The Big Apricot

Marketing sense or stupidity? Burger King Norway ditches 30k Facebook fans

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 11:03:00 +0000

Burger King in Norway has ditched 30k Facebook fans and kept only 8k true BK fans (link).

BK noticed that it had free loaders (i.e. just wanting a free burger) or people who wanted to complain. So they tested fans by offering them a Big Mac or a Whopper. Those choosing the Big Mac were banned from the BK Facebook page and got a goodbye letter. Those who didn't could stay on the page and be true BK fans.

Is this crazy? Or clever marketing?

On one hand they are reaching around 16% of their average fans per post (or 1280 fans). Not many unless BK do paid for advertising / post promotion. And they are reaching customers who are likely to buy BK anyway (as social media mostly does). It also suggests that engagement is more important than growth on social media (which I would argue is thinking the wrong way round). The other point is that BK perhaps doesn't see that many of their buyers and fans are ‘polygamously loyal’: they buy from BK sometimes and from McDonald’s another.

On the other hand at least these fans may spread the love for BK. It gains PR and the community is a strong and positive. And it will make community managers feel loved by a small, groupie segment.

I would say that it’s an interesting experiment, but not great LTerm marketing. It is doing a lot to very few. Maybe it's just an experiment in a smaller market. Maybe a separate VIP Facebook tab / micro-site just for VIP fans would have been better. But don’t go out of your way to ditch those who may well buy from you in the future if they are not that loyal.

It might set the rules for what it means to buy from Burger King and be a fan, it might just be a bit of fun, it might encourage more true fans in Norway to like the page in the future, but it doesn't send out a positive message for the majority of potential Norwegian BK buyers who are not 'loyal' BK buyers.

Quote of The Day from 'Testing To Destruction'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 16:55:00 +0000

"Noticing and remembering advertising is not by any means a necessary prerequisite of advertising effectiveness. Advertising may, and probably generally does ‘work’ without ever having been processed by our higher-level rational faculties." - Testing to Destruction

Social media skews towards heavy buyers - a chart

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 15:44:00 +0000

This chart supports research from Bryon Sharp and The Ehrenberg Bass Institute that social media is skewed to those who are your heaviest buyers (i.e. those who buy you already or those who are more likely to buy you in the future) and do not reach effectively occasional and non category buyers (i.e. the ones you need to grow a brand). It shows that social media is working for people who already have built a 'mental availability' of the brand so have it ready to mind far more than non-heavy buyers (who are the ones that need convincing).

Interestingly, 12% 'liked' a brand because the company wanted it to (via paid for or organic). Arguably this low 12% represents the less heavy, occasional / non category buyers. Interesting too is the 38% who liked a brand because it had a promotion: it would be interesting to see exactly to what extent these are heavy vs. non heavy buyers.

(The chart is taken from an Adobe report into online advertising, in June this year and researched into 8,750 consumers across 7 countries. Presumably by 'social media' this chart largely means Facebook because of the word 'liking'.)

Confusing missions with passions?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 15:37:00 +0000

Missions and Passions are often confused. Especially when we are trying figure out where to focus our time.

At the bottom of the rung, you have 'likes'. People, brands, places etc, can be liked, they don't involve much effort to like or dislike later. A bit like the everyday brands that we buy and then don't buy.

'Interests' are better than 'likes' but they don't hold the high level of energy that passions do. Interests aren't that intense, but a little exploratory time is committed to understand, gain enjoyment from an interest without sacrificing too much in the process. A bit like when you trial a car that you may buy, do work experience for a day or go on a 1st date.

Passions are strong and there is room for far fewer in these in our lives. Passions take us over and control us (whereas interests and likes are behaviours that we control, I would say). We feel compelled to do them and gain great satisfaction. This might be sex, coding a computer game, writing a book, supporting your country in a world cup, falling in love.

Missions are the creme de la creme. I would argue that there can only be one mission in our lives. The best brands have them (Nike's is "to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world"). Charities and religious organisations are built around them. A very few of us in our personal lives have missions: to become a vicar, be a professional athlete, fight climate change. Marriage is arguably another one of these. The sacrifice for a mission is hard, but the change they make in yours and other people's lives can be enormous. Conversely, it is significantly harder to change a person's mission than it is to change somebody's likes or interests. This is why brands with genuine missions have consistency and real energy in what they do because of the pure, unshaken focus that the have in their mission-like mindset (again, think of Nike).

