Indolent - online marketing, planning, media and stuff.

Vote for my sessions at SXSW please :-)

2009-09-02T22:00:15Z

Voting is in full swing for the panels at next year's SXSW in Austin Texas. Earlier this year I was lucky enough to do a panel on doing business in Europe - next year I'd love to go back.

I have two sessions you can vote for.

1) Is too much math killing marketing

Breakthrough marketing used to come from creative genius, from big ideas, from empathy with customers. But now all the attention goes to rigorous testing and algorithmic approaches to customer insight. So is the science driving out creativity - or are we focused on the wrong kind of maths?

To vote for this one, go here.

2) How Social Media CRM Will Transform Marketing Communications

If email is dying, what does this mean for eCRM? Can Twitter, Facebook Messaging and Google Wave do the same heavy lifting as a good old-fashioned email newsletter? The new social media tools may be free - but are they as useful for businesses as the ones they replace?

To vote for this one, go here.

You don't have too long to vote - actually voting closes at midnight on Friday the 4th September.

If you're interested in the second topic, I'm doing a cut-down version of this at the IDM Academy at Ad:Tech in London. And no doubt I can find some way to get the first topic out into the fresh air.

So thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Nokia Money is a potential game changer

2009-09-01T16:57:00Z

One definition of the shallowness of the modern world is that the focus at this week’s Nokia World conference will no doubt be on which handsets Nokia releases and whether or not they have an iphone beater tucked up their Nordic sleeves.

But more interesting than all this hardware is the pre-announcement last week of Nokia Money. To quote from the press release, Nokia Money:

“…will enable consumers to send money to another person just by using the person's mobile phone number, as well as to pay merchants for goods and services, pay their utility bills, or recharge their prepaid SIM cards.”

This promises to bring simple 24-hour banking services to a huge number of people, particularly in the developing world. Globally there are about 4 billion mobile phones, but only 1.6 billion bank accounts.

If Nokia can pull this off, then I think this would be a Very Good Thing. Of course, not as interesting as whether the Spotify app is approved for the iPhone </irony>, but decently cool all the same.

PlayStation Repair Action Team

2009-09-01T16:25:49Z

Nice little stunt in the street outside Sony HQ in Great Marlborough Street - Watchdog has a van parked up full of engineers who are repairing PlayStations for free to bring attention to Sony's charging policy.

This kind of consumer direct action reminds me of a Milton Jones' joke - available I believe on a nice shiny DVD just in time for Christmas.

"I went to our local train station and they told me 'There's a bus replacement service running today.' So I gave them a tin of pineapple rings. 'What's this?' 'It's my money replacement service.'

What does your email address say about you?

2009-08-27T15:38:47Z

I’ve recently been playing with Wolfram Alpha, which pulls in some great statistical information when you search on a first name, including the age distribution of the name and the average age of people with a particular name.

All this makes me think that you could make some pretty reasonable assumptions based purely on a first name.

Take ‘Gordon’ for instance. Most famous Gordon is probably our current prime minister. Wolfram Alpha’s search on Gordon shows the birth dates of Gordon over time (US only data, unfortunately):

And from that data, you can generate another graph showing the age distribution of people called Gordon:

So the average age of an American called Gordon is 58 – which co-incidentally is the age of Gordon Brown.

Turning to David Cameron, David is a much more common name – but even so the average age of all Davids is 50. Not a million miles away from David Cameron’s real age of 43.

So OK, if I could get hold of UK data this would be more interesting. But my basic thought is that if your email address contains your first name, marketers could probably make a pretty good stab at guessing your age.

Twitter UK celebrity chart – 17th July

2009-07-17T10:03:30Z

A month since my last look at the murky world of celebrities on Twitter – so what’s new?

Well as usual I have noticed someone I’ve miss someone completely off the list – in this case Jamie Oliver, who has swept up an impressive 150,000 followers.

Elsewhere, Lily Allen is now very close to the magic one million followers – I guess she’ll probably make it in a week or so.

And those who were shocked at Coldplay overtaking Stephen Fry will not be cheered by the fact that Richard Bacon now has more followers than the erudite Mr Fry.

