the UK – 10% of people will die and 15% will have severe after-effects including brain damage, loss of hearing and sight and, where septicaemia has occurred, loss of limbs and scarring.

Engelbert Humperdinck has supported the project, saying: "I think it's a great thing if it's going to help the charity's work and it would be nice to have it back in the charts.” He added: “And why not change the words? I didn't write it myself but I knew the late Eddie Miller, who did write it, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

Sue Davie, CEO of the Meningitis Trust, says: “We want to reach out to a young audience and make them aware of the signs and symptoms, and what they should do if they are concerned. “Please ReTweet Me” appeals to an at risk group; if it helps save one life it will have worked.”

I've been asked several times why, what's the connection? Well there wasn't a rationale when we decided to write a social media anthem, just because we could. OK, now we can post rationalize about how the song is a classic, the new lyrics are memorable and should provoke conversations about a serious subject. Kids tend to listen to their grandparents more than their parents, hence the gentlemen of a certain age singing it.

Ultimately, the contrast between social media brands and icons, perceived as a young person's pastime, and the older generation crooning about them sparks conversations. That's why a gorilla banging a drum can get away with selling chocolate and a man on a horse with a handful of diamonds can sell shower gel.

The spin off is that the Drybrook Male Voice Choir have become local sensations. We hope the knock on effect will be more people interested in a cultural musical phenomenon and will swell the choir's ranks.

And, maybe Engelbert will sell a few extra tickets when he tours next year... who can say. We're already tee-ing up TV and press for the Choir and Engelbert for the New Year, so this viral is only going to build... all through online PR and blogger outreach. Not a cent has been spent on paid-for seeding.

For you music geeks and nostalgics, “Release Me” was a hit for Engelbert in 1967 when it reached number one in the charts and remained there for six weeks. More than 40 years on and the new version has its tongue firmly in its cheek and we tip our hats the maestro.

This couldn't have happened without production company Atticus Finch. We are indebted to Chris, Martin and Noelia for giving their time for free. They came all the way up from London to the Forest of Dean twice on consecutive cold and wet Wednesday nights, with all their gear and made a damn good job of creating a number of films that we think will help save lives. All they got in return was a slap on the back and a bag of fish and chips. We salute you. Power to the people.

Creative Social Amsterdam

2010-12-20T17:08:00.028Z

Earlier this month I attended Creative Social, the global collective of digital creatives, which gathers twice a year.

Six years on from its debut in 2004, Creative Social returned to Amsterdam, the financial and cultural capital of the Netherlands. From technology to trading, sex, cannabis and Big Brother, Amsterdam continues to steadfastly push barriers. Consistently ranked third in the Innovation Cities Index and now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Amsterdam is at the top of its game in both the past and the present.

Attending were a 40-strong tribe of creative adventurers from all corners of the globe who together shared their wares and inspired those around them in a city that host Mark Chalmers described as a “Tim Burton movie with wifi”.

Programme stalwart ‘That’s Me That Is’ kicked off the event with 28 reveals of what certain Socials are up to -- each social unveiling a piece of work to be proud of. From the charming to the sublime, the session will best be remembered for LMFM's Sam Ball talking us through his Toilet Tracker initiative for Domestos – follow your turd’s journey at flushtracker.

Every modern creative -- from PR to design -- draws inspiration from technology to popular culture when re-interpreting client briefs. So it was with great excitement that Dutch design [anti] hero, Frank Tjepkama was up next.

Frank Tjepkama
Tripping through a decade of design with Frank Tjepkama, or Tjep to those who know him well, we opened our minds to his ideas on contrast of perception vs reality. Perfect design leading to the perception that reality is imperfect, but still beautiful. A man known for quirky metaphor reflected on past zeitgeist from multifunction furniture to statement jewellery and commercial interior design.

It felt more like Frank’s journey to Mars on a fantasy self-sustaining rocket ship that occasionally docked at a service station of alternate reality. Frank’s vision for saving the planet involves a sustainable Disney Land and Tulips. If you want to know more then sign up for the Tjep Gazette.

Frank presented a series of photographs that in isolation had little meaning, but juxtaposed provided the contrast between design perception and reality. the obsession with perfection and the extreme side of rational thinking vs the reality of imperfection. He went on to outline how the concept of jazz music can be applied to product design – layer upon layer of idea to form a finished piece of texture.

For those of you who are not so familiar with Tjep’s work, check out his iconic jewellery such as the Christian Cross, the Logo of Logos – a multidimensional metaphor for the consuming generation made from his trademark chemical etching process – Tjep’s signature dish.

He’s gone further with cracked vases – the ‘shock proof collection’. Ceramics coated inside with rubber, that when dropped from rooftops, bowled at walls or even shot at, don’t disntergrate, they retain shape take on a new ancient identity of mysterious webs of cracks and chips. He’s applied the process to jewellery with his latest piece, a ceramic heart that comes with a small hammer – the message: break my heart, but it will never fall apart. Genius.

What next? Artificial plants that look artificial -- a new generation of authenticity.

My take? Frank brings meaning to the mundane and utilitarian to the useless. Genius.

Rafael Rozendaal

Alternate realities continued when online artist and Tin Tin lookalike Rafael Rozendaal demo’d his personal democratisation of the internet through the language of vectors and websites-as-art.

His online creations, of which a collector or curator can buy the URL of one of his works, are simple interactions with sound and vision. What might look like a pointless waste of a pixel is jaw droppingly compelling and engaging.

As the world of cinema, TV, gaming becomes more complex and hyper real, Rafael has taken the simplification and exaggeration of sound and colour back to the curious and childlike. watching images flash on screen such as towardsandbeyond catapulted me back to late 80s Commodore 64 games

Rafael says: “People used to buy something, hang it on the wall at home so only they could see it. Today it’s cooler to own a domain name so that everyone can see it. The more people viewing, the cooler it is. Domain names are the only tradable commodity online.”

Influenced by cartoons and abstract paintings Rafael cites Betty Boo, Road Runner, Mickey Mouse and Lichtenstein as his influences. Rafael's sense of cheeky humour is perhaps best expressed in the digitisation of Kazivah’s painting, “High Society In Top Hats”, look out for the now animated ‘peeing man’at kazimirmalevich.

“Art needs a lot of attention these days”, says Rafael, “you have to spend hours or days looking at it to understand it,” adding “I prefer art to be instantaneous”.

When asked about platforms other than the desktop Rafael is quick to resist the temptation to work on everything from mobiles to tablets “the iPhone screen is too small”, should I work for Android or Apple?” he questions, asserting “am I a media company or an artist?”

Flaming Cursor is one of his most popular works, so much so that the single Google banner ad on the page covers all his monthly outgoings and has a whopping 4% click through. We’re disappointed to note that the flaming cursor doesn’t ignite and burn the banner.

Ever the sceptical I wonder if his absent-minded presentation is a non-linear act or orchestrated exploration of his work. So later that evening when we’re sitting in the hangar-like Hotel de Goudfazant next to a ping pong table and a load of dusty cars and motorbikes (it was pointed out it’s not a hotel, neither will you see a golden pheasant. But it’s an amazing place and the food was excellent and will def take the wife there next time I'm in A'Dam), he was charming and self effacing as his innocent line “nothing happens if you don’t touch it”. A manifesto of his way of life.

Wernard Bruining
Continuing the trading theme, Creative Social welcomed Wernard Bruining who founded the first Amsterdam coffee shop ‘Mellow Yellow’ back in 1973. Cannabis and the coffee shops are an underground industry bigger than the over ground and in a world that’s now starting to realise capitalist consumerism doesn’t make things better, maybe we can learn from the way of the herb.

Wernard was inspiring in his passion as a hemp oil evangelist. I thought of him as a Sensimilla Guerrilla fighting to make people aware of the considerable benefits of hemp.

Articulate and knowledgeable, Wernard took the audience through a speeded up history of the coffee shop movement, from humble beginnings as a focal point for social gatherings to billion Euro business that quietly pours millions into the tax coffers of the Dutch Government.

Wernard blew our minds with the amazing uses for hemp as a source of everything from heating oil to wonder medicine. Back through the decades Ford made a car out of hemp plastic, global corporation Du Pont effectively criminalised hemp to protect its oil-fuelled business model, and media tycoon Randolph Hearst protected his paper empire by helping outlaw hemp.

An agricultural and ecological Godsend, marijuana needs no fertilisers or pesticides to grow, is biodecradable – it’s a basic crop for a green future. Use it as concrete or “MediWeed”, the “Peoples Medicine” -- until 1977 30-40% of medicines contained hemp extract, Wernard revealed.

Wernard says: “The world is full of drugs, all medicines are drugs, coffee is a drug, and they are not going to go away – we just need to learn to live with them.”

A paid up cannabis terrorist Wernard believes the so called ‘war on drugs’ has much in common with a religious war where something is proclaimed dangerous for society, and victory, like a drug-free world, is impossible. Sober thoughts from the man who wants to heal the world with hemp.

The best of the rest
Creative Social touched on many interests close to the hearts of digital creatives, there were talks on “How To Pitch a Book” by Taschen’s Julius Wiedman – a man who receives 5000 unsolicited proposals, but who only publishes 65 books a year.

Formats
Then there was Jon de Mol, Founder of Endemol and creator of Big Brother who now runs Talpa, a multi-media empire with new formats and content at it’s heart. Geertje Hoek, manager of Talpa content, spoke about why The Netherlands punches way above its weight in TV formats, what lies at the heart of great format & content, and revealed the next big reality format that will dominate our Saturday-night screens in 2011: “The Voice Of…”, a new talent show with a twist.

Sell, sell, sell
Commercial reality vs creativity was brought to life with an insight into how to build a creative business for a trade sale. Amsterdam created the first stock market, the first share certificate and the first futures. Couple trading with a history of progression and thanks to VC firm Prime Ventures, we can see a great example of the legacy today. Specialising in technology investments with a portfolio including Layar and eBuddy, Creative Social welcomed PV's Rogier Taphoorn. The ex-Lehman Brothers' partner outlined that the name of the game, just like back then, is to make money and scale is everything.

Round tables
Various round tables, which I'd have liked to have seen more of if more time was available, centred on the issues we all experience in a client-servicing business. One I attended focused on the client obsession with paying for hours worked a frustrating if not prehistoric approach to valuing our work. We acknowledged that there are now two pitches to win a client. The first is to the marketing team, where the ideas count and second is to the procurement team. Both have a very different agenda and the latter is harming the industry. I won’t write any more on this as Tobias Gartner of Pilot in Germany has summarised the roundtable nicely here on the Creative Social Blog.

To source or not to crowd source
A similarly charged and interesting rountable entitled Mass Collaboration and Crowd Sourcing is summarised by Giant Hydra’s Ignacio Oreamuno here.

The Creative Social isn't a conference, no one was selling, egos were left at Schiphol. No business was done in the breaks, lunches or dinners (to my knowledge). So it was a refreshing gathering of like-minded people. In other words it was a social, for creatives. Just like it said on the tin.

With thanks to Mark and Daniele.

Does your Facebook campaign break the rules?

2010-11-26T10:57:00.002Z

In the world of social media marketing there are some great examples of really innovative campaigns - and plenty of lazy copy-cats too. But in our clamour to measure, incentivise and prove that all-important ROI metric, are marketers putting their clients brands at risk by breaking Facebook (or other sites) terms and conditions?

Despite the many different and varied metrics you could choose to use to 'prove' the success of a social networking campaign, many people still choose to take a metric such as 'Likes' or fan numbers as their metric of choice.

As somebody who has worked in and alongside the search industry for many years, the concept of 'obvious but meaningless' metrics is one I'm very familiar with. How many of us haven't heard a brand bemoaning a lack or drop of a certain keyword ranking, despite no focus on conversions, traffic or click-throughs? If a metric is easy for your client to find by themselves, you have to expect that you'll be measured against it.

This dependence on improving 'Likes' had lead to a lot of brands or their agencies clamouring to gain quick results, by any means necessary. One of the most popular ways at the moment is incentivising to 'Like' a page, often by offering prizes, rewards or exclusive offers based on doing so. But did you know that by doing this, you're breaking Facebook's own terms and conditions?

I've seen some high-profile brands doing this lately. I'm not going to embarrass anybody with a name-and-shame, but do any variation on the following Google searches and you can find examples of your own:

Like us on facebook for your chance to...

Like our Facebook page and...

There have also been a few very well-covered examples of this recently, including one well-known travel firm who made a sizable donation to charity when they hit a certain number of fans.

So what's the harm in this practise then? Surely it's just giving something back to the fans for helping to support you? You'd think so, but no...

Extracted from the Facebook Promotional Guidelines page...

Facebook specifically forbids brands from asking users to 'Like' a page in return for something - and they'll happily remove content or possibly even remove the pages of brands who contravene these rules (if they spot them). Are you prepared to have your hard-earned community removed for the sake of a few quick fans?

Not to mention the can-of-worms that is the argument over whether an incentivised 'Like' is even of any value in the first place. Whilst there's no argument that having a fan 'Like' you can give you better exposure to both them and their social connections, how likely are fans who have only Liked you to enter a competition really going to be to add value to your community?

Whatever you opinion of these tactics and their validity, you need to make sure you're aware of the risks you're taking if you don't follow the rules of the communities you're interacting with. If somebody had told you that this is a good tactic, why not point them in the direction of Facebook's T&Cs and ask what their back-up plan is for when that content gets removed?

By Henry Elliss

Jimmy Carr takes mickey out of marketers at Engage

2010-11-04T18:17:00.003Z

And finally, we were privileged to have funny man Jimmy Carr on the stage taking the mickey out of the industry -- welcome relief.

Wrapping up Engage 2010, comedian Jimmy Carr was quizzed by the silky-tongued “media pluralist” and Parkinson-like IAB chairman Richard Eyre on the popularity of social networking. “No one will overtake Facebook and Twitter," said Carr. "They're like The Beatles and Elvis. They were the first.”

Carr, briefly a marketer for Shell, admitted that he wasn’t very good at the job: “I was sh*t. But that's not a barrier to working in marketing.” And, in a dig at the assembled audience of marketers, he added: “But then if you're really bad you just go client side.”

When asked what advert he would like to star in Carr said: “Show me the money I'm not fussy, I will do feminine bloating if they ask." However, when pressed on the question of selling-out he argued that there is a difference between doing a voice over and appearing in–shot. According to Carr, the brand has to be right for the comedian. “John Smiths made Jack Dee a star, a household name – more so than his TV sitcom. Same with Peter Kay, the ads fit with his personality. A perfect match”.

Showing his up to date knowledge of the advertising business, Carr commented on how he thought brands were becoming more like broadcasters. Referring to the new campaign by beer brand Fosters, which is unveiling ten video clips starring Alan Partridge, Carr commented: “Fosters has become a broadcaster, they’re like the BBC”.
Carr is a renowned Twitter fan and was introduced to the micro blogging network by last year’s Engage comedy turn, Stephen Fry: “Stephen said give this a go”, adding “it’s the perfect tool, easy to use, right for the technology, 140 characters is perfect. Feedback is immediate, people either laugh or they don’t.”

No stranger to social networks, Carr has also performed gigs in Second Life, although admitted he didn’t see the point of virtual reality and preferred the popularity of games. “I did a gig in Second Life, it cost me nothing, it didn’t work, but I gave it a crack. I should have done a gig on World of Warcraft”.

Discussing YouTube, Carr sees it as “a meritocracy, unlike the music business where you have to be incredibly lucky to do well.”

Carr also listed his favourite websites as Chortle - “it’s the business website for comedians” - and The Onion - “everything about it is perfect”. His favourite app is Grinder. “It’s certainly the funniest”, he said deadpan.

Marketers should 'listen, listen, listen', says P&G CMO

2010-11-04T18:14:00.003Z

More news from IAB Engage.

Marketers should 'listen, listen, listen', says P&G CMO
Spotify founder bids to wipeout piracy

The afternoon session at IAB Engage 2010 saw a welcome return for Roisin Donnelly, P&G corporate marketing director. Donnelly last spoke at Engage in 2007 and in her opening remarks criticised the industry saying marketers are “overcomplicating our world”.

Donnelly, who oversees successful online brands as diverse as Old Spice and Pringles, argued that marketers should “listen, listen, listen” and “deeply understand their consumers”. She added: “You can no longer tell and sell as the Mad Men did in the 1960s.”

Talking about the blurring of the lines between media and creative agencies, Donnelly believes that all brands need today is a “big idea” and argued that “we no longer have above the line and below the line". Citing this year’s Old Spice campaign, which ran across TV and online, Donnelly described how in the past Old Spice ran the same campaign for 12 Christmases – which turned it into a “granddad brand” - but the big idea reached out to female as well as male purchasers online and offline.

Donnelly highlighted the importance of testing the consumer path to purchase, and refinement based on desired user experience. "Online drives higher shares and higher loyalty," she said. "But our consumers are not always delighted with the experience". Using the example of power toothbrushes, Donnelly described how for one P&G product from search to purchase took 12 clicks, once the path was reduced to four clicks "sales doubled overnight," she said.
Donnelly also explained how P&G is committed to promoting innovation within communications, including in-game advertising, which is a perfect media to target “tribes who play games 100% of the time” adding that in-game is a “brilliant place to target this tribe”.

In a nod to the rise of social media, Donnelly believes, "consumers are our advertisers and pass on our message." She closed with the message “Online is utterly at the heart of supercharging ou Spotify is 'radio for the new millenium'

Daniel Ek
Following Donnelly in his first appearance at Engage, Ek argued that “the way of doing business has changed, there is a move from ownership to access of music". According to the serial entrepreneur, this is why the music industry, once worth $50billion a year is today worth $17 billion and could be worth $15 billion or less this year.

Ek, also founder of the successful Stardoll, a social network for teenage girls, explained that he is determined to increase the scope of Spotify for marketers and said he is trying to push brand engagement online. "Spotify is more than music online,” he said, adding that “Spotify knows more about you than you imagine. Not only your location, age, gender. We know your mood based on the music they’re listening to.”

In the future, Ek expects mobile to play a bigger role. For this to happen Ek believes he has to make things more simple: “You can buy a CD, take it home and play it on any machine and get sound. But digital music is complicated.” He added “there are a million devices, we want Spotify to be enabled across them all.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ek believes there is great scope for growth for the platform. “There is so much growth left. [Spotify] is radio for the new millennium with all the targeting online can bring.” He added: “Spotify is the dominant audio”.

Ek believes that piracy is the biggest competitive threat to Spotify: “We are not competing with other [music] businesses. That’s of no interest to us," he said. Instead he is focused on getting people to move from piracy to a legal environment: “Accessibility, ease, speed – legal is not a priority to users. No one prefers to do something illegal, people want to help the artists.”

Over the course of the interview with the IAB's chief executive Guy Phillipson, Ek also admitted that his favourite music is retro and encompasses the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, ironically neither of, which are available on Spotify.

Morning's news from IAB Engage

2010-11-04T17:54:00.004Z

Renegade has been working down at IAB Engage conference all day and summarising the speeches, writing up news for the media, the IAB website, various blogs and Twitter feeds. Here's a summary of the morning's best news.

UK advertisers “could do better”, says Yahoo! CEO
Supercharge your brand with serendipity, argues BBC presenter
Apps are the future of the web, says Microsoft president

Highlights from Aleks Krotoski, Carol Bartz and Qi Lu at this morning's Engage 2010 sessions.

A sell out IAB Engage 2010 kicked off this morning with an inspiring opener from researcher and journalist Dr Aleks Krotoski who opined that the ethos of the web is being undermined and content creators are “breaking the internet”.

Krotoski, who presented the BBC's Virtual Revolution series, talked about the evolution of online communities and how the web holds a mirror up to society. With so much content our navigation is determined by what we want to know and want to hear, contended Krotoski before going on to argue that our vision is narrowed and we coagulate into the community which best fits our attitudes and ideas.

A new form of social trust
The 650-strong audience of the UK’s digital glitterati heard from Krotoski how online users are now so used to joining groups and communities populated by people who we perceive to have common interests, we’re too easily influenced by people we think have similar attitudes to us. This is engendering a new form of “social trust”, she said.

Krotoski concluded by encouraging marketers to stop and think about serendipity when creating their next technology or content, saying: “Create services that enable people to bump into each other and find ways to create elements of randomness to intentionally bring people together who may never normally ‘bump’ into each other”.

Krotoski was followed by Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo!, who continued the social theme outlining Yahoo!’s approach of “Social Recommendation Optimisation” – the attempt to empower each other to influence each other. “The ability to do this no matter how or where they [consumers] are connected is key” she said.

Never waste a pixel

However, Bartz, believes that although the UK is a leader in online advertising “it could be doing better”. For her, “advertising is just another piece of content and brands are not doing enough”. Bartz recognised another issue across emerging platforms that needs to be addressed, saying: “Never waste a pixel and make the most of the canvas in order to give people the content they want wherever they are.”

The Yahoo! CEO continued by saying that advertisers need to inject some education into their advertising and while there is rightly a focus on emotion, Bartz believes “Emotion is great, but online can also educate in an easy on-demand fashion.”

Bartz ended with another call to action for advertisers who she believes are not doing enough to integrate search and display advertising. “advertisers think of these as disconnected, this needs to change. 49% of consumers respond to display ads and follow with a search.” While search and display are important, advertisers need to think about supporting each channel. “If doing search ensure there’s a display component”, she says.

A digital copy of the planet

Microsoft’s president online services division, Dr Qui Lu, focused on what is driving the evolution of the web and how the “velocity of the internet is getting more real time” thanks to Facebook and Twitter.

Lu believes that today’s consumer-facing internet is “Topical Internet” thanks to the “connective tissue of the web” being based around hyperlinks. Lu continued by saying that “keywords are nothing more than “a topical expression of what we want”.

