Emerging Spaces - The home of Starcom MediaVest Group London’s insight, news and opinions.

Project You

Steve Smith — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 08:45:42 +0000

Chances are you have heard of the ‘quantified self’. If you haven’t, it's about people using technology to collect data about themselves (coined by the editors of Wired magazine in fact).

Smartphones, apps, GPS devices, and physical activity trackers can all be used to trace different aspects of your daily lives, from the number of steps you take and the amount of food you eat, through to your heart rate, mood and how much sleep you get. Fitbit Tracker, Jawbone Up, Withings Pulse, and the Nike+ FuelBand are just a few.

Of course, this isn’t anything new. People have been using stopwatches, weight scales and diet diaries for years. But this behaviour is accelerating, and more people are doing it. Why?

To answer this, we need to do a bit of history. Bear with me…

In traditional societies, people’s identities and social roles were more or less fixed. Most likely, we were born in the same place as our parents, we’d follow the same trades as them, we’d marry someone there, have kids there, live all our lives there and eventually get buried there. All rather dull really.

But in post-traditional societies, things are very different. We have to create our identities and roles. This involves having to make lots of choices, the results of which help make up who we are. This is a lifelong project - a bit like a journey with no real end point. You’re not wholly sure how to get to where you want to be, but you collect information on the way to show you how well you are doing and whether you need to turn left, right, backwards or go straight on.

So, the ‘quantified self’ is just one part of a much larger set of behaviours we do to help us understand and reflect upon our journey to date. This reflecting back upon ourselves is really important. It helps us to build a biographical narrative – a story of who we are and how we came to be where we are now – which is gives us self-identity. http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens5.htm

But, I hear you ask, what has this got to do with brands?

Well, as I said, we have to make lots of choices in our journey of life that people didn’t have to make in traditional societies. It’s one of the results of capitalism. Lots of choices about what to buy, where to eat, where to live, where to work. But increased choice can be both liberating and troubling. It’s liberating because it increases the likelihood of self-fulfilment, but troubling because of increased emotional stress and uncertainty - you can’t be wholly sure that the choices you make will benefit you or be a total disaster.

This goes to the heart of branding. If the journey of life is such a risky business, a brand owner needs to persuade people that their brand is the best from among their category for carrying people further down their path of self-creation (whether as a mum, a rugby player, a cyclist or a film fan). This has as much to do with mundane brands as with the more exotic. And the real proof for people is that after having made their choice, they can see they are closer to what they want to be than they were before.

The Visibility of Things

simon pont — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 10:20:44 +0000

Why brands need to be Very Present & Very There

There’s irony in the way branding has borrowed from the language of utility companies.

Utility companies?

After the picture, that’s maybe not the opening sentence you were expecting - but I assure you, everything will link up. Though I am going to have to ask that you stop thinking about that picture for a moment.

Great. Thanks. And yes, utilities, as in gas, water and electricity, the ‘Very Very Useful Stuff’ we can’t really live without.

Brand-builders would figure “utility” to be a rather useful word to borrow, given it reminds everyone that brands must make themselves useful to people - given there are few better examples of those daily essentials than the stuff the utility companies provide.

Only, I think we’ve just fished out a herring of the very red kind. (No, it wasn’t hiding in that cleavage.) Because how do you feel about your utility providers? When did you last give your electricity a moments thought? And that’s because this is the 21st Century, where utilities are meant to work - and so, we don’t actually give two hoots (arguably not even one) about our gas, water or electricity, because it’s “always there”, almost never “suddenly turned off”. Gas, water and electricity might be essential to our daily lives, but they are givens, they are “invisible essentials”. And the moment something becomes truly assumed and taken for granted, it becomes invisible… and forgotten.

And for brands, Invisible & Forgotten is the equivalent of Arsenic & Cyanide.

VERY PRESENT & VERY THERE

Decent broadband, an always-in-range wifi connection, will inevitably become another “invisible given”, once it’s become truly ubiquitous. But we’re not quite there yet. We can still lose signal a little too often. And consequently, we’re still grateful of our broadband, still offer the odd silent thanks to a Virgin or a Sky, because it can still occasionally be taken from us, a 5-bar signal or fibre optic suddenly at the whim of a capricious God or mischievous gremlin. Take something away, and its very disappearance creates fresh and potentially urgent wanting.

But I’m not right now suggesting brands be built by occasionally making themselves scarce, the figurative equivalent of turning off the tap or lights.

