howard | 
05 22nd, 2007| 
May
22
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nice article on using a PC/Mac on your TV. good comment from Apple as well suggesting more to come for the Apple TV?
May
18
May
18
ESA Talking Tech
Another day, another conference. Yesterday I attended the ESA Sponsorship Seminar entitled Talking Tech. This wasn’t something I had planned, but a colleague had to drop out at the last minute and asked if I’d like to go instead. Even though the title was "Talking Tech" I didn’t let that put me off.
This conference was aimed at the Sponsorship industry with a slant to how digital tools (lots of reference to new media, but is it still new?) have/can/will later that side of the marketing business.
The panel of speakers for the event had some interesting people on board, and in my usual style I’ll go through each of them in turn now.
John Nolan - North One TV
North One TV are a, according to John, a bit of an anomaly. They sit directly between the more traditional world of TV as we all know it, and the new internet digital world which, according to some, threatens to destroy TV. The question was raised in response to this apparent paradox of "What actually is TV? it’s a box, on the wall, that displays images and sound". True - and I guess when you look at it like that the way that video gets into the box is kind of irrelevant?
Perhaps.
For John, with regard to how businesses are going to adapt in this new world, it’s boils down to two things which don’t work so well together - theory and practice. Businesses must listen to theory but at the same time they don’t have the luxury of being able to wait for all the answers and they must act on impulse and in the best intrerests of their business. Catch 22.
At North One TV all staff are forced to have a myspace page and a blog (really, forced? What do they write? What if they don’t want to do it?) and this has helped them to understand the importance and what can be done with these new tools. As such the company are just about to do their first execution of a TV show with an integral blog attached. They think of it now as moving forwards from the world of a few DVD extras. The blog becomes an extra as well as part of the TV experience.
John believes that in this new landscape you can’t get things wrong because in many ways there is no right or wrong - you can just learn by your mistakes.
Duncan Bird, VP of Futures, Sony BMG
Duncan Bird is an ex-Leagas bod, just like me - so he’s got to be cool, right?
For Duncan, change in anything is good and is often the best way to learn. For Sony BMG, the music industry is in a state of constant change, and as an example, the Justin Timberlake album (got you copy yet? No? Strange!) sold in 71 different formats. That’s a big change from CD, Tape and Vinyl!
Blogging is a new venture for Sony BMG. The music industry is traditionally a secret society, insular in structure. This is a big challenge for them and has caused arguments not just internally about whether they should or shouldn’t blog, but also with the artists themselves. To help with this transition all senior management at Sony BMG have to have a blog so audience can see what is going on day to day. it’s beneficial to the artists and the company if the person who looks after Kasabian (great first album, not so great second one IMHO) blogs about what they’re doing with the band. Duncan says you need to be careful though - lots of blogging is self indulgent and this needs to be avoided, but Sony BMG they’re trying to use it as an aternative to channels they perhaps would otherwise have used like TV.
They’ve also taken a note out of the UGC and Web 2.0 world by shifting the way they receive demos off potential new artists. Wannabees are now expected to upload their work to one of two demo blogs created by the company rather than send it in through the post on CD. So far they have over 1526 users in the community.
The speed with which the digital world, not just the music biz, is changing is quite phenomenal and impossible to map out. Anyone who says they have the future planned is trying to sell something or is insane.
Duncan sign off by saying that if anyone wants to sponsor the new rod stewart tour they should let him know. I’ve got a tenner?
Amy Kemp, Kempster
In 1994 the World Cup Sponsorship was managed using a fax machine
Zoom to the present day and you can see how quickly things are changing (for the better!) Amy sees a big challenge for sponsors in the digital age being how do they carve out a unique position for themselves and their offerings when the playing field is so level? As an example Amy uses a sponsor for next years UEFA 2008 championships, who is using unique technology developed by UEFA to track player stats on the pitch itself. This has direct corelation to their own brand and product range, and in this way they’ve found a niche for themselves which has been enabled through new tech. This is the way forward to sponsorship she believes.
Amy also believes that for people organising sponsorship, agencies etc., the challenge is logistics and not the idea. Managing all of the licenses and rights when so many different partners and, more importantly, delivery channels, are involved is and can be a nightmare. Careful planning and the right tools are essential.
All in all this was an OK conference, but to be honest it was a bit basic for me. Not being from a sponsorship world I was hoping for a bit more insight to that side of things - but this conference was aimed squarely at people who already knew a lot about sponsorship and little about digital - so i was in the wrong camp completely.
Still, it was a well organised event and had some very good speakers.
Next time though, I hope the ESA puts on some wifi! What is it with no wifi at conferences these days?
Howard
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May
17
Saw this great video at the ESA event this morning. Might be a bit old, but I liked it so here it is.
Give you something to thing about.
Howard
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May
17
As mentioned, last night I attended the Chinwag Live Widgets seminar, at the Slug and Lettuce in Soho.
Quite a few people were there really from a nice wide range of clients, agencies and other in the industry - made for a good mix and different points of view.
Apparently this was the second event in "widget week", with the next one being on Mobile Monday (which is next week, so surely that’s widget fortnight?)
