When social media goes BAD.

After attending our 'Engage for Social Media' conference today, I can now wholeheartedly confirm exactly what I've been suspecting for some years:  that social media is perhaps the most exciting, dynamic, innovative form of advertising ever to exist.  That's until, obviously, someone invents 3D interactive TVs that enable you to taste new products and smell new perfumes, and hologramatic shop assistants who enter your home upon request, knowing exacly what your likes and dislikes are.... One day people, one day.

Facebook Connect is VERY important

The internet is a hugely disjointed and messy place. How many logins do you have? How many times do you have to enter payment details? There’s only one ‘you’ so it seems ridiculous that you have to do all the leg work on the internet. Companies try to make processes simpler and Microsoft has done a good job of this with its Live accounts. Likewise for Google. Facebook however, is the first to launch itself head first into joining up the dots outside of its own property.

The dream behind Facebook Connect is that it will let you connect your Facebook account to other websites, allowing you to leave comments, buy products, upload pictures and more using a single account. Google has a good grip of the internet at the moment with search, but it’s this level of personal account connectivity that is the Holy Grail. It also puts the fear of god into people because it means one company sets the standard and you have one account for all of your personal information.

Personal information isn’t actually a worry at this stage because Facebook Connect doesn’t go anywhere close to linking your bank account details yet. If it ever does, it will no doubt employ far more secure measures. As from last week what it does allow you to do is post comments on blogs and websites set up to use your Facebook account. These comments also appear within Facebook, so Facebook benefits from attracting more page views for advertising. Content will appear in both places and it will be read by more people however.

There is no doubt in my mind that the internet has to have this kind of functionality to work in the future, but should one company have control of so much data? An interesting question and it isn’t a simple case of ‘no’. We do need a single account, and a company with the right structure could do this. Ideally it would not be a ‘company’ that has total control, but a trustworthy organisation. How does such an organisation raise the money to cover the cost without commercialisation though?

All of this may sound complicated in text, but in practice it tidies up the messy internet a lot. So, this is a hugely important step. It is very early days but the first fruits are filtering their way through. I’ll be keeping my eye on it closely at the IAB, as will the rest of the team, to track its developments and potential. You should too.

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Where are the celebrities?

You can use celebrities in marketing campaigns to grab the attention of consumers. This is a basic rule of branding taught at GCSE level upwards and is used all the time on TV, in cinemas, in print, on the radio. Where then, are the celebrities in online advertising?! Ignoring the obvious film and TV campaigns, I can’t recall a single online advert that uses a celebrity to associate with a product or service and certainly not for a standalone online campaign.

In the grand scheme of marketing, celebrities are a cost efficient method of grabbing attention and brand association. High quality (not status) celebs come at a price, but a price that can be lower than a high production ad. I wonder if it’s because people don’t think they will get their money’s worth in an online advert. I dearly hope that this is not the case because it would show a big lack of imagination and creativity.

Can anyone point me in the direction of an online only advert/campaign that uses a celebrity? If not, please can someone make one and then point it out to me? Perhaps I’ve just missed them, but given how obsessed I am with celebrity I find it hard to believe.

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The green shoots of opportunity

Government ministers have, in the past, got into hot water for merely mentioning the words ‘green shoots’ when times are tough.  We all know the UK economy is officially in recession.  However, unlike Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, I won’t be talking the economy down.  I fear the wrath and another four-letter outburst from business secretary, Lord Mandelson, if I did so!  Times are indeed tough and every day we read and hear about another business shedding jobs.  Yesterday, Bradford-based Stylo, owner of Barratts shoes, announced it was closing 220 stores and cutting 2,500 jobs.

