Category Archives: addictive!

Mobile Fix – June 14

Posted by Simon Andrews on June 14, 2013 None comments

Apple WWDC 

Back in the 1980s when Coca Cola launched New Coke then quickly withdrew it in the face of consumer reaction, Pepsi ran an ad in the New York Times showing this letter; saying “The other guy just blinked”

Hearing Tim Cook Phil Schiller say “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass,” on stage at the Apple developer conference we thought of that line.

Clearly the criticism is getting to Apple. The Samsung ads seem to be working – in at least they are rattling the Apple team. And a lot of the new features for iOS7 seem to be inspired by other apps and by Android.

With iOS7 having little real substance we wonder if this is a similar moment for Apple? The redesign seems to be insufficient to appease the critics and perhaps enough to discomfort users.

The much trailed iTunes radio looks good and leverages the huge amount of data that iTunes gives Apple. With 8000 tracks burned into in my iTunes, Apple are better able to serve up music I will like than Amazon Google or Pandora. But essentially it’s a version of Pandora.

Whilst there will clearly be a new device announced to coincide its the release of ios7 in September, there seems to be a real loss of momentum at Apple. And with new Android devices due from Motorola and others (probably at a much lower price point) the new iPhone is going to have to be pretty special to regain momentum

The significant change in user experience will be a key issue. Years ago we worked with Motorola when their key problem was the fact most people were very familiar with how a Nokia worked, so were reluctant to start and earn a new operations system

Come September when your experience on your current iPhone changes, making the shift to a Samsung or other Android may not seem such a leap.

Search

We keep saying we expect Apple to switch search away from Google at some point. It’s the one piece of Google still baked into the iPhone (now that Google Maps and YouTube are no longer pre installed ) and we know Bing (and Yahoo) would love to get the search volume that the iPhone delivers

So we were fascinated to see that search in Siri now defaults to Bing. Will the default for Safari on ios7 still be Google or will they switch the 3 choices (Bing, Google and Yahoo) to alphabetical order with Bing as the default?

Whilst on search, one of the best sessions at the econsultancy Future of Digital Marketing event we spoke at last week, was on search. Neil Perkin has done a good write up on this and the deck from Will Critchlow is worth a read.

Mapping

Apple maps didn’t get a mention at the WWDC event, but other news dealt a further blow. Google are to pay more than $1bn for Waze who Apple were rumoured to be buying last year for $500m. A key reason for Apples interest is that Waze supply data to Apple Maps – and that must be in some jeopardy now.

Money

Not everything at Google is going well. There some well documented problems with Google Wallet and this interview with a rival gets into some of the issues. His company Braintree is a big player in digital payments, handling money for Airbnb, Fab, Angry Birds and many more.

One technology in the money space that isn’t doing so well is NFC. For some time now the promise of iPhone support has kept NFC as the next big thing. But in talking about AirDrop the Apple team seemed very uninterested in NFC  and it seems unlikely that it is going to feature in the next Apple device.

Quick Reads

Smart thinking on mobile strategy – its all about quality and frequency

Weve – the UK partnership between the mobile operators is extending their offering to ads in mobile apps. Having built a strong business in permission SMS, they will shortly start using their data to target ads within 3rd party apps. With good relationships with media agencies they are well placed to have real impact, but is their data any better than the other ad networks they will be bidding against? They talk of 17 million people agreeing that data on their location, gender, age, device, district address etc can be used –we wonder how many of those know they have given this permission?

Talking of data the FT have a good look at how valuable your data is with a smart interactive tool – ours is worth just 42 cents.

We all know the old notion of the purchase funnel doesn’t make much            sense anymore. The McKinsey rethink on the Decision Journey seems more realistic, but this HBR article argues that, with mobile, people are shopping constantly.

The hashtag is an idea who’s time has come and Facebook now concedes and enables them.

As the ad world schlepp to Cannes we are seeing some of the promotional ideas. Deutsch are supplying late night pizza (…us neither) but our friends at Clearchannel are adding some value by facilitating a debate on Twitter –which  then culminates in a mural on an outdoor site.

Finally we get some good feedback on Fix, so we guess most readers enjoy it. Can we ask a favour, then?

The Drum is running an online poll to find the most influential people in mobile and, given there is no such thing as bad publicity, we’d appreciate it if you voted for me.

The list has all the usual subjects – many of whom are Fix subscribers – so you can support others too.

Thanks.