Steve Bowbrick was the very capable chair for the evening, introducing and chipping in when and where required. Steve kicked it off by stating that in some ways the internet is about two things - integration and disintegration and that the panel of five people on the panel are all about disintegration.
First up was George Berkowski from BT Retail. Apparently BT are looking at widgets a lot but he doesn’t think the notion of widgets is a new one - google adsense is a widget, and has been around a while now, but people didn’t and don’t call it one. Widgets is a new word for something that’s been going a while. For him, if brands wish to take advantage of widgets for a marketing perspective they need to make sure they do one thing, do it well, and make it idiot proof so anyone can use it. e.g. photobucket. 41 million users and 1% of all worldwide internet traffic.
Fergus Burns was up next, from Nooked, who are an RSS marketing company (don’t they have ties to feedburner??) For him, a lot of brands/clients want to know how they can take advantage of social networks like myspace and also how they can get onto the actual desktop of the next OSs like Vista and OSX. Widgets are the key to this he believes. He sees the biggest challenge to this happening are notions of brand control. For example, placement - put your widget next to something which ins’t appropriate and you can cause a lot of problems. But do it right and it can pay off big time. Ryan air have a desktop widget that gets 25% CTR, whilst their web version only gets 5% CTR. Widget ads therefore do work - but it’s all about doing it right.
Kaj Haggman from Widsets was up next. Widsets, as I have mentioned before, are a mobile widget platform provider. For them, widgets must be two things - fun, and simple. Widsets have 1,400 widgets in their library now, the majority of which were created by their own users, many of whom don’t know how to code at all. In terms of marketing, widsets are tracking a lot of data about their users behaviour within the environment (something they can opt in and out of) and they use this pattern recognition to push recommended widgets to the audience. This caused a few questions, but nothing too scary, from the crowd at the event. For widsets, the next step beyond this is to get actual ads playing in the environment - something they’re actively working on at the moment.
Mark Taylor, Head of Content a fir Eircom and founder of sleevenotes reiterated the notion that Google Adsense was the original widget. He believes that widgets represent both chaos and order in the online world and that in some ways widgets = de-portalisation but that causes a problem. As a content provider, you need the portal to aggregate users. As a widget provider you need the widgets to distribute your content as much as possible. This causes a catch 22 situation. But, for marketers, widgets can work like a trojan horse to get into the world of social networks and the like and therefore allow brands to tap into the audiences contained within (as long as they don’t keep blocking them like they can be prone to do I guess!). But, Mark does have some concerns that widgets will become just another ad format and he hopes this is avoided.
Finally, Jonathan Gabbai from Ebay spoke about ebay using widgets where possible. he mentioned their recent venture with widgets and discussed that, for ebay, they’re looking at widgets as a way to incentivize users to click through and engage with the auctions. Key to this will be how do they monetize the streams they produce? For him, youtube is the perfect example of a widget. He also believes that in order to have a good widget idea you need a solid API sitting behind the sites. This can raise issues of control for your content, but it’s essential to provide the best widget experience.
From the audience there were some questions raised…
Q What’s the definition of widgets?
A someone suggested that in many ways widgets are. "The Bumper Stickers of the Internet?"
Q Will new tech like Apollo and Silverlight make a big different? How do we see that apollo affecting the market?
A It may not make a difference because of the 25 different widget platforms that already exist. Apollo will add to the confusion, not reduce it. Widget developers are still going to have to make their product available on all 25 platforms if they want to cover all of the ground.
Lastly, there was a comment from the audience that in some ways widgets are another form of direct marketing and that it’s just about targeting ads to users. For me, this is completely wrong. To do this right we need to move brands and their widgets into the utility marketing space, providing a service that users decide to use and decide is valuable. In that respect widgets couldn’t be further removed from the DM world.
For a short evening conference this was a good event and well worth attending. I’ll be keeping my eye on the future events at the chinwag live website to see what’s coming up.
Howard
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May
16
Tomorrow morning, Thursday 17th May, I will be attending the ESA Sponsorship Forum 2007, Talking Tech, at th offices of K&L Gates in he city.
Careful not to get a nose bleed as I cross the border from Soho into the suit wearing realm, I’ll be blogging about, if not from, the event in the near future.
The event is focusing on the role and place of sponsorship in the world of converging media, so should be right up my street.
Speakers on the discussion panel include representatives from Sony BMG and Sky TV.
Howard
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May
15
I’ve created a room on Meebo Rooms, the new service from THE web based IM provider, meebo. It’s a bit like IRC crossed with chatrooms and IM.
Feel free to join us anytime.
Howard
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May
15
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excellent post on why we should be using personas when looking at design challenges in the digital space
May
14
There’s an excellent Apple TV how-to video over on the revision3 vlog site.
I’m not quite ready to open up my apple TV just yet and stick in a new HDD, even though i’ve now fille dup the 40gb drive it ships with an could really do with an extra 120gb of space. Until Apple release an update for the device I’m not doing anything incase they do something like detect the size of the drive and so forth. When that happens, and people report it as working OK, out comes the screwdriver!
But, if you’re not quite as chicken as me watch this great video and you’ll be up with a new 160gb drive and SSH in no time!
Howard
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