Big Picture Advertising

New Ofcom report - Mostly Mobile

2009-07-08T14:06:43+01:00

Those clever people at Ofcom (the ones David Cameron wants to fire) have published a very interesting report called Mostly Mobile.

Its a 195 pages so I have a bit more to read, but found this very interesting;

Mobile data services on handsets. A growing proportion of mobile users within the UK use smartphones (22), which enable access to more advanced data features.(23) Research suggests smartphone owners are more likely to use mobile data services than owners of other handsets.(24)

22A category of advanced mobile handsets; they run complete operating systems and have relatively large screens and powerful ‘PC like’ processors.

23 23 per cent of all UK handset sales in 2008 were smartphones, compared to only 13 per cent in 2007.

24 Comscore, March 2009, http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2759 For example, 77 per cent of smartphone owners use email, 40 per cent use the GPS functionality, and 38 per cent use instant

Well worth a read.

Twitter genius

2009-07-06T12:51:50+01:00

There is still a lot of wittering about twitter.

At the Clio awards in the US a few weeks ago I was surprised at the antipathy towards it by some really smart people. Most of the negativity was around not needing to know what sandwich someone had bought or whether their train/plane was late.

@faris and I tried to explain it's value - my take was (is) that in the same way people in your office say both mundane things and really smart things so too does your collection of twitter friends. The difference is, for the first time ever, people can now choose to hear the thoughts of some the smartest people around the world- by following them on Twitter.

We are now seeing Twitter mature as people start games such as 140 Mafia but my favourite creative use of Twitter is @NotSirMartin - a fantastic spoof of a certain ad titan - with real wit. Pure genius and a must follow.

New Home

2009-07-02T16:06:07+01:00

I'm now lodging with the nice people at Agenda 21 - the award winning digital media business. Having worked with Pete Robins back in the day at Modem I figured he will be less shocked by my bad habits than some of the other friends who also generously offered space - Que Pasa, Amberlight, C4, Dare, Spike, Grand Union, Unruly Media, Great Guns, Contentment....

As well as all this generosity I'm seeing a real appetite for new thinking amongst people and a genuinely entrepreneurial spirit - most people seem to be with Rahm Emanuel when he said its a shame to waste a good crisis.

The upside of the credit crunch is that talented people are available, its never been cheaper to develop new ideas and smart businesses are looking for ways to improve the consumer experience as a way of increasing loyalty and reducing the churn that plague so many industries.

Its a good time to be launching a new venture

You don't miss a good thing 'til its gone

2009-06-23T13:57:44+01:00

Making the transition from corporate life to being part of the free agent nation has given me the chance to reassess some of this digital stuff we're always talking about.

My decision to wait for the new iphone led me to walking around with a useless BB for a week or so - with the data turned off you really understand the value of a smartphone;

late for one meeting I decided to call -but didn't have the number - no problem - its on their email sig file - except I can't access my email - or google their web site to get the switchboard number
looking for another meeting I decide to resort to Google maps - except I can't
half an hour to kill in Bar Italia, so I can catch up on email - except I can't - and the annoyance of having to deal the email when you get back to the laptop ....
and the way i stay in touch with smart thinking from my friends around the world is twitter - except I can't get that either........

Now back on the grid I realise just how much some people ( 300 million of them?) rely on being connected through their smartphone. So maybe there is something in this mobile thing after all.

You don't miss a good this 'til its gone

now, next

2009-06-05T08:17:11+01:00

I'm moving on from Mindshare and wanted to tell you about my plans.

Despite all the doom and gloom around the economy - and consequently around some parts of the ad industry - it's still a hugely exciting time to be in this business. The web has changed everything, all around the world and we're seeing the start of structural changes to the marketing industry.

One positive result is that the friction involved in starting a business has never been less - technology enables a business to act globally from a handful of locations; talent is more accessible than ever before as more and more people embrace collaboration and an open source way of working. And new businesses can develop new business models where they get paid for being clever (ie effective), rather than for the hours they put in.

Where is the opportunity? To me it's all about Mobile.

Not mobile advertising, although that has a role to play. I see the most exciting opportunity as around mobile content and services - focused on smart phones. Over 300 million smart phones have been sold since the start of 2007 - and this is making the mobile internet a reality.

Looking back to the early days of the web, when we started Poppe Tyson in 1996 there were only 50 million people on the web - it wasn't until 1999 that the 300 million figure was reached. And by that time there was a huge industry helping businesses embrace the web to drive profits and reduce costs.

Another key piece of evidence is what people are now doing with their smart phones. Morgan Stanley data shows that Facebook has over 20 million active mobile users - who are 50% more active than non mobile users!