In choosing careers, deciding to grow businesses and brands, we often mistake what a passion is for what a mission is. A passion is what you dedicate part of your time to, a mission is what you dedicate all of your time to. A mission is everything.

Differentiating between what is your mission, passion, interest or like (and being honest with too), is a helpful way to understand the level of change that you want naturally want to deliver to your lives and others.

Beyond this, I would argue, that if having a mission (or even a passion) doesn't come naturally, I wouldn't force it. You're probably just wasting yours and others time. And that's not bad thing.

Where would you place your likes, interests, passions and mission on the above diagram?

BMW and Audi: media and creative become aware of each other

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 10:08:00 +0000

An sound example of entertainment aware of cluttered billboard landscapes that consumers end up seeing. Messaging might not need to seem so cluttered if media and creative can be aware and take advantage of their environment. Not the first example of this kind, but good to see...

90% of time is spent offline, 10% online - a thought on Pareto's law

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 08:55:00 +0000

Was thinking of Pareto's law listening to an IPA talk, that claimed 90% of our time is spent offline and 10% online. In marketing terms, it feels like 'shiny-new-things' in online are taking up 80% of marketers time and offline is getting 20% of focus. Two contrasting examples of Pareto's law, perhaps Do we need to rebalance our focus?

Emerged economies overtake developed economies chart

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 14:09:00 +0000

A chart to show that emerging economies are just about to overtake developed economies in terms of % share of global GDP. It's taken from a presentation about John Grant's new book. Change is afoot.

Facebook New News Feed

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:39:00 +0000

A post originally posted here

Last night, Facebook announced its new news feed after an under-the-radar trial in New Zealand.

As part of Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to make the Facebook experience a more ‘immersive’ one, the revamped news feed is designed to be a more social, mobile-friendly newspaper, with a greater emphasis on visually organised news rather than a ‘jumble sale’ of updates.

Here are the key changes:

Users can curate topic feeds (or streams) by friends or brands / businesses, music, sports, events, using sub-feeds (which can also be seen in reverse order)
Introduction of a ‘following’ section showing each post from pages users like (a mix between Google + Circles and an online newspaper)
Greater space given to images and videos to reflect ‘photo-phile’ and (increasingly) video-phile culture, driven by mobile and tablets. Zuckerberg claimed that around 50% of posts are now photo or video – double that of 2011. It is also encouraging news that 3rd party photo apps are now getting more prominence, with bigger images that can be tagged with check-ins
Extra features include improved photo albums, links with better previews, check-ins with a larger map, friends’ faces next to shared posts, raised trending content based on ‘liked’ pages (potentially good news for brands) and cover photos highlighted in news feeds when friends engage with that page

Brands will need to work harder

What this means for brands is that unpaid content will need to work harder to win attention because users may well curate out unwanted ‘noise’ from those that don’t do a good enough job in engaging the audience. Brand updates will need to focus on being predominantly visual as text becomes a bit of a dirty word (long text-based updates are a thing of the past if engaging content is the goal.) If users show indifference, fortunately there is still the chance for them to see brands via sponsored posts or via the new trending or ‘following’ feature (a feature that lies outside a friend’s circles).

Users will feel more engaged

From a user perspective, the changes should give a deeper experience (given the focus on images) with more control and a less ‘scattergun’ approach.

It is also a clear rebuttal to negative press about people suffering ’Facebook fatigue’ by giving users less reason to switch to another channel such as Tumblr and Pinterest. Interestingly for Twitter, despite the introduction of Vine, it may now feel like a poor relation against other social channels in terms of a photo-led experience.

Reframing the experience as a ‘personal newspaper’, makes it feel more Flipboard-like, with its ability to curate and organise content, highlighted by larger visuals. It too reframes and upgrades ‘updates’ as ‘news’ - potentially increasing the perceived value of content on Facebook.

(We wonder if the next evolutions will become more dynamic in terms of content. Having moved from a text- to image-focused news feed, will we be looking at far more video / audio focused ones in the future?)

The challenge now for brands is to think of themselves as creators of exciting visual, mobile-style, (trending) news for the user, entertaining them and not thinking of content as merely ‘updates’.

Users can join the waiting list to try the news feed here.

