Digital Connections

Great World Cup SMS Infographic (c/o O2 & Wired)

Building on my England World Cup infographic post from last Saturday, here's another England / World Cup infographic. 

 

Taken from an interesting article from @NateLanxon at Wired magazine, showing SMS usage around England's World Cup games - perfectly illustrated in infographic form. (If anybody gets a higher res version please nudge me).

During England’s Group C matches, O2 users sent just over 75,000,000 text messages - with usage peaking at 4k-5k texts immediately after England's goals.

Sport is inherently social and its best served live and with shared real time experiences, it’s all about “The Power of Now”. First choice mode of carriage for major sport is always on TV, sharing and analysis then happens on the most convenient platform, in this case mobile. As a gregarious and social race, we instinctively and immediately want to share our appreciation of the “awesome” with our closest friends.

(On the flip side SMS traffic looks highest during England Algeria - but I think we can put that down to boredom)

Gregarious creatures and the World Cup "fail whale"

Hello, it's been a while,

Working on lots of exciting projects at Fast Track has resulted in me being pretty quiet on this blog for the past month or so. If you've been trying to get hold of me then you've probably received my "over capacity" reply, as I've been tied up with the FIFA World Cup (read more here) and London 2012 projects.

And chances are that if you've been on Twitter over the past few weeks then at some point you've probably also been hit by their over capacity replay, aka the "Twitter Fail Whale", as the social media platform has been creaking under the volume of conversation around the World Cup.

 

Even Twitter have admitted that June has been Twitter’s worst month as the  platform undergoes structural changes to address record tweeting and account creations.

"We’re working through tweaks to our system in order to provide greater stability at a time when we’re facing record traffic. We have long-term solutions that we are working towards, but in the meantime, we are making real-time adjustments so that we can grow our capacity and avoid outages during the World Cup."

The FIFA World Cup is a great example that sport is inherently social, best served live and paired with real time social communication. The first choice mode of engagement is always TV, the second choice is a social platform. In the past this social platform was mainly the pub or the home, but now opinion sharing and analysis is occurring on the most convenient platform (Twitter, Facebook) whether thats online or mobile.

In the view of Karl Marx, "Human beings are intrinsically, necessarily and by definition social beings who, beyond being "gregarious creatures", cannot survive and meet their needs other than through social co-operation and association."

When it comes to World Class sport we still instinctively and immediately want to instantly share our appreciation of the “awesome” with our social circles.

I guess this is just another fine example of how "Technology Changes People Don't" ... 

 

Timeless Marketing Classics: The Search Continues

A recent post by Charles Frith and a conversation over a pint with Will Humphrey, reminded me of a blog project that I started earlier this year, namely "Timeless Marketing Classics".

Inspired by James Webb Young's "A technique for producing ideas" and a blog post by Neil Perkin, I set out to identify which books were perceived by modern day marketers as true "Timeless Marketing Classics".

Timeless Marketing Classics: Books that have survived the test of time; haven't aged, and are just as relevant today, if not even more so, than when they were first written.

 

Image: Weeping Willow (Flickr)

Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" has always been relevant in the workplace, and in a digital world where Twitter followers and Google Page Rank contribute to determining influence, its value is definitely retained. On many occasions I've found that James Webb Young's 50 year old masterpiece can more often than not provide the catalyst for an idea. Other titles such as Eating the Big Fish, The Cluetrain Manifesto, and Truth Lies & Advertising were all written over 10 years ago and their core insights are still influential and relevant a decade later.

Back in April, I knocked on the door of several authors, bloggers and planners, (namely Seth Godin, Jon Steel, Chris Anderson, Russell Davies, Adam Richardson, Helge Tenno, Neil Perkin, Eaon Pritchard and Charles Frith), and asked them, 3 simple questions:

-     What you consider to be a Timeless Marketing Classic
-     Why was it relevant then?
-     Why is it relevant now?

Their responses were varied, interesting and in many ways surprising. Jon Steel, a man who has written two outstanding marketing books, explained his preference to gain inspiration elsewhere - "I prefer to spend my time reading novels, quality newspapers and good magazines like the New Yorker. I've learned more about planning from that than I ever would have done reading most of the books written by advertising people", a view shared by Charles Frith. Although Jon did go on to name Ogilvy on Advertising and The Book of Gossage as the only books he would ever recommend.