Lu went on to point out how we are witnessing an “unfolding digital copy of the planet” and how everything is digitally available: words, places, people are all available online: “The web’s structure is to connect. Everything is tied together”, he said.

Lu went on to describe what he called the "applification of the world”, the dawn of a new era of connectivity and interaction. If today’s browers are a metaphor for a library system of documenting the world, tomorrow’s app-inspired connectivity will lend more to visual and emotional controls. “Tomorrow we will touch, swipe, point and voice activate to find what we want”.

This will lead to a new set of issues in documenting the world, argues Lu. If the future of the world is apps, “the big question is when you have many apps what’s the structure of the new web? How do we order the apps, what’s the connective tissue?”. What's more, asked Lu, how will marketers realise the opportunities of these new “surface areas”.

Finally, Lu talked about the significance of the recent Facebook and Bing tie up. In a social context Lu believes that there is now a profound shift in how we trust what we see online. If popular opinion and expert opinion are what drive consumers actions, the collaboration between social network and search engine will enable “Trusted opinion” to influence our decision making.

“Trusted opinions matter more than popular or expert opinion”, said Lu, indicating that search results from Bing will include the opinions of our Facebook peers, which we will naturally take more note of. “Friends' opinions are profoundly more important. We’re at the tip of theiceberg.”

Creative Social book: When Sweden Rules the World

2010-11-01T10:41:00.005Z

An abridged version of the essay by Patrick Gardner, CEO, Perfect Fools that appears in the first Creative Social book: "digital advertising past, present and future".
For more info click Creative Social Blog

Or buy it at Lulu

When Sweden Rules the World

ABBA brought us disco and still spawn catchy showtunes at an alarming rate. IKEA, the friendly furniture giant, won its way into our homes by serving up bookshelves and beds with a side order of… meatballs?

With a mere 9 million inhabitants Sweden has enriched the world with a wildly disproportionate number of popular creations – a fact also true in our own sphere of digital advertising, where the work of native digital agencies and production companies like farfar (“Grandpa”), North Kingdom, Acne, Perfect Fools and B-Reel has been well-known for years.

All this while less than .15% of the world’s population is actually Swedish. So what gives?

I’m an American by birth I’ve lived and worked in Stockholm since 1994, almost all of that time in digital advertising. Along the way I’ve had a unique chance to watch the Swedish digital industry grow from an embryo into a svelte teen.

20 years ago I studied a unit on “The Swedish Way” as part of a college economics course. Swedish Social Democracy seemed to offer the best of all worlds; with its national healthcare, generous vacations and other social benefits, the nation’s inhabitants clearly enjoyed a startling quality of life.

But after arriving in Sweden I found that Swedes today work not within the system described by my textbook, but rather in the system’s aftermath. Sweden in the past thirty years, like the rest of the world, has drifted much nearer to democratic capitalism.

Yet the Swedish Way rolls on. Reformatted for the 21st century, Sweden 2.0 seems just as successful as ever. At its core remains a set of principles that have probably always driven the Swedish story. These are:

Responsibility with freedom. Swedes work hard and require each and every member of the team to deliver. In return they expect and generally get a degree of freedom to decide over their own work environments.

A willingness to stand up for healthy work-life values. As hard as Swedes work, they are equally demanding when it comes to their free time, with a state-mandated minimum paid vacation of five weeks. Any organization that would discriminate against them for taking necessary time away to relax is not one worth working for. This point of view may seem to reflect a slacker mentality but nothing could be further from the truth. Swedes take their careers very seriously so when they do finally get down to work they are recharged, full of new ideas and ready to get things done.

Modesty. Swedish culture is self-effacing and it is considered “fult att skryta”, “ugly to brag”. In fact Swedes take modesty almost to a fault with a phenomenon known as “Jantelagen”, Jante Law, an unwritten rule that can be summed up with: “Don’t think you are special.” Under Jantelagen behavior that even smacks of immodesty can be grounds for ostracizing.

Collabetition. Swedes are extremely competitive. But as members of a small nation they have also developed a keen understanding of the advantages and even necessity of effective collaboration. The result is something I’ve come to think of as “collabetition”, a system that is competitive yet cooperative. Collabetition exists both within and between organizations. Within a business flat management structures enhance the personal sense of creative ownership and speed information transfer between all members of the team. Competitive Swedish businesses sometimes team up in order to overcome obstacles that may be too big to tackle alone.

Honesty, fairness and mutual loyalty – In Sweden, people speak their minds, lifting uncomfortable truths to the surface where they can be aired and exorcised more effectively. A sense of compact or loyalty also exists between employee and employer. When taking a job an employee generally aims to stick with their new place of work for three or more years. These many forms of honorable behavior enable simpler, more rational and at the same time longer-term choices.

Innovation - technical innovation has been a key ingredient to Swedish business success. Today’s Swedish digitals benefited in their childhood from the country’s innovation tradition in many ways, including access to state-subsidized home computers, as well as high-quality, government-funded communications networks.

Acceptance of failure - finally, if all of these factors make the stereotypical Swede sound superhuman, take heart. They do fail, and pretty often as it turns out. However, a good cultural pressure-release valve comes to their assistance: a willingness to accept and learn from failure. While other cultures might blindly contend that failure is not an option, Swedes generally accept that some failure is inevitable. As long as it is honest and not repetitive, and especially if it is learned from, it is tolerated.

All in all, there are many elements of the Swedish Way that do make the country highly effective, and a number of these have also contributed to the success of Swedish digital advertising around the globe. Despite cultural differences these principles are just as applicable anywhere as they are in Stockholm. Swedes would never want to rule the world, but many aspects of the Swedish mentality do rule.

Ten Tips to Make Your World a Little More Swedish
1. Work hard every day that you work and be modest.
2. Prioritize your private life and refuse to compromise it away for work.
3. Tell uncomfortable truths and skip the jargon.
4. Always innovate. If it has been done before do it differently or don’t do it at all.
5. Collaborate and give credit where credit is due.
6. If you’ve got that sweet corner office turn it into your team’s project room and move your desk back out onto the floor.
7. Keep structures and titles as flat as possible. You may need your title on occasion but don’t take it too seriously or use it as a wall.
8. Promote the doctrine that everyone contributes ideas.
9. Kill your darlings for the good of the project.
10. Cultivate a culture of responsibility with freedom and let people know they’re allowed to fail.

Commonsense should prevail when PRs target bloggers

2010-10-18T12:01:00.005+01:00

If you’re planning to run a blogger outreach programme do it properly, transparently and ensure all bloggers targeted are treated equally.

Bloggers can help PRs by clearly signposting their likes and dislikes on their blog. If you don’t want unsolicited pitches say so.

Databases of blogs are the enemy of good PR and blogger relationships. PRs should plan campaigns by understanding the blogs that they are targeting and not spamming an email list.

Relevancy, relationships and respect are the key to successful blogger relations. Abuse of these fundamental tenets of PR has been an issue for the industry for the last 20-years.

Bloggers wanting to generate income from their blog should be aware of their part in the role in the client-agency-media supply chain. Is a PR agency seeking favourable comment, feedback or a link back? Is there an opportunity for an ad or to write a sponsored post?

The PR industry is a broad church and is going through rapid change as it modernises. Some practitioners are excellent at blogger relations, some are still learning.

There can be no better way of gaining experience of blogger relations than blogging yourself.

No one has an appetite for a code of practise for how bloggers and PRs should work together. Commonsense should prevail.

In Imitation of a Reverse Letter ’S’

2010-10-18T10:35:00.004+01:00

How Malcolm McLaren McLaren’s dancefloor maxim -- "Waltz Darling" -- can be also read as a best practice guide for brands online.

By Dave Barton

Good ideas, they say, are as rare as ‘rocking horse ***’ or ‘hen’s teeth’ – depending on which end of the animal you feel most comfortable with. Perhaps that’s why creative people are always advised to look outside of their chosen industry when searching for the coveted ‘Big Idea’.

And who better to seek counsel from than the late, great music supremo, Malcolm McLaren. McLaren himself was often criticised for making British Popular Culture into ‘nothing more than a cheap marketing gimmick’, but his passion for creativity was second to none.

Sex Pistols aside, the remainder of his career saw him behind the scenes bringing hip-hop to the attention of an international audience, and orchestrating a series of divine aural concoctions – including an album fusing his love of opera with 80s pop music.

Consider his 1989 hit, Waltz Darling – taken from the album of the same name. Allegorical as they are, McLaren’s conclusive maxims on dance floor etiquette can be also read as a guide for best practice for brands looking to gain share of voice across the online media landscape: ‘Never put your hands on a man except in dancing, Whispering, giggling at the same time have no place in good society, Don't think you can be rude to anyone and escape, Whispering is always rude, Don't hang on to anyone for support, Don't stand or walk with your chest held in and your hips forward, In imitation of a reverse letter S’.

Looking at each of the above lines in isolation, McLaren’s words strongly resonate with a good deal of the do’s and don’ts of social media marketing:

Don’t do anything that could be deemed inappropriate – unless the occasion condones it. Follow the examples set by others, operate by the rules set by the community concerned.

In-jokes, underhanded conversations that mean little to anyone outside of a small group excludes others, and is bad practice when looking to gauge Twitter followers or Facebook fans. Content should be straightforward, accessible and inclusive. * Being rude to anyone on a social media platform is a huge mistake.

Not only can it impact on how a brand is perceived, it can have wider implications when others get wind of it and subsequently lend their support to the injured party. The fact all faux pas are recorded online means insults can stick around like a bad smell. * Tagging your brand onto the coattails of others should be avoided. What matters is authenticity. Brands looking to forge a new identity among consumers via social media need to build it from the bottom up. Only then can marketers ensure they’ve created a genuine grass roots following and a unique platform that serves the needs of both the brand and its fans. *

Posturing and positioning are key.

This means no slacking off. Once a branded community has set a precedent, members expect a certain level of regular engagement. All things considered, as tenuous as these comparisons may appear, it stands to reason that concepts which may seem unrelated can be appropriated to suit any agenda.

That’s the real creative challenge – making connections between different ideas to serve a singular purpose. Next week – the opportunity inherent in Augmented Reality location-based systems, as perceived through a re-reading of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger.

Dave Barton is an account manager at Renegade Media

Chatroulette Improv Piano Man

2010-10-14T13:18:00.001+01:00

Chatroulette has had its share of stormtroopers and Jon Stewart parodies, but now there’s a new star on the block: the Chatroulette improv piano player.

The webcam network has quickly ascended to become one of the web’s biggest phenomenons. The anonymous webcam network, estimated to be made up of 71% males, 15% females, and 14% perverts, has gained huge traffic that has attracted venture capital interest and, of course, funny viral videos.

The Chatroulette improv piano player, who we found via the Huffington Post, uses only his playing prowess and freestyle vocals to entertain random dudes and win the hearts of teenage girls in hilarious fashion. It’s no wonder this video’s already going viral.

Watch and listen to the improv piano man himself; you won’t regret it:

A Messy Kitchen Has the Patina That Digital Products Need to Succeed

2010-10-14T10:28:00.005+01:00

Jonas Carlsson is an Engagement Manager and strategist at global digital strategy, design, technology and marketing company HUGE in Stockholm. He wrote the following piece which echoes my agency's (Renegade Media) approach to building and managing online communities.

The 'built it and they will come' mentality that many marketers have when it comes to managing and moderating blogs, Facebook pages and forums is damaging to a brand. We call it the 'empty pub syndrome', Jonas calls it the 'clean kitchen' or 'digital patina'.

Read on and think about your own real world behaviour and how you act online...if you are planning to launch a blog, a Facebook or online community, think about how you will a) generate visitors and b) entertain and engage those visitors for the long term.

Patina is the surface appearance of something grown beautiful especially with age or use. A lived-in kitchen, a Leica camera, a leather jacket—they were all once brand spanking new but they all get better with time. Scratches and stains symbolize memories and experiences, and they build up on a durable, perpetually relevant item to create character, or patina.

In the digital world, patina is a key hurdle to product success. Unlike the lifecycle of a physical object, Internet users don’t want to buy into something when it’s new. New online services come and go at hyper-speed, and simultaneously, millions of users are sifting through these products deciding whether or not to use them. If a user lands on a blog with no comments, a social network with no users, a store with no user reviews, they’re apt to move on to places already deemed valuable by mass participation such as Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. In the digital space, it’s essential for products to develop patina as fast as possible, as early as possible in their lifecycles. Without patina, no one would pick a digital product up from the shelf. It’s the barrier to success in an environment where there’s almost no barrier to entry.

It all comes down to understanding real world human behavior. If a friend invites you over dinner and has a brand new, modern shiny kitchen, you may hesitate before asking to help. It’s too clean. You don’t want to mess it up. But on the other hand, if the kitchen is a little scruffy here and there, it’s easy to offer a hand. Or say you had to choose between a restaurant filled with people and an empty one down the block that just opened. My bet is you’d choose the popular one. This is the concept of digital patina.

Digital patina comes in the form of populated message boards, article comments, product reviews, the tally of a weight loss communities’ number of pounds lost, the lists of email addresses of past recipients embedded in email forwards. Social media has a particularly apparent patina. Just like a scratch on a sofa represents an event and a memory, every photo, poke and update on Facebook represents an experience, a moment. Accordingly, each social networking account has its own individual patina.

Someone who has been on Facebook for five years with 800 friends has developed a different patina than a user signed up for an account last week and has 50 friends.
When developing new digital products, it’s essential to implement strategies that rapidly develop patina. Fortunately this could become easier to achieve. One type of tool that significantly helps develop patina is Facebook Connect and similar services.

They can instantly bring elements of digital patina, like friends, photos and comments, to a brand new product. Patina may also become easier to develop as privacy walls continue to erode and consumers rely increasingly on applications. The more digital traces we leave, the more patina we create.

The original article was published on www.notesondigital.com.

Top ten most hated business phrases -- IAB

2010-10-08T20:34:00.001+01:00

One of our clients published this list this week... lets see if we can "leverage these with our transmedia cinematic credentials", which was said to me today. My personal favourite I’m going to use next week is "lets run it up the flagpole and see who salutes".

IAB top ten most hated business phrases:

1. Blue sky thinking
2. Singing from the same hymn sheet
3. Thinking outside the box
4. Touching base
5. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes
6. End to end solution
7. We must reach out
8. Evolution NOT revolution
9. All on the same page
10. Team work makes the dream work

SW Business Awards

2010-10-08T14:22:00.004+01:00

You know standards are slipping when an awards that is sponsored and endorsed by two newspapers and a magazine can't spell check.

Spot the mistake on this page.

And before you post a comment, no, we're not bitter about not coming first in our category - we were second to a worthy winner... we're more than satisfied being runner up in Best Use of Digital, and we had a blinding night. The hangovers are testimony to that.

Roll on next year...

Personalised Greeting Cards Get Gratuitous

2010-10-05T14:10:00.002+01:00

Gratuitous Product Endorsement
Re-posted from www.danceswithferrets.org - the adventure of Oddbloke

Do you ever despise an actor or celebrity when he/she starts endorsing a product? An item for which they have no need? A supermarket that you know they wouldn’t visit in a million years?

Do we really think that Jason Donovan and Kerry Katona shop at Iceland? Does Tommy Walsh really care about “doing the job right” with his van insurance? Does that gorilla really play the drums when he eats a Dairy Milk?

I’m sure you – like I – sit back with smug satisfaction and declare proudly: “well, I certainly couldn’t be bought that easily!”. We know in our heart-of-hearts that there is no amount of money that would persuade us to scoff some poncy yoghurt and practically fake an orgasm for the camera. No amount of cajoling that would make us drag-in our extended family and pretend to feed them from Sainsbury’s “pretentious tossers” range of delicatessen.

I used to think so … until this week. This week I discovered that:
I do indeed have a price, and depressingly, it is rather low.
It seems that my price is a bit of flattery, and two shiny coffee mugs.
Let me explain.

Last week I received a very nice feedback e-mail from an Alex Sass about my night in Asda, and my efforts to rid the world of “Friends”. To receive an e-mail that did not begin with the words “Dear Oddbloke, you suck!” ticked the “flattery” box by default, and so I was already pretty sold by this point – but then he iced the cake by mentioning the magic words: “free stuff”.

Alex, it seems, currently represents a company with the non-vicar-friendly name The Dog’s Doodahs – who will make all manner of personalised mugs, cards, aprons and other gifts – allowing you to insult your close friends and relatives with more professional gloss than ever before.

And so this morning I receive two very nice mugs. I particularly like the one that suggests the Friends-coffee shop should burn in a towering inferno:

Actually, his e-mail made no request for publicity – he was just being friendly. But he’s getting some publicity anyway because I am dead chuffed with the mugs and greetings card. He may live to regret it – to be mentioned on this blog is rather like the curse of Hello! magazine. He’ll be divorced and destitute and sharing a cell with George Michael by the end of the year.

So there you have it: should you feel the need to purchase a mug that says “I pissed in this mug” so that no-one else in the office pinches it, you now know where to go. And I’m sure that Alex won’t thank me for sending him the sort of low-brow, toilet-humour obsessed clients that this blog attracts. Yes, I mean you lot.
If you buy anything, tell them I sent you.

Of course, this marvellous new facility also allows me to slightly modify and use my “messages I wish I could buy on a greetings card” article that I wrote ages ago, and found on an old pen-drive last week. I can now rename it and present thusly:
Things that you can now have printed on a greetings card
(thanks to the wonder of SCIENCE and THE INTERNET)

Congratulations! You have Chlamydia!

Congrats on your vasectomy. We (the undersigned) all support your decision to remove your modest contribution from the gene pool. All that remains now is for you to send the six whinging little shits you have already sired off to the abattoir.
One year anniversary! Who’d have thought you’d manage to keep your affair with your secretary a secret from your wife for ONE WHOLE YEAR! Here’s to another happy year of “weekend conferences”! From all the night-duty staff at the Travelodge, Barnsley.
Congratulations on getting onto the X-Factor. What a shame that no-one warned you beforehand about how badly you sing, and too bad that the recording of you embarrassing yourself in front of millions is now a Youtube sensation.
So pleased to see that your daughter has a fulltime job, after leaving University only last month! The Boobalicious Titty Bar and “Contact” club seems even more cerebral now that they have an M.Eng spinning around centre-pole!
The staff at Giggleswick Infants would like to congratulate you on the successful separation of your siamese twins … but would be interested in your suggestions of how the hell we’re going to fill the role of push-me-pull-you in this year’s Christmas production of Doctor Dolittle.
Sorry to hear that your daughter moved out. But look at it this way – now you’ve got all that spare space in the cellar!
Congrats on all the money you’ve been given by that Nigerian millionaire!
We hear you’re feeling down after your plastic surgery. Here’s a little card to make you smile – assuming the facelift allows it.
So you suffer from low self-esteem and have tried to commit suicide. Wow … couldn’t even get that right. Are you completely useless?
Rupert Grint is ten years younger than you, worth millions, and shagging a different bird every day of the year. You are fat, hairy, broke, and have been stuck with the same ugly girlfriend since college. Happy 30th Birthday!
And if anyone else would like to send me some freebies in exchange for a possible mention on this Mighty Organ, then please send the truck driver to the usual address. Though I feel I should mention that I only review Aston Martin cars, chocolate from Montezuma’s, and hi-def televisions of fifty inches or greater.
Visit those nice people at The Dog’s Doodahs, or please suggest more text for greetings cards or mugs in the comments.

Amsterdam Worldwide Wins Silver EFFIE

2010-09-17T12:06:00.002+01:00

Our client Amsterdam Worldwide has once more proven its international creative credentials with an Effie for its Legend of Akhtamar campaign.

The team picked up a Silver Communications Effectiveness Award in the 360 Degree Integration category.

The EACA Euro Effies are considered to be the gold standard in commercial effectiveness. They recognize proven communications rewarding campaigns that build brands across borders.

The Legend of Akhtamar is a real success for Pernod Ricard’s Ararat brandy. The campaign has repositioned the brand though its creativity , innovative use of on-line , and effective targeting. You can view the full case study through this link.

“It is a real honour that our team has been recognised again this year, said Brian Elliott, Amsterdam Worldwide founder and CEO. The Ararat campaign allowed us to dig deep into Armenian and Russian culture and create a powerful, compelling long-form art-house movie. Not only did our team demonstrate a passion for creativity, but also use of technology as The Legend of Akhtamar was an overwhelming social media success – largely bypassing traditional channels. Pernod Ricard recognized that the unique cultural dimensions of the brand, demanded that it engage with consumers in surprising ways. Together we helped preserve classic legends in a contemporary way, helping refresh the Ararat brand.”

So far this year more than 2 million people have viewed at least some of the film, and more than half have viewed the complete 20 minute. And without support the site continues to get significant daily traffic.

This news comes hot on the heels of the agency commendation last week at the M&M Global Awards for Legend of Akhtamar, which was recognised as ‘Highly Commendable’ in the International Targeting category.

In addition, Amsterdam Worldwide were shortlisted in two other M&M categories – the Onitsuka Tiger Tansu campaign for Best Use of Content and Akhtamar for Best Use of Digital.

Earlier this year the agency won a Gold Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival for their Tansu campaign for Onitsuka Tiger.

Getting ahead with Converse

2010-08-28T08:24:00.005+01:00

create-your-own-paper-head

Converse unveils 3-D ‘Paper Heads’ app

It’s easy to lose your head during the heat of the summer, especially at music festivals, but thanks to Converse you can fashion a new one for safekeeping. As part of its Summer of Music campaign, the brand has created an online app that’ll help get fans noticed.

The “Paper Heads” online application, created by our client Perfect Fools, enables users to create 3-D paper masks of their own faces. Visitors to www.converseblog.com click on the webcam-enabled app to photograph their face, render it in 3-D and transform it into a printable mask format. Different paper sizes can be used: A4 is fun, A3 better, but for maximum effect, A2 paper works best.