The Democracy Of Consumption

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:55:00 +0000

(This post was originally written by me and posted on my work's blog late last year)

Overview
The world’s population is projected to reach as much as 10 billion by 2050. The impact on our consumer economy will be significant in terms of resourcing and opportunities for brands. And the reliance on digital commerce to enable this will be increasingly significant.
This is the view Red Ant came away with after attending Trendwatching 2012. Presented with around 100 new trends, we took a step back in an attempt to understand what they all mean - what is the ‘mega-trend’ pulling them all together? That’s when we developed ‘The Democracy of Consumption’ as a unifying concept.
For us, ‘The Democracy of Consumption’ is the growth of products, services and brand experiences opening up to wider and wider groups at faster and faster rates while paying less and less attention to income levels and location. And we were particularly impressed by the way digital engagement and digital commerce are driving this growth.
Underpinning the concept, there are three broad areas to focus on when developing digital strategy and digital experiences. These areas are Availability for all, Humanising humanity and Uniquely different together:
Availability for all reflects the global trend towards all brand experiences, products and services becoming available to everyone, wherever and whenever they choose. It’s a bold vision which is gradually becoming reality, and it’s driven by digital.
Humanising humanity is the move towards brands showing consumers their human side, revealing more about who they really are. Successful brands are letting go of the need to seem ‘flawless’, appearing both ‘flawsome’ and sensitive to human needs in the process. This allows consumers to feel increasingly empathetic towards brands and engage with them in a more 1:1 way.
Uniquely different together refers to how humans are seeking to take their place in a world of 6.97 billion people. If brands ‘scratch the backs’ of consumers, helping them look better and stand out from the masses, then they should be more loyal in return. Digital engagement and technology is proving more and more important in enabling this.
The Democracy of Consumption proves that the reign of the ‘corporate brand’ is over and the open, conversive brand rules in its place. It is a reminder that brands should be seen to put others’ needs first, be transparent and, above all, be human. Equally, digital engagement is proving to marketing departments that prosperity is not just about material growth.
Of course, there’s still room for ‘big’ business, but it must learn to act more democratically, less autocratically and abandon its ‘closed door’ policies. As examples of this, Ben & Jerry’s, Lush and Innocent have ‘for the people’ attitudes. They welcome consumers into their brand, help them to feel special (often through ‘behind the scenes’ access to the brand), while delivering positive employee-focused business practices.
The message is clear - brands that choose not to engage in this new-found democracy will be found out, judged harshly, and viewed as putting profit before people.
In the words of Trendwatching: ‘Consumers will expect - if not demand - that brands mirror society, and act genuinely, honestly and openly.’

The Democracy Of Consumption - Part 1. Availability For All

How brand experiences, products and services are becoming increasingly available to all corners of the globe and the significant role played by digital innovation
The ability of the world’s population to engage and participate in brand experiences, products and services is still growing at a spectacularly fast rate, breaking down both financial and geographical barriers in the process.
TEDeducation and Codecademy are notable examples of brands engaging online, making ‘skilling up’ open to all and fuelling a realisation that we can ‘do it ourselves’, whether it’s self-improvement, making, buying, selling and even managing our own wellbeing.
And digital innovation is helping emerging and recently emerged economies too. China is a key example of a recently emerged economy, evidenced not by what China offers the Western world but rather by what the Western world offers China, by rolling out the ‘red carpet’, welcoming them to experiences bespoke to Chinese tastes. For example, Chinese-themed Hilton Hotels offer Vivienne Tam limited edition slippers, and Schiphol airport in Amsterdam offers a free app to Chinese tourists to help them make sense of their airport experience as they navigate their way in a foreign country.
Brands are realising that emerging economies offer further potential for growth, too – some are starting to shift strategies by offering more functional products and services. Notably, in China’s rural areas, less affluent demographics often don’t have bank accounts and are unfamiliar with eCommerce, online banking or electronic payment methods. In response to this, China’s massive C2C platform Taobao offers cash on delivery as a payment method to make product consumption available to all. Even availability of education is opening up to all demographics through crowd-sourced student funding for less affluent student-hopefuls (take a look at Qifang.)
For emerged and emerging economies, digital innovation is helping to establish a more democratic approach to consumption as access to products and services is becoming more ubiquitous. It would seem that the goal is for every person to have every product and service available to them whenever and wherever they choose. It’s a bold vision which is gradually becoming reality, and it’s driven by digital.

