Archive for the 'Strategy' Category

Another dent in tv’s advertsing revenues

YouTube has just started auctioning video positions to the highest bidder - Adsense paid search results for video. (tip o’ hat to Marshall K at Read Write Web ) Along with yesterday’s announcement that full length feature films from MGM are to run on YouTube, that’s another dent in broadcast tv’s audiences, and revenues.

There’s already a good selection of brand commercials on YouTube: there’s a high definition service too. If you were running a commercials agency, wouldn’t you put some budget into YouTube? If only as a hedge against falling broadcast audiences - and with the potential to earn larger production fees on long films.

How long before we see broadcast tv being used to trail long ads on YouTube? It’s a technique that’s already been used by advertisers like the Army (who also offered mobile video, iirc). The idea that TV may not be the prime channel, that it’s just feding others, will make some old Madison Avenue & Soho admen rotate in their graves.

The world’s changing, and fast.

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real, social marketing

When folk talk about ‘marketing to social networks’ , you can be pretty sure (from their language) if they’re about to spam a community.  The wrong way to go about it is to think like a broadcast, analogue advertiser, and think what message can be put infront of the greatest number of eyeballs.

Making that message interactive is a just-about-acceptable half way house to…

Properly engaging folk
By giving them soemthing they can contribute to
That lets folk/customers change the company & its product/service, in even the most miniscule way.

There’s a conversation going on at the mo’ ’bout ’social objects ‘(Gapingvoid is a great entry point, as are Jyri Engestrom’s slides on slideshare (who coined the term). And here’s a cracking example….

Howies make clothes; they’re a responsible company, in every way. <declaration: today I’m mostly wearing Howies jeans /declration>  So when they open their first store you’d expect a brand/web/shop social object. It’s described on Russell Davies’ blog  - and involves a heath robinson contraption to print photos from Howies’ flickr group. Looks like a thing of beauty - as a marketing concept and in store (must make a point of visiting.)

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on positive management styles

It’s no surprise to find that UK managers are the most negative: over the past 12 months I’ve worked with folk for the UK (natch!), Sweden, South Africa, Australia, America, and even a Brit based in Australia… they are consistently more positive, energetic and constructive than UK management.

The ability of UK folk to sit, diss, and do nothing, is astonising.

So I applaud  UK clients who do manage to stay positive, in spite of the zeitgeist.

</rant>

How often does that negativity seep out to customers? I guess the trite answer is that “once would be too often”.

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BBC & TheCloud’s free wifi deal

This is massive.

It’s a breakthrough: free wifi & useful, entertaining content… I wonder if the BBC’s streaming tv will be included?

“The BBC has signed a deal with wireless network operator The Cloud to offer its customers online services over WiFi free of charge.

Customers with any WiFi enabled device will be able to surf the BBC’s web site in all 7,500 of The Cloud’s hotspots without paying a log-in or subscription fee.”
from VNUNet

Sadly news coverage of this innovative deal will get lost in coverage of the BBC’s budget & staffing plans. But I believe that it’s this kind of deal that defines public service broadcasting in a digital, networked society.

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social networking & business roundup article

A nice piece by David Bowen that captures ‘where we’re up to’ on social networking

…and includes this gem
“The price is that it is important to give away really valuable
information, because only this will be picked up. “The first thing you
have to do is relinquish control,””

Yep.
Nailed it.
There’s no point in sharing information that everybody knows.
If you’re an expert, share stuff that only you know, that everybody else (who is interested) will find useful.

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BT networks home wifi

The FT reports that “BT Group
is attempting to create the world’s largest wi-fi network by persuading
millions of UK customers to turn their home wireless “hubs” into public
hotspots.”

What a smart idea - and it goes back to the idea that networked nodes’ power & value grows with the number of nodes on the network. If they can pull this off, BT’s share price will rocket (if the market understands what they’ve achieved).

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Collaborate

What a neat idea… Collabandrate is an online in-house suggestion box - so it’s social, transparent, and efficient.

Neat.

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Mashups crossing the chasm

BEA’s pan-european business survey includes this news (as reported by Silicon):
The survey also found that the demand for mashups,
where a website or application that combines content from more than one
source into an integrated experience, was set to treble from its
current level of 6% of organisations to 18% within 18 months.”

Have you got an adoption curve to hand? Then we’ll begin!
At 6%, mashups are playful fun for early innovators: at 18%, they’re heading rapidly for the mainstream, in 2009.

Trouble is, at the same time elsewhere in Silicon today, they’re reporting on IT skills shortages - with retail organisations and banks unable to fill 40%-50% of vacancies… Now, maybe the skilled workforce doesn’t exist in the right parts of the country. Or maybe companies aren’t paying enough - in spite of IT’s year on year pay inflation. Genuinely useful online features save business money by reducing cost while making it easier to perform a task: that’s just the sort of high-bang-for-the-buck customer content that mashups provide. Perhaps some of those cost-efficiency gains need to be diverted back to their source - IT teams’ pay packets?

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