The Paper Head app is inspired by those sported in the music video for All Summer, a
collaboration – exclusively for Converse – between Kid Cudi, Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend and Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino.

Converse is also bringing the app to life for festival goers. Music fans can create their own Paper Heads at several European festivals including Lowlands 2010 in the Netherlands and at Rock en Seine in France. Teams will be on site to help people design, print and stick.

“Cautious” marketers put budgets in reverse

2010-07-12T11:53:00.003+01:00

Lifted from Marketing Week...

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 | By Russell Parsons

The fragile nature of the recovery in the marketing industry has been highlighted by the latest Bellwether report, which found that marketing budgets were revised down in the second quarter.

The quarterly survey, carried out by Markit Economics on behalf of the IPA and BDO, shows almost 20% of those polled adjusted spend downwards in the three months to 30 June versus 15% that noted an increase, a net balance of 4.6%.

The reverse comes as a blow following the uplift of 4.5% Bellwether found in the first quarter, when marketing budgets increased for the first time since the global economic crisis started.

Confidence among those polled also dipped. A greater proportion of executives polled were more pessimistic about the financial prospects of their company that they had been at the start of the year, up to 25% from 20% in the first quarter.

The number feeling confident was flat at about 41%.

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit and author of the Bellwether report, says the downward revision was “disappointing” following the uplift seen in the first quarter.

“Companies are exercising increased caution in their expenditure in the face of likely slower economic growth in the second half of the year,” he adds.

The gloomier forecast from marketers comes amid fears that the recovery in the UK economy is also faltering.

Financial think-tank the National Institute for Economic and Social Research said last week that that quarter on quarter growth slowed to 0.7% in the three months to June, from 0.9% at the start of the year.

Many observers fear that the UK economy could be hit again in the next year after VAT increases to 20% in January and the extent of public sector job losses becomes known.

Despite the gloomier picture that emerged from Bellwether in the second quarter, other recent evidence suggests that advertising spend will grow this year following falls in the wake of the 2008/09 global recession. The latest Advertising Association/Warc data predicted overall market growth of 3.3% in 2010.

Commenting on Bellwether, Rory Sutherland, IPA President and vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK, says the “cautious” approach shown by marketers in the second quarter is understandable given the “uncertain” nature of the economy.

“However, though this indicates a less optimistic picture than previously thought for this year, marketing spend is still set to increase,” he adds.

Direct marketing, internet and internet search were the only media channels forecast to increase, according to Bellwether, with the net balance of those predicting uplift 1.2%, 10.1% and 6.6% respectively.

Sales promotion is expected to experience the steepest drop, by -11.5%.

Kid Cudi + Rostam Batmanglij + Best Coast, “All Summer” MP3

2010-07-08T19:06:00.000+01:00

Kid Cudi + Rostam Batmanglij + Best Coast, “All Summer” MP3

Inspiring Agencies to Do Their Best Work on Your Brands

2010-07-01T15:43:00.000+01:00

Interesting post by marketing luminary, Jim Stengel

InspiringAgencies

Inspiring Agencies to Do Their Best Work on Your Brands
I recently spoke with the Cannes Creative Leadership Program group at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, and shared what I have learned over the years about leadership in client/agency relationships. Here are my “8 Tips” to inspire agencies to do their best work on your brands:

1. It’s about the people we serve, consumers, not us.

Know your business and your consumer, and hold everyone on the brand team, including your agencies, accountable for the same.

Embrace the consumer when and wherever s/he is receptive; including the store.

As a team, let the consumer guide all decisions and actions.

2. Create, or renew, a “brand ideal” for your brand that inspires your team.

Your “brand ideal should be rooted in the brand’s heritage, and it should represent a meaningful goal for the brand that inspires everyone to better serve consumers.

3. Be a “leader integrator.”

Get all of your agencies at the same table on a regular basis. Your brand will benefit from the synergy and creativity that happens when they collectively debate the future direction for your brand.

Own identification of decision makers for all activities, and be clear about who has authority.

4. Go for the “and.”

Set very high standards and accept no compromises. Your advertising must be persuasive and likeable, rationale and emotional, distinctive and relevant.

5. Build a relationship with your Creative people.

Learn to speak the language of creatives and embrace the creative brief. Be sure you and your leading creative are on the same page about what makes great advertising.

Create an environment where your brand team interacts more often and more collaboratively with your creative team.

6. Say “I do.”

A true agency partnership is a long-term commitment. Treat your agency as a real partner.

Get your agency team involved early and often in opportunities to influence and contribute to the brand strategy, brand direction, and brand equity.

Don’t be afraid to take risks, and own them jointly with the agency. The best advertising doesn’t result from “being safe.”

7. Open up.

Evaluate each other formally at least once a year. This will ensure the expectations on both sides are understood, and that we are holding ourselves accountable for delivering against them.

Deliver feedback with respect, honesty and candor. Receive it with an open mind and appreciation.

8. “Be the “magnet.”

Be personally responsible for creating a culture that attracts and inspires the world’s best creative talent within your agency. Make it part of your workplan.

Know the people on your business as individuals. Show appreciation for their commitment, passion, and tremendous effort, even when mistakes occur.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 11:32 am and is filed under Business, Speaking Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Inspiring Agencies to Do Their Best Work on Your Brands”
Ute Hagen says:
July 1, 2010 at 9:01 am
Jim, this is excellent help for Marketers. I recognize the moments in my career when we were getting the best ideas from our Agency partners. In fact, often we were so “ahead of the time” that we had a hard time selling the work to Top Management. Any tips on how to sell work that is generated like this to Top Management that may not be so close to the consumer to understand why it is so great?

Fishy phishing

2010-06-17T21:37:00.003+01:00

I love this new twist on an old phishing scam...

Hello

I pray that this message meets you in Good Health, I am General John Miller, From Ohio,51 yrs of Age, A retired American Soldier who went for Peace keeping talk in Iraq during the time of Sadam Hussein but now on a sick bed in UK, for heart Operation which has lasted for more than 4yrs flying from one country to another to get a better operation but now has landed in United kingdom Due to the same problem.

I like to bring to your notice about funds US$13.2Million Dollars which we discovered on our visit to one Saddam Hussein’s farmhouse near one of Saddam's old palaces in Tikrit-Iraq during a rescue operation, and it was agreed by Sgt Darren D. Braswell and I that some part of this money be shared among both of us while US$5million Dollars be shared among the Junior Officers that followed us to the Rescue Operation about 7 of them.

After the sharing of this funds i was in Possession of US$4.5million Dollars as my own personal share and due to i was not yet retired from the US army i handed it over to a diplomat to send it down to the states for me which he did his best and delivered it to somewhere personal at Atlanta Georgia under the care of a Custom officer. Details shall be revealed on my next response to you.

I seek your assistance to stand for me and receive these said funds in cash in your state.

You will be handsomely rewarded if you can assist me on this, because i don’t know my position in the Hospital at the moment.

I like to also bring to your Notice that i was born an brought up in an orphanage home before i joined the US army at the age of 25, due to this reason i do not have any family to call my own.

Come back to me with your assurance to assist me receive this cash funds to enable me get you in contact with the custom officer in possession of this funds to deliver them to you.

Please view website for confirmation: http://www.voanews.com/burmese/archive/2003-04/a-2003-04-20-1-1.cfm

Best regards.

General John Miller,

Will England’s players miss Twitter?

2010-06-07T13:42:00.004+01:00

Here's an article I wrote that's was published in Marketing Week on Friday

MarketingWeek

Will England’s players miss Twitter?

Mark Terry-Lush, founder and director at Renegade Media, debates if the England players are any worse off by being banned from using Twitter at the World Cup.

So Fabio Capello has banned his stars from their Twitter accounts and Facebook pages for the duration of next month’s football World Cup.

In fairness to the Italian, the decision was most probably taken by one of the FA’s media handlers; the same handlers who recently strangled at birth his potentially lucrative player ratings service.

But much like the ’English disease’ that was football hooliganism a few years back, putting the boot into social media seems to have spread across Europe.

Spain coach Vicente del Bosque has stopped his players from using their social networking sites too, citing the desire for “no distractions” during the tournament.

In many respects, the move is just a logical extension of Sven Goran Eriksson’s ban on his players writing articles for newspapers during the last World Cup. It just takes into account developments in media.

You can see why they’ve done it. Dropped player reveals to opposition he’s not playing (for which read Darren Bent) or candid admission hints at disunity (that’ll be you John Terry) and starts media witch-hunt etc.

And for those with little interest in the ramblings of some of our more cerebrally-challenged footballers, it is probably reason to celebrate.

Yet the implications for marketing practitioners such as ourselves, not to mention wider notions of freedom of speech and employer/employee relations are worth thinking about.

Here at Renegade Media we’ve advised, set up and Tweeted on behalf of Manchester United and other Premiership stars this season. Given Alex Ferguson’s famously fiery dislike of the phenomenon, our player comments have sailed under the radar using a sponsor as a flag of convenience.

Not all sports organisations are as prescriptive. When we Tweeted on behalf of former England rugby union internationals and advised a former captain on the nuances of successful Twitter engagement there was no rumblings at all from the RFU.

Cards on the table therefore, we have a vested interest in this ban. Yet don’t all marketers?

And don’t all lovers of free speech and an unfettered media for that matter, without wishing to sound unnecessarily dramatic about it?

Isn’t direct censorship of this kind, particularly in the days of the Freedom of Information Act, something we used to cock a snoop at the Soviet Union over, tutting at their politburos and Pravda-led pronouncements?

If the Football Association can stop their employees using social media (in their own time presumably, given the difficulty of tweeting during an international football match) why can’t others?

We can laugh at the Luddite tendencies and their fear of new technology and what it might reap, but the truth is we are entering dangerous waters here.

There may even be a series of battles to be fought between those who want to retain the independence and freedom of Twitter and Facebook and those whose aim is to suppress them.

Will a day come - in football perhaps, as it did with Jean-Marc Bosman’s challenge that changed employment law forever - when an employee challenges his employer over their ban on social media?

Surely it’s as logical a next step as England getting knocked out of the World Cup via a penalty shoot-out?

Love it or loathe it - and I swing from one to the other in truth - I know whose side on behalf I’d be taking up arms.

There is a distinct usefulness to social media in general and Twitter in particular.

Unlike the decisions taken by the FA and their Spanish counterparts it is inherently democratic.

As consumers we can filter feed the media we want, digesting the pronouncements of celebrities and companies we chose to follow and spitting out those who aren’t to our taste.

It is a credible, accountable and trusted marketing channel - particularly among the younger generation whose income we are all looking to court.

Not only that, it is a minute-by-minute barometer of what is hot and what is not. Nothing is quite so immediate.

Capello and del Bosque may have legitimate ’crisis management’ reasons for taking the heat out of a potential PR disaster, but we should all fear the big freeze.

"The Digital Election"

2010-05-01T14:14:00.001+01:00

IAB unveils white paper discussing what we can learn from the "Digital Election".

Download Digital Election Report here

Friday, 30 April 2010

This is the fifth Election since Tim Berners-Lee invented the web and the fourth since the formation of the IAB. More significantly though it is the first UK election since facilities like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been firmly established.

Such developments have made it easier for all of us to comment on (and influence) key aspects of modern society. So what impact has this has had on the 2010 Election?

The IAB has assembled a selection of digital and political experts to provide a commentary on how the technological developments that we’ve lived through in the five years since the last election have affected both our collective experience of the Election and the individual parties’ attempts to win our votes.

With a focus on what brands can learn from the experience, our expert panel has also been assessing which parties have performed best in the Digital Election as well as offering key insights to help brands and advertisers keen to unlock digital’s potential.

The report was edited and compiled by the IAB’s Editorial Manager Stuart Aitken and includes chapters from Emily Bell, Director of Digital Content for Guardian News and Media; Matthew McGregor, London Director of Blue State Digital; Ruth Barnett, the Sky News journalist who became the media’s first Twitter correspondent in 2009; and Ciaran Norris, Global Head of Social at Mindshare.

Renegade’s Gongtastic Clients

2010-04-16T14:38:00.006+01:00

What it a week it has been for our advertising and creative clients: Amsterdam Worldwide, DMG, Happiness and Perfect Fools.

Each has picked up a variety of international accolades from collecting a Mobius award – in their office, being recognised as one of the World’s Leading Independent Agencies, and featuring in the “No Apples: 100 Other Top Innovators” book.

Amsterdam Worldwide came to a halt on Monday when the Mobius Awards team arrived from the USA to present three trophies for the agency’s ASICS Left & Right social media campaign. AWW picked up ‘Winner - New Media’ and ‘Winner - Best of Show’ in the New Media category.

Yesterday a double whammy for DMG, Happiness and Perfect Fools. “No Apples: 100 Other Top Innovators” is a beautifully-designed hard-backed book featuring profiles of the most innovative companies from the last 12 months. Combining stunning imagery with in-depth interviews with key players at companies including Intel, Nike, Fiat, Spotify, ASICS, VW and Kodak, the book is designed to celebrate and inspire. The one hundred companies contained within the book, dubbed ‘the Cream 100’, include brands, agencies, consultancies, technologists, charities and funding bodies – all committed to embracing new challenges and uncharted territory.

No Apples book

Also yesterday, Campaign magazine in association with TheNetworkOne published their annual World’s Leading Independent Agencies book. Perfect Fools and DMG star for the second year in a row. Follow these links and read the inspirational essays from these two agencies on opposite sides of the global who we have worked closely with for nearly three years.

Perfect Fools - a Best Indie
DMG - a Best Indie

Renegade is beaming with pride at representing such globally recognised agencies who are game-changers in the communications industry. We’re proud to play a part in building their profiles, managing their reputations and amplifying campaigns to international audiences.

Marks & Spencer, the reply

2010-04-08T12:13:00.002+01:00

Reply from M&S... top marks for fast response, good customer service via email, but still a somewhat cold response...wife still not got any flowers....

Dear Mr Terry-Lush

Thanks for contacting us about the cancellation and non delivery of your order. I'm sorry for any disappointment this may have caused you and your wife.

Having looked into this, I can confirm that all our stock's subject to availability and therefore we're unable to prevent this form happening. However, we've put forward a request on behalf of our customers to change this system.

Also, thanks for informing us that the link doesn't work. We appreciate you taking time to notify us of this.

Thanks for getting in touch. If we can be of any further help, please feel free to contact us on 0845 609 0200. If you are calling from overseas call us on +44 1925 672 317. Or you can reach us by using the following link http://www.marksandspencer.com/contactus

Kind Regards

Lorann Naidoo
Marks & Spencer Customer Services
Registered office: Waterside House, 35 North Wharf Road, London, W2 1 NW.
Registered Number: 214436 (England and Wales)

View and track your orders online:
http://www.marksandspencer.com

Not just any cock up, an M&S cock up

2010-04-08T09:05:00.002+01:00

Marks & Spencer...
Ordered some flowers on 2 April for delivery on 3 April.

Got this email on 5 April

Not the model of ecommerce customer service one might expect from M&S

And, the link to the Contacts page is broken....

Dear Mr terry-lush,

Thank you for your recent order.

We are sorry to let you know that the following item has been delayed and we may
not be able to deliver to you by the date you selected.

"April Bouquet"
Delivery Method: Nominated Day Delivery
Delivery Estimate: April 03 2010

We are sorry if this causes any disappointment or inconvenience, we will refund
your delivery charge and will contact you shortly to arrange a new delivery date.

When we despatch your order, we will email you to confirm the contents of your
delivery and that it is on its way.

For your reference, here is a summary of your order:

1 of "April Bouquet"

You can track your order at http://www.marksandspencer.com/myaccount.

If you need to contact us for any further information,
please click on the link below:

https://www.marksandspencer.com/gp/contact/277-0017431-0804270?extid=090003
Thank you for shopping at marksandspencer.com

Marks & Spencer Customer Services
http://www.marksandspencer.com

Please note this email was sent from a notification-only address
that is unable to accept incoming email.

Marks and Spencer plc.
Registered office: Waterside House, 35 North Wharf Road, London, W2 1 NW.
Registered Number: 214436 (England and Wales)

Pure - the most mental club in history?

2010-03-12T15:27:00.007Z

Last night I had dinner with a client/colleague who's a Scot and we found that we both shared the same memories of Pure -- a pioneering club in Edinburgh in the late 80s -- and what a profound effect it had on our lives. Stuart mentioned that he knew one of the Pure DJs and had interviewed him. Anyway, today Stuart forwarded me this story by "Twitch", a legend who still DJs today at www.optimo.co.uk.

Here's the piece by Twitch... if you we there and want to know more then check out Stuart Aitken's blog at http://tinyurl.com/ykta3tn.

"I am always getting asked about 'back in the day'. 'Back in the day' I guess refers to the days when I did Pure in Edinburgh which ran for exactly ten years from 1990 to 2000. Pure was Scotland's first bona fide techno club and for the first six or seven years it was possibly the best club of its type on the planet. I know that sounds arrogant as hell but honestly, it was. Ask anyone who went or any of the guests who played there. It was to use the parlance of the time 'mental'. Partly this was because at the start most people who came had never heard loud electronic dance music before and boy, was it loud. In the early days before we started to fear for people's well being, Pure was also probably the loudest club on the planet. The monitors for the djs were more powerful and louder than most other clubs entire sound systems. Just thinking about how ridiculously loud it was is actually making me laugh as I type this. Along with the volume, Pure also had the most incredible lighting that pretty much became the blueprint for 'rave lighting'. In a split second the club would go from a sensory overload of every colour imaginable firing at you from every direction to complete darkness punctuated by banks of 'terror strobes' that were so intense that it was literally impossible to move from the spot where you were dancing until they went off again. Then there was the smoke. Sometimes Lighting Monkey (our Optimo lighting operator) leaves the smoke machine on a little too long and the Sub Club looks pretty foggy. Well, multiply that exponentially with multiple smoke machines on full blast for minutes on end until the fog is so thick that you can't see anything at all. if you held up your hand to your face you wouldn't be able to see it. We went through litres and litres of the stuff every week. Finally there were the drugs. The start of Pure pretty much coincided with the arrival of ecstacy in Scotland. So, all these factors combined - the fact that this music sounded like nothing most people had ever heard before, the volume, the intensity of the lights, the smoke and the drugs and people's minds were literally being blown.

"The only way to describe what the atmosphere in there was like is 'Beyond'. It was scary. Every time a new record was mixed in the screams were so loud that despite the ear shredding volume, the screams would drown out the music. People would be climbing onto and even into the pa system. There were times when the whole dancefloor would become one massive group hug. A certain Detroit legend who djed there one time was so freaked out by how mad the atmosphere was that he decided he couldn't play any more and I had to take over. It was truly revolutionary.

"This 'revolution' changed a lot of people's lives (some for the better, some for the worse). The crowd was very mixed with people of every age, race, sexuality and social class and a lot of people formed incredibly strong friendships with people they would never normally have encountered in life. A lot of attitudes were changed, prejudices overcome and life paths altered. it enabled a lot of people to see life in a different light and a lot of people 'dropped out' as they would have said in the 60's. Many times someone would come up and tell me that coming to Pure had inspired them to quit their job that they hated and try and do something different with their life. At the same time, a lot of people dropped out in a negative sense. The level of drug consumption was off the scale and taking 'E' became a way of life for a lot of people. Marriages collapsed, university degrees were forgotten about, jobs were lost and sadly a few minds were lost, some forever. Mine was almost one of them.

"I am by nature quite a shy person and I don't really like being the centre of attention. Both myself and Brainstorm (Andy) who was my dj partner at Pure tried really hard to be egoless, to not bask in the adulation of the near religous fervour that was happening before our eyes. At the end of the night when the lights came up, we would literally duck beneath the decks to avoid appearing to be the stars of the show. We weren't the stars. The audience were (something I still hold by to this day). There was also an enormous sense of responsibility. People would endlessly (half jokingly) say how coming to Pure had caused them to get kicked out of university, messed up their life or some other misfortune and how it was my fault. I would laugh this off but really it affected me quite a lot as I felt this sense of responsibility and began to question the validity of what i was doing. The club truly became a way of life for a lot of people to the point where several people had the Pure logo tattooed on their bodys! The club was about a zillion times more popular than we had ever envisaged with people traveling from all over (a bus load would come from Glasgow every week). I had never intended to do this for a living but I was so caught up in the euphoria that it took over my life completely and utterly and I really didn't know how to handle it. I was pretty straight edge in the early days and would have my head fried by the babblings of people on a chemically enhanced plane that i couldn't really relate to. Later on I would drink just to make it easier to handle.

"In the end I think it really changed me as a person but despite the fact that I found the whole experience quite surreal and initially difficult to deal with, I discovered that I REALLY, REALLY loved sharing the music I loved with other people. Playing music you love and seeing people reacting to it is an amazing experience. It is better than any drug imaginable and something I can't imagine ever tiring of. In fact I probably enjoy doing it more right now than I ever have. Ultimately, ten years of doing Pure gave me a sense of confidence I'd never had before and was the best training I could possibly have had to go on to continue doing this with my life.

"So, that was what 'back in the day' was like. It was incredible, life changing and well, just 'Beyond'. The next thing people always ask is 'was it better?' The answer would have to be no. I genuinely believe Optimo is now one of the best clubs on the planet because we have one of the best crowds on the planet and a great night at Optimo is an incredible thing to behold. But, I'm kind of relieved that that total, total madness of the early 90's has subsided somewhat. I will cherish those days forever but I'm not a nostalgic person and don't buy into the whole 'it was better back in the day' thing. It wasn't better. It was just different and I'm glad that I have the memories and managed not to lose my mind, even if the same thing can't be said for my hearing."

