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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image by Jeremy Brooks on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/

When I worked in an integrated environment I thought all the digital marketing on a campaign should come to my department.  That’s not because I was greedy (although I was of course – we all have targets!) or that I was naive.  I just believed that we were best placed to handle the digital side of an integrated campaign that we were leading.  It hardly ever happened and often it was given to a pure play digital agency who were on the roster for digital, much to my chagrin.

So, now I work in a pure play digital agency.  And guess what?  Now I think all the digital on a client should come to us and that the integrated agency isn’t best placed to do the digital because they don’t understand the medium fully.  And, once again, this isn’t happening and integrated agencies are stepping in and taking bits and bobs here and there, more on some clients, less on others.

OK, so the grass is always greener and I am really hungry when it comes to clients and potential work – but we always knew that!

But, off the back of this something else is happening.  And it’s in relation to Social Media Marketing as opposed to web design+build or campaign based digital activity in traditional digital channels.

And what’s interesting about Social Media Marketing is that not only do we as a pure play have to contend with an integrated agency but more often than not we have to work with/alongside/around a PR agency who are now more and more frequently getting involved.

Now I don’t think this is the same thing as with the pure/integrated angle – not entirely anyway.

It’s more of the fact that I think clients seem to interpret Social Media as more inline with PR than it is with marketing.  There’s a lot of content creation, which PR agencies are very good at.  I think this is what the issue is. PR agencies seem to just be viewed by clients as being better at content creation and dealing with a high-risk situation that needs quick responses and turn arounds than an agency of either a pure or digital nature can do.

But does this mean PR agencies are the best ones to actually deal with this space? Well, that depends.  I personally think that some PR agencies are a bit too old-fashioned to deal with the true intricacies of the social space and tend to just be too formal, too old-world PR in an environment that really doesn’t suit it.

But new PR agencies, and I think this will happen more and more as their nature changes in the ways that ad agencies have had to adapt in the past decade or so, makes PR agencies, or rather forces them, to adapt or die.  I actually think it’s probably a very exciting time to be working in PR – and believe me that’s something I didn’t think I’d ever say!

There are some amazing agencies out there that seem to bridge the gap between PR and social and ad and marketing and pure and integrated.  The one name that immediately springs to mind is We Are Social who call themselves a “conversation agency”.  I’ve got a lot of respect for this agency, especially after seeing them speak at events in the past where they just seem to “get it”.  Maybe this is what PR agencies need to become?

Well, I don’t know and I am sure I’m not best placed to answer either.

I do know I get a little bit “annoyed” when I hear that i’ve lost out to another agency on any piece of work, and more and more recently i’ve been hearing “we’ve given this to the PR agency”.  Especially as someone who loves his social networks and media.  But, you can’t win it all and maybe we aren’t best placed?  Who knows – and I’m not convinced yet.

But I do know it’s intersting and, for me, social is the new battle ground where the old versus new agencies are fighting it out.

Intergrated versus pure play? Who cared – that’s so last year!

Howard

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As soon as I moved to Cardiff I had the great pleasure of very quickly meeting two people attempting to organise a very cool event.

Neil and Claire have done something great – organised the first ever TEDx Cardiff event, due to happen in April this year.

For those of you not familiar with TED, and trust me there are still a few people on the planet who don’t know about it believe it or not!, TED is a global phenomenon with one simple concept behind it: Ideas Worth Spreading.

Now, TED itself is a big big affair, with some of the worlds most famous and most interesting people speaking at it – Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jamie Oliver ;P  they’ve all spoken.

TEDx by comparison is a sub-brand allowing independent events organiser, like Neil and Claire, to put on licensed and branded TED events in locations where the normal big full-on TED brand wouldn’t go (yet?)

Hence, TEDx Cardiff.

So – congratulations to Neil and Claire, for putting this all together.

The reason I blog this is that their new website (wordpress-based) went up today, is looking great, and was created through volunteers some of whom I work with – so it’s close to my heart.

Visit the new site at www.tedxcardiff.co.uk for more information.  I think most, if not all, of the tickets are now gone I am afraid – but you might be lucky still.  It’s at the Wales Millennium Centre on April 14th April.

I can’t wait myself

Howard

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On Friday last week I gave an hour long lecture to 3rd year management students at Southampton University on the subject of Digital Marketing and how it’s evolved from my own perspective, 14+ years into a career in the business.

After the event I was interviewed by Karen Woods, a freelance journalist working for the University, and she recorded this interview.

I waffle a bit, and I am really not used to being recorded so excuse it if I say some things that are a bit weird and fumbled

Generally I am happy with what I said though – it seems to make sense after 2 re-listens

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

There’s a few of these videos knocking about on Youtube and elsewhere, and I’m sure you’ve seen the like before.  But this is a nice one, with a few new stats in there for those persuasive soc-med presentations you need for clients and colleague who don’t get it yet.

This is great.  Not just because I love kinetic type, but because it shows Best Buy get it, and they realise the power of the revolution we’re involved in.

Big thanks to Matt Alder as always for sending it my way.