In yesterday’s Technology Guardian, Victor Keegan, made a very good (and related) point: he said that whilst this may be the worst of times to look for a job, it is the among the best to be setting up your own business.  Keegan is spot on citing that the cost of starting a web business is 10% of what it was in the dotcom boom.  He doesn’t refer to the contribution advertising makes to this.  Advertising on the internet already helps to fund much of the UK’s entrepreneurial and creative talent.  It’s a little known fact to many that, in the last three months, Google paid £970m to publishers for adverts on their sites.  Many of these will be small and emerging businesses, using the internet as platform to innovate, compete and challenge traditional businesses.

This is an argument lost on Lord Carter in his Digital Britain interim report published last month.  His ‘comprehensive analysis of the digital economy’ missed it and therefore failed to acknowledge the UK as one of the best places in the world to do ‘digital business’.  But Carter and his team seem primarily focused on how to pay the people that create the content we are used to reading, watching or listening but is now free on the internet.  Interestingly the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has just begun hearings on this issue and one of the suggestions put forward is a tax or levy on internet use to finance domestically produced new media.  This kind of approach would be regressive.  The Digital Britain report was big on bridging the ‘digital divide’ – ensuring that everyone can get broadband by 2012.  Let’s not artificially create another digital divide which would disrupt an already successful approach, particularly in tough times.  An internet tax here would not only mean that the UK would lose its status as Europe’s leading digital hub, but – more importantly – it would deny people from using the internet to ‘get on the ladder’ and build competitive businesses.  Remember: we’re in a recession.  We need the green shoots of opportunity.

Send in the net police: power to the people!

I can’t claim to know the ins and outs, but I’m sure we’re all aware that there is an evil worm virus attacking computers the world over. It is apparently the most evilest of worms to have ever been invented and it keeps changing to make it a slippery blighter to catch. Interestingly, Microsoft is invoking mob behaviour by offering a £172k reward to anyone with a lead. It’s like Crimewatch dot com.

Microsoft aren’t revolutionaries in this regard, other companies have used the internet user base to keep other people in check for some time now. YouTube, for instance, relies heavily on the public reporting of inappropriate content. Amazon and Expedia are other examples I’ve noticed recently of self-monitored user content. The internet is too big for companies to manage the vast amount of user content and computers don’t (yet) have the common sense to pick and choose what is and isn’t appropriate.

Therefore, with a middle person to offer final judgement, employing the aid of the millions of web users seems like one of the most logical methods of controlling the internet. Indeed, the advertising industry is already adopting this method through self-regulatory bodies like IASH. Is this the way the internet is to continue moving, the ultimate form of democracy? If it is, the most important element is that middle-layer. Someone, or a group of someones, to act on the responses of the masses.

An example of the middle-layer being wrongly implemented is Wikipedia. True, there are some moderators on the site that are responsible enough, but there are a large number of other moderators that aren’t. Emphasised by the creator Jimmy Wales publicly dismissing large chunks of content on the site as inaccurate and an embarrassing episode between Gordon Brown and David Cameron over the age of Titian. Of course, Wikipedia has no real revenue stream to cover the cost of employing the efforts of a complete middle-layer. Although I work in advertising, I applaud sites that can survive without it – but can Wikipedia? I like it being free, but I would sacrifice viewing ads to enable the site to employ a decent middle-layer, thus improving its overall quality.

In actual fact, every time self-policing has the correct middle-layer, it does work. In Microsoft’s case of the worms, the middle-layer will of course be the police; they aren’t expecting a genuine mob of virtual torch wielding geeks to surround the virus creator in a massive battle in World of Warcraft. I don’t think anyway…

The point of this post is simple: people are hard to manage and managing billions in the future is going to be a little tougher. Understatement. It is reassuring to see the foundations being put in place now, at least in the UK, because in ten years time we won’t want to realise we built this house on sand.

Are T-shirts the reason that Stephen Fry is Twittering?

I've been intrigued by Stephen Fry's obsession with Twitter for some time now. My suspicions were first aroused when he appeared on the Jonathan Ross Show discussing Twitter. A few days later I came across this video from the BBC website with Mr Fry discussing the joys of Twitter.

