Media Week

One of the best bits of feedback I’ve ever had as a Microsoft employee was an email from a US super-affiliate – and I mean SUPER-affiliate – after adCenter and Microsoft in general were being discussed in unfavourable and fruity language on his blog.

I’d added a comment saying I thought we could perhaps do a bit better and soliciting some actionable data with regards to his readers’ concerns so I could send them to our product teams.

His email said, “The thing about you Microsoft guys is, whenever you screw up or something isn’t well received, you don’t get all down about it but come straight back asking questions! That’s how to run a business!”

Although I’d rather not screw up, it does pay to ask the right kind of questions, listen intently and collaborate with your customers to act on the path to constant improvement.

The recent launch of Bing out of beta in the UK last week is a good example of how we’ve listened... a lot!

I must have spoken at over 100 conferences to thousands of people about Microsoft adCenter and search engine marketing, and not a day has gone past in the last 4 ½ years when I’ve been asked, “When can we get more traffic? The conversions are great but we need more volume. This market needs more competition. We can’t have such a one-sided industry. We want variety!”

Now my role has always been to evangelise adCenter, but unofficially I’ve had to keep my fingers in the Dutch flood barrier – so to speak – keeping track of any piece of feedback received from the industry and feeding them to the engineers, forcing them out of their lab to exchange face-to-face with our users.

That unofficial job is now really redundant.

With the launch last week, the guys in our Search Technology Centre in London have done their bit and will continue to do their bit to push the boundaries of innovation. They’ve asked all the right questions and worked tirelessly to create a search engine that I am proud of and very happy to use. Bing is a search engine that not only delivers in the worldwide #1 search market, but also meets the needs of local consumers and advertisers.

Although my better half is American, the other half is still very keen on its conker battles, Yorkshire puddings and warm beer. So the in-depth localisation efforts on the user experience and algorithm results keep reminding me I'm in Britain and not in a Vegas hotel.

Here’s the rallying cry!

So we can gauge what you think, please use Bing.com as your default search engine for a week and comment below on what you think after 7 days. Have it as your homepage and discover some new facts about different parts of the world from the daily changing photo that teachers all over the world are now starting their pupils’ day at school with. Use it to check football scores and do your Christmas shopping while you’re at it!

The industry wanted a game-changer, and while we start working on the consumer marketing, where better to start talking about and using it than within the industry itself.

If you’ve enjoyed any of my previous 323 posts over the last 2 ½ years just indulge me this once... you might be pleasantly surprised!

http://www.Bing.com

Just fill out this survey if you're a UK Advertiser http://www.reformdigital.com/research for the chance of a digital makeover.

Thanks for the heads up from the wonderful Amanda Davie who, I'm sure, will answer a few questions on the findings when the data has been put through the mangle!

I spend around 15 minutes every month down at the recycling bins in Sainsbury’s car park in Richmond.

It’s be a lot less frequent if I wasn’t throwing away a load of the Sunday Times I don’t read.

Regular news – forget it – rather get it from the BBC
Sport – too much footy and again rather hear what Aggers has to say
Appointments – quite happy where I am thanks
Culture – although I need some I have a TV to tell me what’s on next

What I do read?

Style – because gawd knows I need it and I like AA Gill’s restaurant reviews
Home – because I always want a bigger one and like to snoop
Magazine – the features are often very good
Travel – I like to get away from it all on the train
Gadget – because I love to see how negative the journos can be about MS products

So does that say something about me?

If I only went for the last 5 would that give advertisers something better to aim at?

It would save some trees, energy, and do much for the paper delivery man’s heart condition as I live on the 3rd floor with no lift.

Someone tell me why I can’t?

More social media insight! This time from Ben Chapman who heads up interactive for BBC Radio 1.

In this 12 minute interview he serves up how they use digital to enhance radio for their 11 million weekly listeners.

I met an Oscar winner last night. Estelle Parsons, who won best supporting actress in Bonnie and Clyde, was performing in August – Osage County at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle and I was lucky enough to get back stage and shake her hand.

The play was awesome! A company of about 12 actors had 2000 enthralled in a tale of family strife which included some hilarious and very sad moments too.

What it didn’t contain, even though it was a new play, was any mention of sodding Twitter!!!

