Will Rowan | marketing-led web-savvy digital strategy
The web thrives on standards - but try putting toghther a virtual team video conference with freelancers, outside the confines of an organisation’s preferred software, and the mix of technical religions will almost certainly scupper things before they get started.
Maybe ooVoo is the answer - I’ll try it out on a Mac/Win, UK broadband & South african narrowband conference & see how we go….
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Sphere: Related ContentAround the milennium I used a 10.4 inch Sony Vaio laptop… and only stopped using it around 2005, when its inability to run anything more modern than Win 98se stopped it connecting to networks. The Mac Air launch had me digging for reviews of my old Vaio - this one ending “After 6 months, there still isn’t anything to upgrade to. That’s
unheard of in the PC market.”
Come to think of it, after more than 6 years, and reading the mixed reviews of Mac Air at launch, there’s still precious little to compare. It’s (almost) tempting to find a late PII Vaio pcg505, & pimp it with Linux.
Almost.
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Sphere: Related ContentWhen 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.)
Sphere: Related ContentThe House of Windsor now has a channel on YouTube: that’s very welcome… I’m sure it won’t be long before TheRoyalChannel is the most popular way of watching the annual Christmas Queen’s Speech…. and that they add a lot more content to show the Family at work.
Sphere: Related ContentSeth nails it: there’s two ways to market online - burn permission with frequency (make money now, rebuild your customer base later), or engage, and dig in for a longer haul, but with permission.
I’ve always been a fan of the latter - work the customer base, with their consent, to grow your network by engaging theirs. Rather than talking about ‘permission’ which has a kinda ‘yes/no, once & for all time’ feel to it, I think of this as ‘consent’ - it has a softer feel to the relationship, & maybe there’s more of a 2 way sense to the relationship.
Sphere: Related ContentNo, I don’t particularly trust government with my data - but then I fully expect all organisations to at some time abuse the trust I’ve placed in them.
There’s two types of problem here - errors (a polite way of saying ‘incompetence’, and ‘breaches of trust’ where data given in good faith is then used for a different purpose. In so many ways the web makes these errors & breaches of trust transparent - I’m sure these things went on in the past, but folk just didn’t know about them.
The only answer is to take responsibility for your own privacy.
The long term solution would be to have an efficient personal recourse & compensation system. At present there is no commonly agreed straightforward way to alert a company to loss or misuse of your data - and no sense of an appropriate value for compansation.
A friend who had £500+ stoln through a credit card fraud “fixed” the problem with one phone call to Lloyds TSB (well done them for dealing with it so quickly). But he’ll be without £500 for 10 days or so: what’s that worth? And for all the background fraud protection that does go on in business, nobody seems to be asking why the data was in the wild in the first place. In the particular case of financial data, chip & pin doesn’t seem to be the answer: fraud rose after its introduction. If we customers can help by changing our behaviour, then being guided on what behaviour to change would be a good start.
The Government’s reward for finding lost families data is less than the commercial rate for name & address data; appended family & financial data would cost several times more than the reward offer for a single use of the data.
One can only wish the Data Privacy Consultation well; i’ll look into it to see if I can contribute, constructively. The folk I’ve met from the Information Commissioner’s office have always been just the kind of folk you’d want in charge of your data. I hope they can spread some of their good karma & thinking to other government departments & businesses.
Sphere: Related ContentIt’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”.
Sphere: Related ContentThis 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.
Sphere: Related ContentTwo pieces of retail research news today: no mention of social networks, just shops selling goods to customers.
The Times has:
“Online sales of groceries are predicted to double over next five years Sarah Butler
“The amount of groceries sold over the internet is expected to double in the next five years, according to new research that suggests that one in ten shoppers will no longer visit a supermarket by 2012.
“IGD, the grocery market research organisation, predicts that sales of groceries online will reach £5 billion in five years’ time, although this will still be a small fraction of the £156 billion expected value of the total grocery market. At present only 2 per cent of groceries are sold online and that would rise to just over 3 per cent by 2012, according to the IGD’s figures.
“Grocery retailers said that they believed IGD’s predictions were conservative and that online grocery sales, which are increasing by about 30 per cent a year, could double within the next three years. [...]
“Tesco, by far the biggest online grocer in the UK, sells £1.23 billion of groceries online – about 3½ times the level achieved five years ago. Last year its online grocery sales rose by about 30 per cent.
Those sales make up nearly 5 per cent of Tesco’s UK business”
while the FT has:
“Affluent flock to online stores By Tom Braithwaite
“London’s affluent commuter belt boasts the UK’s largest number of home shopping devotees as cash-rich, time-poor consumers flock to the internet. Two-thirds of home shopping hotspots are now in the home counties, while the north and Scotland lag behind, on a list compiled by Experian.
“The data research company found Sunningdale in Berkshire had vaulted to the top of this year’s list, overtaking Barnes in south-west London, with an average spend of £137 a head in the 12 months to June. Two-thirds of the top 100 towns were within commuting distance of London, while 77 per cent were in the south.
“Overall home shopping spend increased by 15 per cent in 2006-07 as more retailers launched transactional websites, broadband penetration increased and consumers became more web savvy.”
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