Facebook Messages Revealed

2010-03-04T10:43:00.000Z

A few weeks ago Facebook fouled up in a big way by misdirecting private messages to the wrong recipients, revealing a random and riveting slice of life to members who found their inboxes full of love notes for teenagers in other US States (or countries), the jealous rants of spurned lovers, ho-hum planning for family events, menacing hate mail, updates on accidents and illness... the list goes on. The story was first reported by a Wall Street Journal reporter who happened to be one of the mixed-up recipients, and posted some excerpts from the misdirected missives.

Today Gawker.com posted a more extensive sampling of the text of these sometimes prurient, sometimes pathetic, sometimes pedestrian but always personal windows into the lives of others. I have reposted some of my favorites from the WSJ and Gawker.com below, with my commentary seeking to unearth the deeper meaning of it all.

"I might kill you for this."

ES: This is smart. You need to give yourself some leeway when issuing death threats. "Depending on schedule and personnel availability, and other issues still TBD, you may be one dead m***********."

"Until I start hearing some thank yous from you, I will be unable to give you rides home after dance."

ES: This made me wonder how much parenting/child discipline takes place via Facebook. Probably a fair amount, and why not? Sure it seems absurd when exposed to the general public, but I think most parent-child hectoring seems absurd to outsiders, regardless of the forum (viz: Alec Baldwin's cell phone message to his daughter).

"The jealousy, the vibes, and what I hold dear to me made this whole weekend hard. The cuddling, truth or dare game, the texting back and forth for long periods of time, and the whispering back and forth for a long time got to me."

ES: This is clearly describing some kind of insufferable love tricycle, from the perspective of the jealous third wheel. If it were me, I would have dared them to play a game of William Tell, with bricks instead of arrows. In fairness, however, the third wheel needs to stand up for him-/herself. Why the hell is he/she hanging out with these inconsiderate schmucks? Probably because of unrequited love for the intended recipient (I've been there myself, and yes, it was a stupid waste of time when I did it too).

"I took my stuff off don't want to ruin your life for you. So you can continue to cheat on facebook I don't care anymore. I have asked you please not to do things but you keep on and on. So you are listed as married but that is because my status is gone. Too bad everything had to end over a f*****' website. Wow that was worth it to you I guess."

ES: This is one of the sadder messages unearthed by Gawker.com. On a serious note, it brings up the peril of social networks: they are so convenient, and their reach is so broad, that they make infidelity as easy as ordering a pizza. I don't have any Utopian program for dealing with this -- it's hardly the social network's fault that people cheat -- but it interests me to see how individuals adapt and deal with the new possibilities opened to them by technology. And while it could be argued that if someone wants to cheat, they're going to cheat, I have to imagine that ease and convenience have a lot to do with the actual decision to commit infidelity - i.e., that more people cheat now, because it's easier via social networks?

Greetings from Twitter's founder

2010-03-03T10:41:00.003Z

I got an email from Mr Stone this morning... None of my colleagues received it (why me then?). Anyway, I thought I'd share it as it's quite sweet...

Hi there,

In the early days of Twitter, I used to send out short updates just to keep everyone in the loop since so much was happening. It's been a while, but you signed up for short, monthly updates from Twitter so we thought it was time to start sharing more information. We've had quite a year. If you haven't visited in a while, we'd like to invite you to come have a look at http://twitter.com -- we've been busy!

Growing Up
In the course of a year, registered Twitter accounts have grown more than 1,500% and our team has grown 500%. Recently, we hired our 140th employee! His name is Aaron and he's an engineer focused on building internal tools to help promote productivity, communication, and support within our company. We celebrated with a little dance party.

Features of Note
Some features of note that we released over the course of a year include the ability to create lists, quickly spread information with a retweet button, and an easier way to activate your mobile phone to work with Twitter over SMS. We also built a new mobile web site that looks and works much better on smart phones.

Feeling Inspired
By working together during critical times when others needed help, sharing important information that otherwise might not make the news, and inventing new and interesting ways to use Twitter, you've shown us that Twitter is more than a triumph of technology -- it is a triumph of humanity. Projects like Fledgling and Hope140 were inspired by you.

Chirp!
While there may only be 140 full-time employees working at the Twitter offices, there are thousands of dedicated platform developers who have now created more than 70,000 registered Twitter applications creating variety and utility for all of us. We'll be gathering this spring at Chirp, our first ever official Twitter developer conference.
Thanks,

Biz Stone, Co-founder (@Biz)
Twitter, Inc.

PS: This was sent to mark@renegadephoto.net for the account @CountryMediaBoy. If you'd rather not receive newsletters from Twitter, you can unsubscribe immediately. For questions, please visit us at Twitter Support.

Milky wrongness from Perfect Fools

2010-02-10T11:35:00.005Z

Have you ever wanted to milk a cow but were afraid your senses might explode? Well now you can, without the worry of impaling yourself on a milking stool. Dairy hats off to Sweden's Perfect Fools for it's latest creation... the E-cow.

http://www.e-kon.se/

Perfect Fools created Milk the E-cow together with WatersWidgren\TBWA for the launch of Arla’s ecological cottage cheese.

It's teat-tastistc, if not a little pervy in a bovine way.

The Twitter Train Has Left the Station

2010-02-04T16:19:00.001Z

By NICK BILTON
George Packer usually writes about foreign affairs, politics and books for The New Yorker, but this week he decided to attack Twitter in a blog post that ironically got much of its attention because a link to it was reposted more than 700 times on Twitter.

“Every time I hear about Twitter I want to yell Stop,” he writes. “The notion of sending and getting brief updates to and from dozens or thousands of people every few minutes is an image from information hell.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Packer’s misgivings seem to be based entirely on what he has heard about the service — he’s so afraid of it that he won’t even try it. (I wonder how Mr. Packer would feel if, say, a restaurant critic panned a restaurant based solely on hearsay about the establishment.)

“Twitter is crack for media addicts,” he writes. “It scares me, not because I’m morally superior to it, but because I don’t think I could handle it.”

Call me a digital crack dealer, but here’s why Twitter is a vital part of the information economy — and why Mr. Packer and other doubters ought to at least give it a Tweet.

Hundreds of thousands of people now rely on Twitter every day for their business. Food trucks and restaurants around the world tell patrons about daily food specials. Corporations use the service to handle customer service issues. Starbucks, Dell, Ford, JetBlue and many more companies use Twitter to offer discounts and coupons to their customers. Public relations firms, ad agencies, schools, the State Department — even President Obama — now use Twitter and other social networks to share information.

There are communication and scholarly uses. Right now, an astronaut, floating 250 miles above the Earth, is using Twitter and conversing with people all over the globe, answering both mundane and scientific questions about living on a space station.

Most importantly, Twitter is transforming the nature of news, the industry from which Mr. Packer reaps his paycheck. The news media are going through their most robust transformation since the dawn of the printing press, in large part due to the Internet and services like Twitter. After this metamorphosis takes place, everyone will benefit from the information moving swiftly around the globe.

You can see that change beginning to take place. During the protests in Iran last year, ordinary Iranians shared information through Twitter about the government atrocities taking place. That supplemented the reporting by professional journalists, who faced restrictions on their movements and coverage. More recently, after the earthquake in Haiti, Twitter helped spread information about donation efforts, connected people to their loved ones, and of course, spread news from inside the country — news that reprinted in this publication.

Finally, there’s the filtering, entertainment and serendipitous value of these services, as I outlined in a previous post.

Ironically, Mr. Packer notes how much he treasures his Amtrak rides in the quiet car of the train, with his laptop closed and cellphone turned off. As I’ve found in previous research, when trains were a new technology 150 years ago, some journalists and intellectuals worried about the destruction that the railroads would bring to society. One news article at the time warned that trains would “blight crops with their smoke, terrorize livestock … and people could asphyxiate” if they traveled on them.

I wonder if, 150 years ago, Mr. Packer would be riding the train at all, or if he would have stayed home, afraid to engage in an evolving society and demanding that the trains be stopped.

Lifted from the New York Times
Thursday, February 4, 2010

Eight Ways to Ruin Your Social-Media Strategy

2010-02-04T13:44:00.003Z

So you’ve set up a company fan page on Facebook and you’re letting your employees fire off messages to the world via Twitter — or you’re at least thinking about it. Well, congratulations. You’re part of the social-media revolution, which can offer unparalleled access to word-of-mouth buzz among those you most want to reach: your customers, current and future.

Hold on, though. While social media might sound simple, there are as many ways to screw up in this new world as in the old. More, in fact, because technology and online norms are both new and rapidly evolving, often in ways that are particularly challenging to deal with in a corporate setting. Here are eight mistakes to avoid as you make your way in the buzzing cauldron of grass-roots chat.

Mistake 1: Pretend you can do without it.
You may have already run into the Graying Skeptics, executives who can’t understand why they should devote employee time and company resources to social media, and who dismiss Facebook and Twitter as fads that amount to little more than a waste of time and money.

Well, social media is here to stay, and the rocketing growth of some outlets makes it foolish to ignore them. Facebook, the largest, recently reached 300 million users worldwide — roughly the population of the United States. And the largest demographic is the 35 to 49 set that most businesses are eager to reach. So listen to Sebastian Gard of social marketing firm Context Optional when he says bluntly: “You’re going to have a social-media strategy whether you do it or not. It’s not up to you."

Context Optional.
Mistake 2: Play down the costs.
Sure, Twitter accounts, Facebook fan pages and YouTube channels don’t cost a thing. But don’t think for a second that you can do your social-media effort on the cheap. Getting the most out of these tools requires time, attention and skill — none of which are free.

Over time, however, social media does save you some money, since you can use these outlets for efforts you might otherwise contract out to PR firms, ad agencies or market researchers. Don’t expect to replace them all. Instead, think of social media as a necessary and powerful complement to your existing outreach.

Mistake 3: Act like you own the conversation
Social media is a conversation, and conversations — more so than ads — require tact. “It all begins with listening,” says Paul Chaney, an Internet marketing director who bills himself as The Social Media Handyman. Just as you wouldn’t walk into a cocktail party and start bragging about yourself, Chaney says, you shouldn’t “just jump into the conversation” in social-media channels, either.

So if your customers are talking about your stores online, don’t just start blasting them with canned sale promotions — unless, of course, you want to lose customers. Instead, get a feel for the vibe of the conversation, then ease your way into it, for instance, by answering general user questions, even if they don’t pertain directly to your company or its brands. Let your social-media mavens become resources for these customer micro-communities. Once your folks have earned some trust, they’ll have the leeway to advance your business goals.

Dunkin’ Donuts did this well when it set up a social-media presence last year on Facebook and elsewhere. “We wanted to have conversations with our consumers, who were already having these conversations themselves,” says David Puner, a communications manager at the Canton, Mass.-based company. “Once we got out there, people found us.” A year later, one million people are fans of the official Dunkin’ Facebook page. The brand has its own YouTube channel, and its Twitter feed, @dunkindonuts — which Puner runs — has more than 35,000 followers.

Mistake 4: Fear empowering your employees
A client once told me they were nervous about letting customer-service employees speak to the public through Twitter. I asked, 'Would you trust these people to talk to customers on the phone or face to face?' Of course they would. The key is to think of social media more like a call center than a press release.

The online shoe store Zappos, now part of Amazon, has a reputation for personalised customer service and communication — and social media played a big role. Dozens of employees maintain blogs on the company Web site; hundreds have Twitter accounts. It’s not just Web-only companies that offer such empowerment, Dell, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Southwest Airlines do as well. The common thread: All have corporate cultures that value transparent relationships with customers.

Mistake 5: Assume you have little to learn
Dell, however, joined the social media revolution the hard way. When Jeff Jarvis, a prominent media blogger, did a series of 2005 posts on his horrible customer-service experience with Dell — posts that came to be known as “Dell Hell” — the company suddenly realized how powerful, and damaging, the voice of the consumer could be.

Spurred by the public relations disaster, CEO Michael Dell blessed an effort to work his company into its customers’ conversations. According to a case study on Dell in the book “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” the listening effort helped Dell figure out, for instance, that it needed to better coordinate technical support and customer service to quickly resolve customer problems.

Mistake 6: Take negative feedback personally
Look, this is the Internet, where there are always going to be trolls and other nasty individuals who delight in saying unpleasant things about your company, especially in the comment boxes -- that where the evil really lurk. Don’t let it bug you. On the other hand, don’t overlook the opportunity to address real concerns head-on.

Comcast began to repair its dismal customer-service reputation several years ago by using Twitter to reach out to complaining customers, offering to troubleshoot problems or sometimes offering refunds. Frank Eliason, the director of digital care, originally manned the account, @comcastcares; it’s now staffed by a small platoon of Comcast employees. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Comcast’s score is inching upward. “It’s still not where we would like to see it, but we are happy it is heading in the right direction,” Eliason says.

Mistake 7: Fret about return on investment
Solid return on investment in social media is tough to measure. You can, however, evaluate your outreach efforts the same way you might a PR or advertising campaign.
You can start by looking at simple tallies such as your number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, or how often people visit your company’s blog. Other metrics, such as the number of blog comments and the number of times consumers shared a link to your content, can show how engaged users are with your brand.

That said, many companies still take the value of social media largely on faith. Context Optional’s Sebastian Gard, who until June was a social-media manager at Microsoft, admits, “The only way I can tell you it’s effective [at Microsoft] is that they continue to do more of it.”

Mistake 8: Underestimate the power of seemingly small efforts
Embracing social media isn’t about achieving specific goals so much as it is establishing a real bond with your customers. Rick Karp, president and “keeper of the karma” for the San Francisco-based Cole Hardware chain, recently announced via Twitter (@colehardware) that the company would exchange a particular water bottle suspected of chemical contamination — no questions asked. Within two weeks, consumers returned about 1,000 of the bottles. “We lost money, but we gained so much [for our brand] by virtue of our doing it,” he says. “I will do a lot to build our brand, regardless of whether it pays off immediately economically or not.”

“We wanted to have conversations with our consumers, who were already having these conversations themselves,” says David Puner, a communications manager at Dunkin' Donuts.

Eight Ways to Ruin Your Social-Media Strategy

2010-02-04T13:44:00.000Z

So you’ve set up a company fan page on Facebook and you’re letting your employees fire off messages to the world via Twitter — or you’re at least thinking about it. Well, congratulations! You’re part of the social-media revolution, which can offer unparalleled access to word-of-mouth buzz among those you most want to reach: your customers, current and future.

Hold on, though. While social media might sound simple, there are as many ways to screw up in this new world as in the old. More, in fact, because technology and online norms are both new and rapidly evolving, often in ways that are particularly challenging to deal with in a corporate setting. Here are eight mistakes to avoid as you make your way in the buzzing cauldron of grass-roots chat.

Mistake 1: Pretend you can do without it.
You may have already run into the Graying Skeptics, executives who can’t understand why they should devote employee time and company resources to social media, and who dismiss Facebook and Twitter as fads that amount to little more than a waste of time and money.

Well, social media is here to stay, and the rocketing growth of some outlets makes it foolish to ignore them. Facebook, the largest, recently reached 300 million users worldwide — roughly the population of the United States. And the largest demographic is the 35 to 49 set that most businesses are eager to reach. So listen to Sebastian Gard of social marketing firm Context Optional when he says bluntly: “You’re going to have a social-media strategy whether you do it or not. It’s not up to you."

Context Optional.
Mistake 2: Play down the costs.
Sure, Twitter accounts, Facebook fan pages and YouTube channels don’t cost a thing. But don’t think for a second that you can do your social-media effort on the cheap. Getting the most out of these tools requires time, attention and skill — none of which are free.
Over time, however, social media does save you some money, since you can use these outlets for efforts you might otherwise contract out to PR firms, ad agencies or market researchers. Don’t expect to replace them all. Instead, think of social media as a necessary and powerful complement to your existing outreach.

Mistake 3: Act like you own the conversation
Social media is a conversation, and conversations — more so than ads — require tact. “It all begins with listening,” says Paul Chaney, an Internet marketing director who bills himself as The Social Media Handyman. Just as you wouldn’t walk into a cocktail party and start bragging about yourself, Chaney says, you shouldn’t “just jump into the conversation” in social-media channels, either.

So if your customers are talking about your stores online, don’t just start blasting them with canned sale promotions — unless, of course, you want to lose customers. Instead, get a feel for the vibe of the conversation, then ease your way into it, for instance, by answering general user questions, even if they don’t pertain directly to your company or its brands. Let your social-media mavens become resources for these customer micro-communities. Once your folks have earned some trust, they’ll have the leeway to advance your business goals.

Dunkin’ Donuts did this well when it set up a social-media presence last year on Facebook and elsewhere. “We wanted to have conversations with our consumers, who were already having these conversations themselves,” says David Puner, a communications manager at the Canton, Mass.-based company. “Once we got out there, people found us.” A year later, one million people are fans of the official Dunkin’ Facebook page. The brand has its own YouTube channel, and its Twitter feed, @dunkindonuts — which Puner runs — has more than 35,000 followers.

Mistake 4: Fear empowering your employees
“A client once told me they were nervous about letting customer-service employees speak to the public through Twitter,” says David Griner, social-media strategist for Birmingham, Alabama-based ad agency Luckie & Co. “I asked, 'Would you trust these people to talk to customers on the phone or face to face?' Of course they would. The key is to think of social media more like a call center than a press release.”

The online shoe store Zappos, now part of Amazon, has a reputation for personalized customer service and communication — and social media played a big role. Dozens of employees maintain blogs on the company Web site; hundreds have Twitter accounts. It’s not just Web-only companies that offer such empowerment, Dell, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Southwest Airlines do as well. The common thread: All have corporate cultures that value transparent relationships with customers.

Mistake 5: Assume you have little to learn
Dell, however, joined the social media revolution the hard way. When Jeff Jarvis, a prominent media blogger, did a series of 2005 posts on his horrible customer-service experience with Dell — posts that came to be known as “Dell Hell” — the company suddenly realized how powerful, and damaging, the voice of the consumer could be. Spurred by the public relations disaster, CEO Michael Dell blessed an effort to work his company into its customers’ conversations. According to a case study on Dell in the book “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” the listening effort helped Dell figure out, for instance, that it needed to better coordinate technical support and customer service to quickly resolve customer problems.

Mistake 6: Take negative feedback personally
Look, this is the Internet, where there are always going to be trolls and other nasty individuals who delight in saying unpleasant things about your company. Don’t let it bug you. On the other hand, don’t overlook the opportunity to address real concerns head-on.
Comcast began to repair its dismal customer-service reputation several years ago by using Twitter to reach out to complaining customers, offering to troubleshoot problems or sometimes offering refunds. Frank Eliason, the director of digital care, originally manned the account, @comcastcares; it’s now staffed by a small platoon of Comcast employees. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Comcast’s score is inching upward. “It’s still not where we would like to see it, but we are happy it is heading in the right direction,” Eliason says.

Mistake 7: Fret about return on investment
Solid return on investment in social media is tough to measure. You can, however, evaluate your outreach efforts the same way you might a PR or advertising campaign.
You can start by looking at simple tallies such as your number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, or how often people visit your company’s blog. Other metrics, such as the number of blog comments and the number of times consumers shared a link to your content, can show how engaged users are with your brand.
That said, many companies still take the value of social media largely on faith. Context Optional’s Sebastian Gard, who until June was a social-media manager at Microsoft, admits, “The only way I can tell you it’s effective [at Microsoft] is that they continue to do more of it.”

Mistake 8: Underestimate the power of seemingly small efforts
Embracing social media isn’t about achieving specific goals so much as it is establishing a real bond with your customers. Rick Karp, president and “keeper of the karma” for the San Francisco-based Cole Hardware chain, recently announced via Twitter (@colehardware) that the company would exchange a particular water bottle suspected of chemical contamination — no questions asked. Within two weeks, consumers returned about 1,000 of the bottles. “We lost money, but we gained so much [for our brand] by virtue of our doing it,” he says. “I will do a lot to build our brand, regardless of whether it pays off immediately economically or not.”

“We wanted to have conversations with our consumers, who were already having these conversations themselves,” says David Puner, a communications manager at Dunkin' Donuts.

Twitter With a Twist as platform inspires brands to share content

2010-01-25T22:54:00.002Z

For much of the past year, a favorite game has been hypothesizing on Twitter's ad model. None have emerged, but that hasn't stopped brands from reaping the rewards of Twitter's growing popularity in other, surprising ways.

Brands are going beyond early Twitter efforts focused on customer service, buzz monitoring and contests, to embrace Twitter in its emerging role as a key part of the Internet infrastructure. They use it as a default content-syndication channel, pop-culture icon and real-time content source. What's more, Twitter's decision to open its application programming interface (API) has allowed brands to weave Twitter into campaigns, rather than have stand-alone Twitter strategies.

One of the most essential functions Twitter serves is as a real-time source of consumer-to-consumer recommendations. Twitter acknowledged this last November when it changed its prompt from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" For brands, this means Twitter has become a key content-sharing option. Some banner ads, for example, now have a "retweet" button.

Twitter serves a content-sharing role for an initiative Sapient Interactive kicked off for Coca-Cola tied to the World Cup. On its site, Sapient built widgets of information designed for sharing and Twitter lets consumers pass it around. "The real-time aspect is the most interesting," said Freddie Laker, director of digital strategy at Sapient.

Twitter has been discussed so much that the Global Language Monitor named it 2009 word of the year. A confectionery company is capitalizing on the zeitgeist with a Valentine's Day campaign that will use "Tweet me" on its Sweethearts sweeties. It also has iPhone and Web apps for users to Tweet Sweethearts' messages to friends. Marketers had been gravitating towards Facebook, but people are realizing it's a very cluttered space.

