Viral Marketing

To any company, viral marketing is both powerful and mysterious. For many years viral clips that have grabbed worldwide attention have seemed to go global spontaneously. Just this year, a teenager’s impassioned plea to ‘leave Britney alone’ received millions of hits within days of being uploaded, followed by international news coverage on programmes like E Entertainment News.

Making the most of the viral marketing phenomenon can have massive pay offs for companies, but it can be dangerous territory for marketers to explore.

This was made particularly clear in when Coca Cola attempted to kick start their own viral marketing campaign by anonymously ‘seeding’ it in forums, pretending to be interested consumers. Their attempts were quickly spotted and net users responded to this trickery by burying the campaign.

Nevertheless, when it comes to viral campaigns content is king. It requires genuinely interesting content that grabs attention without relying on spectacular production values - quite the opposite, in fact. The best viral videos have the feel of being shot on someone’s phone or home video camera and shy away from any professional gloss. A good example of this is the completely unbranded Levi’s viral campaign ‘Guys backflip into jeans’ launched in early May. The clip looks like it has been shot by friends. It’s very rough and ready with a music track over the top. However the image of the young man literally backflipping off a trampoline and into his jeans was spectacular enough to launch the viral. A close eye can glimpse the Levi’s logo on the jeans, but overall there is very little branding. This allowed the campaign to spin up a genuine viral fuss and within a few days of being uploaded it had already been viewed 1.4 million times. Directed by Benzo Theodore, who also (unsurprisingly) directed Jackass and created by Cutwater, this was a highly successful campaign by Levi’s that has been viewed on YouTube 3 million times since its launch.

However there is a fine line to tread with viral marketing campaigns. This was demonstrated in November 2007 when Stanford student and viral marketer Dan Ackerman Greenberg wrote an expose of viral marketing ‘tricks’ on a TechCrunch.com blog. This tell-all blog outlined some of the more deceitful methods that viral marketers use to get their campaigns going. This included seeding forums with their video, sending it through email lists and creating fake controversy in comments columns in order to gain attention. The backlash against this blog was huge, with more than 400 comments, mainly from people who were disgusted with these practices. Greenberg himself was personally vilified for his involvement.

It raises an interesting question for online marketers, because having a video go organically viral can be very difficult and the practices outlined by Greenberg in his blog most certainly help a campaign over the hump. But for users who feel they have been subject to trickery, the attitude can have very negative consequences for the brand. Nevertheless, a successful campaign can bring huge rewards at a very low cost. By tapping into the social networking power of the internet, online companies can both increase their visibility and strengthen their brand. It’s just a case of recognising when above-board manipulation becomes underhand exploitation, and being sure to stay on the right side of the line.

Justin Drummond,

Chief Executive - Media Corporation plc

Mobile Rich, Time Poor

You know what it's like, sometimes information comes at you from all sides and none of it makes sense; but from time to time disparate ideas coalesce and the lightbulb flickers into life.

I attended a great little conference run by Vodafone last week - the audience was made up mainly of international advertisers looking at new ways to reach their audiences and mobile was the main attraction. Of the many presentations I digested, one slide, in one deck caught my eye - 'Mobile Advertising Reaches Light TV Viewers'. I thought no more about it until yesterday when I came across some recent research from Starcom that illuminated this 'Light Viewer' category and it turns out that they are an elusive yet highly desirable advertiser target. Apparaently they watch less than 40 minutes of TV a day but they make up 15% of the population and this is a headache for advertisers who have to spend a fortune to reach them. Starcoms's research showed that only 19% of Light Viewers see 'major budget' TV adverts three times which suggest that many big budget TV led media plans are not maximising reach. Why is this? Well it turns out these Light Viewers are very busy, cash rich, time poor executives who shun 'Britain's Got Talent' but look forward to 'Dispatches' and 'Cutting Edge' in the evening. They are also much more likely to watch late peak and weekends and they are prized because many of them are the main driver of an executive car and devote a large proportion of their disposable incomes to online shopping and entertainment.

