Shouldn't this be a webpage?

First off, let me just state I don’t have an iPad (my boss does so I have seen one at least) and I haven’t yet had the pleasure of the new Wired magazine app.

But I’ve been thinking…

Shouldn’t Wired’s new iPad magazine app (soon to be “all tablets” apparently) actually be an HTML5 website? That would be truly cutting edge right? And accessible to all, regardless of platform, machine or OS?

And shouldn’t it be free? I know Chris Anderson has said a “freemium” version is on it’s way – which is great.

“For all asking about Wired iPad app pricing, it will evolve as we build new ecommerce methods. Freemium is in our future about 22 hours ago via web @chr1sa“

But right now, as far as I can tell, Wired’s app is just their version of a Murdoch’s Paywall. At £2.99 a month it’s not that expensive, but it’s not that cheap either. Actually scratch that.  it is cheap.  I’d gladly pay that myself.  I’ve bought the magazine for years and don’t see any reason why I am going to stop.  But it’s still not free is it!  Not that I necessarily think free is right – but I do believe Chris has said he does in the past once or twice. (I am, after all, mainly in the business of trying to sell stuff to people, and so are most of you I suspect!)

But I can’t help feeling for such a supposedly cutting edge geek-guide magazine, it should have been web-based, in a truly cutting edge tech, and “open”.  And that’s something coming from me, as someone who’s built his fair share of flash-based websites in the last few years and screw the UX! (I’m a changed man at my new agency, what can I say!)

Howard
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2009 was quite a good year for us at AdventuresDM, and to bring a bit of light back to some posts which have now dropped off the page, and some which you may not have caught first time around, here is the top 10 posts of last year.  Enjoy!

1. Digital Wales: A Google Map (you can edit!)

2. Sony’s new TV’s bring Yahoo! widget content to the masses

3. Twitter as a sales promotion channel

4. Augmented Reality on the iPhone

5. Future of Web Design 2009 London

6. ASOS using real-time sentiment analysis direct to consumers

7. Oxfam’s Cannes Lion Youtube Competition

8. Some digital marketing predictions for 2009

9. Yahoo!’s connected TV platform

10. Honda Insight Takeover Shines

What are the goals and standards by which we can judge a successful Intranet or work application?

It would ideally accomplish a lot including:

• Enhance skills
• Support work activities
• Recognise the interplay between technology and organisational issues
• Emphasise increases in quality rather just focusing on productivity
• Encourage creativity and draw out tacit/shared knowledge
• Simulate the future to aid in prediction, decision making and evaluation

Any additional goals would be most welcome.

Thanks,

Jon

I forgot one final prediction…

The digital sector will continue to grow in 2009, just not as fast as before

As with previous years I think digital will continue to grow, possibly ahead of TV for the first time in it’s history, but certainly a positive move upwards.  It won’t be anywhere near as big in previous years I don’t think (i could be wrong) but the way marketers want to increase accountability and ROI digital has got to be the platform (in all it’s guises) that clients are going to want to maximise.  Like I’ve said before with the likes of Orange and Nike coming out recently with statements along the lines of “it’s all got to be digital” others will start to follow.  And even if they don’t go the whole hog, digital will certainly canibalise other media as budgets are switched around to get cheaper results.

Howard

Over the holiday break I was in the car coming back from the shops when I overheard a news story on Radio 2 (yes, I am old) where they were reporting that a new study by the Will Page of the PRS in the UK had disproved Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory, and that by stating that the majority of music sales last year were by a small percentage of the total tracks or albums available they had definitive proof that Chris’s theory was false.

Whilst I was listening to this and getting my head around what they were reporting I found myself getting more and more annoyed by what I was hearing.

This article by The Times goes into it in a bit more details, stating…

However, a new study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, the not-for-profit royalty collection society, suggests that the niche market is not an untapped goldmine and that online sales success still relies on big hits.

Page is saying that the endless choice offered by unlimited storage and virtual shelfspace online isn’t being used, and that consumers stick to “the hits” within a 52,000 (for single tracks) and 173,00 (for albums) range.

“Hang on” I thought!

52,000 different songs?

173,000 different albums?

Since when were there that many new albums and tracks released in a year. Are they trying to tell us that last year there were 52,000 new songs released and these formed “the hits” of 2008?

and 173,000 albums? were there that many last year? Can someone tell me? because I don’t know, but I suspect that not just “the hits” of 2008.

During the radio interview Jeff Buckley’s song Hallelujah was used as a key example of the Long Tail NOT working and that was representative of a hit (something they say over here as well). But surely, the fact that that song – which has had tiny if not non-existant sales for many years, suddenly shooting up to number 2 in he chart is the perfect example of a Long Tail spike?

it’s just like Touching The Void becoming a best seller due to it being still listed on Amazon.com when a competitors book becomes popular.