I am however suggesting brands can be built be being ‘Very Present’ and ‘Very There’ in the right kind of way.

Now the fact our appreciation (of a thing) is born of things making themselves present and visible – well, that’s why we have brands in the first place. Because branding makes products conspicuous. It gives them profile. Apple. Nike. These are not shrinking violets. Their advertising positions them as social peacocks; life-and-soul-and-look-at-me of the party types. Apple’s “products”, Nike’s “products”: they try and make themselves front-and-centre in our everyday. We can’t help but be aware of that which makes itself clear and highly visible to us. Apple and Nike are but two examples of brands that shoulder-barge the competition in order to get right in front of us. And it’s from that awareness that our potential understanding and consequent appreciation for them may then grow.

The French sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) suggested companies don’t manufacture objects, but rather signs - a running shoe is not actually a running shoe, but the semiotic suggestion of a running shoe. A bra is not… you get the idea. However you want to look at things, whether as objects or signs, I say it’s a helluva lot easier to “look” on anything if it’s up close and personal and staring you in the face. Which, yes, I guess takes us back to that opening photo.

So you bet, a brand needs to be useful, and better still essential, like the water and the gas, but never invisibly so. “Out of sight” is not only out of mind, but also out of heart, and too quickly an after-thought. Absence doesn’t equate to increasing fondness. Successful brands make themselves frequent and “Visibly Essential”. There are times when “in your face” can be a very good thing.

SP.

Workshops for women. Do we need them?

Liz Nottingham — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 07:38:30 +0000

I am watching a four year old twirling her umbrella twirling in the sunshine. She is skipping and dancing as the umbrella moves up and down, round and round. I notice another umbrella being jabbed at the little girl's umbrella. It's owner is a four year old boy intent in stabbing her umbrella He sees his umbrella as a weapon and her umbrella is his target.

It is true to say that the differences between men and women are to be found in the playground, even under the spanish sun. And as we get older the divide deepens. I am reassured that there is concrete evidence to support the 5 stages of a woman's career, where male and female values differ at the different life staging posts. It is not about right and wrong; it is about difference. And the biggest biological fact of difference is the buggy in the hall way. I fully understand that women don't want to be treated as a minority group, to be seen in need of remedial attention. But the fact is that the sexes are wired differently ; biologically and psychologically. And to ignore this in the workplace would be negligent.

This is why we have created specific female development workshops for our women at SMG. With or without children, graduate or Managing Director, we celebrate the differences with specific support to ensure our women can be the best they can be. Our work has been shaped and inspired by our women themselves as they seek the space to explore their own challenges in a private space.

Acknowledging the career stage differences further help us to understand who we are; what our limiting beliefs might be and how to explore the edges of our comfort zones. It has been a bold journey as not everyone agrees. But that is not a reason not to do it. These sessions get fabulous feedback and have had a big impact on the delegates. Networking is key for women. Along with lots of listening and sharing. The many sessions help us identify who we are, who we want to be and how to prevent burn out as we tackle the curse of female over conscientiousness. We have even introduced our own female coaching module to encourage women to fully explore their career choices. For media mums who left the industry several years ago we will be running a BacktoBusiness Internship to restore their confidence, skills and knowledge post toddler stage.

Our work at SMG sits alongside the wider Publicis Groupe initiatives for women to be launched in October and the broader industry work of WACL and Bloom.

Do women need specific focus? Yes they do. And most of all we need to do all we can to support each other.

Economy up, but only for some

Steve Smith — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 08:18:10 +0000

The Resolution Foundation has just released figures showing that the economic downturn has pushed a further 1.4 million employees below the living wage - the rate set as necessary for a basic standard of living in the UK. (The living wage is calculated at two-thirds of average hourly pay for all employees, equivalent to £7.44 an hour.)

This means that right now, 4.8 million people in the UK– that’s one fifth of all employees – now earn below the living wage, a leap from 3.4 million (14%) in 2009 at the height of the recession.

This positions the UK with the greatest proportion of low paid workers across the whole of Western Europe.

On the upside, the OECD has just predicted that UK growth would this year reach 1.5%, almost doubling the May prediction of 0.8%. Yet the Resolution Foundation data shows that there is a significant risk that any recovery is only likely to benefit some people, resulting in an emerging two tier workforce.