I could continue in this vein and reel off a bunch of statistics to show that professional, 35-45 ABC1 males are far more likely to be heavy regular users of mobile internet services (our own studies with Millward Brown confirm this) but it will be far more convincing if you see it with your own eyes. So when you are next on that tube, bus or train or walking past one of those big Starbucks goldfish bowl windows have a good look at who is gazing at their phone - not tapping - but gazing. They will likely be surfing and I suspect most will fit the basic profile I've set out above.

The trend for consumers, matching this profile, to use the mobile internet in deeper and more expansive ways is only set to increase. I'd like to argue then that planners have a duty to evaluate the potential of the mobile internet to reach 'Light Viewers' where TV cannot. What is exciting - from both a planning and creative perspective - is that if we can create compelling 'educational' campaigns that replicate the attraction of 'Dispatches' or 'Cutting Edge' on mobile then we should expect to capture the attention of this elusive audience. This would be a diversion from the norm as in ad-land we largely try to entertain to get cut-thru, but perhaps it's time to get serious when engaging these Light TV viewers on mobile and deliver campaigns that speak to their need to broaden their intellectual horizons. A huge challenge - and I suspect such a strategy won't be 'on brand' for many advertisers - but I'm convinced that their is scope for sectors such as finance, telco and auto to experiment with this insight and if planners reading this don't - then we will.

The Rise of Online Video

In the two years between December 2006 and January 2008 there was a 70% growth in the UK online video audience, alongside a mere 14% growth in general internet use. This shows just how popular online video has become.

The success story of the BBC iPlayer epitomises this popularity. Since its launch at Christmas last year there have been more than 75 million requests to stream or download programmes on the service. Sites relying on user-generated content such as YouTube are responsible for many internet trends, proving the potency of word of mouth virality and the accessibility of video compared to text and image-based content.

Even politicians have recognised the potential of online video to reach their constituents and influence public opinion. Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently launched a service called Ask the PM through which users can post video questions. So far the issues raised have included political correctness, disability and university costs. By branching out into online video, Brown is clearly hoping to challenge Conservative leader David Cameron’s accusations that he is an ‘analogue politician in a digital age’.

As well as user-generated video content, there has been a rise in the number of advertisers using online video in their campaigns. Analysts predict that spending on online video ads will triple within the next three years in the USA, with even faster growth in Europe as high-speed broadband spreads. European online video ad spending looks set to increase from $200 million this year.

The advantages to advertisers are manifold. Firms which use the online video advertising medium will reach their target audiences more successfully. Since online video advertising is still relatively new, an automatic niche is carved for advertisers in a marketplace crowded with text-based and one dimensional ads and dulled by user complacency to such forms. Online video advertising mixes the traditional advantages of television advertising with the accessibility of the internet, without the constrictions of a fifteen to thirty second TV commercial slot. Most importantly, the relatively high click-through rates for online video ads compared to their text and image based equivalents makes this form of advertising a fruitful field. Of course, this means that costs will be higher for advertisers looking to exploit online video. The very fact that consumers respond better to online video adverts has pushed the costing up. Nick Johnson, internet VP for media giant NBC hits the nail on the head when he says ‘It’s a marketplace supply and demand story’.

But it isn’t all plain sailing. There are fears that the massive growth in online video will threaten the very basis of the internet. Jim Cicconi, vice president of legal affairs for telecommunications firm AT&T believes that online video will take up all of the internet’s bandwidth within a couple of years. Right now online video makes up 30% of web traffic, but Cicconi predicts that it will reach 80% in two years. One solution to this problem would be to stratify traffic and charge users more to guarantee that high priority traffic gets through. However, web analysts like Professor Andrew Odlyzko are certain that these predictions of doom are unfounded. He says of the growth in online video: ‘It’s rapid but it’s manageable.’

Justin Drummond,

Chief Executive - Media Corporation plc

Mobile Marketing Lessons From Africa

It's sunrise and you wake to start the four hour walk to the next village to sell your produce in order to feed your family for the following week. When you set out you are not even sure if the customer who wants to buy your goods will be at the destination and it's a four hour walk back. This is everyday life in many villages in sub Saharan Africa but things are rapidly changing. Cell base stations are cropping up everywhere and transforming the lives of many. Now villagers call and text buyers directly, supplies are ordered based on demand and money transfer transactions are conducted by mobile with monies sent to families a long way from the workplace. "The cell phone is the single most transformative technology for development," says Columbia University economist and emerging markets expert Jeffrey Sachs. Robert Jensen, an associate professor at Brown University points to the heart of the matter "Its all about economic efficiencies where everyone is better off." He studied a group of poor fishermen in the Indian state of Kerala. The fisherman lifted profits by 8% after they began using mobile phones to find out which coastal marketplaces offered the highest prices for sardines. However, consumer prices for fish dropped 4% because the fishermen no longer had to throw away the catch they couldn't sell when they sailed into a port after all the buyers had left.