Celeb	Followers
Coldplay	1,384,168
Lily Allen	956,466
Neil Gaiman	777,202
Imogen Heap	709,445
Richard Bacon	672,436
Stephen Fry	659,472
Eddie Izzard	654,437
Russell Brand	457,507
Jonathan Ross	363,176
Alan Carr	263,683
Chris Moyles	230,204
John Cleese	214,625
Phillip Schofield	213,956
Fearne Cotton	180,720
Jimmy Carr	174,450
Jamie Oliver	150,083
Richard Branson	143,449
Holly Willoughby	109,828
Alan Davies	81,761
David Mitchell	80,863

Eat yourself fitter?

2009-07-15T15:02:20Z

Speaking as someone whose last meal was the all-you-can-eat buffet at Pizza Hut in Victoria, Diana Janicki's blog Growling Belly is a glimpse into a magical fairytale land where food is lovingly prepared and eaten with proper relish (and where relish does not equal bacon bits).

As I salivated over the "foolproof" recipe for pavlova with fresh summer berries I did worry that even my pizza-enhanced frame might struggle with the combined calorie load of meringue, whipping cream and sugar.

And astonishingly Google's content matching algorithm agrees with me - dropping in a banner for a weight-loss product into the recipe.

Hmmm. Good thinking Google!

Of course if you really did want to lose weight, in the words of the old Irish joke, you wouldn't want to be starting from here!

Want higher click through rate on banners? Sorted!

2009-06-30T17:30:26Z

Maybe more creative like this will sort out the UK’s woefully low average CTRs!

Source: Bridge Worldwide 2009: Cannes Cyber Lions Gold - Pringles Can Hands

Click through rate on UK banner advertising amongst lowest in Europe

2009-06-30T16:05:00Z

This month DoubleClick published a useful benchmark of online advertising performance rates across all activity in 2008. This is pretty much the most solid data you'll ever see on display advertising performance, based according to DoubleClick on: "hundreds of advertisers, thousands of campaigns, and tens of billions of ad impressions."

It's a useful set of benchmarks showing for instance variations in click rates by size and format of ads. The data is also split by geography - which shows some fairly disappointing results for the UK.

The table below shows the average click through rate across all formats (static image, flash, video) for the main economies in Europe, plus the United States. (The DoubleClick report has worldwide performance data for twenty nine countries).

Country Overall Click-through Rate
Spain	0.14%
Germany	0.13%
France	0.12%
Italy	0.12%
United States	0.10%
United Kingdom	0.08%

This is really disappointing - and not just for the online advertising industry. As the Guardian recently pointed out, the British newspaper industry is also desperately hoping for a renaissance from online advertising.

So why the poor performance. Probably no single reason, but possible reasons would be:

banner fatigue - advertising creative not being refreshed often enough
lower percentage of inventory going on larger sizes / more static formats
larger percentage of media going out across networks which tend to deliver a lower CPC
more brand advertising versus direct response campaigns

Any more ideas anyone?

Firefox grows European market share, whilst UK lags behind

2009-06-30T12:53:35Z

Today’s launch of Firefox 3.5 is the latest shot in the long struggle for domination in the browser market.

The data below – from AT Internet Institute - shows that Firefox has steadily been growing its market share in Europe, mostly at the expense of Internet Explorer. Disappointingly for Microsoft, Internet Explorer’s market share actually dropped in March, coinciding with the long-awaited launch of IE 8.

The same AT Internet research, from April 2009 shows the stark differences in the popularity of Firefox around Europe. Of the five major European economies, the UK shows the lowest penetration of Firefox with 17% market share – compared with 30% in France and 42% in Germany.

This competition is driving some genuine innovation in the browser market, which is great to see. Compare and contrast with the situation around email, where Microsoft is lazily exploiting Outlook’s monopoly position to resist innovation and ignore web standards.

Australia – an apology

2009-06-24T14:15:55Z

When I wrote our last company newsletter I added in a throwaway line about Google Wave:

Meanwhile Google Wave looks genuinely awesome, the best thing to
come out of Australia since... er... anyway it makes Microsoft Exchange
look very last century.