Overall the project threw up a hugely varied selection of titles, only books by Seth Godin, Clay Shirky and Jon Steel received more than one nomination and it was hard to identify any real trends. I was surprised to see Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" named as a timeless, after all the book is only a couple of years old - surely that's akin to naming The Dark Knight as one of the greatest films ever made? Russell Davies had a couple of interesting selections in Britain by Mass Observation and Dorothy Sayers (Murder must Advertise), whilst Seth Godin's selections were all totally unknown to me.

Six months on and I still don't feel that I've identified a solid group of "Timeless Marketing Classics".

So in the pursuit of identifying a definite list, I've decided to throw the question back out to a wider audience, and to also encourage an open source response - so please feel welcome to blog, tweet or comment with your own suggestions to enhance or add to the list.

Hopefully in a months time I'll be able to reveal a fairly conclusive list.... or at the very worst a Christmas present list for that planner in your life!

Marketing In The "Non-Place": Airports

The last 10 days have been pretty hectic, and culturally diverse.

It started with a best friends wedding at The Landmark Hotel in London; followed by a 4/5 day planning session with the Emirates marcomms team in Dubai, and topped off with family time & a quintessentially English Saturday at the “The Henley Show”.

Without doubt, a week full of contrasts.

Sandwiched in there, were 4 hours spent in “non-places” .....  airports.

“If a place can be defined as relational, historical and is concerned with identity, then a place which can not be defined as relational, or historical, or is not concerned with identity will be a non-place”.

Marc Auge (French Anthropologist)

This eerie yet strangely beautiful video by Aaron Meyers helped clarify how much of a “non-place" an airport is.

I just wish that I’d understood the “non-place” 4-5 years ago when I was planning and writing creative briefs for Bacardi-Martini’s travel retail / duty free work.

The airport is devoid of cultural symbols. Apparently, it lacks codes which can be interpreted as "national" or "ethnic" ones. It objectivates freedom and equality - virtues of individualism. At the same time, the airport may function, for the traveller, as a kind of catharsis: The moment one passes through immigration into the departure lounge, one is removed from the impediments of society: Once there, neither the tax collector nor the family can reach you. You are a free individual.

(Døving, field notes)

A non-place requires non-marketing and by default non-briefs. An airport’s duty free shopping area is the Room 101 of marketing communications, a place where bland briefs rule – cultural identity is negated – oversized logos are king – individualism and cultural identity are left behind in the pursuit of mass global brand appeal.

“Sorry” Is Still The Hardest Word

Saying sorry is an art.

When delivered with sincerity and honesty, saying sorry has the power to transform. The person receiving the apology needs knows that they have been listened to, and that there is true regret.

Sometimes apologies are used superficially, to deflect criticism. “Sorry” may look like an apology - " - but on closer inspection there is no apology at all.

Hats off to The Evening Standard for taking the bold move and actually saying sorry, although I have to admit that I didn’t know they’d actually done anything wrong.

Client: The Evening Standard

Agency: McCann Erickson

Timeless Marketing Classics: Jon Steel

Jon Steel: Planner at WPP & author of Truth, Lies and Advertising, and Perfect Pitch.

As this project comes to close to an end, I'm starting to finalise my own list of Timeless Marketing Classics, and Jon Steel will definitely have one if not two books on the list.

Readers of Perfect Pitch and Russell Davies blog (Interview between RD & JS) will know that Jon doesn't read business books. Could this be true, in an attempt to find out I posed the question "Jon, which books are your timeless marketing classics?” 

"I don't often read business books. I've written two myself, but if I hadn't written them I sincerely doubt that I would have read them.
 
I prefer to spend my time reading novels, quality newspapers and good magazines like the New Yorker. I've learned more about planning from that than I ever would have done reading most of the books written by advertising people.
 
The only books I would ever recommend are Ogilvy on Advertising and The Book of Gossage. Both David and Howard were writing a long time ago, but what they have to say is as relevant today (maybe even more so?) as it was then."