It doesn’t disprove the Long Tail – it reinforces it as a theory.

Chris Anderson never said that millions of small and independent artists would make a fortune from Long Tail economics.

He DID say that large retailers, like Amazon or Apple with iTunes and unlimited virtual shelfspace WOULD make lots of money from all of the small and tiny individual sales underneath the tail.

He also said the head would continue to make as much if not more of the sales that the long tail is making. he did not say the head would disappear – but that both would co-exist, a state that can only be allowed and maintained within a digital virtually free storage environment, something which itself allows the long tail priniciple to exist in the first place.

I know Chris has responded now to the article, as the piece in The Times clearly states, but I wanted to blog about this even though it was a few weeks ago now.

This blog also commented on the report, but it tries to reinforce the point that LT is broken – but as Seth Godin correctly points out in his comment, someone, somewhere hasn’t got the point of what the LT is really about.

When you write, “80 percent of sales came from 52,000 tracks” and present this as evidence of disproving the theory, you are making a huge mistake. Chris never said that EVERYTHING would be bought sooner or later. He said that it spreads out over time. (Seth Godin)

It seems to me like Mr Page wanted to get a bit of cheap PR spotlight on him at a pretty quiet time of the year in the media and choose a good time to stick his oar in and savage Long Tail theory with some stats which don’t seem to back up his argument. It’s a rough rule of thumb isn’t it in PR fields that you get great coverage if you are willing to be out on a limb or contentious? Case in point.

As far as I can see Long Tail theory still stands. It may have taken a hit with this from it’s own PR point of view, but this certainly doesn’t disprove it – it does the exact opposite in fact.

Howard
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It seems that digital outsourcing of production continues to be the conversation on everyone’s lips right now in London. I see Iain Tait blogging about it over on crackunit. I’ve also seen more and more articles in the print press about it. Obviously something is going on – not quite sure what it is and why it’s so in focus right now, but it surely is.

Would love to hear peoples ideas on why this is such a hot topic right now – are we all deciding to outsource our development? all of it? part of it? none of it?

And don’t lie – I KNOW for a fact a lot of you out there in both “integrated” and “pure play” worlds are doing it already – so who’s doing it and why?

Howard

ps – yes, I know I just used an under construction logo – been so long I couldn’t resist

A recent Campaign article which asked the question "Should agencies outsource digital?", in which Kate Nettleton discussed the differing points-of-view within the industry regarding the outsourcing of the so called “techy” end of digital creativity, has promoted me to put down a few thoughts of my own on the subject.

I’ve actually discussed the outsourcing of production with quite a few people over the years and in fact it’s a model I’ve worked with in varying degrees for quite some time now, from right back in the late 90’s at TDPL/Leagas Delaney through to the present day.

We all know that agencies employ freelancers – it’s so common place it’s never questioned as a business practice – but for agencies of a digital slant to completely outsource a whole chunk of what is often perceived as being a key business function is quite a recent phenomenon.  In the past, and particularly in the pure-play world, having a dedicated production (and by that we’re really saying programmers right?) team in-house was taken for granted.  But I don’t think it has to be that way personally, and I can see it becoming less common as we continue to understand how Digital Marketing and Advertising has to function as a business over time.

Kate points out in her article that a “new breed” of agencies are taking a note from the traditional world and outsourcing skills which don’t necessarily fit in with the overall creative business of an agency.  And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense – in fact I completely subscribe to it myself.  I love Martin Brooks’s comment that “digital agencies can’t take the strategic high ground if their business model relies on building banners in-house”.  It’s completely right.  How often do we hear the buzz-phrase of “we sell ideas” and yet never see it delivered because people are tied into a particular back-end system or delivery method?

In an ATL agency for example, where the majority of business may be focused on TV commercials – it’d be extremely unlikely that they’d have a load of directors, editors, sound experts and the like sitting around as permanent members of staff.  Those people, with highly technical and creative skills are brought in on a case-by-case basis as and when required – because it allows everyone else to focus on what they need to do – come up with great creative ideas. 

Why, then, do we (and I include myself in this to some degree) think that to do digital creative work in marketing and advertising we need to have programmers and other technical experts sitting around on the books full time, rather than get them in on a similar case-by-case basis.

The outsourcing of digital production makes perfect sense.

However, what I can’t stress strongly enough is that outsourcing your digital production or development does not, in any way, mean that as an agency you can forget about the technical side of the business, regarding it as “not your job” or unimportant.  When you remove technology from one side of the equation it has to be replaced elsewhere – and invariably what that means is that the people who you do have on a permanent basis in your agency need to pick up some of the knowledge to make your ideas work.  What that means is that it is essential that the creative teams, strategists, planners and account managers are more technically minded than perhaps you would normally have, and are able to understand what is and isn’t possible.  They wouldn’t normally be like that in an environment where programmers are sitting next to them. 