Now don’t get me wrong.......I love Twitter, and I also love Stephen Fry, but was his banter with a detractor over the weekend really worthy of national news?

Last week I was lucky enough to catch up with Andrew Sampson who runs Stephen Fry's website and works with the actor on a host of new media projects.

In this interview he talks about how they started, how they see social media panning out, and gives us the scoop on the upcoming Untied Artist's Network.

Click on the photo to get to the video as I couldn't embed it on this blog.

Would love to get your thoughts on the insight Andrew gives us into working with Britain's favourite Twitterer!

There’s already been a lot of coverage about the Twitter deals with Bing and Google announced in the last couple of days and waking up this morning the day after Windows 7 launched and Nick Griffin made an arse of himself on Question Time, just goes to show how important these innovations are.

Trending on Twitter 10 minutes ago (writing at 10.06am on Friday 23rd October) were “Windows 7” and “Nick Griffin” as well as “BBC” “#bbcqt” and “Jan Moir”. All the tweets using those keywords are relating to something that’s happened very recently and are in large part conveying some kind of sentiment about different events or news.

Over two years ago Danny Sullivan and other search marketing luminaries attended a conference I’d organised, the after party of which was held on the same night and 100 yards away from where a car bomb had been planted outside a nightclub on the Haymarket.

Luckily it didn’t go off!

The next day Danny wrote an article called the London Car Bombs – The Big Fat Search Failure – in it he complained – quite rightly – that people searching on KWs relating to the previous night’s near miss were getting tired old news/blog results from 2 years before where the bombers had unfortunately been more successful in their mission.

How things have changed.

These new announcements mean we all have access to real-time results from people on the ground and results that have been established over time through solid linking/content criteria.

We now have a choice.

In the last 14 minutes – yes I’m a slow typer – the keywords in Mashable’s post entitled “Apple Fires Back” – about the new Apple ads dissing Windows 7 – have drifted in and now out of the trending topics, demonstrating a hiatus in sharing of that news while the critical mass are still venting on Griffin and Jan Moir’s apology.

This really is a new dawn for not only how we receive and understand information, but also how we disseminate it. Brands need to tap into what's being said about them like never before.

Pro-activity is key now and much more careful thought needs to go into how we include social media into the marketing mix because it’s definitely here to stay!

With the advent of the web and the acceleration of user-generated content onto our computer screens, you never know who’s training a camera on you, especially when you’re at work going about your business. Social media and the loss of “control” companies have on how their message or public reputation is now displayed means a more robust approach to customer-centric marketing is needed to maintain trust, let your consumers know your are listening, that you care and that you are willing to put yourself out to help them.

With me so far?

Your hot-headed macho silliness last week has done you no favours and damaged the reputation of your colleagues and company – the day after Boris Johnson announced record prices hikes for the pleasure of your potty mouth next year.

Now, you should have acted a bit more like Derek. I call him Derek because I don’t know his real name. It’s a fitting moniker.

Derek has been selling news papers and knick knacks at Barnes Station in SW London for at least 10 years. He started with a few papers on a stand and a box of Mars Bars on an upside down milk crate. Over the winters (and he’s there come rain, snow, sleet or shine without fail) he’s added to his product portfolio according to his customers needs and his desire to expand his “empire”.

Now his “shop” is a good few metres long, selling all kinds of sustenance (I counted TEN flavours of  granola bar this morning) and every time the train pulls up I watch him grabbing broadsheets and thrusting them into the hands of late passengers just as the doors close mouthing, “pay me tomorrow”, as the carriages trudge down the tracks towards Waterloo.

That’s customer service Ian. That’s how to get your name (albeit fictitious) and photo onto a blog with NICE things said about you. We’re in a recession. People are valuing value more than ever before and so much value comes in the way we treat those paying for our products or services.

Now you’re young. We all make mistakes – saying on your Facebook page that your religion is “Jedi” is a mistake as the force is not with you yet – and I hope you learn from this. You might be in a high pressure role, dealing with the public, underground with high noise levels etc etc. But just put yourself in that old man’s shoes.

Thinking about how are customers feel, understanding their perspective and ignoring our own for a few moments, can help us react in more helpful ways now that we’re held to account and public scrutiny like never before.

I spotted this guy in Victoria Station a few weeks back and just found the photo on my phone. I think he was promoting IKEA with a TV monitor on his back and front.

