horrible puke inducing corporate style video

Video: Microsoft Surface at Sheraton Hotel & Resorts

That was two or three years ago, but I’m glad to report that, in London at least, the Digital Marketing Uniform appears to be well and truly strong (not least in my own wardrobe).

I was on the train this morning listening to two blokes talk about the intricacies of getting DivX movies to play on an Apple TV (that alone should have been enough of a pointer!) when I noticed I was dressed in a very similar way to both of them.  We were all wearing the uniform, and although I didn’t ask them, I’d put money on them both being at an agency somewhere -one was obviously a coder, while I am sure the other was a producer.

It get’s that way - you can start to spot the job role of people who work in the industry by what they are wearing - in the same way you can spot an ageing above the line creative by the wacky flowery shirt they will wear on summer party days!

So, what is this digital uniform so you can spot those around you in a John Carpenter “They Live” sunglasses kind of way?

Simple…

Blue Jeans
Why wear a full suit when jeans will suffice - they’re smart casual right?

Navy Suit Jacket
But, the top half of your body deserves the full smart look - so employ a navy blue suit jacket, preferrably with a nice accented colour strip of check.

White Shirt
Other colours don’t do it - got to be white, probably double cuff with cufflinks, or if not then at least with two buttons.  Oh, and a nice contrasting lining to the inside of the cuff and the collar always goes down well to show off your “creative” side.

Brown Shoes
Some can pull it off with trainers, but to get the full digital marketing uniform just right you’re going to need a nice pair of brown shoes, maybe even brogues.

Trendy Nerd Glasses
Even if you don’t need them to see, a corking pair of nerdy, yet extremely trendy designer glasses will really set this outfit off and show the world that although you work in marketing, you’re a nerdy geek marketer through and through - should have gone to specsavers!

See - it’s easy!  You too can look like you work in digital just by switching your wardrobe.

Howard

–

14 months and 42 countries later.

Today it looks like their servers have crashed with the site simply reporting a bad gateway error or, as is now happening, a very nasty looking PHP report.

Sometimes, too much is a bad thing.  I have to say though, they must have done a cracking job of getting the word out there if it’s hammering their systems so much.  That’s a positive right?

Am sure it’ll be back up soon.  Stick some more RAM in - that always seems to work.

H

Howard

• If communication can fail, it will.
• If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm.
• There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message.
• The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.

And I particularly like his observation that any time there are two people conversing, there are actually six people in the conversation:

1. Who you think you are
2. Who you think the other person is
3. Who you think the other person thinks you are
4. Who the other person thinks he/she is
5. Who the other person thinks you are
6. Who the other person thinks you think he/she is

If you find this interesting, you can read more about Osmo and his theories on communication.

Wiios 7 laws of communication:

1 Communication usually fails, except by accident.
1.1 If communication can fail, it will
1.2 If communication cannot fail, it still most usually fails
1.3 If communication seems to succeed in the intended way, there’s a misunderstanding
1.4 If you are content with your message, communication certainly fails
2 If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes the damage
3 There is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message
4 The more we communicate, the worse communication succeeds
4.1 The more we communicate, the faster misunderstandings propagate
5 In mass communication, the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be
6 The importance of a news item is inversely proportional to the square of the distance
7 The more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago

Korpela’s First Corollary: If nobody barks at you, your message did not get through
Korpela’s Second Corollary: Search for information fails, except by accident
The Pedagogic Corollary: Give the student a chance to realize he misunderstood it all

Professor Osmo A. Wiio (born 1928) is a famous Finnish researcher of human communication. He has studied, among other things, readability of texts, organizations and communication within them, and the general theory of communication. In addition to his academic career, he has authored books, articles, and radio and TV programs on technology, the future, society, and politics. He formulated “Wiio’s laws” when he was a member of parliament (1975–79) and published them in Wiion lait - ja vähän muidenkin (Wiio’s laws - and some others’; in Finnish). (Weilin+Göös, 1978, Espoo; ISBN 951-35-1657-1).

Jonathan

By placing a small piece of Javascript widget code into your blog or social networking page (you can see mine at the bottom right of this page) you can take part for a chance to win daily prizes and the grand prize of a week in a Luxury Villa in Ibiza.

Hats off to Poke - they continue to produce fantastic Digital promotion work for orange what with this and my old favourite Spot The Bull.

Howard

I’ve been inspired to finally put some words down in a post from an article in the NYTimes which talks about a new form of digital billboard that’s popping up which features a built in camera for facial recognition. Apparently two companies are actively playing in this space, which they refer to as audience measurement systems, Quividi, a French company, and TruMedia, based in Israel and Holland. By placing small cameras into digital billboards (quite small ones judging by the image I saw about the size of a 32″ TV embedded into a larger billboard area) they both claim to be able to view the faces of people directly looking at the ad itself, and then using facial recognition, work out the sex, age and so forth of the audience. They don’t take a photo, apparently, just using it in real-time to work out what they want and then ditching the image.

It doesn’t take much to work out that this has got a lot of privacy people worked up, and in these cases I often sit very firmly on the fence as I am obviously both a professional in the digital space and a normal run of the mill consumer.

That aside, digital screens are beginning to pop up all over the place in London - and I can’t believe it’s not the same in other large urban spaces around the UK, Europe and the World.

The tube is the best example so far of digital advertising screens - there are simply hundreds of them appearing all the time (TFL claim they are in the process of installing 2000). Large runs of screens on escalators, to large poster sized screens at pretty much platform level. These screens feature animation, video and still images - often with multiple screens working together in some way.

But there are much larger screens appearing outside. Right by the London IMAX there is a really good example. A huge billboard is situated on the left of the Waterloo Bridge as you approach the IMAX. Unlike the tube screens, these large format outdoor screens are still image only. This is apparently because there still isn’t any research to prove that you won’t crash your car when an ad comes on.

There are even screens appearing on the stands that the Evening Standard newspaper sellers use - with what look like 32″ TV screens positioned clearly on the top of the stand.

Not to mention the sheer volume already of in-store digital screens that exist in the captive retail environment.

In the US there’s already an industry/trade body setup to work alongside providers of this new and rapidly growing area of digital marketing. I’m not yet aware of one in the UK, perhaps it falls under the domain of someone like BIMA or the IAB?

Often a concern about these screens is that they take energy where a poster would not - but I wonder what the comparison is between digital distributing a poster/video/animation to 2000 screens over the internet, versus printing off 2000 large format posters, driving them around london and then pasting them up in place?  Aside from the saving for advertisers themselves, and the benefit of being able to digital and centrally manage campaigns on huge scales, there’s got to be something in not having to cut down any more trees?

Like I said above, I’m not sure about the audience tracking part being right or wrong, but it’s obvious that digital is gradually starting to take over all of the areas that traditional marketing has had it’s foot on for all this time.  TV’s slowly going to the dark side, the likes of iPlayer and the soon to arrive “project Kangaroo” are making sure of that, and now posters and outdoor begin to make the move as well.  Is nothing safe from our grubby binary hands?

Howard

image by James Cridland and found on Flickr

Take that Apple!