What is striking about these two examples is the magnitude of the economic efficiency to the consumer as a result of adopting mobile communication and there is a useful lesson here for mobile marketers in the West. The initial driver of SMS growth in Europe was the economic efficiency delivered to parents by allowing their teenagers to text using a pre-paid card rather than racking up a large bill on a contract based phone. Sales promotion campaigns, the main staple of mobile marketing agencies for many years, delivered to the consumer a more economically efficient means to enter a prize draw using a text message rather than cutting and posting a coupon; and Diageo has worked out that the fastest route to get you to sample a pint of 'Guinness Red' is to enable you to locate the nearest bar that stocks it, based on your mobile location.

It would appear that 'consumer economic efficiency' is a key driver of adoption of a mobile marketing proposition and mobile advertisers and agencies alike should give it careful consideration when developing their mobile advertising strategies.

What will Microsoft do now?

Almost two weeks ago, Microsoft formally withdrew its offer of $44.6 billion to acquire the remaining shares of Yahoo!  This is the latest episode in a controversial saga that has been long drawn out and publicly scrutinized, and comes after a civil bid transformed into a hostile takeover threat.  What analysts are keen to predict now is Microsoft’s next move, and what this will ultimately mean for the advertising industry.

There is speculation that Steve Ballmer and his company will simply hold out, perhaps going back to the table with Yahoo!  Having officially withdrawn their bid does not, after all, equate to disinterest in a company they were willing to pay $33 a share for.  Far from it. Microsoft are well aware of Yahoo!’s worth in the online advertising sector and the potential power they have in challenging current giants, Google. 

After Microsoft’s offer was retracted, Yahoo!’s stock dropped as investors assumed that they were out for good, and such conviction could cause the stocks to fall even more.  However, the more Yahoo! slips, the more undervalued it becomes and thus the more appealing it becomes, especially to Microsoft. 

It is rumoured that Yahoo! investors who were keen to accept Microsoft’s buyout are unlikely to try and oust the board, but are using lawsuits and campaigning to turn the annual meeting in July into a vote of no confidence. 
CEO of Yahoo!, Jerry Yang, who has said openly that he is still open to a deal with Microsoft, must win back the faith of the shareholders. No doubt certain factors could potentially increase Yahoo’s stock.  There is an opportunity to do a deal with Google, who were fairly instrumental in sinking the deal with Microsoft, or Time Warner’s AOL or even Newscorp.  Support for this from the shareholders and analysts is not substantial though, as any such deal would only consign Yahoo! to second place in the online advertising race and they may indeed be greeted by an offer from Microsoft that satisfies both sides.

There is, of course, a significant possibility that Microsoft will change tack altogether and move swiftly in reaction to Yahoo!’s rejection.  Ballmer maintains that they have gone back to building the online division through “select investments and organic development” but there are strong rumours that an acquisition of social networking company Facebook may be an ambition of the not so distant future.  Microsoft already has a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook which they gained with a $240m investment, and also has an advertising outsourcing deal with them until 2011. 

There are several ways in which Microsoft’s MSN, Facebook and search platforms could be agreeably assimilated.  The price that Microsoft would pay for Facebook is presently a source of great contention as analysts have been quick to calculate a potential valuation based on Microsoft’s payment for their 1.6 percent stake, of upwards of $15bn.  Though, it remains relatively unlikely that Microsoft would pay that amount for the company when they have secured the rights to serve its adverts through Facebook for a little while yet.