Mobile Fix – June 7

Posted by Simon Andrews on June 7, 2013 None comments

Amazon Advertising

With revenues of $38billion Google is now thought to be the biggest media owner in the world. The competition is likely to come from other GAFA players with Facebook growing very quickly – especially in mobile – but they are a long way behind.  Amazon are also a growing threat – as their unique insight into peoples buying habits theoretically allows for very granular targeting.

New forecasts suggest that Amazon will take $835m in ad revenue this year – up from just $400m in 2011.

This shouldn’t cause too many sleepless nights at Google HQ, but the very different business models do suggest Amazon can trouble Google in the future.

Because Amazon profit from the actual sales of goods, they can treat the advertising in a different way to Google – and as they could close the loop between advertising and actual sales they could be an attractive alternative for brands struggling with attribution. Of course Google hope their wallet will one day give them similar data on actual sales.

We see the Tesco investment in media as part of a similar strategy. Persuading brands to allocate marketing funds to Tesco TV as part of the deal for distribution could be attractive to both sides. Although we know that many (most?) CPG companies fear retailers getting more control over what brands do to promote their products. The biggest expenditure of many CPG brands isn’t media spend as is often believed – it’s the funds they give to Tesco, Walmart, Carrefour etc to fund BOGOFs and other instore promotions.

And this is why there is so much interest in mobile shopping list tools and coupons. Brands would love to find a way to use mobile to build relationships with their customers – and retailers are keen to thwart this. Could we see a mobile revival of the Project Jigsaw initiative in the UK in the 90s – where Unilever, Cadbury and Kimberly Clark combined their CRM efforts to offer coupons by direct mail?

Amazon Delivers

The other part of the ecommerce business where Google and Amazon are going head to head is delivery. Google (and eBay) are trialing same day delivery in San Francisco and Amazon are expanding their warehouses across the US and here in the UK. Now they have announced plans to expand their grocery delivery service in the US adding Los Angeles and San Francisco to their current Seattle service.

This is seen as madness by some, but it looks like Amazon could use the low profit grocery business to subside daily delivery for non grocery items. Interestingly one of the sources suggested that the roll out will include some non US markets. Given the persistent rumours that Ocado is a possible acquisition target for Amazon, that could be interesting. Would using the ubiquitous Ocado vans to deliver Amazon orders push Ocado finally into profitability?

And given the very long term view that Amazon take, would they care as long as it cements their position as the dominant player in ecommerce? Despite their amazing revenue growth they seem quite uninterested in profits – which makes them a dangerous competitor to anyone with a more traditional affection for ROI.

This week saw Ocado announce they are to expand into non food areas with a standalone website targeting petowners and soon, toys, beauty and homeware sites. They are also allowing other retailers to use their platform and delivery service – we understand a very good Italian wine specialist will be one of the first.

This is a very good look at how Amazon is using delivery innovation to grow their business.

Making digital efficient

Boston Consulting Group have taken a look at the inefficiencies most agencies have in the way they approach digital advertising. It’s a frightening picture – which we certainly recognise. Someone once said that digital advertising is the only billion dollar cottage industry as it is (was?) largely managed on excel spreadsheets.

BCG obviously recommends embracing technology to solve this problem. Given the report was commissioned by Google we wonder if they are about to ride to the rescue with some sort of platform for agencies to use? Bolting together DoubleClick and Google Analytics with some of the insight tools built into Adwords would be a good start. And Google have the most to gain as the biggest player. Maybe the fruit of their partnership with Publicis could about to be shared.

newTV

Channel 4 are to launch an iPad app so they have a proprietary 2 screen service. We remain convinced that all broadcasters will want to develop their own 2screen service so they keep control and keep all the ad revenue. Zeebox is building strong partnerships with broadcasters around the world and Shazam is doing well with some of the others in a narrower way. But the real competition is Twitter, which is where consumers go to share their views on TV.

Like a lot of the competition the C4 app incorporates Twitter, but we wonder whether on air promotion can pull a significant audience away from their usual Twitter client.

Quick Reads

As agencies wind up for Cannes, the shortlist for the innovations Lion has been published. We have covered a few of these projects in the past and we will look at some more in coming weeks

Our piece on product placement last week didn’t really get into the way tech is adding new possibilities.  MirriAd are doing some interesting stuff – particularly in Asia – and a Finish company Supponor demonstrated its approach in the England Brazil game the other day.

NFC isn’t ready for prime time as this new research shows;

“With the exception of a few projects in Asia-Pacific, there are only three NFC mobile wallet services in the world that have an effective addressable market of more than 100,000 people”

As responsive design grows in popularity, various people are developing responsive advertising solutions. We see this becoming really important in the next 12 months.

An interesting look at Mobile search

PWC have released an interesting report on the Entertainment and Media Industry. These are some of the key points.

