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Starbucks ? Tata ? "Some Chinese or Indian tech company" - these were the results of the straw poll I conducted in the office this morning,
According to Fortune BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) is the World’s fastest-growing company, apparently the Canadian firm recorded average yearly revenue growth of 74% over the last three years,and average profit growth of 84% over the same period. Since 2006, RIM has provided an average 45% return on its backers’ investment.
This growth is directly driven by the huge rise in demand for smartphones in the last three years.- it now has 74% of the business smartphone market and recent reports indicate that the BlackBerry now outsells the iPhone in the US. Interestingly Apple also features at 39 which belies their sucess recently due to the huge base it is growing from.
With smartphone sales representing the fastest-growing segment of the mobile devices market surpassing 40 million units,- a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year they have recently become the "phone of choice" for everyone from high powered International businessmen to sutudents which have apparently adopted them in droves - mainly down to unlimied access to personal email, free contracts and according to some even to cheat in exams ! it will be interesting to see if this growth is sustainable but with the exponential rise in social networking through phones, applications and announcements such as Nokia recently announcing a partneship with Microsoft and Apple relaxing its association with specific carriers such as O2 in the Uk it looks set to continue
I still dream about the simplicity of my old Nokia 6310i !
I have waited for months now to write a post with that title and when I saw a campaign that Nissan ran recently I found the perfect excuse. In short to promote their new car, the Cube in their words "they avoided the usual mainstream quadrangle of TV, radio, print and billboard to trumpet their car launch" and instead used a social media led campaign targeting the creative classes to spread the word.
According to Jeff Parent, Nissan Canada's vice-president of sales and marketing "The creative class is what's motivating everything these days they are the ones that other people coalesce around. Creative people make their art to infect others. For us, it was a natural fit."In short five hundred finalists were assigned a blank webpage on Nissan's hypercube.ca website and invited to creatively "audition" for their chance to win a free vehicle - one of the winners award winning Canadian artist Greg Sczebel ended up generating more than 4,000 votes and 21,000 profile views.
So what is the point in the title ? - well the point here is not the campaign - it is not particularly innovative or different - but rather that a huge company chose the launch a new car in this manner and spent (according to them) a third of the amount they would normally would for a car launch of this type as PHD's Rob Young says "The thinking here is that you could spend $5 to reach 1,000 people in a TV commercial at a relatively low level of involvement, or spend $5 reaching 10 people at a high level of involvement. The high level of involvement – if you get the right consumers – is a better payback." My issue is that that this is not a UK based campaign (it is from Canada) and it is by no means normal and the reason is not because of agencies not presenting these ideas (I am convinced that any agency worth its fee will be pushing social media activation wherever relevant) but rather that Clients at best do not understand the opportunties afforded by this approach or at worst are not willing to embrace the myriad of opportunties that are available in the new media landscape and "think outside the cube"
So the conclusion has to be fairly aimed at Clients to raise their game - and the although the risks are high so are the rewards, as Ice T says in the aforementioned song "If you out for mega cheddar, you got to go high risk" but I am sure the rewards will be worthwhile.
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The latest edition of Business Week carries a fascinating article about the value of friendships not only to us but also to companies how by analysing the closeness of friendships and associated behaviour a great deal of useful information can be gleaned about that person and the opportunty they represent.
One part that particularly struck a chord was from a study that is being carried out by Cameron A. Marlow, a research scientist at Facebook, who has studied social media communications including wall posts, shared photos, pokes, and friend requests among 200 million people to determine how close we are to our friends online. According to the article "They looked at how often people clicked on their friends' news or photos, how often they communicated, and if the communications traveled in both directions. Studying this data, they determined that an average Facebook user with 500 friends actively follows the news on only 40 of them, communicates with 20, and keeps in close touch with about 10. Those with smaller networks follow even fewer". The conclusion to this is obviously that in order to make sense of the opportunity to drive WOM then the focus should be on the closest friends ignoring the wider group - as they say "By focusing campaigns on people who interact with each other, they'll likely get better results".
I think the opportunity does differ by product as I know I have a small group of close friends with which I will discuss certain brands and products in detail I also have a slightly larger group of friends who are experts in certain areas - wines, holiday destinations, bikes, technology etc. BUT I also have a much wider group of acquaintances with whom I will discuss either very specific issues with eg a new laptop or music system (as they are perceived to be experts in these areas) and this is is where it becomes an awful lot more complicated.
I guess as a brand or company trying to tap into this the key is coming back to the traditional method of understanding your consumer and their decision making journey and where and what degree of influence the friendship group carries on this journey.
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In a brilliant homage to Burt Reynolds' 1972 Cosmopolitan front cover Lawson Clarke has used a hugely fun way to find himself a new job at http://www.malecopywriter.com/
As he says:
Hello, I'm Lawson Clarke.Am I serious? Yes, I am very serious.I'm also a copywriter. I worked at Arnold for four years.Before that I worked at Clarke Goward Advertising. My daddy owned it.Before that I worked at BBDO/West in Los Angeles. Yes, it's true.I went to school at Occidental College. I also went to Boston University. They gave me an M.F.A. in film. That is also true.Hope you enjoy my work. I love you.male@malecopywriter.com
What a great way to show a CV !