However, is Facebook just another example of what Ballmer termed “faddish” just a few weeks before Microsoft’s investment?  Is it really worth Microsoft acquiring when the global leading operating systems and software company might just as well reap the ad revenue rewards from their current deal with them and focus their more concerted, long-term efforts on redefining the whole online advertising game?  According to Charlene Li, vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc., this is exactly what they should do.    She argues that Microsoft’s huge user base with MSN et al stands them in good stead to differentiate themselves from Google and that they should stick to their current online advertising strategies, which includes continuing to integrate its recently purchased advertising network aQuantative into its services.  There are also potential partnership opportunities with AOL and Baidu.  Moreover, with their recent Software-as-a-service focus for Exchange and SharePoint, not to mention their recent acquisition of FAST Technology and Transfer, perhaps they really don’t need to obtain Facebook or Yahoo! to get where it is they desire to go.  In changing direction, Microsoft could surprise us all with what comes next.

As conjecture continues to buzz around Microsoft and their next decision, I’m sure they are weighing up their options with great care.  They might find a rapid way to improve their share of online advertising with a swift alliance or asset, or they might instead nurture a slow and steady transformation and eventually emerge with a dazzling new look to lead us all away from search engine marketing as we know it.

Justin Drummond,

Chief Executive - Media Corporation plc

It's Not All Good....

I guess I've been a little guilty of over promoting the positive aspects of mobile marketing and advertising over the past few weeks. I know however that it’s important to present a balanced view, and this is particularly true when convincing advertisers on the benefits of this new media.

Let’s look at industries for starters; mobile isn’t a panacea for all - not yet anyway. Products and services generally fall into either 'high consideration' or 'low consideration' categories but in reality they sit somewhere on a spectrum with the highest consideration been something like the home you live in (although I have read anecdotal reports that some houses are bought in minutes!!) and lowest a commodity like…well, black bin bags!

Imagining for a moment that the leading brand of bin bags is "Mr. Bin" you might suspect that mobile could play some kind of role in driving sales of a branded version of a commodity that is largely bought on impulse. But FMCG, for now, is a challenge for mobile. Sure, we can argue that mobile plays a branding role...and research, including our own, shows that it can. But in the real world where FMCG brands are just getting to grips with the opportunities offered by the fixed web it’s a difficult case to argue to the "Mr. Bin" brand manager. As technology develops (in particular Bluetooth) and is adopted by the multiple retailers mobile will play a much larger role in helping manufacturers of impulse products drive sales. Expect to see mums at checkout happily redeeming mobile coupons that they have recieved from a Bluetooth transmitter in Aisle-5 only minutes before. Some of you will say "what about Txt2Win?" This has unfortunately been reduced to a replacement response mechanism for the 0800 number and it’s a shame because so much more could be done to integrate mobile with the impulse purchase experience in store but again it requires retailer involvement and that is where the problems (as any promotions agency will know) begin.

Mobile then - today - appears to offer owners of high consideration products and services better opportunities. And the research supports this as mobile advertising drives PC usage - consumers see mobile ads and want to learn more so they head to their PC for deeper research. But even more interestingly consumers are today using the mobile internet to research high value, high consideration items and are digging deep for this research on their mobile handsets. I suspect that more and more automotive, financial, telecommunication and electronic goods advertisers will invest in mobile way before FMCG brands do when they realise potential consumers are looking for information about their products there.

Advertisers also need to be careful with demographics. Want to reach 12 to 19 year olds? Then mobile advertising is unlikely to hit the spot - but text messaging is. Want to reach over 50 year olds? No mobile media will help you with that objective - this age group are ramping up their PC web usage but have still yet to replicate their 'silver surfer’ behaviour on the mobile internet.

And some of mobiles greatest benefits, its timeliness and intimacy can also be its greatest weakness if used incorrectly. Today, more than ever, consumers will reject marketing messages if they are received at the wrong time of day or in the wrong context. So sending your SMS message to coincide with the 10pm screening of your new 30-second spot may seem like a good idea but it could very well be peak texting time for your recipient and her mates because they are all talking about 'Gossip Girl' on ITV2. Not the best time to get her attention then.

So with mobile media...sometimes it might be best to say ‘no’. I hope that my peers in this industry share this view because if they don’t then their failed campaigns ahead will only do damage to the reputation of a nascent medium in its most vulnerable stage.