Howard

Something I’ve discussed before here, but the connected TV concept being pioneered by Yahoo!, from their widget platform, working with the likes of Samsung and Sony, is starting to hit the mainstream.

Case in point – Sony’s new range of TVs have a user interface which will be very familiar to anyone with a PSP or PS3, and an ethernet plug right there in the back of the TV itself.

Connect them up, and using the XMB (as the interface is known) you can get content from Yahoo! right there on top of the TV image, or watch IPTV content from the likes of YouTube, CNN and so forth instead of anything being “broadcast”.

The name Sony like’s to call their people who work in this field (Convergineers) says it all.

Convergence isn’t something that’s “coming soon” any more.

It’s now.

Howard

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I’ve seen more and more brands dipping their toes into twitter for use as a sales promotion channel lately.

Brands have been on twitter for quite some time now, as well all know, some having good success, and others not doing it quite as well as they could, but what we’ve not fully seen are brands using it as a direct communications channel to clients in relation to a competiton or game, with differing end goals by the look of it.

Only last week, my attention was drawn to a competition being run by Asus computers, producers of the well loved EeePC series, for the launch of a new model they have created (known as the Asus SeaShell for reasons that I can’t fathom aside from it, like all laptops, looks a bit like a clamshell). For your chance to win one of these machines you simply had to follow the brand on twitter (@asusuk) and in turn, they would select a user at random, once a week, to be the lucky winner of the machine.  When I chose to follow them they had about 40 followers.  Now, they have 1472 – not massive by anyone’s measure, but not too shabby either.  All I can think of was that this was an attempt to grow their follower-base to hit the right kind of people who might, in turn, spread the word to others interested in netbooks and so on – so, actually, in terms of “hitting the right people” this is probably quite an interesting exercise for them.

So, one week later, and I come across an email from another technology company, Novatech, a tech and PC retailer which you might not have heard from (but for those of us tech-inclined on the south-coast of the UK trust me, they’re a god-send at times!)  Novatech are running a similar competittion to Asus, but it, for me, fails at the first hurdle due to the barrier to entry.

Again it’s to win a netbook (this time from MSI) and all you have to do is follow BOTH MSI and Novatech on twitter (@msitweets and @novatechltd) – so not one, but two – and then you have to tweet on your own profile that you’re following them, AND then…  you have to register on the novatech forum and post a link on that to your twitter page.

*PHEW*

got that?  couldn’t be simpler right?  erm… well, perhaps it could.  I think this is a bad example of how to use the channels around twitter for a promotion.

And finally, although by no means the last “brand” on twitter doing so, everyone’s favourite mockney chef, Jamie Oliver (@jamie_oliver), is running a regular competition each Friday called “Jamie’s Twitchen” (see what he did there?) where by he asks a question, and the first person from around the twitterverse to reply with the correct answer and the hashtag #jamiestwitchen wins a prize which changes each week.

This is, for me, a great example of how to use the channel in a positive, respectful way that actually makes use of the unique nature of twitter itself, rather than trying to make it into something it’s not intended to be for the sake of a few thousand email addresses you can bombard.

What I think these illustrates is a couple of things.

1) brands (large and small, world famous and not) are waking up to twitter as a very immediate here-and-now channel to run competitions in – and the power of communicating directly to your core audience and what that can give you.

2) sometimes, social media usage can be taken to far (not mentioning any names Novatech!) in your quest to grab user details and build up a pool of “followers” to spread the word to (less is often more)

Twitter is, as I pointed out to a senior client I work with via a linkedin conversation last night, simply another channel within which we can conduct digital marketing.  It’s not the answer to everything, but it’s emerging quite rapidly, that using twitter as part of a sales promotion strategy, or a games/comps strategy, really does seem to work – but as with everything, treat it with respect and don’t abuse the power it can give you.

Overall, I like this trend, I like that we, the users of twitter, are coming up with a plethora of new ways to work it.

It’s evolving!

Howard

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uber-trendy microblogging platform of choice, twitter, is making a reality TV show featuring both "real users" and celebs.

So, this is an interesting one.

Reuters is reporting that Twitter, golden child of the internet new world order, home of the Twitterati, is making moves towards one of of the very media channels which many of us in the “new media” world see as on it’s way to the grave (certainly in it’s current look and feel)…

TV

No, not IPTV, not Apple TV, not dodgy shows you’ve downloaded via torrent from a site i couldn’t possibly list or guide you towards, plain old broadcast medium of choice, Television.

Yes, your favourite microblogging platform and mine is to create it’s own TV series, where “real life” twitter users get to interact on an unscripted show with celebrity twitterers.  Quite how this will happen isn’t clear right now, but it’s being created in collaboration with production companies who seem to be pretty big hitters – one of them being Reveille who are behind “The Office” (presumably the US version?  I dunno?)

I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.  The juxtaposition of such a contemporary, not-quite-worked-out-yet medium like Twitter choosing the traditional, we get it already (or we thought we did) medium of TV is, for me at least, very interesting.

I look forward to the first episode hitting the torrents soon!

Howard

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