The Democracy Of Consumption - Part 2. Humanising Humanity

We noticed that a ‘Democracy of Consumption’ is not just available for all but is making humanity more ‘human’, as digital engagement allows brands to reveal who they ‘really’ are. Successful brands realise that it’s less about being perfect, and more about developing strategies that focus on showing their human side - good and bad. If a brand hides its true nature, someone else is likely to reveal the skeletons in its closet to the world.
'Behind-the-scenes-marketing' is one area where digital is enabling the human face of a brand to shine through. (Remember McDonald’s YouTube answer to why a Big Mac looks different in advertising vs in-outlet? It’s encouragingly honest.) In being transparent, brands are having to become more deferential to their customers, and are inviting them to come closer to the boardroom. Brands (eg Ecotricity, who offer customer bonds) are turning consumers into ‘custowners’, helping them invest in the brand and blur the lines between brand and customer.
Some brands are showing deeper sensitivity to their human sides. For example, Russian credit card company PromsvyazbankP is adapting its products to local customs by teaming up with Rovio’s Angry Birds to deliver a limited edition card and a 10% discount in Rovio’s internet store. This sensitivity is evident too in social gaming (think WeTopia) and in digital commerce (think Toms who did an online ‘buy one and give one free’ on every pair of shoes).
Brands are also enabling consumers to indulge their human side with more immersive digital experiences. For example, in China, urbanisation is creating densely populated cities and brands are addressing the crowd-based frustration of waiting, stopping and starting etc. Social network app WeChat has built a human social feature which allows ‘perfect strangers’ to connect by sending a virtual message in a bottle to see who replies. Every waking experience is being filled with constructive rather than wasted time.
The insight here is that successful brands are letting go of the need to seem ‘flawless’, appearing both ‘flawsome’ and sensitive to human needs in the process. The reach and depth of functionality from digital innovation is enabling brands to deliver a greater 1:1 personalised experience – where people feel less like a market segment and more like an individual.

The Democracy Of Consumption - Part 3. Uniquely Different Together

Within a world of 6.97 billion people, consumers are constantly trying to stand out from the crowd, increasingly wanting to be thought of as unique. Self-branding and improving status are markers of difference - and it is important for brands to realise that in helping others to achieve this, they are also helping their own reputation. Digital is a key enabler in this process.
Using social media to showcase ‘enviable’ experiences is one way of doing this. For example, unique experiences of brands teaching refined cooking skills are enviable status currency, as is showing off your reduced carbon footprint on Facebook or being part of invitation-only social networks (see China’s P1.cn). Even improving and showing off our own health and fitness levels (think Nike+ Fuelband) is another way of saying 'I am more different than you'.
Interestingly, the rise of ‘virgin consumers’ in China (ie Chinese people who are new to higher levels of consumption) is helping Chinese consumers to be seen as first-to-product and unique. On the luxury end, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Swarovski and Chanel have opened up special exhibitions showing exclusive stories behind their products, without the obligation to buy. Best Buy makes new customers feel special by offering them a five-star service. Experts offer cherry tomatoes, hot water and a massage while they consider their purchase, backed up by a dedicated sales staff member to follow up on any specific post-purchase questions.
If brands ‘scratch the backs’ of consumers in helping them look better and to stand out from the crowd, then they should be more loyal in return. Strategies that play to their need for personalised and ‘special’ brand experiences are likely to win over consumers as they are elevated above their peers. Digital engagement is a key way of enabling consumers to be first among many - even if it is only for a second.

Life First, Digital Second - are we misusing digital?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:04:00 +0000

Life First, Digital Second

Reading Charlie Brooker’s article discussing the over-stimulation of our noggins when it comes to digital, it reminded me of how split attention that it can create is bad for our stress levels as well as for our levels of productivity. What a strain we are putting on our little minds, leaving one wondering why we allow ourselves to do it at all.

In Radio 4’s the Digital Human (episode 1) a point is made about how we may be halting our experience of life. It tells a story of a modern day writer wandering some English hills looking for a splendid flower with some 10-syllable Latin name. When he found the flower, he took many photos on his digital camera before walking on. Some footsteps on, he then paused, realising that he had captured the flower in pixels but not actually experienced it for himself. He claimed that he had not lived in the moment.