Allowing them to believe they don’t need to know that stuff because “they’re not technical” is not an option. Technology doesn’t disappear from your business because you’re outsourcing it – it just moves around a bit – but it is still present and is as important to the overall creative process and end deliverables that you provide as ever.

Bill Brock’s comment that by outsourcing digital you allow the agency to “be free to go for best-of-breed ideas, not end up selling website ideas because we had a website designer(s) free” is completely on the money and if you look at the other founding members you can see that together they can all help to provide that essential in-house technical knowledge that must be present.

Creative ideas should never be shoehorned into the technical solutions that your agency is capable of delivering in-house – they should be free to come from anywhere and delivered in any way you can think of that’s applicable.

Outsourcing production, to different 3rd-party partners who are expert in their specific fields allows agencies to mix-and-match what they need to answer a client’s brief and deliver on their objectives – and at the end of the day that’s what we are all trying to do.

It has made perfect sense in the offline and traditional world for the past few decades – are we not big enough now to admit that it makes perfect sense in our decade as well?

Howard

Grabbing hold of current trends in both music sales/distribution and digital advertising/marketing, Trent Reznor’s band the Nine Inch Nails (disclaimer: I am and always have been a very big fan) have launched their new instrumental album, Ghosts I-IV, online in a variety of both digital and physical formats with prices ranging from free for the 9-track DRM-Free sampler album to $300 for the Ultra deluxe package.

With a nod towards Radiohead’s recent launch of In Rainbows, which they offered online for the price the user felt they wanted to pay and was covered alongside the future of the music business as a whole in great detail in an article by David Byrne for Wired Magazine, Reznor has changed tack slightly by providing a large range of options to suit all pockets.

Free music being what it is recently, with a lot of artists testing the water one way or another, such as Prince with his Daily Mail (gah! must clean mouth out after saying that paper’s name) free CD, there are lots of discussions ongoing as to whether this is a solid new approach or simply something already established artists with a loyal fan base are able to exploit at this time.

What really interests me in this instance is what Reznor has done alongside the variable pricing structure for his latest work – which is providing a whole host of other formats to the usual MP3, as well as material specifically designed to act in a marketing context.

When you download the album (I got the $0 version for now, although I will be getting the full thing on pay day!), you get a couple of folders full of wallpaper, the cover art for the album as a JPG, a PDF document which acts like the insert in a CD (some lovely photography contained within) and, most interesting in some ways for us digital marketing types, a whole host of pre-made banner, button and blog header images.

Reznor is doing something very intelligent and interesting here.  Not only is he experimenting with the free music approach, something which in itself will generate a load of PR one way or the other, but he’s giving the music itself away in multi-track formats to encourage people to play with and remix his work (something he did previously on other albums, giving it away in Apple Garage band format at least), and by providing the ready made blog and banner formats, he’s giving people a way to show their loyalty to the band, and in turn generate a viral style effect for the album which he couldn’t possibly hope to achieve on his own or through an agency with a media plan.

By giving away so much stuff, stuff which fans will firstly think is way cool and want to put all over the internet, Reznor’s actually giving the fans control over his marketing campaign, truly putting it right into the hands of the people who know and love the most about the band in the first place.

User generated advertising was a buzz word a short time ago, and perhaps still is in certain bars around Soho on a good night, but handing over the control of the campaign, utilising free media space in highly targetted areas with an applicable audience, is IMHO a master stroke and a perfect example of where marketing is possibly going in terms of control and transparency.

Undoubtedly the freedom NIN and the like are now experiencing in terms of no-label is also extending itself into their thinking for no-agency marketing and no-control PR.

In more ways than just my musical taste alone I have to say right now Trent, I am a big fan.

Howard

Leading web guru Guy Kawasaki has launched a new site, alltop.com, to join his already large portfolio of web products.

Alltop is typically simple but excellent in it’s execution, taking the top stories from a whole host of different feeds and bringing them all into one place. 

With topics for most tastes ranging from food to tech to moms it’s poised to become a key destination especially as the twitterati will no doubt jump onto it like hot cakes and with Guy’s so called golden touch no doubt make him a few quid as well.

Check it out at alltop.com

Howard
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OKA Direct, the last site I produced whilst at TEQUILA\ London, just got reviewed in the NMA this week.  It scored a pretty healthy 88% overall.  Congratulations to all the team still at TEQUILA\ as well as those moved on to different strokes.

OKA was actually three sites produced at once, RAPT direct and Cath Collins (although CC appears to be down at the moment for some reason) being the other two, all based on a common architecture. 

NMA particularly liked the idea of being able to buy a whole room at once, rather than selecting items individually.  Good – that was my idea

Well done OKA and TEQUILA\

Howard
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Tags: nma, oka, ecommerce, web site, rapt, cath collins, tequila