Other marketers using Twitter in a unique way include US brand Tasti D-Lite, which has made it the backbone of a customer loyalty programme. It lets users earn extra reward points for broadcasting their purchasing activity on Twitter and mobile social network Foursquare.

Twitter skeptics point to a stagnant, if not declining, traffic rate. According to Nielsen, Twitter.com received 18.1 million visitors last month, a 579 percent increase from a year earlier, but a 5 percent decrease from November. That doesn't, however, take into account the many tweeters using third-party tools to update and read tweets.

Popularity debates can obscure the service's power as a real-time pulse of information and feedback. Twitter already has deals with Microsoft and Google to feed its data into search results. Marketers have waded into the fire hose of information by taking on a curator role. Microsoft, for instance, has sponsored ExecTweets, built by Federated Media. It pulls together Tweets from executives in six industry verticals, from IT to healthcare.

These types of aggregation plays give a Twitter-based initiative far larger reach. Frog Design in San Francisco has created tvChatter, an iPhone app that aggregates discussions around TV shows. (NBC recently linked up with Frog to sponsor tvChatter.) The app is meant to appeal beyond Twitter's user base by allowing people to see a filtered stream of TV buzz in real time. While users can tweet directly from the app to join the conversation, it's not required, said Mike Goos, director of product management at Frog. "There's never the problem of a cold start," he said. "There's always some kind of relevant conversation going on."

The many different uses of Twitter are testament to the platform's inherent flexibility, with no cost to set up an account and a free API to build brand applications. The downside, according to Shiv Singh, social media lead at Razorfish, is this can lead to a confused strategy, or the lack of one. Many companies, he noted, find themselves with several different Twitter initiatives that lack coherence.

"You have to get your plumbing in order," he said. "You can't let these things mushroom."

Snow 3.0

2010-01-18T11:07:00.002Z

When the road to the office is covered with snow, those of us in the digital industry naturally feel a little comfort in knowing we can remain in contact with our colleagues and clients via the good old web. What happens though, when webcams and Google Docs just aren't enough? Faced with a trip to Paris last week, where our team was hosting a workshop and to which 25 marketing directors and managers had made their way across a frozen continent to attend, the question had to arise -- how helpful is the web to achieving our goal of physically moving from one place to another?

The morning started with the Blackberry beeping, a series of messages by SMS and messenger from friends travelling the same roads we plan to hit. Maps are shared and photos Flickr'd. Of course we've subscribed to the RSS feed from the local paper and there too are warning tales of frozen side roads and scarce grit. A conference call later and we're on our way, travelling in the path others have taken, but beyond the office door we need to know-- are airports open, will the trains be running, what's the situation at the other end?

First thought, let's move some money around. At the very best there will be delays and it will be useful to have some Euros in the pocket. Easy enough once we're online and a few clicks later some expenses are in the account. Harder though is to pin down the availability of transport. A text message to AQA's 63336 confirms that the small local airport can't charter anything today, but provides a phone number for tomorrow and a brief look at the regional hub in Birmingham confirms closure.

Eurostar is running, but seat availability through the site doesn't look good. Always the optimists, we turn to the social networks to see if there are options that can be made good through bribe or promise. A contact in a travel agency concurs that tickets can be bought, but only in first class and delays are likely.
Interesting that they have information that the dot com doesn't.

Back to flying. Birmingham operates its own dedicated Twitter feed.
A post has been made in the last hour "We’re still working hard to clear the snow. No movements expected until 1200. Check with your airline or visit...", says Margaret. Although the news isn't what we wanted to hear, it feels real, informed, comfortable and credible.

The day goes on, but already I feel like there are people across the UK helping me to get where I want to go. So there we lurk, in snowy South West England, hanging about in cyberspace until some wheels turn or the client gives in and sends everyone home.

The M5 and M42 are deserted, so is Birmingham Airport. Twitter and Facebook provide real time travel updates. We park, slip and slide into the Terminal, check the boards... then turn to Twitter again. Twitter is more up to date.

We fly, we land... iPhone app translates direction instructions for French taxi driver, Google Maps shows the way.

Snowmonsters terrorise Renegade HQ

2010-01-06T13:15:00.007Z

Renegade Media's offices were closed today following an invasion by Snowmonsters. Several children and clients were fed to the monsters in order to protect the team. Normal service may be resumed tomrrow, but don't count on it as the monsters are very scary.

Predictions for social media in 2010

2009-12-23T10:51:00.001Z

1. Social media marketing will finally transition from "nice to have" to "must have": Brands that haven't embraced the medium will understand that social media marketing is not about slapping a brand page on Facebook and hoping for the best. Efforts will start with a sound strategy, a commitment to participate, and a willingness to listen and respond. This may seem obvious, but there are brands that still aren't fully engaged. As more brands like Ford and Pepsi hire heads of social media to lead the charge, 2010 will be the year that brands realize that social media is no longer a novelty; it's serious business.

2. Location-based social networking is here to stay: More consumers will use smartphone applications to tell their friends where they are and who they are with. 2010 will be the year for brands to figure out how to market to them. Local bars/restaurants have been the main advertisers. However, opportunities shouldn't be limited to food. For example, luxury retailers could target consumers checking in at upscale restaurants and invite them to sample sales or give discounts.

3. Experimental social media budgets are key: How can you predict what's going to be the Twitter topic of 2010? You can't. But that doesn't mean you don't have the opportunity to be a pioneer. Creating an emerging media budget will give your brand the flexibility to participate in communities and embrace technological platforms before your competitors do.

4. The division between the virtual world and the physical world will continue to blur: Digital technology enables consumers to understand the world around them as well as others. These advancements are accelerated by smartphone usage. You'll see more companies using simulations and augmented reality to provide users branded text overlays and 3-D virtual demos on their phone viewfinder.

5. Crowd sourcing will turn social media into a direct sales channel: Social media is typically thought of as a vehicle for branding and relationship marketing, but there are direct sales opportunities. For example, Best Buy celebrated opening day for the movie New Moon by asking its Facebook fans what their favorite vampire-themed films and books were. They put 50 of those items on sale on BestBuy.com. Many fans thanked Best Buy for listening to them and readily purchased the products.

The most important thing for brands to remember is that we should spend less of our efforts trying to predict "what's next for 2010" and focus on adapting quickly to changes in consumer behavior and technology. The one certainty is that social marketing strategies will have to evolve with whatever comes our way next year.

Crunchonomics Makes It's Mart

2009-12-18T10:36:00.002Z

Money guru Martin Lewis is the man the British public want to lead the country out of recession.

The self-styled financial genius has saved millions for cash-strapped consumers since he launched moneysavingexpert.com.

Those who took part in the latest Crunchonomics poll believed Lewis is better equipped to manage the country's coffers than premier Gordon Brown.

Beleagured Brown only came second in the poll, while David Cameron was third.

Current chancellor Alistair Darling was fourth and Apprentice hirer and firer
Sir Alan Sugar, who recently took on a role as a business adviser for the Government, was fifth.

Yesterday Steve Booth, chief executive of media planning and buying consultants Arena BLM, which carry out the quarterly Crunchonomics research: said: ''Martin Lewis has already helped millions of Brits get back on top of their finances, which has made him a popular choice for doing the same with the country’s cash.

"Crunchonomics has revealed that Briton’s are being more thrifty, but Martin’s money-saving tips and advice on debt have saved people millions of pounds over the past few years, especially since the recessions has taken hold.

"He’s also advised people on how to get their bills down to the lowest amount possible and even how to reduce the amount they spend on their weekly food shop.

"Not only is he extremely savvy when it comes to spending money wisely but he isn’t afraid to speak his mind if something is unfair either.

Sixth place in the poll of 1900 Brits went to BBC business editor Robert Peston, while Conservative MP and Shadow Secretary of State for Business Kenneth Clarke came seventh.

Shadow chancellor George Osbourne was voted in at number eight while Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was at nine.

Lord Mandelson completed the top ten.

Steve Booth added: “Crunchonomics shows that British people think the worst of the recession is behind them, but they are still not spending the way they were this time last year. Martin Lewis has the peoples’ trust and are helping them get the most from their budgets.”

Top ten people to lead us out of recession
1. Martin Lewis
2. Gordon Brown
3. David Cameron
4. Alistair Darling
5. Alan Sugar
6. Robert Peston
7. Ken Clarke
8. George Osbourne
9. Nick Clegg
10. Lord Mandelson

ENDS

Bloopers and Villians of 2009

2009-12-11T12:06:00.000Z

From those amusing chaps at www.speedcommunications.com

Top ten PR bloopers of 2009

The Met Office's "barbeque summer". Proving sound bites can bite you in the ass
Jordan's divorce meltdown. Bad behaviour, too much to say on too much and lousy advice landed her with six consecutive bush tucker trials
Habitat and Twitter. This year's poster child for how not to use social media
Gordon Brown. So piecemeal. So cheaply opportunistic. So continuously unsuccessful
The Daily Telegraph's live Twitterfall stream of #budget tags on its Budget 2009 homepage. Editorial sabotage at its very best
M&S and "bra gate". Taxing bigger breasts is just plain weird. (But congratulations M&S for recovering spectacularly.)
Derek Draper, Damian McBride and "Smeargate". Never put it on email
Former Commons' Speaker Michael Martin's refusal to apologise over the MPs expenses fiasco
Eric Daniels, chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, and his "relatively modest pay" of more than £1million
Fred Goodwin's pension. No amount of spinning can disguise this as anything other than a grotesque reward for the most spectacular failure in UK corporate history

Top ten villains of 2009

Fred Goodwin. The most deeply unprincipled shit alive
Bankers. The most deeply unprincipled bunch of shits alive
MPs. Marginally more principled than bankers. And beaten into third place by virtue of having to live off "rations"
BBC executives. Depressingly overpaid
Jan Moir. Gay-hating Daily Mail commentator. Why did no one suggest she might have gone too far?
Berlusconi. Under age girls, prostitutes, corruption of so many different hues and politically incompetent
Rupert Murdoch: the King Canute of the media business
The Sun. At least pretend you're balanced
Trafigura. You can run but you can't hide! Toxic waste can't be held back by super-injunctions
The NLA

Five things we think might not happen next year

David Cameron expensing a duck city
Roger Federer and something unseemly with a cow. Blame the "Curse of Gillette" which has already claimed Becks (infidelity), Tiger (infidelity) and Thierry (football cheat). The curse is saving its worst for last
First mention of abandoning use of apostrophes. Hollywood hates them and, as most PRs will testify, they're fiddly and easy to get wrong
A barbeque summer
The beginning of the end for celebrity culture. (Wishful thinking probably)

Why Digital Swedes Are Moving Away From Advertising

2009-12-03T14:26:00.008Z

Here's a piece penned by our client Patrick Gardner that appears on Ad Age. The opinion has sparked debate on both sides of the Atlantic and is well worth a read if you are interested in digital marketing.

Go Patrick...
http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=140742
http://www.resume.se/nyheter/2009/12/03/de-ar-inte-intresserade-av/

That Sweden knows a thing or two about digital advertising isn't news to most Mad Men these days. At Cannes you can hardly swing a cyber Lion without hitting at least one Swede. If you have a Lion to swing, that is -- the Swede will probably be the one holding it in the first place.

But the fact Swedes now contribute a surprising share of the world's most innovative advertising belies a deeper truth, one slowly being revealed by accelerating digitization and continued success. The truth is: Most Swedish digital advertising leaders don't actually care all that much about advertising.

As an American based in Stockholm since 1994, I've watched this industry develop as both insider and permanent outsider. I've gained a respect for the Swedish way and, though not a local, feel pride over the country's digital accomplishments.

Saying they don't care about advertising may sound shocking or even a bit rude, but it's unsurprising when you consider their roots.

With few exceptions, those driving Swedish digital advertising earned their chops in the internet boom of the '90s and early 2000s. They started working with the internet, not advertising, because they were excited by the incredible communication possibilities this new technology enabled. Only over time did what they do come to be viewed as advertising.

That's not to say they're nonchalant about their brand-champion roles. Swedish digitals clearly care a lot about connecting brands with target audiences and delivering strong ROI.

But this group generally didn't emerge from the Ogilvy/Bernbach tradition that infuses mainstream advertising -- so they naturally feel little compulsion to uphold it. Their allegiance is to creating effective and innovative ways of communicating, not just crafting persuasive messages.

So far, their new mindset has yet to have much impact on advertising's overall trajectory, with this group still mostly content to color within lines laid down by the traditional industry.

Granted their efforts have led to a wild variety of effective, new digital-advertising solutions (and in fairness, no small number of flops along the way). But truth be told, even the most successful recent Swedish digital efforts can still be summarized with that most traditional advertising word: "campaign," meaning short-lived, one-way and, for all the recent social bluster, focused on message delivery.

The buzz these days among Sweden's digitals is about a bigger change now afoot. As one colleague says: "It's time to stop communicating about business and start creating it."

Perspectives vary on what exactly this statement means. For some, it's drifting away from advertising in the sense of announcing products and toward specialties like gaming or corporate dot-com development. For others, it's launching their own products -- from designer jeans to iPhone apps to our own music service Traxxter.com -- to prove their theories by doing for themselves as well as clients.

But for many a theme emerges: that the next great campaign is no longer enough. And thanks to their non-traditional roots, they seem to be of the view that that isn't such a bad thing.

One thing's for sure, advertising will never be the same -- if it survives at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Gardner is CEO of Swedish-headquartered digital shop Perfect Fools, which has offices in Stockholm, Amsterdam and New York.

Nightmare as Media Week closes, Revolution goes quarterly

2009-11-17T15:06:00.002Z

Our trade press has been destroyed...

Mark Sweney guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 November 2009

Lord Heseltine's Haymarket Publishing is to close Media Week after almost 25 years as part of a restructure of its marketing and advertising trade titles, including Campaign and Marketing, that will see the loss of 18 editorial jobs.

Media Week magazine will close immediately, although it will retain its website and awards portfolio, as part of the restructuring, with around 30% of the 58 editorial roles at risk in Haymarket's Brand Media group.

Today's issue of Media Week, dated 17 November, will be the last. The weekly title, covering media buying agencies and media owners' ad sales houses, launched in 1985 and has been through several changes of ownership. Haymarket acquired Media Week in early summer 2005.

Revolution will cease monthly publication and become a quarterly supplement within Marketing.

It is thought Haymarket intends to form a "centralised hub" of reporters to cover the media, advertising and marketing sectors across the weeklies Campaign and Marketing and the websites of each of the titles, which are all housed within the Brand Republic portal.

Haymarket has today launched a consultation with affected editorial staff, with 18 expected to lose their jobs. Dominic Mills, the Haymarket Business Media editorial director, is leading the restructuring process.

The editors of all the Brand Media print titles will have to reapply for their jobs. These include Claire Beale on Campaign, Lucy Barrett on Marketing and Steve Barrett on Media Week.

The affected editors also include Rich Sutcliffe, editor of Brand Republic, Revolution's editor Gareth Jones and Noelle McElhatton, editor of Marketing Direct.

Editors will go through an undefined "selection process", with Mills admitting that not all would remain in place.

It is thought that section editors on Campaign and Marketing, for areas such as features and analysis, will be retained for each title.

The company said that Revolution magazine would be backed by a "new blogging initiative" next year. Haymarket added it would also undertake a redesign of Brand Republic early next year.

"We will do everything we can to keep job losses to a minimum, and we are looking to redeploy affected staff in other parts of the group," said Jane Macken, the managing director of Haymarket Brand Media.

Martin Durham, the managing director and chairman of Haymarket Business Media, added that its titles had "suffered" during the downturn.

"We, like other media owners, have been hit by a combination of a severe advertising downturn and unprecedented structural change," Durham said. "Our proposed restructure consolidates our marketing communications brands into a stronger and more integrated portfolio that puts them into a commercially sound position well-placed for the recovery."

"I will be physically located in the same space as the [new] teams," said Haymarket Business Media editorial director, Mills, speaking to MediaGuardian.co.uk. "I will devote as much of my time as I feel necessary to get it to work. I will stay for as long as I feel necessary, this will be the focus of my attention for the foreseeable future."

He also said that Brand Media's commercial arm, comprising 22 staff, would lose just one employee. It has been trimming roles for the last six months with numbers thought to be down about 20%.

Mills added that all Brand Media staff are now subject to a 30-day consultation period, although management aimed to finalise the new structure swiftly, with the new editorial structure set to be in place from 1 January.

FRY: “I'M NOT JUST A PERFOMER ANY MORE, I'M A CONTENT PROVIDER”

2009-11-11T18:23:00.004Z

This is my take on Stepehen Fry's captivating chat at today's packed IAB Engage 2009 event in London. I'll post a few more pictures soon.

In a ‘fireside interview’ with IAB chairman, Richard Eyre, Stephen Fry had the Engage 2009 audience eating out of his hand recounting his years as a techno geek and posterboy for Twitter, where he has nearly one million followers.

Fry explained that he first signed up to Twitter and expected nothing to come of it: “I was packing to go to Africa to film a documentary about disappearing species.” He naively thought it would a fun way to stay in touch with friends back home, and thought nothing of sending his first tweet before he boarded the plane. “On arrival in Africa I had 3,000 followers,” he said.

Fry described being on Twitter as an odyssey and an “extraordinary journey with peaks and troughs”. On his return from Africa his Tweeting reached a new height. “I went to meet Jonathan Ross, but got stuck in a lift. I tweeted about being stuck in a lift and the next day it was all over the media,” he added “it was insane”.

Talking about his recent “wobble” Fry explained that it was a combination of events surrounding Stephen Gately’s death – who he described as a “friend” – and insults received by the BNP affected him deeply: “"I almost committed 'Twittercide', I felt very, very disenchanted."
A fortnight ago he publicly announced he would quit Twitter after a stranger called him boring but changed his mind after thousands sent messages of support. He said he was extremely sensitive to criticism and while 99% of the comments he receives from the public are friendly, he focuses more on the rest. "They ruin my day. I'm not exaggerating. I cry, I can't work, it devastates me," he said. He added: "There is so much resentment, so much acid, it's a cancer of dislike."

He argued that Twitter can be the folly of a crowd,” adding “Twitter is not the sum of my opinion nor any other celebrity twitterers. It’s the vast majority of ordinary twitterers.” Discussing Jan Moir’s column specifically, Fry said: “She’d written something quite vile about someone who was a friend. He was a close friend of my partner who was on his way to the funeral.” He added: “I think she knows it was ill judged”. Continuing he sad: “I was pretty temperate in terms of what I said [on Twitter] other than calling her a malignant nobody.”

Fry believes that “the worst of the internet is that which is found below the blog: the comments. 99% of people who choose to comment are simply unbearable.” Fry despises such commentators: "There is so much resentment, so much acid, it's a cancer of dislike." He went on: “It is side of the internet that is deeply worrying.”

Advertisers have tried to cash in on Fry’s influence on Twitter and he now receives “12 books a day from publishers” to review and recommend from publishers. One book he recommended – “Sum” went to number one in the Amazon book chart. There is a downside to the commercialism; Fry now has to stipulate to people that he will only recommend a website if it can withstand 1,000 visitors a second for two hours.

When asked about the offers he regularly receives from brands, Fry belowed: “I'm not just a performer any more, I'm a content provider.”

He criticised the music industry for its “fortress mentality” and described them as “mean spirited people who don’t recognise natural fandom. It’s a disaster.”

Fry recounted how he introduced his friend, Peter Mandelson, to the internet in 1997: “I showed Peter his first website, it was the Conservatives website.”

When asked about his newspaper habits and whether he would pay for one online he said: “I haven’t read a newspaper for 12 years. They are like used toilet paper.” However, he has a very different opinion about Rupert Murdoch. Fry described him as a “supreme leader in his field,” adding “he is extraordinary, a brilliant leader and far sighted.”
The final question asked by the audience was what Fry wants for Christmas, and it’s good news for the HTC HD mobile phone handset. Stephen “adores it” and says “it’s a sexy thing”.

ASHLEY HIGHFIELD SAYS “MICROSOFT WANTS TO BE A MAJOR PLAYER IN TV”

2009-11-11T18:22:00.001Z

ASHLEY HIGHFIELD SAYS “MICROSOFT WANTS TO BE A MAJOR PLAYER IN TV”
Online has an “advertiser-funded future” says Microsoft chief
www.iabengage2009.co.uk

Ashley Highfield, Microsoft’s managing director & vice president, consumer & online, outlined his vision for Microsoft to be a major player in television and how the back catalogue of TV programmes will increase through advertiser funding.

Speaking at the IAB Engage 2009 conference, Highfield focused on the future for TV and online content. He talked of the development of MSN’s Video Player and how “real audience demand is outstripping expectations and budgets.”

On the question of whether television will get left by the roadside Highfield talked of a renaissance for TV. He cited the back catalogues of TV programmes as driving demand: “everyone is familiar with the fact you can access old content online.”
Regarding funding the future and how to make the back catalogue of programmes work online he said: “We are still learning how you bring to life the long tail of television.”
Highfield believes that “content will enter a new golden age” and that “watching programmes as part of the media mix will increase”.

Where advertisers fit in Highfield sees a future for media and content owners to commercialise their back catalogues by “packaging up audiences and selling them back to agencies.”
“TV has to change, it maybe TV channels that change. But programmes have a monitisable
And Microsoft wants to be a major player in TV”

Highfield sees the drivers of online TV as the explosion of cheaper computing. He cites that sales of PCs now outstrips that of TV sets. Within a couple of years “two-way” touch screens will be commonplace and will replace traditional TV sets.
Furthermore, the “rise of lowend netbooks” are already making an impact, now accounting for 25% of all PC sales, Highfield added that netbooks “will be as disposable as radios,” adding: “Every home will have between three and four PCs or laptops in the home.”
Ends

For more information contact Mark Terry-Lush on 07740 432 112 mark@renegademedia.net

COI CHIEF CITES DIGITAL AS THE KEY TO SOLVING SOCIAL ILLS

2009-11-11T18:20:00.001Z

COI CHIEF CITES DIGITAL AS THE KEY TO SOLVING SOCIAL ILLS
Digital is a "pivotal" media says Lund

The IAB Engage lunchtime address by Mark Lund, COI chief executive, was entitled "Citizen 2.0 - how government can interact and engage in the digital age."