It made me wonder too: if Wordsworth was wandering lonely as a cloud o’er vales and hills today, would he have tweeted about his experience, updated his Facebook page with an Instagram filtered picture of the hills with the caption “strolling over these hills, totes amazing, not an English critic in sight! LOL”? Would Wordsworth have been distracted from this experience to the extent that this would have prevented him writing his famous words? Would he have even felt the compulsion to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) with the same emotive zeal?

What I feel uncomfortable about is that we feel compelled to capture our every thought and moment lived on social channels or hard drives because we can rather than because we need to. My hard drive is full of photos that I have never look at. My wedding photos – all 700 of them – are saved on a CD gathering dust because I can’t be arsed to face the stress of rattling through them and wasting an entire Sunday. Did all of them need to be taken? Or would 25 have done (like those good old cameras did in the 1980s)? Surely my mind (+ 25photos) can remember the experience as well as - or better than - 700 photos can?

I think what we are doing is snaring our lives into too many boxes: our Facebook box, our Pinterest box, our Picassa library, our blog box etc... just so we can ‘capture’ and ‘have’ our moments forever to treasure and share. Like trinkets. But trinkets that no one really cares about.

We’re also halting the lives of others because we are pushing alot of inane, vapid shit onto people who, most likely, don’t want it or don’t want it in the same way that you want them to want it.

On top of this, digital marketing campaigns are focused on delivering tweets, Facebook updates, email updates, often on a daily basis. The single-shot old school marketing message is replaced by the Arnie -rapid-fire-machine-gun-messaging-machine spraying ‘content’ (yuk, vile word) at us like a burst water pipe in the face. I wonder why marketers don’t give much of an airborn piece de merd that people might find over-communication stressful and intrusive to the 'end-user'. Why not quality over quantity? Just because brands tell people what they like as often as they like, doesn’t mean that brands should.

What I am yet to understand is why we put our desire to own, spread and share experiences above experiencing life in full. I think it helps in diminishing the meaning of it. Maybe we just can’t accept that ‘sunlight in the garden hardens and grows cold, you cannot cage its minute within its nets of gold’. I think that maybe we just want to keep it all gold.

I am not suggesting ditching iPads and Blackberrys, hiding in a lead coffin, growing a long grey beard and see out your days as a digital-recluse. I suppose the message is really: use digital to enhance your life, not dominate it - and importantly don’t forget to experience life first (before updating your Facebook status, that is).

Digital Evaluation: Adding the 'why' into a quantified world

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 17:15:00 +0000

A post I wrote for my company Red Ant:

Metrics have a significant role to play in building digital strategies. They are invaluable. They offer insights into actual (not reported) behaviour and offer robust numbers and scale into audiences that they reflect. We know this.

Sometimes, however, these metrics can fall short when we want to know 'why'. Metrics can be inflexible in proving why a social media campaign succeeds or fails, or why one piece of content is classified as more engaging than another. Even sentiment analysis cannot provide all the answers as to why.

This is where qualitative data can be of great use to support and flesh out the quantitative figures on digital activity. Often metrics are classified as insights, when indeed they are simply observations dressed as insights. Knowing the why – combining quant and qual - is where real insights for digital activity can come from.

To help us to do this there are some excellent online methodologies for garnering qualitative insight for digital. Below are select examples:

Ethnographic Apps: with the growing prevalence of smartphone technology, ethnographic apps are proving their value. A notable one is Ethos, which allows consumers to feed back their attitudes and behaviour in their daily lives through a smartphone to a central domain. The client/agency is then able to evaluate video, image, text and audio content from that location.
Crowdsourcing: a cheaper and timely method to source feedback from existing fans or followers. It can help an audience feel closer to a brand by being consulted. Fashion and Nissan are turning to social media crowdsourcing as ready and cheaper alternatives for customer ideas and feedback. A smart, recent crowdsourcing example is CutOnYourBias, that allows users to choose and vote on fashion designs. One watchout: this could cause a PR backlash if done in a public forum if you use open rather than closed questions - so do consider undertaking it in a closed, moderated and proprietary environment.
Online Focus Groups: A methodology growing in popularity, but use carefully for now. It is useful to reach hard-to-find audiences and is fairly cost and time effective. It is good at showing a variety of media in impressive ways on screen. However, the reality is that it can crash and respondents can be hard to moderate on screen, especially in large numbers. (Imagine holding an MSN group chat with 8-10people, who are all typing responses to your question at the same time!)
Online Social Communities: A highly useful online methodology. Able to post a variety of media, can easily be made bespoke and a closed network. A great cost effective platform for this is Ning. If you like, follow up with VOIP calls to the participants to get deeper levels of feedback if required. This can also be used as a methodology on its own.
Face to Face Discussions: Even though offline, costly and more time-consuming, it is ultimately very rewarding and incredibly insightful. Better in small groups (say 3 or 5) and for shorter time periods (45-60 minutes) when dealing with digital creative; longer for behavioural and attitudinal work. A plus if run in conjunction with online research, where the ‘best’ participants are selected to be met face to face.