If I’d thought about this for more than a couple of seconds I should have realised that some thin-skinned Australians would take offence. Sure enough, our receptionist is now not talking to me – and is putting through endless calls from recruitment consultants. Worse still, we’ve had a very long email from an antipodean who took particular offence to my racist comment:

To whom it may concern,

I am a potential client of Harvest Digital and I recently received the below email from your company. However I do not understand the need to mention Australia and its lack of successful exports!!

I find it incredibly offensive and hurtful that your company represents such a standpoint.

I would like to let you know about some of the successful things Australia has brought to the world,

1. The Bionic Ear - Melbourne University professor made history in 1978 by inventing the world's first bionic ear.

2. The Black Box Flight recorder - Dr. David Warren from Melbourne invented the first black box flight recorder in 1958.

3. The Cow Fan, During summer temperatures in Australia can soar into the fifties, too hot for most European farm animals. Luckily the ever ingenious Australian farmers have come up with a solution to cool our cows.

4. Meat Flavored Water: Inventor Andrew started marketing meat and vegetable flavored bottled water to canine connoisseurs in December 2003. It's like a sports drink for dogs he said and put his Dog Plus K-9 Water on sale across Australia in flavors ranging from bacon and beef to liver, chicken and corn. A 600ml bottle will set you back $2.95

5. Viagra Oysters - Oysters have long been known as an aphrodisiac, but NSW oyster farmer George thought he could do better and started lacing his oysters with Viagra hoping for lucrative markets in Asia where many men are obsessed with all sorts of ways to increase their virility. ( To the point where they will drink urine from tigers and rhinoceros for perceived benefits.) Unfortunately, no matter how good the idea may have sounded, there are always a few whingers out there, and so the NSW Food Safety authority says it is illegal and breaches the NSW Food Act and also Pfizer was not happy with their trademarked name being used in this way and threatened with legal action, but George reckons that countries outside Australia have different regulations so even if they are illegal in Australia he still sells them overseas, and change the name to get Pfizer off his back.

From the above points it is clear that Australia is a great nation and that we in fact contribute greatly to the world on all different levels from Science to Bovine welfare.

I would like to note that your email asked me “how’s it going????” …….Well as a result of this attack on our proud nation I am willing to say that I am not so good and I will be in touch with more Aussie great inventions in the near future.

Regards

Mac

Well Mac (and Mel!), all I can say is sorry! The thrust of my argument was to say how good Google Wave was and not to put down Australia. Now that I have the facts in front of me, I can see that Australian ingenuity clearly out-classes second-rate British inventions like television, the telephone and the internet.

Next time I’ll stick to being rude to the French…

Twitter UK celebrity chart – 11th June

2009-06-11T15:50:46Z

Here’s the latest update in our literally all-star celebrity Twitter chart. Have Coldplay topped the magic one million followers? You know it!

Celeb	Followers
Coldplay	1,003,695
Lily Allen	556,754
Stephen Fry	552,133
Neil Gaiman	521,822
Imogen Heap	461,337
Richard Bacon	427,365
Russell Brand	377,358
Eddie Izzard	364,028
Jonathan Ross	306,404
John Cleese	186,825
Chris Moyles	185,186
Alan Carr	184,622
Phillip Schofield	182,571
Fearne Cotton	144,586
Jimmy Carr	132,807
Richard Branson	122,122
Holly Willoughby	87,640
Alan Davies	71,464
Andi Peters	57,745
David Mitchell	65,234

Almost as shocking, Lily Allen has overtaken the saintly Stephen Fry to take number two in the chart.

With Wimbledon approaching, it would be nice for Andy Murray to make a return to the chart – sample tweet: “Anyone seen andy roddicks hats? They have really nice sweat stains on them cause he never washes them and thinks they r lucky”. Sadly he is nowhere near, with just 27,925 followers.

Another surprisingly poor performer is Aleksandr Orlov with 16,357 followers. Surprising, because our meerkat chum has almost half a million fans on Facebook – then again, the kids aren’t really down with Twitter quite yet.

Trademark bidding on Google Adwords – the saga continues

2009-05-29T09:45:00Z

At my session at SES this year I reviewed the current legal position of trademark bidding and made the confident forecast that this one will run and run.

Seemed like a safe prediction - and for once I was right!