Lund started by saying: "Levels of trust in politicians is at an all time low, because trust is at the heart of good communications and the health of democracy." He believes that "society faces serious ills as a result of our prosperous society and the choices we make. Digital is at the heart of behaviour change and to make the revolution we need."

He talked of the challenges facing the COI: "the COI has to talk to the widest range of people in the UK" and how digital is central to tackling societies issues: "our view is of digital as a pivotal media of the future". He continued:"it's [digital] a joiner upper, an enabler of government and other media channels. It's the plasma that runs through media ecology." "The end results is we want to join up citizens and government better."

The COI did its first digital work in 1999 with the unveiling of its website. Its turnover in digital spend has rocketed three-fold since 2006, an increase of 200% in the last three years.

Lund outlined the challenges his department faces: "The COI can't choose its audiences; government has to deal with every individual and every business." He went on to cite social issues such as obesity, smoking, binge drinking and climate change as the big challenges for behaviour change: "we're changing habits, whole ways of life, starting things and giving things up. If we can change behaviour we will make a huge difference to society. Digital communications is at the heart of that."

Lund believes that conversations are the key to changing behaviour through digital channels: "Conversation creates the possibility of giving voice to the voiceless and power to the unempowered [sic]. Digital allows a first step in behaviour change."

He also placed critical importance on social media at the heart of the COI's digital strategy. He used the example of the RAF campaign of "Afghan Diaries," which saw video diaries created by servicemen posted on YouTube in what Lund described as an "unmediated and unvarnished view of what it's like to be in the RAF."

Lund championed the need to link up all channels: "it's not enough to do digital by itself - you have to link it."

On the next phase of development for the newly installed CEO, Lund sees trying to change the way that government and citizens interact as a primary objective: "I want people to get involved when policy is being created." He added: "whether it's for education, policing, health or power stations, we want to let people into the process of government... get big numbers engaged in a debate."

Lund ended by inviting the assembled industry audience to get involved, asking them to "come with us" and also to "show us the way". "London is world capital in social media. Within this room there is the capacity to make a huge difference."

Ends

For more information contact Mark Terry-Lush on 07740 432 112 mark@renegademedia.net

WIZARD OF THE WEB FORECASTS FUTURE OF PEBBLES, BOULDERS & CLOUDS

2009-11-11T18:19:00.001Z

Brands need to understand “you are what you share and how you share it”
www.iabengage2009.co.uk

Opening keynote speaker at the fifth IAB Engage conference, Charlie Leadbeater, former Tony Blair strategy advisor, believes that “we’ve only just begun a new social and technological experiment that millions of people haven’t started playing with yet.”

Making a metaphor of the growing move towards cloud-based technology, Leadbeater argued that “a cloud-based future filled with multiple forms of cloud media, culture, media and organisations is the most fertile metaphor for the future.”

The self proclaimed “Wizard of the Web” and best-selling author painted a picture of a media landscape today made up of “boulders” – multi-national media owners and technology companies – which are under threat from “pebbles” – niche platforms, blogs, forums and websites.

In Leadbeater’s mind big organisations are trying to become small while small organisations are trying to become big: “boulders becoming pebbles, old boulders trying to accommodate to this new world of pebbles.” He added: “all media in future will be neutral media. Mutuality will be the defining feature of media. One route will be social --- user-generated content.”

But Leadbeater believes the industry faces a crisis: “Except for Google and Glastonbury every media business is looking for a new business model.” He also criticised Rupert Murdoch’s “desperate move to lock up his content,” because brands will be judged by mutuality.

Discussing what part brands play in the media future, Leadbeater believes that the more unfinished, modular a brand’s approach, the more consumers will engage with them: “Consumers want tools and the more you give them the more they will thank you for it.” He also argues that the era of “interruptive advertising is over,” adding “You are what you share and how you share it,” which he believes is at the heart of what the new generation of internet users.

Leadbeater also believes that in the past organisations “said they did things for people but the reality is that they did something to you.” Today consumers have their own opinions and make their own contributions, therefore, he argued, brands need to “think with, not for or to” their audiences so as to encourage a culture of “Think with”.

Ends

For more information contact Mark Terry-Lush on 07740 432 112 mark@renegademedia.net

BRAND ADVERTISING IS THE FUTURE FOR ONLINE SAYS AOL’S JEFF LEVICK

2009-11-11T18:17:00.002Z

Today I was running the press office at IAB Engage 2009. What follows are the press releases I wrote:

BRAND ADVERTISING IS THE FUTURE FOR ONLINE SAYS AOL’S JEFF LEVICK
Reality TV is making advertisers switch budgets
www.iabengage2009.com

Search has become ubiquitous and brand advertising is the future for online are the key points delivered by AOL’s Jeff Levick, AOL President, global advertising and strategy, at his keynote Engage 2009 address.

Levick believes that “Now is the first real opportunity for building brands online” and “reality TV is making marketers switch budgets.” He added: “The future of online is brand advertising, as we currently move into a critical stage for digital”.

In his speech, which outlined five characteristics of the digital landscape, Levick argued that marketers – particularly within the consumer goods sector – can no longer rely on TV to provide them with a safe environment within which to advertise.

“Brands are steadily running out of places to control their brand”, he said and referenced a quote from a senior marketer at P&G, who told him that more than ‘60% of network programming will be reality television and I can’t put my brand there’.

Levick believes that the life cycle of online is entering its third stage: the first, between 1990 and 2000 was about getting people online, between 2000 and 2010 it was all about connectivity and platforms; beyond this, the “third act” is all about content, because people are consuming more online.

For Levick the real opportunity for advertisers in the next decade is as co-creators of content to drive growth through brand building – especially across multiple platforms of mobile and video. He described the challenge for marketers as “niche is the new mass media. In online there isn’t a massive panacea where you invest in five properties and you’re done. The real opportunity and also challenge for brand advertisers is to define these niche audiences.”

He argued that brands have yet to figure out what the right “media cycle” is and that in the future there will be “lots of campaigns and creatives and formats. We’re back in the infancy of the internet.”

1980s fitness icon Mr Motivator opened the Engage 2009 with a breathless morning workout for the sell-out 650-strong audience of advertisers, media owners and industry movers and shakers.

It was a hard act to follow for IAB CEO Guy Phillipson whose buoyant opening address on the shape of the online industry was complemented by his florescent shell suit.

Ends
For more information contact Mark Terry-Lush on 087740 432 112 mark@renegademedia.net

Facebook accounts for 1 in every 7 UK page views

2009-10-16T15:10:00.001+01:00

By Charlotte McEleny, New Media Age

One in every seven web page views in the UK is on Facebook, according to new Experian Hitwise research, and reported by New Media Age.

The web measurement firm revealed the social network accounts for 14.5% of all UK internet page views after it increased traffic to its site by 86.1% over the past 12 months.

When compared to other social media sites, Facebook dominates, accounting for 49.2% of all UK internet visits in the category. It is followed by YouTube (16.5%), Bebo (3.7%), Twitter (2.2%) and MySpace (2.1%).

Robin Goad, director of research for Experian Hitwise in the UK, said, “During September Facebook was the second most visited website in the UK after Google UK, but because users view a much larger number of pages per visit, Facebook is the clear leader in terms of page views. During September, Facebook received more page views than Google UK, Ebay UK and YouTube combined.”

Goad said that although Facebook has not been in the spotlight in the UK recently, especially compared with Twitter, its growth still doesn’t show any signs of slowing.

“A key measure of success for any social network is average session time. As we have seen with sites such as Friends Reunited and MySpace, when average session times begins to drop off visitor numbers soon follow. Facebook has yet to experience this problem, Hitwise monitoring data shows that its average visit time increased from 19 minutes 59 seconds in September 2008 to 26 minutes 14 seconds during September 2009,” said Goad.

No bounce back for newspapers after summer break

2009-10-16T13:30:00.003+01:00

Reposted from MarketingWeek.co.uk
By Branwell Johnson, associate editor

Newspaper circulation failed to rise following the return to work after the summer break, with weekday popular titles dropping 1.71% in total month-on-month and quality titles sliding 0.27% in September on August, according to latest ABC figures.

The Sun, which bucked the usual summer trend of a dip in August , saw its figure drop 1.57% month on month in September to 3,079,451 and a 2.53% drop year-on-year for the six month period April to September.

The newspaper has just appointed its second consecutive interim marketing director, Rob Planter and has just declared its support for the Conservative party, which may be reflected in the next ABCs.

The Daily Mirror saw a 1.4% fall to 1,306,394 month-on-month and a 9.37% drop for the six months, year-on-year. The Daily Star’s lower price failed to save it from a 2.62% fall to 863,559 month-on-month.

In the quality sector, The Independent, now looking a little more confident about its future after solving immediate financial problems, posted an average net circulation down 0.72% to 186,490 for September. The title is down 16.53% for the six months April to September, year-on-year. It now has a new commercial director at the helm in the form of Simon Davis.

The Guardian did see a rise of 1.15% to 314,963 for September on August to 314,963 while rivals The Daily Telegraph and The Times dropped 1.51% to 801,782 and 0.81% to 571,506 respectively.

The Financial Times, which launched an outdoor campaign in the capital in mid-September to promote its editorial content, saw a rise of 3.21% to 408,544 for September but is down 6.56% for April to September, year-on-year. This may still reflect the stripping out of bulks by the publication over recent months.

The mid-market saw the Daily Mail, which has just appointed M&C Saatchi as its advertising agency, saw a drop of 0.54% to 2,159, 931 month-on-month and the Daily Express fell 2.49% to 712,023.

The Sunday quality newspapers actually did see an overall rise month-on-month of 2.31% with The Observer up a sizeable 6.59% to 385,617, The Sunday Times up 3.63% to 1,207,141 and the Sunday Telegraph up 0.04% to 599,380.

In the popular sector the News of the World rose 0.26% to 3,129,162 and the Sunday Mirror fell 1.26% to 1,221,676. The mid-market saw the Sunday Express tumble 4.3% and the Mail on Sunday fall 0.05% to 619,032 and 2,012,741 respectively.

The Evening Standard became a free title on October 12 but in September and now distributes 600,000 copies.

Tories spell end for Spotify

2009-10-16T12:47:00.002+01:00

Spotify is a marvelous invention but it’s fast falling out of favour in the office as the ads get more frequent, invasive and irritating. We get interrupted more now on Spotify than our local Sunshine 106 station.

So news that the Conservative party is to become the first UK political party to advertise on the music streaming service was welcomed as much as a visit to the dentist.

Not only is it going to be dreadful listening to 40 seconds of plain speaking party chairman Eric Pickles (who has been described as a "Bluff Diamond" and “jovial and blunt-speaking”) attempt to squash the Tories’ image as soft-cheeked trendy toffs but it’s all a bit naughty.

Using Spotify allows the Tories to evade rules that forbid political parties to advertise on television or radio in the UK outside of election broadcasts in the run-up to a general election.

I think that Jeremy Hunt, shadow culture secretary, was misquoted when he said Tories are always looking “for new and relevant ways of engaging with people”. He surely meant “irritating and invading”.

The party says it may continue to use the music site as the election gets closer to deliver localised messages as the service allows advertisers to target listeners by postcode. My local Tory MP is a soft cheeked toff so I can’t wait to hear him interrupting my Feet Up Friday playlist.

Can someone please invent a Tivo for Spotify so we can zap the ads.

A proud night for the Renegades

2009-10-09T09:42:00.004+01:00

Last night Renegade Media was honoured as a finalist in the SW Business of the Year Awards 2009. More than 630 of the south west’s top business men and women, plus a smattering of MPs, media types and WAGs, congregated at Cheltenham Racecourse to watch BBC personality Jill Douglas present the gongs.

Competition was super stiff from emerging tech companies, marketing services, dot coms and established hard industries. It’s easy to forget in the heart of this crippling recession that there is a) life outside of London and b) fast growing, successful businesses doing great work and making a difference on our own doorstep – made me proud to live and work in Gloucestershire.

There were an inordinate number of fluffy entries from PR, design and advertising agencies but thankfully none of them won – not even Communicator of the Year (what does that tell you?). The top awards largely went to real innovators and hard industries doing real world stuff and employing lots of people.

It was also great to be outside our usual bubble of creative, media, fashion and sports clients. At our table were some eminent folk from Tbi Connect, on the surface yet another software company, but scratch the surface and you find a simple proof of concept application that saves companies millions of pounds. They were joined by an eminent gentleman who looks after the Police Force’s Forensic Unit’s hard- and soft-ware, as well as running the Navy’s submarine systems.

So we didn’t win Business of the Year, but it would have been a scandal if we had given the quality of entries. The top honours went to a company that makes indescribably important equipment for the defence, aviation and marine industries. Runner up was a company that supplies portable kitchens to Olympic villages and the military. Simple, effective and worthy winners

Much champagne was drunk and many flashbulbs popped by the time the swing bang started to, rock. It was a proper awards night with people passed out on the tables and married men who should have known better (you know who you are) than to try and touch up the younger female members of the Renegade team... thankfully our digital attack dog, Alex Sass, was on hand to put a stop to any tomfoolery. Roll on 2010’s awards!

FTC Cracks Down on Blogger Payola, Celebrity Tweets

2009-10-02T20:25:00.009+01:00

Rules on Endorsements and Testimonials Extended to Social Media
by Michael Learmonth

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on blogger payola.
The agency, which protects consumers from fraud or deceptive business practices, voted 4 to 0 to update its rules governing endorsements, and the new guidelines require bloggers to clearly disclose any "material connection" to an advertiser, including payments for an endorsement or free product.
It's the first time since 1980 that the FTC has updated its rules on the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising. In addition to covering bloggers, the new FTC rules state that celebrity endorsers can be held liable for false statements about a product, and all endorsements must include results consumers can "generally expect." Previously, an advertiser could cover their claims by the disclaimer "results not typical."
But the new rules on bloggers are the most far-reaching attempt to stamp some guidelines of conduct on the blogosphere, which generally operates according to informal codes and the notion that "inauthentic" bloggers -- including those not disclosing commercial relationships -- will suffer in the web's court of public opinion.
The new rules go into effect Dec. 1, and penalties include $11,000 in fines per violation. The FTC wasn't specific about how disclosures must be communicated but said its decisions would be made on a "case-by-case" basis.
Rules for everyone
Specifically covered in the new rules is the use of social media, such as Twitter, by celebrities to endorse a product. That's now a no-no unless the commercial relationship is disclosed. So, too, are celebrity mentions of products in other media, such as talk shows.
But the new rules on blogging will have the farthest-reaching influence. They are, in effect, the first rules imposed on a general public that no longer needs access to TV, print or radio to publish opinions or create a personal media channel.
"In 1980 most of all advertising was disseminated by the advertisers themselves; today a good part of that advertising is being disseminated by users," said Richard Cleland, assistant director- division of advertising practices at the FTC.
The government agency has been reviewing its nearly 40-year-old rules on testimonials and endorsements for the better part of a year, and marketers have been anticipating a change.
The new guidelines for social media are "relatively consistent with preexisting principles that have applied to traditional forms of advertising," said C. Lee Peeler, president and CEO of the National Advertising Review Council. Some think the rules could spur brand involvement in the social media space by better defining what's OK and what's not.
Clearing the air
"The legal departments of big brands don't like ambiguity, and that has been a challenge for us," said Joe Chernov, VP-communications for word-of-mouth marketing firm BzzAgent.
Now that the dust has settled, the rules are more or less clear, he said. "If a consumer's speech has been materially influenced by a marketer, it must be disclosed. That speech, the consumer's speech, also must be restricted to their own personal experience," he said.
Within the text of the new rules, the FTC gives many hypothetical scenarios, including that of a college student who maintains a "blog where he posts entries about his gaming experiences." If that student receives a console from a gaming company and posts a review, "the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge."
Mr. Cleland said the guidelines include posts on review sites such as Yelp or online stores such as Amazon, where the writer is being compensated in some way. That would include an employee of a restaurant giving it a stellar review, or the author of a book.

Raging Bull chases Carling on Twitter

2009-09-25T15:05:00.007+01:00

Rugby players are known for their blood, guts and on-pitch competitiveness... but the game played by men with odd-shaped balls has taken a new twist this week as rugby legends compete in the Twittershere. Phil Vickery launched his first feed on Monday and within hours clocked up 240 followers.

Other rugby twitterers include Kyran Bracken (5,600 followers), former England player who is better known to most as winner of Dancing on Ice in 2007; James Haskell (3,118 followers) plays for London Wasps in the Guinness Premiership & internationally for England; Cai Griffiths (647 followers), and a Welsh rugby union player for the Ospreys in the Magners League.

But the Raging Bull (ragingbull.com) and his sporting peers have got a long way to go before catching up with the daddy of rugby Twitterers, ex-England captain Will Carling (rucku.com), who has amassed almost a whopping 20,000 followers.

Let me know about any other rugby Twitterers, we're keeping a log as we work for a number of rugby brands - including Under Armour (sponsors of Welsh Rugby) and Raging Bull.

Perfect Fools win battle of the bands

2009-09-15T21:51:00.007+01:00

Last night our international digital creative superstar rockstar clients, Perfect Fools (www.perfectfools.com), cleaned up at the 29th annual DN Byrårocken/Agency Battle of the Bands competition in Stockholm. The Fools' in-house band, Circus de la Fools, were crowned victorious following a shoot-out against eight other agencies. Roof raising renditions of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ and Val Halen’s ‘Jump’ sealed the deal (against ringers from pro bands seconded into competitor agency bands, tut, tut).

Fools...we salute you...

Circus de la Fools are:
Fredrik Heghammar – vocals
Björn Kummeneje – guitar
Stefan “The Killer” Lagergren – guitar
Alexander Radsby – bass guitar
John Wolst – keyboard
Carl Bock – drums (honorary fool, normally at Garbergs)
Jenny Olsson – mime artist
Kathrin Spaak – soap bubble dancer

The most strangest pharma marketing ever

2009-07-31T20:38:00.003+01:00

Ladies and gentlefolk, for no reason other than entertainment I bring you www.peteyandpokey.com. The ultimate in "the most strangest pharma marketing ever"... and that quote comes from Renegade's head of digital who has seen a thing or two online. Enjoy.

Under Armour Football Boots Nominated for a Top Kit Award

2009-07-22T13:19:00.004+01:00

Our blogger and social media campaign to launch Under Armour's new Create and Dominate football boots is hotting up.

The boots, Under Armour’s first foray into football, have been nominated for a top kit award by one of the UK’s leading online football sites, Footy-boots.com.

Billed as the Oscars of the football kit world, the UA Dominate Pro is shortlisted for the Safest Football Boot of the Year (best protection) and Most Innovative Football Boot Feature of the Year (UA Armour Form).

The boots were put through their paces by the “UA11”, a test team of Europe’s top pro-am players – guys who are professional in all but name.

You can see the boots and what the UA11 think of them in a series of video documentaries. The films and the website were conceived and produced by digital creative aces Perfect Fools, go to www.underarmour.com/ua11. If you like what you see then cast your vote at www.footy-boots.com.

China ad industry - Interview with Cannes Lions chairman Terry Savage

2009-07-22T12:16:00.005+01:00

In June I was down at Cannes for the International Ad festival. One of the many enjoyable hours was spent with the general manager of the ADC China talking about the creative industry in China. Renegade represents DMG (Dynamic Marketing Group), China's largest independent advertising and entertainment agency, so we have a vested interest in the People's Repulic. The ADC asked me to help them out interviewing the Cannes Lions Chairman, Terry Savage, for a feature set to appear in China's leading advertising trade title, Advertising International.

Here's a few extracts from the interview I did with Terry:

Cannes Lions 2009

If you want to know what’s going on in our industry Terry is a guy who has a handle on the global scene. Based in Sydney he has run the Festival since 2004 and has seem some major shifts, which he’s had to reflect, not least the internationalisation of the Festival.

When I asked Terry why China only counts 60 delegates (including journalists) this year, he said that companies in China hesitate to send their people to Cannes because they do not want competitors to recruit their people afterwards. Sounds logical but highlights a naive and immature mindset among China’s creative community. Such reservations will not lead us to a brighter future in terms of creativity in advertising.

You have to share knowledge if you want to improve. It is an essential key to success. Be open and honour creativity; Let us compare our work on a national level and score for China on a worldwide level.

Another reason that keeps Chinese delegates away is the perceived cost. In these straightened times we all have to tighten our belts and Cannes is not the cheapest event to attend once you add up the flight, hotel, food, drinks and of course the cost of the delegate badge. There may be no change out of US$4,500 if you stay the week.

Savage summed up the value of the Lions: “You’ve got two choices when you come to Cannes. You can come to Cannes, see the work, you can attend the seminars, you can have phenomenal networking opportunities during the week or you can come to Cannes and sit on the beach. Frankly I don’t particularly want the people to come to Cannes and sit on the beach because that’s not what we’re about. We are about creativity, inspiration, and learning. Where else can you come and get 52 seminars, 25 workshops? Go and have a one-day conference in London or New York and it will cost you £1,200.”

For the cream of Chinese delegates and entrants it's not hard to justify if you look at it in the right way. And how much value do you place on a happy client who honours the fact that you send your people and work to Cannes? How do you value a passionate employee bringing the Cannes spirit back to your company, along with a new way of thinking and dealing with tasks and creative briefs? You will probably find it as hard to measure as I do – but think about it.