Now the mobile world has lots of really smart people, but I think the constant refrain "will this be the year of mobile?" has obscured the fact that there is now a really attractive opportunity around smart phones. And despite all the hype over iphone apps, few businesses are really thinking about how they can use mobile to improve their customer experience, reduce the cost of doing business, build real loyalty through addictive services and content and - yes - attract new customers.

Such a platform specific play might seem odd, given much of the web is increasingly platform agnostic, but I suspect that the changes that flow from the mobile phone evolving into the Pocket Computer, will be just as profound as those wrought by the last PC revolution.

So I'm spending the summer looking at the opportunities for a new business focused on content and services for smart phones. Potentially, my 5th start up. Over the coming weeks I'll be talking with old friends and new contacts across the mobile business to explore the possibilities for a professional services company that can help business really embrace all the potential of the mobile internet. If you'd like to join those conversations let me know and I can buy you a cup of tea.

I'm also interested in keeping busy through working with smart people on interesting projects (mobile or not), so if you need some thinking and/or doing let me know.

And if anyone has a spare desk for the next couple of months - either in the east end or central london - again, let me know. I promise not to inflict my music taste on others.

I'm now off to Paris for a weekend to celebrate the end of one chapter and the start of a new one.

Bientot.

Peoples ingenuity with mobile

2009-05-21T12:41:55+01:00

One of the many great speakers at this weeks Zeitgeist Europe was Jared Cohen from the US Secretary of State office. His panel was all about citizen politics and covered the way new media was being used by activists.
When talking about his time in Iran whilst a student he mentioned that he learnt young people used bluetooth to find others who shared their political beliefs. When asked whether they were worried about the secret police he was told no-one over 30 knows what Bluetooth is. You can read more about this here.
Whilst bluetooth isn't that fashionable any more - and there are some issues on privacy - it's another great example of how people dictate what works and what doesn't.
Back in 2002 we wanted to use bluetooth for the COI sex lottery campaign - tagline "Don't play the sex lottery. Use a condom." - and we came up with the idea of going to TigerTiger on Valentines Day and using bluetooth to 'drop' that line on peoples phone - emulating the alarming ease with which you can pick up something nasty. Unfortunately the client said no - but they did let us do our most successful viral ever - the 12 STIs of Christmas; over 2 million views in the days before YouTube

Mad Men at Clios

2009-05-13T05:49:26+01:00

I'm in Las Vegas to speak at the Clios 50th anniversary conference. It's my first time in Vegas (baby) and the unreal nature of the whole place is emphasised by the fact the cast of Mad Men are live tweeting the awards ceremony.

The reason is that the Clio are celebrating their 50th anniversary by making some Honorary Clio Awards and the first one is going to Matthew Weiner - the creator of Mad Men.
In an introductory film someone makes the point that being in the ad business at the time of Mad Men was the best job in the US - creative, anti establsihment, well paid, fun etc - and when Matthew Weiner walked on stage most of the audience stood up and gave him a standing ovation.
This show resonates so much for people in the business because it's nostalgia for a time when people knew what they had to do - as I said in Nice last week; it used to be simple - agencies solved peoples problems. We need to go back to that - only then will agencies be valued.

This is the future

2009-04-30T15:54:53+01:00

Simon Andrews

Apps - this changes everything

2009-04-23T14:04:32+01:00

Those nice people at Contagious have allowed me to share the article on Apps I wrote for their latest issue.Download Apps - Contagious march 09
As with anything moving as fast as apps it's already a little outdated - the founder of Dodgeball ( which I mention) has now launched foursquare and a number of the gaps I discuss have been filled.
But I remain convinced that apps ( be they on Facebook, iPhone or anywhere else )are a major opportunity for brands and will be a significant factor for some time yet.

Google Profiles - a VRM play?

2009-04-23T12:59:19+01:00

The new Google profile seems like a really interesting development by Google - here is a legitimate way of gaming their system - for vanity searches anyway.
This is a way for Google to encourage people to self identify all their other web presences - their Facebook page, LinkedIn, Flickr etc - and tell Google more about them generally. As John Battelle points out - this is a big deal.
But is there more to it than that? Could it be the Google way into VRM?
Now I have a profile its quite easy for Google to encourage me to build that out with some brand/product preferences. What if they asked me what brands I don't want to hear from - and those that I do? With Googles integration of DoubleClick they have the ability to determine what display ads I see - and the data from my profile could radically increase the value of those ads.
I get to reduce the amount of irrelevant marketing noise I get across all the sites served by DoubleClick and Google get to charge advertisers a premium to avoid people who don't want to hear from them - and, crucially, to reach people in market.
And because I've chosen to declare my interests by building my profile, rather than having it inferred through my searches, there is less here to concern privacy advocates.
One of the challenges of VRM is how players in this market establish credibility - Google just don't have that problem. If you're interested in learning more about VRM you should read Alan Mitchell