According to Outlaw, the case between Interflora and Marks and Spencer has now been referred to the European Court of Justice for a final ruling, where it joins a bunch of actions from other European brands.

Meanwhile there were a couple of interesting things from the summing up of the High Court judge in London:

It’s pretty strange that Google is running a different set of rules on trademark bidding in the UK and Ireland to the rest of Europe, given that ultimately we are controlled under the same set of laws. But the reason is that trademark laws are quite different here to mainland Europe. And hence any judgement in Europe may not really clear up the situation in the UK.
Interflora has quantified the loss it has suffered from the introduction of competitive bidding. According to the High Court ruling: "Interflora's bidding costs for their keywords during the nine days leading up to Valentine's Day increased from 2p per click in 2008 to 23-28p per click in 2009. Interflora estimate that in total their costs will have increased by about $750,000 in the year from 5 May 2008."

Given that this case will definitely drag on and may not even clear up the UK situation, it’s well worth brands doing a similar calculation of the material loss they believe they may have suffered. There’s always the possibility – however slim – that the case will finally be settled, will go against Google, and that compensation will be paid.

Twitter UK celebrity chart – 22nd May

2009-05-22T05:32:45Z

A month since our last celeb chart, so what’s new?

Celeb	Followers
Coldplay	848,910
Stephen Fry	510,333
Neil Gaiman	425,767
Lily Allen	385,495
Imogen Heap	363,913
Richard Bacon	336,431
Russell Brand	331,545
Jonathan Ross	270,432
Eddie Izzard	251,613
John Cleese	172,803
Phillip Schofield	166,120
Chris Moyles	159,523
Alan Carr	154,538
Fearne Cotton	119,004
Jimmy Carr	114,234
Richard Branson	109,932
Holly Willoughby	74,359
Andi Peters	53,019
Alan Davies	54,557
David Mitchell	56,740

Last month I confidently predicted that Richard Bacon would soon be top five – and naturally I was wrong. He has almost doubled his follower count, but only makes it to number six.

The story instead is of the rise of musicians, with Lily Allen and Imogen Heap both easing into the top five – replacing Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.

With Coldplay now massively out at the front of the pack, it seems that Twitter could be replacing MySpace as the primary way for musicians to connect with their fans.

Finally one big new entry to the chart – Eddie Izzard rocks in with 250k followers – an unfortunate omission (although he was born in the Yemen, so possibly doesn’t count!). With Eddie’s arrival, Rob Brydon (46k) drops off the chart for the time being.

Google’s Eurovision predictor

2009-05-14T16:23:00Z

Google has turned its gaze away from worthy goals like predicting the spread of flu to more challenging tasks like forecasting the winner of this Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest.

Like the flu prediction service, Google is studying search trends on particular keywords to come to its conclusions. It excludes searches from a contestants own country, because you can’t vote for your own entry.

Personally I’ll be impressed if Google can pull this off. As any student of Eurovision knows, simple ‘popularity’ ranks quite a bit behind the simmering stew of post-cold war politics across Europe in terms of influence on voting. So the countries of the former Soviet Union may hate Russia at a governmental level, but the large numbers of Russian diaspora guarantee a healthy slug of votes flowing back to Mother Russia.

Presumably search volume – and hence accuracy – will improve closer to the final on the 16th May. Right now Google has Turkey and Norway neck and neck for the win, just ahead of Greece. The punters on Betfair have the same top three, but with Norway clearly ahead of Greece and Turkey.

Rebranding swine flu

2009-04-30T14:36:42Z

Marketing has a story about an attempt in the United States to rebrand swine flu. Swine flu is hitting consumption of pork products (not that you can really catch flu from a sausage) so officials are trying to persuade us to talk instead about the ‘2009 H1N1 virus’.

Well good luck with that.

The marketing industry has a long history of using cuddly animals to bring a brand to life. In fact the ITV Digital Monkey famously proved more durable than the brand and has moved on to promote PG Tips.

So what chance that we can forget about pigs and think about a row of numbers instead? Pretty slim I would think. They would be better off trying to associate the flu virus with another even cuter small animal – perhaps the ubiquitous meerkat could be a useful fall guy?

Or how about ‘piglet flu’? Sounds much friendlier, and it already has its own viral!