More Tech company M&A in the marketing space. Salesforce have paid $2.5billion for email/CRM company ExactTarget. Forrester think it’s a very significant deal and likely to lead to even more consolidation.

Book of the week

Dave Trott is one of the advertising legends and his blog is always worth reading. So this collection of blog posts is our book of the week. Predatory Thinking proves what we have always thought; great creatives are usually great strategists too.

Finally a couple of good articles that are well worth reading;

VC Chris Dixon with smart thinking around mobile and the way app stores are putting off some entrepreneurs.

Our friend Rory Sutherland has written a good piece on marketing for Wired.

 

 

Mobile Fix – May 31 – Mary Meeker, Social, Mobile Money, Product Placement & more

Posted by Simon Andrews on May 31, 2013 Comments Off

Mary Meeker

And she’s back. Mary Meeker has shared new data on what is happening on the global internet. This is the video of her presenting the deck – she talks even faster than I do – and you can read the deck here.

Lots to digest but a couple of things jumped out. Obviously the data shows mobile is still growing very quickly. Video is growing so fast. And the section on China is really interesting. Especially that QR codes are huge in China – has no-one told them they are really uncool now?

We’ll be digging deeper in the data in the next few days and we’ll tweet the good stuff we find.

Social

Whilst there is rightly some questioning of the business sense of chasing likes and followers, we are seeing social mature as a strategic discipline for brands,

Some are starting to organise themselves in new ways to better capture the potential value of social. We mentioned Nestle last week and now we read Mastercard have a social command centre.

As well as disrupting marketing social is driving new business models too. We met Oliver Luckett when he was with Disney and his new business is blending social with the entertainment industry. The social profile of artists is becoming a key factor in their careers; whilst her acting ability was a factor in Rihanna being given a role on Battleships, we suspect her 30m Twitter followers probably helped too.

This interview with Oliver gets into the thinking of social and as well as some great examples, there is this killer quote;

“If you are sitting in the boardroom and someone says to you here is our 6 month strategy and here’s how it is going to work… They are lying to you. They don’t have any idea…”

Our friends at Dachis have been amongst the pioneers of professionalizing social with tools that turn the data into insight. Here they look at how the sort of cultural relevance that Oliver talks about has worked for H&M through their use of Beyonce.

Product Placement

Ever since soap operas arrived, brands have been looking for ways to get their product associated with content that their customers enjoy. Picking up on how social is being used to promote content, we think there is going to be lots of innovation around integrating product in modern marketing.

I ran a very early product placement test for Kenco Coffee in the early 90s – as an example of what could be done we had the new packaging featured in Coronation Street – Alf Roberts held the jar clearly as he chatted in the corner shop for around 50 seconds.

It was very impressive but we couldn’t see any real commercial value so didn’t pursue it. But the morning after it ran around a dozen people at the client mentioned they had seen it – a good example of Cocktail Party Syndrome.

And some old research into the Coke sponsorship of American Idol shows similar effect; when people were asked if they had noticed the product placement of Coke in the show nearly everyone said no – but ad tracking showed Coke ads perform much better in breaks in the show than when they ran elsewhere.

The new Great Gatsby film was significantly funded through brand integration and whilst the social element wasn’t as high profile as it could have been, this looks like the type of partnership we will see more of.

This is a good look at a more traditional product placement deal for Ford in New Girl.

Will we see more of this thinking in mobile and social? Definitely

Always on

As part of the new Google Think insights there is a good piece on Constant Connectivity – the idea that people are using multiple screens so wherever they are they are constantly connected.

This multi screen multi channel approach makes perfect sense and informs much of our current thinking on projects. But it relies on being able to get a connection. And as we know that isn’t always possible in the worlds biggest Cities– even with 4G rolling out and increasingly ubiquitous free WiFi.

But Google have predicted that by the end of the decade everyone on Earth will be connected. How’s that going to work?

The GoogleX labs think that Blimps are the answer – tethering balloons in the stratosphere to ’beam’ down broadband. As a way to bring in more potential customers for the range of Google products and services this makes sense – like their investment in fiber in Kansas and Austin and free Wifi in Manhattan. And owning the infrastructure as Africa evolves into a major economic power makes good sense too. Google is very active in Africa and looking to have be involved in a range of ways to provide the internet infrastructure 

Mobile Money

Yet another Square like mobile money service is getting traction with investors. Sumup has raised money from American Express and Groupon.

The Economist has a good look at the success of mobile money in Africa . Nothing we haven’t covered before but a good summary.