Got me thinking that although some of us promote brands through exposing logos on our trainers, T-Shirts, or handbags, would it be beyond the realms of reality for brands to pay advocates to wear full ads in the form of video screens or messages when out on the town?

OK, it might be a bit whacky but what if you were really into a particular sport or gadget or shampoo, if the brand knew you had a lot of friends and were in contact with their target audience, if there was a way to surreptitiously "brand" you a bit more in exchange for a year's supply would you go for it?

Shall I "get me coat"?

Now it’s not like me to rant. I’ve spent a lot of time training my brain to see the glass half full. Often I think us Brits love to hone in on the negative instead of seeing the positive glory of the other 95% of whatever it is we're critiquing.

But...........!

What the hell is going on with hotels and internet access!!??

Now I travel a lot. I just counted my North American stamps in my passport and at the end of this month I’ll be making my 30th trip there in past four and a half years.

I’ve just got back from covering the Travel Convention 2009 in Barcelona, and will no doubt have a few more EU trips over the next few months as they arise.

My question is: Where do hotels get off charging such exorbitant prices for shoddy bandwidth and why don’t they provide decent, reasonably priced access at conferences where they are making a ton of cash from the conference delegates and just need to flick a switch to make everyone happy?

To break it down, in-room access needs to change. I’m not saying make it free (or maybe I am) but I was charged $17 per DAY in a hotels in NY last month. We were working on covering AdWeek 2009 and there were a lot of videos we had to preview and write posts about. We couldn’t see any of the videos. I called the hotels internet support team and was told, “we don’t give our guests adequate bandwidth to watch video, just enough to do regular stuff on the web!”

How 1980’s?!!! The last time I looked video was one of the fastest growing content areas on the web, so how is that not regular!?

The hotel I was in in Barcelona said the wi-fi was free in the lobby but if I wanted to work in my room I had to pay for it!

The prices are ridiculous. A quick scan of BB prices in the UK show for about a tenner a month you can get 20MB speeds, and some with unlimited downloads. So why are hotels still trying to fleece us?

Downstairs in the conference rooms, at a lot of events for some reason the main hall won’t have access. “Oh we didn’t pay for that,” say the conference organisers, “the hotel wanted to charge us extra so we just took it in the foyer and speaker room!”

That’s a double-whammy there because I and hundreds of others like to work, blog and tweet live from conferences and if we don’t have access it reflects badly on the hotel and the conference. You might have a dozen or so people there who can be promoting your event for you, but you're tying one hand behind their back from the off!

I’d love to know why there is this disparity between what the rest of the world expects and what hotels and conference centres are willing to deliver. Is it the hotels trying to make some extra cash? Or are they being fleeced by who every provides them with their internet pipe?

Answers on a postcard as that’ll probably be faster!

You should, by now, have had an email from the IAB’s Guy Phillipson, or an industry newsletter shouting from the rooftops that online ad spend has finally taken over from TV.

You know graph we’ve all presented – the media mix – showing how in the last few years digital has cut a line right across all other channels. Well I think it was supposed to be 2010 when online came out top, but with the recession, scaling back of ad spend in general and the universal opinion that if you’re going to spend, spend where you can account for it, Guy can proudly say “This is an exciting time for us all, and possibly one of the biggest announcements I'll ever make for the Internet Advertising Bureau!”

Great stuff and very proud to be in this industry and all that but what do we do when ALL advertising is digital? The numbers are quite rightly broken out by display and search etc etc, but we have to keep an eye on a more micro-level if we’re to get better at marketing. Would it be beyond the realms of reality to understand how much of the TV, print and online lolly was spent on integrated campaigns? Was it all individually wrapped or did we marketers do a good job of understanding the user journey has multiple touch points and apply what thought leaders have been asking for a while now – are you thinking about digital in the mix?

Last week I was in New York for Advertising Week, and although I’ve never been before, I was struck as to how much of the content and discussion was around digital and creativity. Rather like Cannes as well this year, people who had been before said that never before had online had so much “face time” during the week.

These are exciting times! Mobile is poised to go mainstream from an advertising perspective. We hosted a Behavioural Targeting conference this week with Google, Yahoo! and AOL all taking the same stage, as Chris Maples put it “to get under the skin of BT and educate the industry!” The stage is set for some fabulous results.