(A quick tip: remember that any incentives should not be a company’s own products or services. This is not seen by the Market Research Society as valid research and, importantly, you’ll want to have non-biased feedback - so promising a lifetime supply of your product will likely bias the findings!)

As with any research, the interpretation of the data is most important and it is the expertise of the Researcher or Planner who can convert numbers and words into digital insight that is of real importance. Otherwise clients will believe (as David Ogilvy once said) that "the trouble with market research is that people don't think how they feel, they don't say what they think and they don't do what they say" – when in fact it is the quality of data and its interpretation that really counts. And qualitative insight is a critical part of this process.

It is important to remember the importance of qualitative data amongst the plethora of quantitative data for building digital strategies and activation- because without knowing the ‘why’, it is very hard to move brands forward to where they could best be: the ultimate goal.

A Morning at the Tuttle Club

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:36:00 +0000

Lloyd Davis is interesting.

Lloyd defines himself online as an Artist and Entrepreneur, though his business card more specifically reads ‘Social Artist and Master Community Builder’. He was worked closely with major organisations like BP, The British Council and the UK Ministry of Justice, who have used his social media, blogging and community engagement expertise. Currently, he lives a nomadic lifestyle with no fixed abode, relying on his vast network of contacts for lodging and his skills and reputation for income.

Around 2006, Lloyd set up the Tuttle Club to host leading thinkers in social media. It has a number of branches, and Red Ant wanted to attend the London club to see what it was all about.

The Tuttle Club runs at the Centre for Creative Collaboration, which is a space made up of academic and business startups coming together for the sake of ‘open innovation’. Running from 10-12 every Friday, the setup is refreshingly informal: you turn up when you like, there’s no closed meeting room, no agenda or set topic, no Powerpoint presentation. It sounded rather like an over-sized focus group, but without the focus.
Arriving and contributing to the coffee and biscuit fund, I took my seat amongst six others. The first thing that any new-comer would notice is that: 1) individuals prompt conversation when they feel moved to and 2) there is no sense of hierarchy – it’s run a bit like a Quaker church service. The result was that whatever came out of anyone’s mouth was intended, rather than forced.

Getting into the flow of conversation, subjects were wide ranging and always interesting. We touched on the recent Future Everything Festival in Manchester, and in particular the innovative work of the artist group Blast Theory. Surprisingly, we moved onto the topic of a rising trends in Buddhism apps, which echoed the recent Radio 4 ‘Digital Human’ podcast, pointing out the growing popularity of religion and online. It seemed possible that this online trend might help normalise an activity that is seen as out of the norm nowadays.

One woman, who spent up to 12 hours a day online, wondered what would happen after Facebook following its recent flotation - whether people would ever migrate elsewhere and what that ‘elsewhere’ would be (answer: somewhere with a purer conversation focus, but no migration will happen for a long while). Conversation got deeper, discussing to what extent digital technology in the form of live hashtagging and capturing large quantities of photos enhanced our experience of life and whether the recent press around ‘digital dieting’ held water. The feeling was that the younger and more digitally confident you are, the more likely that digital enhances; the older and less digitally confident, the more likely that digital detracts: learnings to bear in mind when marketing to different types of audience.

After an hour, the effect of a strong Tuttle coffee had worn off and I had to head to a meeting. Making my ‘thank yous’ and walking towards Kings Cross, I reflected that not only was this group ahead of the curve with social media thought leadership and community engagement, but their focus on collaboration and innovation for the benefit of the end user could only be good news for the advancing social media.

If you want to find out more, go to the Tuttle Club’s website, search for the hashtag #Tuttle and read Lloyd’s blog, the Perfect Path.

I look forward to reporting back on any future meetings with this (or any other) thought-leading communities.

This blog post was originally posted on the Red Ant blog on 29.05.2012