There’s always been this real drive by the networks, to be the first person to ever win the gold Lion for China and that was achieved last year. China have won a few Lions this year, silvers and bronzes and that’s a really important step forward. With this in mind I wanted to get a sounding where Cannes sees China and how we are perceived in terms of creativity.

When I asked Savage he drew an analogy with India, suggesting that China is on a par creatively with the sub continent. “Because of China’s energy, commitment, drive and unique culture we will see a freshness and an originality. China will emerge strongly in the market but right now, it is at the beginning of the road and I think you recognise this position. There are people that I know in China who are passionate about driving people into forums such as this [Cannes] to try and drive that more quickly.”

If you want to know more about the ad scene in China, or are based in China and want to reach a western audience then drop me a line mark@renegademedia.net

Digital PR time to destruct and re-evaluate

2009-07-17T16:23:00.003+01:00

If we’re in the middle of a New Media Revolution, why do we spend so much time speaking in terms of and following the Old Media models?

We’re so entrenched in the old model – as are our colleagues, our collaborators in other creative service industries (read: advertisers), our clients – that most of us simply turn to the old ways and call them new things. This does our revolution a disservice, and cheapens the importance of what digital PR can offer for our clients.

Here are five things we must rid ourselves of before we and our clients can fully appreciate what digital PR can do:

Influence. Influence is something of tantamount importance to the old way, because it was the mechanism by which PR agencies operated: a reporter (or celebrity, or analyst) is an ‘influencer’ because of his or her ‘influence,’ an ambiguous term that roughly means ‘people listen to what they have to say and form opinions accordingly.’ Rather than taking the opportunity to flog our own trust barometer, I instead offer a completely different way to think about influence and our clients:
We are not here to speak to ‘influencers’ on behalf of our clients. This is the ‘let’s keep a list of bloggers and send them emails’ model. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for this, mind you – a very important place. Rather what we need to offer our client is the opportunity to become trusted influencers themselves. It's it’s shocking how many so-called digital PR experts and gurus miss this extremely important point. Creating a viral video is the same thing as an ad. Getting a blogger to write about your press release is really no different than talking to a reporter, just with different rules.

A client who becomes an active, contributing member of the community, who is influential in and of themselves because of the level of interaction and trust they have with other people online – this is what we should be striving for, not The Top 10 Most Influential Celebrity Bloggers On Twitter Who Write About cars/trainers/advertising/football boots.

Engagement. It's is a word we online PR people simply need to put away unless we really mean it, or unless we just proposed to our significant others and they said ‘yes.’ Especially when we couple it with the above icon and we talk about ‘engaging with key influencers.’ What you mean by engagement is either developing relationships over the long-term and yourself becoming a contributing member of the community (which can include sending out media releases and emails to bloggers once you are an active and contributing community member) – or it means the old media broadcast spammy model of email-and-forget. Decide what you want to do, and call it what it is.

Measurement. This is actually two things in one, so let's address the underlying problem here: digital PRs must be able to measure our success in some way, otherwise we can’t effectively sell what we do. At the same time, clients and PRs need to realise that the effects of digital PR are far more abstract than the Ad Equivalent Value model allows. You could argue that the AVE was broken from the start – but that’s a subject for another day.

Either way, measurement is something that must be cracked, but it must be done on our own terms – and on an individual basis for each client. What is relevant and important to one client as they participate in the online community won’t necessarily be relevant to another one – which makes our job even harder. There’s no good answer for this conundrum, only because there is no single correct answer that will suffice for every situation.

Coverage. It seems counter-intuitive but consider how many ‘successful’ digital PR case studies are based around coverage numbers – just like the old model. Made a viral video? How many views did it receive? How many bloggers posted about your story? 20 Retweets, or 200?

PR has always maintained that what makes it different – and more effective – than buying adspace is its ability to get people to think about things in a different way. If that’s true, why are we so concerned with coverage as the end result of a campaign? Isn’t coverage where the conversation starts?

The Revolution. Say what? Yes, we need to get over the idea that we’re doing something revolutionary in digital PR. We’re not. We’re actually enabling our clients to participate in the oldest form of communications: joining a community participating in it. All this language about old and new models, revolutionary tactics, guru-ing and expert-ing is meaningless – and we’re doing ourselves and our clients a disservice if we pretend otherwise. In fact, we run the risk of being a bunch of latte-sipping, Che-shirt-wearing coffee house revolutionaries – talking, waiting, contemplating – not doing.

Note that this does not invalidate the above four points – far from it. But we need to realise that we’re not the keepers of some sacred knowledge that only we understand (and more importantly, we need to stop using lingo that suggests this is the case, both with ourselves and the people we’re trying to help.) More doing, less talking about doing.

In realistic terms there’s a certain degree of concession digital PRs must give to language and landscape – we have to speak in terms our clients understand. But it’s also worth remembering that the things we use are not ends, they are tools to bring us to where we (and our clients) need to be in terms of fully engaged members of the online community. And that means an occasional bout of destruction or re-evaluation.

China web users top 338 million

2009-07-17T16:15:00.001+01:00

According to a report from Media Asia, China's number of internet users hit 338 million at the end of June, a surge of 40 million users, or 13.8 per cent, from the end of last year, according to research by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

According to the report, regarded as the official gauge of China’s online population, the internet’s penetration rate has reached 25.5 per cent. Of the country’s users, more than 51 per cent - or 175 million - are under 26 years old.

China also claims more than 11 million rural users, a spike of more than 13 per cent.

Access to the internet has also improved in China. Ninety-four per cent of netizens use broadband connections, an increase of 3.7 per cent since the end of 2008. Meanwhile, 46 per cent of internet users access the web from their mobile phones, making the total number of mobile internet users 155 million, or 32 per cent more than at the end last year.

Of these users, 28 per cent said they would use 3G phones to access the internet in the future.

Once on the web, 244 million netizens use instant messaging programmes, representing a three per cent drop in penetration rate to 72 per cent of users.

However, 217 million people play games online, a rise of 30 million, positioning the penetration rate at more than 64 per cent.

Nearly 290 million listen to music online, a growth of nearly 40 million; 222 million watch online video, up by more than 20 million people; and 88 million shop online, an increase of 14 million.

Twitter numbers -- 2009 flash fad or not?

2009-07-17T12:04:00.004+01:00

I didn't know whether to laugh or be horrified that someone had hacked Twitter. At first the thought of gaining access to billions of twerrible tweets would be mindnumbing for the hacker. But it looks like internal company data was nicked and then published on French blog Korben.info this week.

According to eMarketer Twitter’s alleged internal projections were revealing.

Twitter estimated that 25 million people worldwide would be using the service by the end of 2009.

•2009: 25 million users
•2010: 100 million users (300% growth)
•2011: 350 million users (250% growth)
The firm projected that it would have 100 million users in 2010 and 350 million in 2011.

“Assuming the information is legitimate, Twitter’s growth projections seem overly optimistic,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst.

eMarketer calculated in April that Twitter would have 12.1 million US adult users in 2009 and 18.1 million in 2010.

“A global projection of 25 million users by year-end would assume that US users make up only 40% of the total,” said Mr. Verna. “That seems unlikely given the US-centric nature of the service.”

There are several barriers to widespread Twitter adoption.

In April, Nielsen Online found that only about 40% of the service’s new users return the following month.

A Harvard Business School study estimated that most Twitter users sent an average of only one tweet in their lifetime.

“While many Twitter users consider the service addictive, there also seems to be a growing backlash—a feeling that Twitter-mania might be a 2009 fad,” said Mr. Verna. “If that’s the case, projecting 18 months ahead or beyond seems speculative, at best.”

And then there’s the revenue question…

“Without a sizable revenue stream, which Twitter has yet to invent, it’s difficult to imagine the service growing its audience to the levels they envision—even if venture capitalists continue to look favorably on the Twitter’s prospects,” said Mr. Verna.

The question remains: Are Twitter’s alleged internal numbers overly optimistic—or do the people inside Twitter know something the rest of us don’t?

Note: The French blogger, Korben, claims he saw Twitter’s revenue projections, but chose not to publish them. But if those numbers are out there—and online somewhere—they will probably appear soon. Screen shots and data purportedly from the hack are already appearing all over the Web.

Update: TechCrunch published partial Twitter revenue figures late yesterday afternoon. The figures were “modest.”

Will we be tweeting as much next year? I'll be watching from my Second Life space.

Where The Marketing Budgets Are Going

2009-07-15T14:27:00.001+01:00

"Traditional Marketing Budgets Lose to Interactive." That was the title of the news item from MediaPost's Research Brief today.

"According to Forrester Research, reported by Richard H. Levey at Directmag.com, 60% of marketers surveyed will increase their interactive marketing budgets by shifting funds from traditional media. Direct mail was cited by 40% of marketers as being one being cut, outranking newspapers (35%), magazines (28%) and television (12%)."

It has been years since Digital Marketers pontificated that traditional dollars will shift online. Even through the economic downturn, as traditional advertising budgets were being slashed, there seemed to be an increase towards the online channel (or, at worst, it remained stagnant from before the crisis). Still, after all of these years, it begs the question: are Marketers shifting dollars for efficacy or because they feel that they can get more bang for their buck in the online channel? While it could well be a combo of the two, it is becoming increasingly obvious that these Marketers are also realizing that consumers are no longer listening, reading and watching their advertising the way they used to. While it's equally easy to blame this on the fragmentation of media, it's also plain to see (just look at the trending topics on Twitter), that it's not just "the Internet". It's new media – in general – and this includes newer channels like satellite radio, mobile, widgets, apps and beyond. We also can't just say, "it's the Internet," as channels like Twitter, video sharing sites YouTube, etc…), news rating sites (like Digg and Reddit) and even aggregators (Google News and Huffington Post) are all very different types of media when you dig into them.

Social Media and mobile is also on Marketer's minds:

"Among the interactive channels, the study finds social media and mobile marketing spending expanding between 2009 and 2014, with social media jumping by 34% on a compounded annual basis and mobile marketing increasing by 27%. Social media starts at $716 million in 2009, increasing to $3.11 billion by 2014. Mobile marketing expenditures stand at 319 million this year, and goes to $1.27 billion by 2014."

For more information and two very interesting news items that are tied into this, please check out:

- Interactive Marketing Will Cannibalize Traditional Channels: Forrester.
- CMOs Say Budgets Cut By 20% Or More: Forrester.

Under Armour football boot launch. Interview with Mike Hanke

2009-07-06T13:38:00.007+01:00

Last week I attended the unveiling of the new strip for German Bundesliga side, Hannover96. Under Armour is kit sponsor and the event attracted dozens of media eager to see the new designs, which were modeled by members of the first team.

One model was striker Mike Hanke, who is the first German player to wear Under Armour's new Create football boots, launched in June. Along with the Dominate these are the brand's first football boots and they have caused quite a stir on and off the pitch for their radical design and specification.

I interviewed Mike after the unveiling to ask him about the forthcoming season and his thoughts on the boots. Here an extract

MTL: Mike, you’re wearing the new UA Create boots today, I know you wore them last season what do you like about them?

MH: They are very light, comfortable and give me a great touch on the ball. Not only do they look cool, they perform fantastic.

MTL: What are your feelings and hopes for the new season?

MH: I am hoping to play better than last season and for the team to come together and perform as we would like. I am looking forward to playing alongside our goalkeeper, Robert Enke, he’s a great player, a real star in the team. I’m confident that we can do better this season, perhaps the new boots will bring me luck.

MTL: Do you fancy your chances getting a place in Europe?

MH: [laughs] We have to play well here [Bundesliga] first and that’s what I am focused on. All I can do is play well and aim for a place in the starting 11 each week.

MTL: You last played and scored for Germany in 2006, do you have hopes that you will be selected for World Cup 2010 in South Africa?

MH: Of course I would like to play for my country, but it’s not important to me right now, my focus is on Hannover96 and doing the best I can for the new season. Of course if I play well anything can happen, there is plenty of time. Next year is next year, we’ll see what happens.

On your boots it says “Jayron-Cain”, who or what does that mean?
MH: Simple, it’s the name of my son.

See the Create and Dominate boots for yourself at www.underarmour.com/ua11 - a website created by the award winning international digital agency, Perfect Fools (www.perfectfools.com).

Renegade Media in Cannes Lions

2009-06-24T11:22:00.009+01:00

Update from guest blogger Alex Sass:
Renegade Media attended the Cannes Lions 21-27 June, with Mark Terry-Lush and Naomi Attard visiting the festival both to support our clients and to absorb the unique networking event. The shortlist is published here.
Amsterdam Worldwide and Perfect Fools both showcased work at the event. At the time of updating this blog, the results are not yet announced. It's a win already for our team to see two of our long-term clients shortlisted for this prestigious award in 2009. The trip to Cannes concludes a six week schedule of outreach for the staff of Renegade Media visiting their clients in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Hamburg and Nice.

Rocky road ahead for newspapers

2009-06-11T16:07:00.002+01:00

According to media and marketing consulltant, Charlie Makin, the latest batch of newspaper circulation figures for May make dismal reading for the newspapers. Overall, daily circulation was down over half a million copies a day or nearly 5%. The only paper that showed any kind of uplift was the Daily Star (+15.78%) on the back of a massive cover price reduction.

The Media Guardian today made a strong case for how well the Telegraph had done on the back of the MP expenses story. Although across May, the Daily Telegraph was down 3% and lost 26,000 copies a day, they estimate the paper sold 60,000 more papers a day than it would have done and has stolen market share. The article finishes with a rather self congratulatory quote from Lord Beaverbrook (1879 - 1964) “You can’t beat news in newspapers.”

Well you can. The Telegraph.co.uk (tcuk) claims to be the fastest growing quality newspaper website. It receives 12.6 million visits a month from UK users who spend on average 8 mins 46 secs per visit and 6 million UK unique users a month.

This whole story brings into stark relief the perfect storm modern newspapers face. Searches for telegraph.co.uk almost doubled during May according to Google Trends, the MP’s expenses scandal probably doubled site traffic. A great story, changing by the hour, fantastic for both the rigorous analysis of newsprint and the immediacy of online.

Read more about what Charlie has to say at:
http://www.crunchonomics.co.uk/archives/rocky-road-ahead-for-newspapers/

Perfect Fools gets Cold Method make-over for Vegas retreat

2009-06-09T13:26:00.003+01:00

Techno geeks have long lived in the shadow of their creative agency contemporaries when it comes to sartorial style and glamour. So when the producers, developers and web design innovators at Perfect Fools were wondering what to pack for their annual retreat to Las Vegas, suitcase respite came from an unlikely source.

Dutch fashion designers Cold Method, with their raison d’être to ‘make men look discreetly well dressed’, sponsored the 40-strong Perfect Fools team and outfitted the multicultural motley bunch with crisp white shirts and classy, tailored black jackets.

Timeless elegance and vintage finishing added Swedish appeal to Sin City’s luxury Encore hotel, as the 21-century digital Rat Pack posed for a fashion photo shoot.

The Las Vegas “conference” rewarded the team for its recent creative successes with H&M, K-Swiss and Umbro, and saw a heated debate on whether to appoint a style director to sit alongside technical and creative directors.

Perfect Fools’ strategy to beat the recession by out-dressing the competition was boosted as Cold Method handed Perfect Fools the brief to launch its next Collection. The win was not marred by rumours that some Fools lost their shirts on the Strip.

Cold Method takes some of its influence from the classier icons of poker and blackjack folklore, so it made perfect sense to sponsor Perfect Fools’ wardrobes in Vegas.

China blocks social media ahead of Tiananmen anniversary

2009-06-02T13:20:00.006+01:00

For those of us involved in social media marketing and general PR, and someone who has had their blog blocked by the Chinese authorities (see my Tibet/Everest motorcycle travelogue below) the news that two days before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, mainland China web users have been blocked from using social networking sites -- including Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail and Microsoft's new search engine Bing -- is not a surprise.

“We started to notice an even more random and broader approach to website filtering in Beijing over the long weekend just passed. Those of us in the China marketing community are accustomed to heavy-handed filtering of blameless as well as politically sensitive websites, but this week, with the 20th anniversary on Thursday, has largely rendered the web unusable for us,” said Simon Cousins, chief executive of PR agency Illuminant Partners, describing the internet’s performance as “off kilter” all week.

Social media are important tools and the blocking is a setback for everyday communication, personal expression as well as just being bad for business.

Apparently, access to Tweetie, an iPhone application, via China Mobile was also blocked.

Who'd have thought Twitter would unnerve the world's biggest economic powerhouse?

Chaxhill petrol station explosion and fire evacuates office

2009-05-29T10:10:00.008+01:00

This morning the fire service evactuated our office as the nearby petrol station and former home of our lunchtime sandwich and snack run, burnt to the ground. There's a threat of gas cannisters exploding so I'm wearing a tin hat and flak jacket as I write. Nightmare...

Down at the village hall it's like being back in the Blitz... the old peoples' home next door to the garage has been evacuated and it's all tea and sing songs.

Drop Box

A Swede and his Mexican Rooster

2009-05-27T09:34:00.002+01:00

Came across this site today (thanks Naomi) and i'm forwading it to all beer loving fans and of course those who love innovation in social-media/web marketing. ClaudioAndI.com is literally the site for a Swede and his Rooster, launched as a favour to someone working on the Pacifico beer campaign. The guy has a webcam pointing at a Rooster ("natures alarm clock") and a blog following the exploits of this champion poultry. Try explaining it to your mother and it sounds ridiculous, but in reading it's rather wonderful. With a cast including scorpions, farmers and complaining neighbours, along with recent earthquakes and injuries, it is rather alarmingly addictive.

http://www.claudioandi.com/

Kathmandu to Tibet photo albums

2009-05-24T09:53:00.003+01:00

Mark Terry-Lush

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=randall.clint&target=ALBUM&id=5338198256472336881&authkey=Gv1sRgCObBz46XubHO8wE&authkey=Gv1sRgCObBz46XubHO8wE&feat=email

Fiennes career peaks on Everest summit

2009-05-21T09:54:00.005+01:00

This time last week I was sitting at Everest Base Camp watching the sun go down -- from nearly the highest point in the world. I was at the Tibetan Base Camp, a far cry from the Nepali base camp on the other side of the mountain, where Sir Ranulph Fiennes was scaling the world's highest peak.

Tibet Base Camp was barren save for three sets of tents, not a soul around except for a sprinkling of Chinese military guards. It couldn't be more different to the Nepal Base Camp where there are dozens of wannbe summiteers, queuing for their ascent.

Now our local hero here in the South West of UK, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, has scaled the peak. Two previous attempts ended in failure. He is the first man to cross both the polar ice-caps and climb 8,850 metres (29,035ft).

Sir Ranulph said from the top he was pleased but "felt dreadful". "This is the closest you can get to the moon by walking." Last week I had ridden a battered old Royal Enfield to 6,000 metres and felt the painful effects of altitude sickness. Ascend too fast and you can die from altitude sickness. You can't underestimate Sir Ranulph's achievement.

The air is thin, feels like you're holdnig your breath running up the stairs. I had headaches, my co-rider couldn't breathe, our mechanic vomited. I don't think many people appreciate just how tough surviving in this unhospitable place really is.

The following is lifted from the BBC... the Nepal route Sir Ranulph took:

Route plan

The route up is like this: first, climbers have to negotiate the crevasses and ice walls of the Khumbu icefall.

Next day, there is a steep climb up the face of the neighbouring peak of Lhotse. Spiked steel crampons are essential on the sometimes rock-hard ice.

They stay the night at Camp 3 about halfway up the face before tackling the rockier sections of the Yellow Band and then the Geneva Spur.

This leads to Everest's southern shoulder, the South Col, and Camp 4 at just under 8,000 metres. This is the launching point for the summit almost a kilometre above.

Climbers are now in the "Death Zone", so-named because there's so little oxygen in the air that nothing - plant or animal - can live up there for long.

Using bottled oxygen helps, but does not cancel out the effects of being that high.

The body is literally starting to break down, using up its stores. So it is a race against time.

On the summit, there is less than a third of the amount of oxygen available as at sea level.

Typically, climbers start out for the summit late at night, aiming to be on top the following morning with enough time to get all the way back to the South Col in daylight.

For this reason, team leaders impose turnaround times. If their climbers are not close enough to the summit by that time - often about 1pm - they have to descend.

It does not always work out like that. So near, people keep on going but then don't have the energy to get down again.

Experienced mountaineers will often say that Everest is not technically difficult to climb by the South Col route, compared with other Himalayan peaks.

But at this altitude, battling with hypoxia or oxygen starvation, each step is a decision.

The thin air plays with your mind. Many die here because they are not able to think straight.

Sometimes the only landmark ahead is the corpse of a dead climber.

There is one last obstacle before the top - a rocky outcrop called the Hillary Step, named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Everest with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.

After that, the summit is about 30 or 40 minutes away, up an undulating snow slope. But "it's the longest walk in the world," says guide Kenton Cool. "Even when you finally see the summit flags ahead, that walk seems never-ending."

Then it is all the way down again, many climbers sleeping a night at the South Col before returning to base camp next day.

EVEREST FACTS AND FIGURES

Height: 8,848 - 8,850m (29,029 - 29,035 feet)
First ascent: 29 May, 1953, Edmund Hillary/Tenzing Norgay
Number of ascents up to 1988: less than 200
Number of ascents up to end of 2008 climbing season: 4,109 by 2,700 individuals
Most people on the summit in a single day: 116, on 22 May, 2003
Oldest summiteer: 76-year-old Nepalese man, Min Bahadur Sherchan
On their final summit push, they usually bypass Camp 1 and go straight to Camp 2 or Advanced Base Camp at about 6,400m, bypassing Camp 1.