 
Mobile can work fantastically well when planned intelligently and targeted at the appropriate audience at the right time, with the right message. But mobile is no different to any other medium - ignore the planning and failure is inevitable.

Complaints - a lesson to advertisers

The very nature of the media means that it will always be open to complaints. Increased interactivity has given more people the opportunity and inclination to voice their concerns and disapproval at aspects of the print and broadcast media and important lessons can be learned across the board.

According to industry reports the internet is quickly becoming the advertising medium which attracts most complaints from the public. It has already overtaken print media and will soon top television to become the most complained about area.
Last year’s annual report from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) states that internet adverts were the subject of almost 3000 complaints in 2007. 72% of these complaints were about web content, not actual advertising, but the number of complaints related to ads is growing steadily. ASA chairman Chris Smith has said “The number of complaints we receive about advertising on the internet continues to grow strongly." The ASA does not deal with complaints relating to web content as this is a matter for the companies themselves, but Chris Smith has commented on the areas that the authority oversees. "Interestingly, these complaints are almost entirely about truth, accuracy, misleadingness, and availability – the 'meat and drink' of the ASA’s daily work on print and broadcast ads."
Indeed, the report states that "The vast majority of all complaints about the internet (84%) were about misleading advertisements or content. Complaints about pricing and charges and the availability of products are more common in online advertising than in traditional media."
Print and television advertising have learned their lesson about overstating claims after many years of complaints. The internet is newer and must catch up.

Another source of complaints is the presence of too many pop ups and banner ads. The dilemma that advertisers face in light of this is finding the right register and space for their campaigns without bombarding audiences and alienating them. It is a trade off between adequate targeted exposure and unobtrusiveness.
The same creative lessons can be learned by television advertisers, to whom the vast majority of public complaints were leveled last year (9,915) - an increase of nearly 200% from 2006. Among the ASA’s most complained about adverts of 2007 was the Department of Health anti-smoking campaign which depicted people with fish hooks in their mouths to highlight the addictive nature of nicotine. This attracted 774 complaints for being frightening and offensive. While the advert at the end of the creative process may seem shocking, it’s easy to see the thought processes involved in the genesis of the campaign. With years of anti-smoking adverts behind them, the agency had the task of coming up with something completely new and hard-hitting. While the image of a person’s cheek spiked with a fish hook is a great simile for cigarette addiction, the reaction of the public was disgust not at the underlying issue of smoking but the medium of the message.
Similarly, Cadbury's television advert for Trident chewing gum received 519 complaints. The ads showed white people affecting Jamaican accents to deliver the tagline ‘mastication for the nation’. Detractors claimed that the adverts were guilty of stereotyping black people, revealing that the campaign managers had misjudged racial sensitivity.
In a time when many are growing weary of excessive political correctness, advertisers can easily fall into the trap of wrongly gauging public opinion. A swathe of mildly sexist adverts including Yorkie’s famous ‘It’s Not For Girls’ campaign in 2001 may point to a swing in feeling, but advertisers must still think carefully before employing outright bigotry. Rustlers adverts for microwaveable burgers featuring a woman in her underwear attracted 219 complaints to the ASA.
What can be learned from advertising complaints is how to juggle attempts at originality which push the boundaries of public sensitivity while remaining finely tuned in to public feeling. In pursuit of the originality and individuality that lies at the heart of a successful ad campaign, marketers must not lose sight of moral and ethical concerns.

Justin Drummond,
Chief Executive - Media Corporation plc

Will mobile agencies do to digital agencies what they did to above-the-line agencies?

I attended a mobile marketing & advertising conference last week at the headquarters of one of the UK's big four mobile operators; it was an international conference aimed at educating global staff on the benefits and potential growth of mobile media. And a great day it was too, peppered with the usual heated debates between agencies, clients and media owners.

But what was most interesting for me - and what I want to talk about today - is the view of the 'traditional' digital agencies with respect to mobile’s future, its application and how it should be used today. I have the greatest respect for the I-Level’s and Profero’s et al of the digital advertising world and count many of their managers and staff as close associates but their views about mobile on the day were just plain wrong.

They suggested that the mobile advertising industry is heading in the wrong direction trying to replicate Web advertising models on mobile. They also claimed that mobile advertising will be a tiny industry and that the focus today should be on mobile widgets.