This struck me as more than a coincidence. Then I noticed that Fry's clothing was the same in both clips - suggesting that both pieces of film were shot on the same day - and I began to realise that either Mr Fry doesn't change his clothes very often or he'd gone on a full scale media offensive in an attempt to gain more Twitter followers.

This attempt has of course been extremely successful and now Fry has getting on for 200,000 followers. But the question that wouldn't go away was why? This nagging uncertainty grew over subsequent weeks as Fry became synonymous with Twitter - the tweeting from a broken lift business being a perfect example. What was Fry up to?

Early suggestions that first started floating around the IAB offices were that he was being paid to promote the micro-blogging site. This was quickly discounted as surely no one responsible for comic genius like this would be so duplicitous.

Other ideas were that he was researching a book. This is of course not out of the question - and if a book about Twitter must exist then who better than Fry to write it?

Watching Gyles Brandreth tackling Twitter on the BBC's One Show earlier this week, Richard Bacon suggested that Twitter was particularly appealing for celebrities "for egotistical reasons". Perhaps this was Fry's reason. But somehow this didn't ring true either.

Whatever the reason I dutifully signed up to follow Fry and have observed (from afar) his recent wanderings around LA where he is currently shooting a new film. And I have been thoroughly entertained in the process. After all it was Fry who first alerted me to this and to this - both evidence of how Twitter can be used to disseminate great content across the web quickly and effectively.

But then last night I noticed this Tweet: "Opened a wee t-shirt stall specially for followers & site forum members  Blog:" A few minutes later came an update: "Wow! Your power! Within 40 seconds thousands of you hit the steohenfry.mysoti.com site. Hasn't crashed, but the shop is full. Working on it".

And it turns out that yes we can in fact buy Stephen Fry Twitter t-shirts here or here.

The timing of this announcement was a little odd - as most of the twitterati were enjoying Twestivals across the world. At least Fry's T-shirts are better than these Twitter spin off garments. But does this not seem more than a little odd? Is this really all that Stephen Fry's tweeting has been about?

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Other Brand Republic blog post on Twitter:

Robin Grant on - Twitter’s UK traffic trebles in a month

Lisa Devaney on Twitter Binge Confession

Gordon MacMillan on Why would you follow a celebrity on Twitter

Time Out or Time In?

Marketers are not always keen to discuss their difficulties in public – especially in times of an economic crisis. It was something of a surprise then that Catherine Demajo, Time Out London’s head of marketing, was in such a candid mood at a recent round table discussion hosted by community media company Chinwag.

Demajo explained that Time Out started to notice the recession biting a year and a half ago, resulting in an increasing shift in focus from the print title to the web and mobile. As the traditional print side of the business has declined, new media is increasingly being seen as a way of stabilising the business. But this strategy can only do so much.

“While new media is growing, it’s not compensating for what’s lost,” said Demajo. “As a result we’re looking more and more at integrating our media”. Another side effect of this is that Time Out has been forced to “become more flexible, open and creative.”

While Demajo admitted to feeling “some trepidation” about the months ahead, she was keen to explain that Time Out is going to “try new things” in the future. “The downturn has forced us to be more innovative, to challenge ourselves and to take more risks. We have to or we will die.”

Traditional publishers have of course been discussing how web integration can work for many years now. In the current economic climate, this is more pronounced than ever. Just this week Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine, appeared on The Daily Show arguing that publishers made some fundamental mistakes in the early days of the web.

But, as Demajo explained, Time Out is facing some very particular isues with the recession was hitting the brand in some unique ways. Not only are people less willing to buy magazines and brands less willing to advertise, but consumers are now less willing to go out and about - the meat and veg of Time Out’s traditional content.

Demajo admitted that this will lead to major changes for Time Out, most notably in terms of editorial. “There will be a shift from content about going out and doing things to content about staying in and doing things,” said Demajo. So, for the near future at the last, expect to see more in depth coverage of the goings on in Coronation Street than the latest dinner for two deals at Claridges. 