Source: BBC, May 2009

Sunday 17 May. Mark's Top 5 KTM-Lhasa Highlights

2009-05-18T16:13:00.004+01:00

In no particular order:

1) Relief and euphoria at reaching Everest Base Camp and watching the cloud lift to reveal the mountain. Some people who visit Everest never see it because of the cloud. We were blessed with clear skies, especially later that evening as we sat overlooking the mountain while the sun went down. The orange glow, no sound but the wind. The stillness, no movement but for a wild dog and a lone deer.

2)Shigatse Monastery. This amazing working monastery really came alive when we visited the monks 'debating' in their private garden -- the noise, the shouting, they each seemed to be having a right laugh teasing and goading each other, slagging off each others views on philosophy, the meaning of life, and last night's football results.

3) Riding into Kathmandu through a moonsoon. Rain drops the size of fists smacking me in the face, the warm rain soaking my jacket then drying within minutes. The Wacky Races ride into KTM, like riding through a bucket of eels, choking on diesel, trying to see through a cloud of grit and smog, slip sliding on wet sandy footpaths.

4) Cultural eye opener. Lhasa... watching the military patrols in semi riot gear bump old ladies and pilgrims out of their way. The CCTV -- everywhere, soldiers on rooftops, warnings from everyone not to take photographs. Are we being bugged? The paranoia.

5) Shortcut from Everest Base Camp to Tingri. Not so much a road as a compass bearing. Getting lost in this incredible and unforgiving wilderness, feeling both liberation and fear when Clint got a puncture in the middle of no-where.

Sunday 17 May. Clint's Top 5 Highlights

2009-05-18T16:02:00.003+01:00

On the plane coming home... what stands out for Clint, in no particular order:

1) First proper view of Everest, about three miles before Base Camp. There was heavy cloud (as well as snow and ice) on the 100km ride in, I didn't think we'd see the peak today, but I turned a corner and there she was. A shiver went up my spine and my jaw bounced off the Enfield's petrol tank.

2) Riding alone through any number of desolate landscapes. The feeling of isolation and really being away from it all. Complete silence, sometimes the edgyness of real fear at what would happen if we broke down. No real roads, no signs, no recovery service, no Little Chef.

3) Having a belly laughy in Barkhor Square, Lhasa, bartering with shop keepers. All good humoured and everyone a winner... "I've got a pony in me pocket, fetch the suitcase from the van..."

4)Submerging myself in the hotsprings. Up to my neck in nearly boiling water straight from the centre of the earth, after riding through sub zero temperatures. Bathing with natives (and other peoples toenails, dead skin etc).

5) Riding into Kathmandu at the end of the trip. The grotesque landscape cheered up by The Dun laughing his Hindu head off at Mark going mad acting out riding in the Wacky Races. A Slumdog Millionnaire boy on the back of his dad's bike shouting at us that we were losers and he was going to beat us. You had to be there... just hearing Mark singing Abba classics at anyone that came too near his bike because his horn was broken.

Road Trip Top Kit

2009-05-18T15:53:00.004+01:00

1) Royal Enfield 500cc. The ultimate all-terrain vehicle. Takes all manner of punishment. Temperamental but loyal servant.

2) Camelbak. Water, water everywhere. Instant hydradration on the move. Without it we wouldn't have drunk enough to survive the altitude, the heat, the cold, the dust.

3) Leatherman. Once again the proven tool that no man can live without. From fixing punctures and busted gear boxes to cutting your nails and slicing up bits of Yak.

4) Canon G9 compact camera. Take anywhere, hide from the military snapper. RAW quality pix and less intrusive than a portly 300mm telephoto lens.

5) Anti bacterial handwash. Let's face it, bikers are not known for their cleanliness. With a lack of water this handy-sized pocket cleanser saved us from toilet hell, we are sure.

Saturday, 16 May. Kathmandu to London

2009-05-18T15:40:00.002+01:00

The most intense bird song I have ever experienced woke me from a deep sleep this morning. It was like being in an avery of sparrows high on cocaine. There was also the ringing of a prayer bell and the smell of curry and spices in the air. Must be Kathmandu. Dropping off I dreamt a slide show of the past two weeks -- the ride, the people, the scenes. Today, it's back to London.

We've got seven hours and £20 in rupees between us... that's a load of cash for this neck of the woods. We eat a massive breakfast, then wander the streets drinking in the city. We feel ten feet taller, much more confident than when we were here a couple of weeks ago, the beggars don't bother us, the street sharks ignore us, even the rickshaw drivers are less interested. We've seemingly blended in -- or look too dirty and terrifying to talk to. Probably the latter.

We revist our favourite rooftop restaurant overlooking Durber Square, Kathmantop we nickname it, and order the world's biggest curry. A mistake I would learn 8 hours later as the Gurkhas revenge would leave me begging at a bowl with spicey ring burn for the duration of flight home. Should've stuck to plain old noodles and veg.

We bump into Mr Kumar Basnet, the Nepali entrepreneur who organised and fixed most of the trip, who insists on buying us a beer. I think he's impressed that we made it back alive -- and that we didn't abandon the bikes in Tibet. He's a great bloke who even bought us a couple of farewell gifts -- a Nepali woollen hat (not yak) and a silk scarf for us to wear on our bikes back home (think Biggles meets Penelope Pitstop in the Wacky Races). Basnet accompanies us to the airport and gives us a hearty farewell. He's such a professional and likable dude... how many other 'tour operators' would buy their guests a beer, gifts and personally see them home? Sad to say goodbye to Nepal, Tibet and Basnet. It's been an awesome, life-affirming adventure.

Saturday, 16 May. Reflections on Tibet

2009-05-18T15:18:00.003+01:00

A road is a road -- half shut your eyes and the roads we have ridden in Tibet could be anywhere in the developing or under developed world. It's one thing writing about a road trip and the relative hardships you expereince on a motorbike, but really that's not the point. What's most memorable about this adventure is not so much reaching Lhasa or surviving Everest Base Camp, it's the cultural eye openers and the condensing of contrasts into a two-week window.

I've ridden bikes all over the world, met lots of indiginous people but there is something magical, mystical about Tibetans. They are an ancient civilisation adapting to modern life at warp speed -- their country, way of life has changed more in the past two decades than the past two hundred years -- longer probably.

The Chinese have given the people of Tibet an infrastructure, education, sanitation, choice, wealth and more -- it's not always welcome for reasons I can't go into here -- on the surface, it's my observation that their culture is being suffocated at the expense of progress.

Homogenisation is something we have become accustomed to in the west -- our high streets, our media, our work, our lives are becoming the same whether in Barcelona or Birmingham. The diversity and history of cultures such as Tibet should be cherished.

Lhasa, Shigatse, Gyantse have experienced the revolution of change faster than others. How long before the towns, villages and communes east of these cities lose their generations of identities? In Lhasa, I tried to buy a Tibetan children's story book for my daughter, I was told by the shop assistance no such thing exists. I found a Tibetan copy of the original Harry Potter book -- looks cool so I bought it. I asked about the later editions and was told buy the assistant their was no need for a Tibetan edition, apparently.

From the West we can't grasp the significance of protests in countries such as Tibet, or Myanmar or Sri Lanka for that matter. Our 'free society' makes us immune from what we see on TV, we don't realise how lucky we are to have a passport and have freedom of movement internationally -- let alone in our own country. Walking around Lhasa last week reminded me of Northern Ireland in the 80s and Eastern Berlin, pre wall coming down. These two societies now have moved on, will Tibet be able to?

Friday, 15 May. Zangmu to Kathmandu

2009-05-16T10:42:00.003+01:00

Friday, 15 May, 2009. Woke with a start at 8.30am to banging on the hotel door. Tashi wants us to get going, the border opens at 10am and there is much bureaucracy to navigate. My neck, back, shoulders are stiff, my knees fel like under lubricated gate hinges. Sick Boy, my Enfield, is suffering 'coming down the mountain sickness'. He won't start, so I try to bump him down the steep Zangmu roads to much hilarity from The Dun who is riding pillion laughing his head off as Sick Boy pops, farts, starts, then stalls.

We rush a breakfast, The Dun goes off to find a battery as he's sure that is the source of Sick Boy's problems. That's the thing about border towns, in fact any town in a developing country, you know that someone, somewhere, will know someone, who knows someone, somewhere who has a battery for sale in the middle of no-where. The Dun is not disappointed. Sadly we have to wait in Zangmu for thre hours for some Chinese official (who is still in bed) to check our motorcycle paperwork. The flies and smell of Zangmu are an unfortunate last memory of Tibet, but that's border crossings for you.

The town clings desparately to a steep precipice of a mountain. It's streets are short, narrow and windey... lorries, buses etc get gridlocked every day and gush diesel smoke into restaurants and peoples' homes. On the way to the actual border bridge/crossing I pick up our Nepali fixer, Kamcha, and we ride down the mountain amid fears of explosions and landslides -- the Chinese road builders are blasting today. Pity they couldn't start at the top of the mountain and wash away the town. More red tape at the border, the Chinese won't let us through. Eventually we have to bribe a senior official to let the bikes through.

We say our godbyes to Tashi and Nunu, hugs and hand shakes plus envelopes of 'backsheesh'.We push bikes past the 12-year old machine gun toting bridge guards and. we're back at the the Nepal border and through in minutes. A bit of confusion now as six guys start loading al our lugage, spares, tools (Dun's big fluffy duvet) onto a 4x4. Clint screams at them, they unload and bugger off. We were very nearly hijacked! Instead Dun hires a crippled looking Toyota, with an equally cripled loking driver, that's already bottoming out. Dun and Kamcha can barely be seen in the back. Preferring to dice with death as Clint's pillion than suffocate, The Dun hitches a ride for 90km journey to KTM -- helmetless, gloveless and jacketless, naturaly. It's a four-hour ride to Kathmandu, it's 1.30pm. The sub tropical, monsoon-like clouds draw in and it starts to rain big fat heavy droplets the size of fists.

It's hot, humid and now wet. Within minutes the roads are a slick soup of water, silt, diesel, sand... Our already suffering Enfields now have a new challenge to add to tight mountain corners, roadworks, and sand/gravel traps. Oh and the Tata trucks, buses, coaches and Mahindra pick-ups driving where they want to. Rain aside, this neck of the Nepali woods is beautiful -- lush forests, vegetation, pretty roadside vilages, smiling happy people -- the ladies loking stunning in multi-coloured saris. We ride parallel to rivers (saw a river burial), past waterfalls.

The ride into KTM is the opposite, another culture shock. When we left nearly two weeks ago it was dawn and the traffic was heavy, but not this mental. We also saw a side of KTM that horrified us -- smoke stacks billowing black sooty bile, thick smog hanging over miles of near-stationary snarled up, hooting and honking traffic. It's like a Pink Floyd album gone wrong. The grit from dust and exhausts gets in your eyes, the choking atmosphere catches in your throat. The only way through is to get on the 'pavement' and pick our way along to the centre of the city.

It's madness, I let the Enfield and Buddha take over... Sick Boy's clutch is slipping, the engine is overheating, the throttle keeps sticking (on), my front fork seals have blown and are leaking fluid. My horn is broken as well so I simply shout, scream and sing at anything that comes near me -- The Dun finds this hilarious and claps and waves from the back of Clint's bike. It's the Nepali Wacky Races, like riding through a bucket of eels.

Back at the Enfielder's workshop we hand back our battered beasts and have a cup of tea with the owner, "captain Siddhartha J Gurung (pilot)", a very cool Nepali bloke who also flies helicopters for a living. Mr Basnet arrives, the nearly dead Toyota and Kamcha turn up and the journey is ended. Hotel, shower, civvies and we pop out for our first beer for a fortnight (we were warned not to drink at all because of the altitude), Cheers, mission accomplished. Happy days.

(Please forgive any spelling, grammar etc mistakes, I'm writing this on the hoof from internet cafes or my phone. I'll correct on my return)

Thursday, 14 May Everest to Zangmu

2009-05-16T10:11:00.003+01:00

Middle of the night and I am awake, the tent is sleping CLint and I, our crew (Tashi, The Dun, Nunu), our lady Tibetan host and a random Tibetan bloke in stylish Chinese army great coat. I can't shift the headache I have, paracetamol, the Alt sickness tablets, water, tea. it's hideous. My sinus are blocked, breathing through mouth is lip and throat drying as there is no moisture in the air.

When the Yak duvet slips off my sleeping bag I instantly feel the fierce cold on my skin. But what do expect -- we're at 19,000 + feet! About 7am we all start to rise, the tent is filled with wood, yak and goat shit smoke from the burner, everyone looks dog rough. A leftover glass of tea by my cot is frozen solid. I hear mutters of -7 to -10 degres outside last night.

The view out of the tent is like a moonscape. The peak of Everest is clear, it has an amazing contrast against the blue sky. At 9am we head off to find a 'short cut' to Tingri. 75km instead of 100km. This track is unbelievable, sometimes it's like riding on a pebble beach, other times like through hard sand dunes, the best option is take a compass bearing and just go... Both Enfields take it al in their stride, except for when Clint gets a puncture -- no worries, The Dun is minutes behind us and fixes it in a jiffy.

At times all you can see are faint tyre tracks across an entire wilderness -- it's easy to get lost, so we do. Up on the Lamna La pass we're suddenly alone. It's desolate, bleak, so high up nothing grows, all around us are snow capped peaks. There are several faint tyre tracks heading off in different directions. We wait for a vehicle to come along to ask for directions -- after an hour a solitary 4x4 with a chinese driver appears. He tries to drive around us but we run after him. Thankfully his western passengers tel him to stop and he points us in the right direction.

At the bottom of the pass Clint gets puncture number two. We pull over by a rushing stream and wait, and wait, and wait. After an hour a 4x4 crosses the bridge, the driver shouts that our truck has broken down. Nothing we can do but have a kip. Two hours later Clint is fixed (thanks Dun) and we're back on the track, hideously behind schedule -- we stil have 160km from Tingri to Zangmu. At New Tingri we're shagged out but have to kep going. We stop for fuel and noodles and hit the road at 4.30pm, at least 4 hours to ride and we're worried about the sunset catching us in the middle of no-where.

We already know the roads are hell, we rode this way east last week. More tracks, more dirt, gravel, stones, rocks, road works, corregated hard mud trails that jar and fuse every vertibrae. Sitting is to painful, like riding a badly behaved horse. We stand on the pegs and imagine we're in an episode of Kickstart, the Enfields become trials bikes and jump from bump, ramp and sand trap. We're both riding fast and smoothe, on a mission. Riding after sunset will be like riding in a coalmine with a candle for a high beam and a canary for company. We have to get to Nyalam before 8.45pm. after that we know it's paved and tarmac roads (mostly). We make it, just. Cold, bruised and batered we grab a quick bowl of noodle soup from a hiddeous Chinese restaurant and wait for the Truck. After 45 minutes Tashi arrives out of no-where and we set off in the dark through the Nyalam pass. Tashi as pillion -- no helmet, gloves or jacket.

I lead, it's terrifying. I have no high beam, the roads are ok but twisty and tight. Oncoming traffic has a nasty habit of never dipping headlights and/or driving halfway across the centre line so I have to slow until they pass. Occasionally the road disappears and is replaced by roadworks of gravel, sand and rock. Landslips and rock falls are common so we have to dodge boulders on the road. The inky blackness forces adrenalin-fueled concentration, thank God I can't see the vertical mountain drops we are riding through. After 45km we're at Nyalam, it's 10.30pm. Actually, we're on the outskirts and stopped at the road closure. miles of trucks are stacked waiting for the go, we nip in and out, down the slippery tracks to the Chinese checkpoint, where we have to wait half an hour. Never did a hotel bed in a nasty border town fel so welcoming. Rough day, unbelieveable ride. Can't believe we did it.

(Please forgive any spelling, grammar etc mistakes, I'm writing this on the hoof from internet cafes or my phone. I'll correct on my return)

wednesday 13 may. Xegar to Everest Base Camp

2009-05-13T02:57:00.003+01:00

6am outside the hotel it,s -4 degrees, dark and snowing. The bikes are coverd in snow, they won't start until The Dun pours hot water over them from a flask. It's 120km to Base camp, 20km on paved road, the rest on tracks. The mountain climb is hard work as we're ascending to 6000m up steep icey, rockey single tracks.

The view is stunning, but we have to concentrate hard to stay upright. Clint takes a tumble on the ice but is unhurt. On the way down the pass I crash and snap off my right mirror and front brake assembly, no damage to me. At the top of the first pass -- Pang La -- the water in our Camelbaks has frozen solid, we sit looking at Everest but it's shrouded in cloud, so frustrating we can't see it. However, we are officially the world's highest motorcyclists -- this pass is higher than Base Camp. The destination is stil 90km away, across some of the most testing offroad conditions. It takes hours -- the roads vary from shit to shitty. Our spines, legs, arms get batterered and bruised -- the track is absolutely appalling.

After 5 nightmare hours we are finally sipping yak butter tea at Everest Base Camp. We are on top of the world and 'Oomolangma' (Tibetan name for Everest)looks absolutely stunnng so close. We get as close as the Chinese guards will allow us -- the mountaineers' base camp, which is separated off from the tourist base camp.

We're finding it hard to breathe, have headaches from the altitude, but euphoria of being here is more than medicine. We sit atop a hillock among prayer flags and mounds of stones that monks have built and just stare. The peak is invisible, we wait for the curtain to lift. Sadly after an hour we have to give up and head back to camp, it's too cold. We decide to get a lift up at sunset when we anticipate (hope) all will be clear. We're not disapointed, a near cloudless scene and Everest is laid out before us -- you get a lump in your throat at it's size, and think about all the mountaineers who have perrished trying to reach the top.

At 8.30 we're watching the sun set from the top of the hilock, one or two mountaineers are busting about, but it's just Clint and I staring, trying to keep warm. After dark we're back in the tents, the log burner has filled up the space with choking smoke and supper is being prepared - rice and potatoes never tasted better. We sit around listening to stories from our Tibetan hosts. At around 10pm our cots are prepared. A yak-smelling blanket and duvet and two hard pillows. All I can bear to remove are my bike bots, jacket and leather trousers. Even in my sleeping bag it's cold. The yak duvet and blanket are wrapped around me -- with the lack of oxygen, mountain sicknes and cold I doubt i'll sleep much tonight.It's sub zero outside, black as a coalmine around but the heavens are alive with the most amazing sea of stars. What a monumental day, what a mental day.

(Please forgive any spelling, grammar etc mistakes, I'm writing this on the hoof from internet cafes or my phone. I'll correct on my return)

tuesday 12 may. Shigatse to Xegar

2009-05-12T12:19:00.004+01:00

Tuesday 12 May. Back on decent roads, but clouds are low and the world is monochromatic. At one point I think I have my tinted visor down, nope, it really is that gloomy. It’s cold, my chest is freezing as we ride up to “Tra La” pass (4050m). We stop to warm up and dance around the prayer flags. We meet some Swedish guys on a tour and THEY HAVE COFFEE… we’re like frozen pigs in a trough gulping the hot Nescafe. Pins and needles follow — ouch, ouch, ouch. This side effect of altitude sickness tablets is painful and annoying. When in one’s feet it feels like I’ve trodden on a wasps nest.

Despite the weather we’re happy to be back in deepest Tibet. The lack of Chinese influence feels good and we pull over to watch people in fields work their yaks. It’s a peaceful, serene scene. While the Tibetans may prefer a Massy Ferguson to do the work, our idealism gets the better of us.

Clint’s bike, Herbie, goes bananas as we enter Lhartse, the horn sticks and Clint honks and beeps his way down the main street, attracting every pair of eyes in the town. Very embarrassing. My own Enfield, Sick Boy, is running like a dream, hasn’t broken down for the first time in eight days. He coughed a bit, but that’s all.

After lunch and the other side of Lhartse we happen across some hot springs – spa time Tibetan style. It’s an ancient bathing site (think Bath Spa but medieval). Clint does a great impression of a laughing Buddha as he gingerly lowers himself into the steaming water, while around us mothers bring their children to bathe away skin complaints, men wash away ailments and older ladies seek spiritual and therapeutic warmth in their bones. Mind you the water seems to have a lot of unidentifiable scum on the surface. Don’t put your head under the water, Clint.

We rode through Gyatso Pass again, and compared to last week it was a transformation. Snow lay thickly everywhere, the raw wind biting. The prayer flags flap so hard you would think the entire scene should blow away. Three nomads hide amid the flags, the toughest is a lady who gestures for a lift, so we give her a ride down the mountain. She must be freezing, I know I am, but she has no jacket, hat or gloves.

Later, riding down yet another steep rocky pass, this one with a 100-ft drop into a river on my right, a sand storm rises and rushes towards us. As luck would have it both Clint and I are hit simultaneously. One moment we’re enjoying the blue sky view then wham! Everything goes orange, my Enfield slews sideways and the wind lifts me from the saddle. The sand crackles on my lid as if shotgun pellets have been fired. Thankfully it’s over as fast as it starts and I can spit the sand from my mouth and wipe the thick moon dust off my kit.

We arrive tea time at Xegar and under the bright blue sky we decide to head out on a misguided excursion to spot Everest and take a chance at off-roading past the Chinese checkpoint guards (just in case it’s cloudy tomorrow and we don’t get to see the mountain. We both forget to fill up on petrol and 10 miles from the hotel both Enfields stall. We’re in the fag end of no-where. No backup. No passers by. My reserve works, but Clint’s is fouled and no fuel gets through the pinched fuel pipes. Without a tow-rope Clint has to hang onto my bike with his left hand and I pull him back to the hotel – it’s a slow, painful journey up and down the windy roads.

When the sun drops behind the Himalayas the temperature goes through the floor. By 10pm it’s -4 degrees. Chilly night ahead.