I can see where the influences for these claims originate. Web banners have run their natural life cycle and now appear juvenile in sophistication. Moreover, their rapidly declining effectiveness means that web agencies are drawn to richer, more interactive media with engagement capability such as Eye Blaster MPU’s or widgets. But turn the clock back ten years and these same agencies were adamant that simple animated - even static - banners had a crucial role to play in advertisers marketing communication strategies. They seem to have forgotten this however. Mobile may seem to be out of synch with PC Web ad-delivery technology (eye blaster mobile just doesn’t exist yet) but coming to the party late is no justification for dismissal of mobile media - it simply needs to play catch up. And catch up it will. Every year in the UK alone some 5m new mobile handsets are given at Christmas, typically to lucky Gen-Y recipients. This serves as a flushing through of old technology and ushers in new mobile platforms that make mobile advertising richer, more dynamic and more engaging year-on-year. 2009 will be the year of mobile Flash, and what Gen-Y do, we all eventually do.

Perhaps it seems that I am suggesting that we should replicate web advertising wholesale on mobile; no, I have always argued that new models will develop that we have not yet conceived. Our ongoing research with Millward Brown is beginning to help us get a glimpse into the future and it seems that most consumers want to get a text message when they click on a mobile banner. Why? Probably because they are ‘on-the-go’ and want to look at the offer at their leisure when they have more time on the bus, train or at home. If the mobile operators offered such a model it would be efficient, targeted and highly economical.

But I can’t ignore that there is space - very valuable space - on mobile WAP sites and portals, and history tells us that where there is media space is usually gets filled. Mobile is no different.

Let’s look at the remaining claims that mobile will command a small percentage of the advertising budget and that widgets are the best way forward for advertisers testing mobile today. Regular readers of this blog will know that I believe Mobile will be transformational. I am a firm believer in Mary Meeker’s view (Internet Analyst at Morgan Stanley) that mobile represents a new computing cycle "Mainframe -> Minicomputer -> PC -> PC Internet -> Mobile Internet" and that "“The mobile will do to the PC, what the PC did to the mainframe”. Very few can see it yet but mobile will represent a quantum leap in media consumption patterns and advertisers will have to adjust. When this happens, the dollars, and pounds and euros - will follow.

I'm a big fan of widgets - use them all the time on the web - but to say that this is where advertisers should invest their hard earned pounds on mobile is misguided. It also misses the point that PC web and mobile web are - in terms of ad delivery technology - out of sync. Widgets on mobile handsets don’t generally work for two good reasons 1) They are expensive to download because of mobile operator fees 2) Consumer fear with regards to installing an 'application' on their handset. Last year there was a rash of TV ads for car manufacturers promoting a short-code that allowed consumers to download Java widgets; don’t see many this year? It's because the download rates are so poor so many car manufacturers have pulled J2ME (mobile widget) downloads. It’s just too damn soon for mobile widgets - the delivery structure, billing issues and consumer fear all combine to make them a poor first line choice for advertisers. What is the right first line choice? We'll visit that next week.

I know that mobile will play an integrated role in advertisers comms strategies – it won’t stand alone. But the comments from the traditional agencies at last weeks conference made me think that perhaps mobile agencies will do to the digital agencies what they did to the above-the-line agencies?!! :-)

The Online Industry in the Face of Recession

When the dot.com bubble finally burst in 2001 causing many internet businesses to collapse amidst market instability and bankruptcy, it was a shock to the hopeful idealism and energy of this new industry.

Now, as recession begins to hit global markets, many commentators are debating whether or not it is entirely appropriate to draw parallels between 2001 and the situation online industries find themselves in today.  Across blogs and articles there are wild cries on both sides, declaring either ‘remember the bursting of the dot.com bubble - don’t trust the hype’ or ‘the internet is recession proof’.

It does not seem entirely fitting to draw comparison between today’s online businesses and the early dot.com start ups eight years ago. Internet years are like dog years, each one is worth four. In the trajectory of the internet, eight years ago was a lifetime.