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I wouldn’t have to change anything if it wasn’t for those pesky consumers

If mobile media usage grew by 36 per cent last year, how much did advertising spend grow on mobile? Whilst we don't yet know the answer (but it's coming!), I 'd like to  bet it didn’t grow enough.

A recent roundtable from Mobile Europe investigated what agencies, technology providers and operators need to do to turn mobile advertising into a success in 2009. The debate featured representatives from Publicis Dialog, Neilsen, Gigafone, O2 and us (the IAB) and came up with some great insights.

One participant, Thomas Curwen from Publicis Dialog, believes that “user acceptance is far ahead of where the marketing industry is.” Too right! The disparity between the growing share of consumers' time spent on mobile and the relatively tiny share of advertising spend is proof of that. He also added that “in some cases you get 50 per cent response rates to promotional activity (on mobile) which suggests the consumer wants this.”

The article also looks at the important of reach and relevance. Mobile sceptics may claim that mobile just doesn’t give you a big enough reach. I’d wholeheartedly disagree with this statement and think it misses the point entirely - the medium can offer much more than reach.

Andrew Grill from Gigaphone said: “Rather than going CPMs, I’d like to go CPRA, cost per relevant audience.” This is a sentiment I like the sound of, although I think it could take us the best part of the next decade rather than just 2009 to try and change the way people think about such payment models and measurement criteria.

The best night of my life!

Or maybe one of the best nights I had this week, was yesterday's Creative Showcase awards event, which we held in association with Microsoft Advertising (full review on the IAB site). And didn't AKQA do well!  Not only did they win Agency of the Year for the most successes throughout 2008, but also the most Contagious Award for Fiat eco:drive, which "has a practical application for the real world, that can genuinely improve the lives of people that use it".  They also won the Microsoft Advertising Most Innovative Campaign Award for their Nike Bootcamp work. 

"Working from home"

I'll let you into a little secret, at the weekends the IAB's website traffic drops right down to less than a tenth of what it is in the work week. For us, this is excellent news because it makes it very obvious that we're hitting the right audiences: UK businesses and their staff. So it was very interesting when on Monday, the height of the 'snow issue' that our site traffic dropped to just 60% of its usual amount. Surely in an industry like new media that fits well with working from home, when people do so, their use of the internet should remain more or less the same. As the country plummets further and further into a recession, when every penny counts for business, it was quite alarming that estimates placed Monday's loss to the economy at around £1 billion. Make of it what you will, but all in all, scary and telling stuff.

Google's human too

As a snow-battered Britain grinds to a halt, it's very re-assuring to learn that the world's most powerful technology company is human too. 

Anyone on the east coast of the US who stayed awake into the early hours of Saturday (January 31st) and tried to carry out a search on Google would have discovered that every result was returned with the message "this site may harm your computer" attached to it.

Some may suggest that a high percentage of people using the internet long into the morning may well be searching for sites that could be considered harmful to their computers. However, Google has revealed that the incident was not the result of a sudden surge in searches for dubious material, but was rather due to "human error".

While this is of course highly amusing (with the best example being this screenshot where Google flags its own site as potenially harmful), it does remind us that technology - no matter how impervious we may believe it is - can still be prone to human error. This is something that should not be forgotten even as Google moves on to ever more remarkable new horizons (unveiling plans to map the ocean floor for example).

From a PR perspective, Google appeared to handle the situation well. It's one thing to be shown to be human - it's quite another to actually admit to it. Immediately after the situation had been resolved, Marissa Mayer, vice-president of search products and user experience at Google explained: "This was clearly an error and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users."

However things are not quite so straight forward. Maxim Weinstein of StopBadware.org was not best pleased with Google's attempt to offload some of the blame.

But then perhaps refusing to admit to all their mistakes is the most human trait of all...