I have followed Guy Kawasaki's work online for a couple of years and always found him to be innovative, interesting and thought provoking - Alltop is a great site so it was really diappointing to see his entry on his blog entitled "How to change the World" extolling the virtues of the Audi R8 along with over 30 (yes thirty) photos of the car which was loaned to him by Audi for a week or so.
To be fair he says that they asked for nothing in return and therefore are no doubt delighted with the coverage but it all feels a little dirty to me - surely an influential and respected blogger should not be bought by the cheap thrill of a sexy sports car without comment or insight ?- or maybe the R8 really is going to "Change the World" !
I blogged in the past about weird social networks but when I saw this site things really can't get any weirder !
As Springwise describes it "Bedpost is an entirely personal application, password-protected from the prying eyes of others, and stresses that it offers absolutely no social networking features. Rather, it is a way for consumers to keep track of the sexual encounters they've had by logging in and entering some key details after each one. Users begin by creating a profile for the partner involved in their most recent encounter and then clicking on the calendar to indicate when the encounter happened. Then, they enter not just the time it happened, but also how long the encounter lasted, some descriptive tags and a star-based rating of the experience. The site then records all that information and presents it in a map of activity for the month on the user's dashboard. For a historical view, Bedpost tracks summary statistics including frequency, average rating, and totals for the month and year so far.
Hilariously "Solo sex" tracking is also available ! Sensibly (and I guess pretty integral) they have been very specific about privacy and data and instead of hiding the privacy policy in a link at the bottom of the page they have made it very clear on the home page. There is a point that all the data is kept by third party companies so they cannot absolutely guarantee that your closest darkest secrets don't end up in a skip or worst still in the inbox of your closest friends !
Every now and then the role for good old fashioned advertising is reaffirmed - either by inspirational creative (Honda's impossible dream or Cadbury's Gorilla) tapping into a zeitgeist (see the new Virgin Atlantic ads) or fantastic media placement which I think the Veet ad placed in the Sydney Herald last week achieved perfectly - Nuff said !
No it is not my weekend activities but rather a reference to the 7 deadly sins of social media article published by James Clark co-founder of Room 214 and featured on their website called capture the conversation
It is worth a read and I am sure that very few involved in the area of social media can read it without a shiver of recognition and regret and a "note to self" to ensure that they reform before the note (or post) comes from someone else !
It would have been good to see a few moore examples of where companies or indivuduals have strayed, in order to make the sins come alive, but maybe he does not want to incur the wrath of those people or show his own greed .
Have a read and decide if you are "Saint or Sinner"
I was recently introduced to a new service that initially I found fascintating but on reflection (and at the risk of sounding like Jeremy Clarkson) it makes me despair for humanity.
The service is called Slydial, a new technology that allows you to leave voicemail messages for people without them knowing that you've called.On the site they give a few different situations where they thought that the service would be useful including the practical "When you are short of time", the spineless "when you want to avoid an awkward conversation" and the crafty "when you want to avoid someone" - they also proffer some scenarios such as when you want to play the field more effectively and leave all your conquests a VM rather than an impersonal text message !
Slydial looks like a great new technology that is mostly designed to bring out your inner coward and take over another sacred part of your space - so I am sure it is only a matter of time before we start getting messages from brands on our voicemails - maybe Nike asking me how my last run went or Innocent reminding me to stock up next time I am at the supermarket.
Anyone have any ideas how brands could use this to their (and their consumer's) benefit ?
I was intrigued when sent a link to this site where i was introduced to the latest high tech "iPhone killer" - nameed the Pomegranate (Blackberry?) Phone - the clever and slick animations are fantastic - the phone claims to shave your legs, brew coffee, project video in full HD, translate and even turn into a harmonica - the interesting reaction I had was that whilst I knew it was a fake viral I wanted to see more about what the phone did and have a guess as to what the pay off for the "the ultimate all in one device" - we even had a vote in the office - was it a soft drink ? a business service ? a website ? a new "Rampant Rabbit" ?
It turns out it is a site to market the wonders of Nova Scotia featuring video vignettes telling stories about residents and why it is a great place to live / visit etc. Apparently this cost the Canadian tax payer over $300k and there is lots of debate and costernation from Canada's bloggersd about whether this will pay back - although judging by the number of peopl talking on Twitter and Alexa shows the site to be growing in visits daily (it is currently ranked 68,000th from 290,000th) so in my book this is $300k well spent and a creative way of getting interest and attention to something that I would other wise ignore - especially as visits are coming from countries as far afield as Germany, Italy and India plus the US and we all know they don't travel anywhere let alone Canada !
Have a look and let me know what you think ?
Generally virals have become a bit old hat and have largely been overtaken by more technically complex and interesting solutions but every now and then you come across one that works brilliantly to not only engage the viewer and hold their attention throughout but also to get the point, send it on to everyone they know would love it too and be intrgued as to why it was done and who did it - and this did all those things for me - I LMAO (especially at the Barbie part and the credits "all of the toys featured in this film were played with" ) and sent to all my other thirty something friends and colleagues and I am hugely intrigued as to who did it, why it was done, what and when the follow up might be?
Andrew Roberts
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 04 Nov 2009
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