Beyond the social consequences this has, there are obvious implications for brand owners. Lower wages, especially with any wage increases being outstripped by inflation, means less money in people’s pockets and therefore less money to spend. It also means that mid-tier brands – take Sainsbury’s and Tesco as examples – need to work hard to take back customers they have lost to lower market brands.

Search Lately: Issue 103

Kevin Ting — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:17:50 +0000

Highlights brought to you by Search Lately @SMGSearchUK this week include:

Google’s Pay Per Gaze – The Future Of Paid Advertising?
Faster Smoother Bing Ads Editor
Google ‘Not Provided’ Searches Reach 49%
Bing Ads Dimensions – Coming Soon

Browse last week’s Search Lately for more details and initial reaction from industry experts on recent hot topics.

Expect tablet share of mCommerce to grow

Steve Smith — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 09:08:12 +0000

It’s easy to think that using mobiles and tablets for home shopping is something radically new. It’s not. Some of us are old enough to have mums who owned those home shopping catalogues when we were kids, which you could browse through then place an order over the phone for anything from clothes to electronic gadgetry.

Of course there are differences. Home shopping catalogues are static; mobile and tablet shopping content can be dynamic, and responsive. I can be at home watching a TV ad for a product that I can then find out more about or even purchase by searching online, going straight to the vendor’s web site or seek opinions of my friends on Facebook or Twitter. (Even more interestingly perhaps, I could be reading a newspaper, magazine or catalogue and then use an app to find out more about the product, but that’s a story for another time).

One of the goals for marketers then is to use TV ads to stimulate people to move along the customer journey – to make them part of an emerging story that people can continue through their mobile devices.

However people are giving smartphones and tablets different roles in this. comScore reports that during the first half of 2013 in the US, tablet owners spent an average of $57 on mobile shopping on their tablets, compared with the $47 that ‘smartphone only’ people spent. But because there are far more ‘smartphone only’ people, smartphones accounted for 63% of the $10.6 billion in mCommerce spending during the same period in the US.

Retailers have therefore been right to focus their development and user experience strategies on smartphones. But as tablet ownership increases, they need to urgently create strategies for tablet users as well, and carefully differentiate between them.

What do the changes to Facebook's Promotions Terms mean for marketers?

Mat Morrison — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 22:44:06 +0000

Until recently, Facebook’s Terms prevented community managers using Facebook Posts as a simple place to run competition mechanics. Now everything has changed in to what some observers predict will be a glorious free-for-all. But what does these changes really mean for social media marketers?

The biggest off pitch contest in a decade, that neither side can afford to lose

James Anderson — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 07:17:44 +0000

One of the biggest off-pitch football battles of the decade gets underway this weekend, when BT takes on Sky with the launch of its BT Sport channels, but is this a fight for pay-TV dominance or a scrap over broadband customers? In reality, it is a bit of both.

Armchair football fans have never had it so good. In the coming season, which is just days away, 154 English Premier League games will be screened live. The basic facts are; Sky will have 116 Premier League games, 90 from the Football League, UEFA Champions League, La Liga, the SPL and some Internationals. BT Sport will show 38 Premier League games plus some FA Cup, Europa League, SPL and games from Germany, France, Italy, Brazil and the U.S.

It is such an imbalanced beginning that it looks like a concerted plan, as if Sky Sports were determined to go all-in at the start. BT certainly hope this is the case, insisting that they have kept their powder dry, that they have more first-choice picks left in the second half of the season. BT could never out-punch Sky Sports but they might hope to out-manoeuvre them.

Sky, though, are confident that they will still be in a strong position for the second half of the season. There are 20 weekend rounds of fixtures left after this first set, and Sky have 12 first-round picks, having used just eight so far. BT have eight left for weekends as well as five weeknight selections. And while that might make for a more even contest, Sky can decide which weekends they make their first pick with.

Despite the imbalance, this is certainly a contest. Neither party is desperately keen on the other and they are willing to make it known, publicly or privately. In the PR battle, Sky's boldest move so far has been to make their schedule free on the first day of the Premier League season, Saturday 17 August, the day BT kick everything off with Liverpool against Stoke City at lunch-time. BT Sport had previously kicked off the war by declaring that live top-flight football would be free for BT Broadband customers.

Not that Sky would describe it that way. "Our strategy is not based on getting anyone back," insisted Sky Sports managing director, Barney Francis. "It is based on providing the best for our customers. It is a fabulous opportunity for people to celebrate the first day of the Premier League season and look at our new-look schedule. We are celebrating the first day of the Premier League season by inviting every home in Britain to enjoy that marvellous day."

