Right. Summer break over. Went to a very slick presentation from Google yesterday afternoon. The amount of user data they have is quite scary. It’s no wonder they are…
Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category
In 1978 viewing figures for the Morecombe and Wise Christmas show on ITV were in the region of 28 million people. Around the same time Nescafe launched an advertising campaign involving the Gold Blend couple which at its peak attracted more than 30 million viewers.
The connection is obvious. Three decades ago the most popular television programmes could attract almost half the nation. Vast numbers of people where on the same frequency. All an advertiser needed to do was position their product in between shows like Morecombe and Wise or soap operas like Coronation Street, and they had a totally captive audience.
By contrast, nowadays, in the modern home very few people are listening or watching the same thing. There are no longer two or three television stations, there are hundreds available via satellite. And countless radio stations. A recent survey carried out by JupiterResearch found that online users are now spending about 14 hours a week, on average – the same amount of time that they spend watching TV – surfing the internet.
By their nature web users are far less passive than the average television viewer. They spend time networking with friends, swapping information and sharing views. They comment on blogs and upload videos and photos. They are busy doing research, downloading music and checking out weird and wonderful facts.
Collaboration and participation are the buzzwords of today. As described in the book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams: “Blogs, wikis, chat rooms, search engines, advertising auctions, peer-to-peer downloading, and personal broadcasting represent new ways to entertain, communicate, and transact. In each instance the traditionally passive buyers of editorial and advertising take active, participatory roles in value creation. Some of these grassroots innovations pose dire threats to existing business models.”
Our job at Global Beach is to be like a new generation advertising agency creating communication strategies that respond to and reflect modern tastes.
We’re in the middle of getting together our pitch for a well-known UK Motorcycle manufacturer and I have suddenly developed an interest in looking at bikes to see if they are the particular brand we are working on… if not (in my head) I seem to think all other makes are “inferior”. I nearly missed my turning the other day whilst totally affixed on following the said bike brand in front of me.
This got me thinking, what is it about working on a brand that makes you a natural advocate and how can I influence others around me to feel as passionately about this or any other brand I work on… which in turn will hopefully inspire them to influence others?
So in the run up to the pitch (and beyond) I plan on becoming that annoying friend who won’t shut up about this particular brand. In fact I would go as far as even trying to influence at least one of my friends to purchase a bike (if nothing else so that I could experience a ride on one).
However, on a more serious note and without wanting to give away too much we are approaching the usual suspects/influencers to gain their opinion and get a feel for their passion about the brand. It’s interesting just how strong people can feel about brands (for some reason it makes me feel normal). I’ll be interested to see just what comes out of this… watch this space.
Yesterday was Red Nose Day and people all over the country were doing unusual things for charity. Some were cringe-worthy, some really weren’t very funny and some were just bizarre.
There was one that really made me laugh though, and that was Peter Serafinowicz‘ twitter vegetable pop star pun war. The idea is simple, think of a vegetable pop star combination, say ‘Tina Turnip’, donate £2 to comic relief and tweet your pop star to @serafinowicz. A great idea, nearly £5k raised for comic relief and something that just wouldn’t have been possible without Twitter.
As I trawled through the weekend newspapers in the search for anything other than recession doom and gloom, the debate on bankers’ bonuses or frivolous Valentines reunion stories, it became evident that in almost every newspaper or publication I read, there was at least one story on Twitter. Intrigued by the apparent fascination this weekend about the service, I couldn’t help but obsess over wanting to read more to find out whether I was missing something.
I was stunned to read in the FT that Twitter rejected a takeover by Facebook valued at up to $500m, even though there is no revenue generation model from the service… Now correct me if I am wrong, but it seems almost obscene to place so much value on something that has failed to introduce ways to make money from it yet.
I then went on to discover The Twitterati (OMG – there’s a name for so-called elite users) column in the Sunday Times Style magazine. I was horrified to read that someone had actually broadcast the birth of a child to the whole world using Twitter!
And then came the endorsement from India Knight (Sunday Times columnist) that she is retracting her initial thoughts about the service – “saying it was needy and megalomaniacal and plain weird for any sane person to spend the day posting random thoughts onto a public site”, to now class it as “amazing”. Amazing because of 3 things -
1. finding out people are funny
2. apparently it can be a great resource and
3. you feel connected
Embarrassed by the fact that I work in a Digital Agency and I had not experienced the Twitter phenomenon (and also having soaked up all this recent information), I immediately signed up to Twitter and selected a few friends to follow. Having broadcast my first thought “Crofty00 just sold her soul to the devil and signed up to Twitter” it was swiftly responded to by my ex-housemate – “you’ll be bored of it in 10 mins! :)”. How right he was… has the world slowly become obsessed with what everyone else is doing every moment of the day? At what point will we make the realisation that focusing on our own lives may provide a real benefit, rather than preoccupying our interest with others?
I don’t really see any personal benefit in Twitter, I don’t want to know when my mate “is listening to the weird bubbly sound of earwax dissolving inside his ear” or “totally lost for words and feels drained”. Can that sort of thing not be discussed in the pub, or are we now evolving into a world where the majority of our social communication is done solely through the realms of the virtual world…. known as Twitter. And will there be any real financial benefits in the future?