Thoughts in Flight

Should have gone to Specsavers

Quick tactical turnaround from the Specsavers team...

Thanks to Allie for sending us this,

Sam

 

Advertising is the cost of being boring

This is from Gaping Void (which if you don't subscribe to - you should do!): 

"This is a piece that we originally did for Andy Sernovitz over at socialmedia.org, and we still love it because it's such a simple thought, and useful to every business, large and small. As Russell Davies, the UK ad executive says, "A brand's first job is to be interesting."

Once you are interesting, every contact with every customer, supplier, and stakeholder becomes easier. When you look at how commodity products and services are differentiated from their competition, it always comes back to the successful ones being more interesting - usually in an unexpected way.

Yes, quality matters. Yes, price matters. Yes, all the stuff you learned in "B" school matters. But what matters most to your customers is that you are smarter, quirkier, cooler, and more determined than the next guy. Once you are able to project these human traits to the world, customers and prospects are drawn to you.

This is for the guys who still think that the only way to market is through explaining product benefits and price advantages. Because being more human and showing that you are different, with personality and purpose, is even more important."

You can buy the image as a print and sign up to daily FREE art emails here: http://www.gapingvoidart.com/

- Simon

 

Lawless, woodcutting and Little White Lies

 

I'm a sucker for beautifully crafted objects. 

The time, effort and pure love that went into the creation of the new Little White Lies Lawless special reaffirms my belief that there'll always be a place for lovingly crafted physical objects (admittedly its not for everyone - like vinyl - but there'll always be a committed hardcore to this stuff).

Props to Little White Lies and The Church Of London.   

- Simon

This Week in Digital: w/c July 16th

What’s happened this week:

• Twitter has boosted its search functionality in an attempt to compete with Google and Facebook in real-time search.
• Digg, one of the symbols of web2.0 has been broken up and sold as mobile begins to dominate news distribution.
• Qualcomm launched Gimbal; a context awareness platform for mobile.
  • Some believe that this is the next frontier for mobile.
  • Facebook’s mobile ad strategy seems to be pointed in this direction.

 What we have learned:

• 55% of Britons shared news on Facebook last week vs. 33% using email and 22% on Twitter ~Reuters Digital News Report.
• Streaming accounts for 89% of Digital Music sales in Sweden and over half of all music revenue.
• Connected TV owners spend 12 hours a week watching online video on the big screen.
  • Social TV interactions are up at least 171% so far this year.

 Cool stuff

• YSL has created a line of products exclusive to its Facebook fans, expect to see many more exclusive product initiatives for online communities.
• This amazing video of Ken Block racing around San Francisco highlights the concept of multiple advertiser supported content enabled by the network.
• Broadcasters are promising up to 24 simultaneous streams of content to 4 different digital platforms for the Olympic Games.

Where to find more:

• ‘Measuring marketing’s worth’, McKinsey’s view of the 5 questions we should be able to answer.
• Why DMPs are emerging as the keystone of Data driven marketing. If the acronym isn’t familiar to you, read this.
• With so much data at our disposal price is becoming an ever more elastic concept, for example mac users pay 30% extra for hotels on Orbitz.com.

 - Sam (thanks to JP and the Futures team)

This Week in Digital: w/c July 9th

 

What’s happened this week:

• YouView launched in the UK, with Internet enabled set top boxes going on sale at £300 over the next few weeks.
• ITV detailed plans for micropayments for TV shows, enabling a paid for version of ITV player.
• Yahoo announced Electric City, a web first animation series starring Tom Hanks.

 What we have learned:

• People in the UK use their Smartphones for 2hours 8 minutes per day, mainly for entertainment and web surfing.
• 81% of UK mainstream consumers surf the web whilst watching TV, according to IBM’s ‘Beyond Digital’ global study of connected consumers.
• Mobile devices now account for 10.5% of all web traffic up >250% since the end of 2010.

 Cool stuff

• Wearable computing is a trend that seems to be finally coming of age with Olympus and Apple joining Google in creating new form factors.
• The Avengers Initiative second screen app points to a new model of monetisation for Hollywood blockbusters.
• Dateline Chatline is the most ambitious attempt yet to curate online interaction around a major broadcast TV show.  

 Where to find more:

• The evolution of the web, beautifully illustrates the acceleration of new web technologies of the past few years.
• Hacking the future of TV. Developers will shape the future of TV through the creation of innovative TV apps.
• The next billion dollar idea will come from unlocking a secret about human behavior rather than a new technology, an inspiring perspective form Nir Eyal.

- Sam (thanks to JP and the Futures team)

All Hail Sauron

No words can describe how great this is.

- Simon

This Week in Digital: w/c July 2nd : Digital Creativity Special.

What’s happened this week:

• Google’s I/O developer event saw the launch of a new tablet device priced under USD 200, Google Now (a Siri like assistant) and a media streamer.
  • The most spectacular feature of the event was this stunt using Google Glass which creatively illustrates the new perspectives enabled by it.
  • Brightcove have launched AppCloud Core that links mobile devices and the Apple TV. Expect to see new kinds of interaction around TV content.
  • YouTube launched Video Creation Marketplace a platform to connect content creators to brands.

 What we have learned:

• YouTube’s top 5 content partners drive 1.5bn views per month. Web content is really starting to scale.
• Anyone can use technology creatively these Girl Scouts quadrupled cookie sales using mobile credit card readers.
• Consumers have very different relationships with their multiple screens; from the everyman to the sage to the lover. ‘Meet the screens’ from Omnicom and MSN illustrates how we should approach each screen’s creative use.

 Cool stuff

• Chrome web lab is coming to London’s Science Museum it is cutting edge ‘experiential Digital creativity’.
• The most shared advertiser content of recent weeks, very different types of content to traditional advertising.
• This interactive music video by Androp is very clever; in this case the interaction is the message.
• IBM’s view on how Augmented Reality can be used creatively in the retail environment.

 Where to find more:

• On YouTube the amateur is the new pro, many more people are being creative in many new ways.
• ‘We need a fundamentally different way of creating a brand’ this memo from CP+B CEO Andrew Keller sums up the challenges facing brands in a world of infinite Digital content.
• The 100 best slides from Cannes, a little inspiration to create in the much maligned ppt.

- Sam (thanks to JP and the Futures Group) 

In one minute all this happens!

Thanks to Ali for passing on this interesting infographic.

- Sam