Timeless Marketing Classics: Eaon Pritchard

Eaon Pritchard: Head of Digital Strategy at Geronimo

Seth Godin: Purple Cow

I first encountered Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow’ around 2004, I think it had been out for a year or so. At the time I was working as Creative Director with an online gaming firm, I had a gut feeling that we were approaching both the design the marketing of our product from the wrong angle.

I was under pressure to conform the look and feel of our games to look similar to the other casinos and gaming sites and the press ads, online ads etc were just not delivering the traffic.

I knew we had to do something but was not sure what.

I was pointed to ‘Purple Cow’ by the manager of one of the local branches of a well know book retailer. He was a convert and had used the principles of Purple Cow to turn around the fortunes of his store the previous year.  He had been voted store manager of the year at the company’s conference and also went on to receive industry wide recognition at the national book awards as bookseller of the year.

I’ll have some of that, I thought.

In a nutshell, Seth describes ‘Purple Cow’ as:

 ‘a manifesto for marketers who want to make a difference at their company by helping create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place. It is a plea for originality, for passion, guts, and daring. ..Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring. Your one chance for success is to be remarkable."

Some say that Seth Godin can be too simplistic (the advertising plannersphere may look down it’s nose at him) I prefer to call him accessible.

Anyone can pick up this book and get something out of it., and it gives you a framework for judging the worth of an idea -  simply ask yourself  ‘why is this idea totally remarkable? Why would anyone bother to tell anyone else about it?  Where is the ‘purple cow’ in this idea?

I’d like to be able to finish off the story by saying I used the cow to transform the gaming company from also-rans to world beaters. No such luck.

But reading this book was the first step for me in realising that it was not enough to just make pretty pictures, I had to get interested in the ‘reasons why’.  I also realised that this was not going to happen in the job I was in so I quickly left (see another essential Seth title ‘The Dip’).

Timeless Marketing Classics: Neil Perkin

Neil Perkin: Director of Marketing & Strategy for the commercial functions of IPC Media

Seth Godin's "Purple Cow" & Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" are a couple of the more recent ones I'd pick, simply because  I think they have each moved the debate on significantly.

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However Mark Earls' Herd is one of those books that I keep going back to again and again.

A connected world dictates new thinking about the way in which ideas spread, but HERD touches on some truths about the way humans behave, and our intrinsic herd-driven nature, that are so fundamental that the ideas at the heart of the book seem almost simplistic. But they challenge some of the most basic assumptions that are common in the business of communications.

I like it because it was, and remains, fresh, different and inspiring.

Timeless Marketing Classics: Russell Davies

Russell Davies: Open Intelligence Agency, planner and really interesting chap, writer for Campaign and Wired Magazine.

Thanks to Russell for his interesting selection, Britain by Mass Observation is a great choice - I haven't looked through that book for years ... and now want to find a copy.

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"Great idea, good stories, splendidly-written. A good way to think about brands."
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"As above. This and Eating The Big Fish is all you need to know about how to do advertising planning."

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"A ripping yarn and a clear illustration that nothing ever changes in adland."
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"They actually paid attention to the world around them."

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"Does what it says on the tin."
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Timeless Marketing Classics: Helge Tennø

Helge Tennø: Strategic Director and Digital Planner at digital agency Screenplay in Oslo, Norway.

Helge gives us a review of the book which introduced him to planning and to this day still provides him with great value.

Jon Steel: Truth, Lies and Advertising (1998)

When I was given the opportunity to work as a planner I was the first one in the agency and had no senior planning department or planner showing me the ropes.

It was a clean start, having to jump in and self teach myself the subject and produce an understanding of what I wanted this role to be and do for my agency. I had to start building processes, models, tools and generate ideas. In other words, I needed to learn a great deal in a short time. The book started my exploration through several excellent resources introducing a very complex subject.

Truth, Lies and Advertising gives a magnificent overview and introduction to the field in a non-complex language which is easy to understand for people with a different first-language than English. At the same time I didn't want to copy or fall into a too narrow definition of what planning is, and I felt that Jon Steel's introduction was broad enough to allow for personal interpretations and ideas along the way.

The book still provides valuable insights and works as a resources I routinely check for quotes and ideas. Finding it includes the best introduction and quick understanding of the daily routine and work I do as a planner.