Guy says in his email, “thanks to its accountability, measurability and exceptional engagement factor, online has weathered the recession...”, and he’s right but let’s not think in silos. This economic re-calibration is making us fiscally smarter and more results orientated, and not just at work, so let’s start putting money in to smart campaigns which understand the limitless opportunities our multi-screen world now provides us with.

I’ve now thankfully recovered from a fabulous evening at The Dorchester thanks to Simon Ferguson and Charlotte Davies at Travolution.

The event has now grown into the much larger surroundings since its inauguration a couple of years ago, and had garnered 450 of the top Travel digerati to attend.

Emily Maitlis from the Beeb was our hostess for the evening and after an opening salvo of gags (including one about what brand name the merger of Cunard and Aer Lingus might create – very...erm...tongue in....erm...cheek!) she managed to hold court and keep everyone’s attention right until all the awards had been received.

The Travolution Achievement Award went to Stephen Kaufer, President and CEO of TripAdvisor and the one to watch, who I’d been jolly impressed with when I met him in New York at AdWeek last week, was Alex Gisbert from Expedia.

For a full line up of winners check out the Travolution site.

Thanks again to Simon and Charlotte for asking me to do a bit of judging, and no thanks to Phil Stelter from Bigmouthmedia for pressing that last Whisky Cocktail into my hand at 1.30am which rendered yesterday pretty much a write off! :-)

Well it’s 3 days in and I’m about to hit some cocktails. Not so hard they fall over, but hard enough so they carry me through tomorrow.

Covering Cannes was a walk in the park compare to here. There are 3 conferences going on at the same time and we have people scattered around 5 or 6 locations around the city.

All our coverage is on our AdWeek NY site, and it ain’t all about Microsoft you’ll be glad to hear, as will Steve Barrett no doubt as I wouldn’t want to hijack this blog for that!

Among them are my thoughts on Ashton Kutcher’s appearance at IAB MIXX which includes some piccys too and an interview with Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

Like Cannes, the buzz is all about digital. This time, a few months on though, when it comes to social media, it’s about how can we measure it’s impact more effectively because it’s here to stay!

We launched a new proof-of-concept social media monitoring tool at the show, part of many ideas our teams are thrashing around. It’s codenamed LookingGlass.

People genuinely thought it was exciting because the idea is to enable advertisers and agencies to layer other forms of data on top of it API-wise.

I must stress it’s not even in beta yet, we’re just thrashing through the ideas - more here.

Other than that, I can tell you advertising folks over here in NY are much better dressed than we are in London. Better dressed as in they wear suits all the time. No open collars. You can tell a creative when he walks in because he’s got jeans on! 

But the money guys, well they must spend a lot of time & moola on 5th Avenue put it that way!

The European Interactive Advertising Association's latest survey is out and seeing as it covers so many sectors like automotive, consumer electronics, entertainment, finance, FMCG, telecommunications, travel and retail it could be useful for all of us!

"With talk of ‘green shoots’ and the recession easing, the Marketers’ Internet Ad Barometer survey will provide the most current look at how the promise of an upturn is affecting the online advertising industry. Respondents receive a pre-launch copy of the report, due for release in November."

It just takes 20 minutes and is in multiple languages so pass it onto any EU cousins you might have!

Well my attempt to write at least two posts a week have gone a bit to pot recently!

It’s mainly because of the hectic run up to AdWeek in NY where we’re sponsoring, blogging, Tweeting and video interviewing the advertising world and his wife.

Yesterday I was speaking about social media at an internal meeting and was lucky enough to hear para-olympian Giles Long talk about his triumph over adversity and win at the Olympic Games and subsequent fainting fit at Buckningham Palace when he met the Queen. It was the heat he said....:-)

Last night was the IAB UK search debate. I was debating with Andrew Girdwood from Bigmouthmedia that “universal” search results, i.e. videos, images, news, shopping reviews. We technically lost as most folks thought (short-sightedly in my opinion) that “regular” search results or the 10 blue links were more important because that’s what they were optimising for right now.

Jack Wallington from the IAB did agree that there was a little confusion around the actual scope of the debate but it was all very good humoured and great fun!

Now I’m packing for a week in the Big Apple. Do keep an eye on our coverage, tweets and wotnot as I try to keep an eye on my waistline!