There’s just one problem: while the TV channels will be promoting a feast of football, fans could suffer severe indigestion attempting to crunch the numbers and work out the best deal.

Adding to the confusion is that it’s no longer the case that you simply have to watch games on the telly. Fast broadband and cheaper mobile phone data deals mean it’s possible to watch almost anywhere — for a price.

The questions are: how to watch, and how much are you willing to pay?

David James, the consumer marketing director at BT, tells Campaign that most of the media have missed the point with their coverage, portraying it as BT taking on Sky’s dominance in pay-TV. The main aim, according to James, is to sign up broadband customers rather than compete head-on with Sky’s powerful package of sports rights. BT is offering its sports channels for free to its broadband customers.

"We don’t want to be played off against Sky," he says. "We accept that a lot of people love Sky, but we have moved the game on… The only decision we are asking people to make is which broadband they use."

James claims the strategy is already paying off, with "very strong take-up" of BT broadband in recent months, adding to its 6.7 million broadband subscribers.

But Sky is among those keen to portray this as a battle over which offers better sports coverage. Barney Francis says BT has made a lot of "noise" about BT Sport, but Sky has three times as many Premier League games and will kick off the season showing top-flight matches from the biggest clubs. He adds that BT’s offer bears "no comparison with what we offer".

BT has already paid £738 million for the Premier League matches over three seasons. Last week, it announced that it had won the rights for FA Cup games in partnership with the BBC. The question is whether the offer is strong enough to persuade Sky broadband customers to pay an extra £12 a month (£15 for high definition) – or switch to BT broadband – to get the coverage not provided by Sky. However, it seems an expensive way for BT to win broadband customers.

But these are just the opening shots in a battle that will rage for years. It is clear at this stage that Sky are the top guns by a long way, but indisputably BT has a significant war chest with which to build a compelling alternative and healthy competition. Having a million customers already across sport is evidence of BT’s power and demonstrates that they gone a step further in the battle of brands. Furthermore in comparing this situation against previous broadcasters ESPN and Setanta, BT, in acquiring a variety of different rights across all sports makes this a case which Sky has to take notice of and respond too.

This was proved by BT Sport’s FA Cup rights victory last week for four seasons until 2017/18, having teamed up with the BBC in a deal sources estimate at £200 million to outbid a competing joint offer from Sky and ITV. Champions League rights currently held by Sky could be next, Martin says, followed by attempts to get a bigger slice of Premier League action in the 2016/17 season.

Depending on the next few years, BT’s focus might yet switch from a scrabble for broadband subscribers to a fight for control of pay-TV. And that’s one battle Sky cannot afford to lose.

Search Lately: Issue 102

Kevin Ting — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 16:33:56 +0000

Highlights brought to you by Search Lately @SMGSearchUK this week include:

Combined Paid & Organic Reporting Dimensions
Matt Cutts says NoFollow for Infographics & Widgets

Browse last week’s Search Lately for more details and initial reaction from industry experts on recent hot topics.

Encouraging Curiosity

Liz Nottingham — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 08:24:36 +0000

Encouraging curiosity is how we learn and grow. I believe in Keeping all the boxes open all of the time. This is how we make unexpected connections and create a better product and an even better experience. Look at things you may not like. Experience things you may not enjoy. And you know what? So what if you don't? At least you will have tried it, have an opinion about it and it will form a memory of who you are. My personal intention is to live without limits. I admit that some days are easier than others, but who said this was meant to be easy? At SMG we encourage our people to live at the edges of their comfort zones. And to be bold. At SMG our learning and development programme has been a bold journey and one that has created a culture of curiosity and creativity for everyone.

Our Inspired Guest Speaker series exposes us to Walking With The Wounded, broadcasters, pilots, prisoners and their Governors. All part of the rich mix of daily life. Our creativity created a workshop which Interprets client briefs through art with an artist from Goldsmith's. We are off on a Microadventure with an intrepid explorer for a one night micro adventure under the stars. The theme continues with art inspired brainstorming, joining up unconnected dots and forming a new vision of the world. A journey that has taken us 5 years to build trust and curiosity. Our businesses need creativity. A a broader perspective means that we create wonderful human experiences for clients brands and consumers. We all need to keep fresh in our thinking. We all need to be creative. We all need to explore the things we don't know and to explore the power of not knowing. restricted. The more we don't know, the more we know.