Then, the internet was not a presence in most households, and in those few cases that it was, it proved slow and hardly beneficial being used mostly to check emails - this seemed the most magnificent thing the internet had to offer. It was widely understood that the communication potential was immense but in reality, the full potential of what the internet is today was for many completely unimagined. Take the Google search engine, for example, which in August 1999 was still in Beta. A mere nine years ago and yet today it is near impossible to conceive of the internet without thinking of Google. In 2000-1 the platforms were not yet well developed and while the potential was understood, most of the time the hype was founded on castles in the air. More importantly though, consumers did not yet understand or have access to the latent possiblities of online services.

Eight years ago the internet was altogether caught up in its own potential and the excitement and wild speculation that surrounded it. In this frenzied period, technology was hastily used to try and impose systems that consumers either did not want or were simply not ready for on platforms that were underdeveloped. This marked a trend in which experience in business was explicitly subordinated to the Big Idea - how to capitalise on this newfound technology - and this inevitably resulted in clunky platforms run by people whose business acumen was secondary to their innovation - grand ideas with deficient substance.

While we saw its potential we had not yet conceived of what the internet would ultimately become economically and socially. Today, unlike eight years ago, the internet has solid foundations. It is accessible to millions of people.  Widespread broadband technology is now counted as one of the key economic indicators in developing countries. In particular, we could not conceive of the way that the internet would eventually become an organic interaction between user, technology and business. This relationship, which today drives numerous innovations and online economies, is one that has evolved above and beyond the early days of internet start ups. For this reason, comparisons to the dot.com boom and bust seem ill founded.

However, it must be noted that to say that the internet is recession proof is somewhat nonsensical.  Indeed, during economically weak times online is a growth industry, but figures such as the research study by Verdict showing online retail as expected to grow by 32% this year against minimal growth of 1.2% in offline sales illustrate not that the internet is recession proof necessarily, but purely that online industries are still growing. Partly, we are protected because we are a growth industry that is still gaining market share from the mature retail and print advertising markets and this will, of course, help buffer our businesses against recession.  Nevertheless , you can be in the best industry in the world and go bust if the company is not well managed, and with the recession hovering no-one can rely on the internet alone to pull their business through. It is critical to all online businesses that good management strategies are in place.

There can be no doubt, the internet today is a vastly evolved organism from what it was eight years ago. Not because net industries today lack idealism and innovation – this is still a core part of the internet’s identity - but because users welcome its presence as a valuable part of their daily lives. No-one is recession proof, not even Google, but during economically fragile moments we are a solid sector. In the end, this is what is will help online industries stand strong through the storm of recession.

Justin Drummond,

Chief Executive - Media Corporation plc

Are you pointing your mobile at me?

If you ever needed evidence that mobile marketing can change consumer behaviour, look no further than the rapidly growing use of mobile by social marketers. The government's 'Think' road safety campaign not only demonstrated how intrinsic mobile technology is to the everyday life of today's youth but more importantly that issues addressed through the mobile camera lens can take on a new significance, a new reality that fits the mindset of young adults and therefore the underlying campaign message becomes meaningful and acceptable.

DirectGov has now adopted mobile video to tackle a broad range of social issues from road safety to tax evasion. The San Francisco Public Health department use mobile to change attitudes towards risky sexual behaviour; the diocese of Dublin use it to raise awareness of the effects of drug abuse, and the BBC is using mobile video to highlight the dangers of binge drinking amongst young adults with its 'Risky Single Occurrence Drinker' campaign. In a world of fragmented media choices these social marketers understand that mobile offers significant 'cut-through'. They also see that mobile acts as the social glue for many tightly-knit groups offering a high likelihood that their message will quickly become endorsed and passed on. What's more they see the clear opportunity to influence attitudes and therefore behaviour.

A recent trend amongst social marketers is to encourage peers to 'shop' their friends via mobile. I don't think recording a mate in an inebriated state and then uploading the video onto a website in order to shame them into changing is going have much effect, as this is a regular Facebook pastime on Sunday mornings, but I do think the Crimestoppers campaign that encourages school pupils to report their peers who carry knives into school has real potential. As the mobile phone is the most popular media device carried into the playground, and 'shopping' a peer is a significant behavioural shift, this is one campaign, that if successful will be a real testimony to the power of mobile to create change.