And NFC seems to be having a few hiccups – it seems that the relatively few NFC enabled readers in retailers have been debiting cards whilst they are still in the customers wallets. We were told that the Oyster system on the tube didn’t take off at first as people were unsure whether their card had worked. So they introduced the beep when your card was read and the rest is history.

NFC payments – whether by card or phone – need some service design to give users confidence around when a transaction has taken place

Future

Next week we are speaking at the eConsultancy Future of Digital Marketing event, and preparing the deck has surfaced lots of interesting thinking around wearable devices – glasses, watches and wristbands like the FuelBand and UP.

This look at the secret Google X lab is really interesting – even if most of the projects are well outside what you would call mobile. Pilotless planes that fly in circles to power wind turbines that send power to the ground, anyone?

And a key member of the Motorola team is looking at electronic tattoos that could replace passwords – and a password you swallow ; the pill is swallowed and the acid in your stomach powers a battery so it emits an 18 bit signal – so your whole body is the password

Quick Reads

Motorola are developing the next Nexus – to be called MotoX. It sounds very cool and continues the Google strategy of making Apple look like the luxury end of the market. It will be much cheaper than the iPhone5 so we can expect a similar price point to the Nexus 4, which is around half the price of an iPhone and arguably just as good.

As we start to think of the Mobile Majority – that time soon when most of your users will be on mobile, this is a good look at the mobile only user.

More good data from Ben Evans – showing that many of the people using Facebook are also using separate messenger apps like WhatsApp.

P&G are digger deeper on ROI

One of the problems with digital is that we have made it complicated. Too many people talk technology rather than ideas, and this does confuse and or scare people. This is a good deck to have to hand as it defines lots of buzzwords you might get thrown at you.

Finally…. are our friends at GAFA risking hubris? With all the debate around tax, it seems politicians are all ready to point the finger at these global players. As the FT points out these people could be the next public enemies.

And this piece on the plans by each to build amazing HQ buildings suggests they could be risking a Leeds United goldfish moment.

Apple is building a huge circular building that they liken to a spaceship. Facebook have got the Bilbao Guggenheim architect Frank Gehry building them a new HQ with a park on the roof. Google plans 9 buildings that lean in, so none of the thousands of workers are more than a two and half minute walk away from each other. And Amazon has just asked for permission to build 3 glass spheres to connect 3 new skyscrapers.

We love great architecture and it seems fitting that todays Industry titans commission great buildings. But the danger  – apart from the accusations of hubris – is that they become white elephants – just as the amazing building modernist genius Eero Saarinen built for Bell Labs has become.

As well as the eConsultancy event I am speaking at Sapient Nitro next week and chairing the IAA Mobile event too – as ever do come and say hello if you are there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mobile Fix – May 24

Posted by Simon Andrews on May 24, 2013 Comments Off

Getting Digital Right

Dan Ho of ad agency Weiden & Kennedy has written a great piece on Tyranny of Digital advertising – essentially blaming media agencies for pursuing formats that reach a gazillion eyeballs if they happen to look at it. He goes on to point out that the more interesting things in marketing are around making products and services – something that traditional agencies don’t really get. Well worth a read.

Now, we get some flak for our constant riff around clients now wanting more than agencies can/do deliver. To some friends (many of whom work in traditional agencies ) it looks like a new biz tactic..

But maybe more people will pay attention now adland bible Campaign is saying Why ‘ad agencies’ could be on brink of extinction.

The danger to ad agencies is that if they can’t convince clients that they offer a shortcut to such thinking, then brands will find it elsewhere.

Digital is of course the key issue here. As Dan Ho points out the response to digital has often been to mould analogue thinking to make it fit digital – such as the banner. The other week we heard a senior marketer lament that her traditional agency was only interested in making big budget TV ads – that weren’t going to be shared by anyone – whilst her digital agency didn’t have the insight to do more than push the latest online fad.

Still not convinced? Accenture have published a fascinating report into marketers thinking – called Turbulence for the CMO. With lots of data on what CMOs think the issues are its an interesting read.

The recommendations are also very interesting. CMOs need to

Fundamentally change the marketing operating model.

Build new skills internally.

Get the right set of partners.

Drive digital orientation throughout the enterprise.

That doesn’t sound too comforting if you are a traditional agency – media, creative or even many digital agencies.

There are some brands who are well equipped for this new climate and  the Economist has taken a look at some people doing it well – including Diageo and Nestle. And Heineken have shared their plans to move to real time marketing centred on mobile.

We believe this is an Alice In Wonderland moment for marketing – clients and agencies.  Do you take the Red pill and go off and immerse yourself in the adventure of modern digital marketing – or take the Blue pill and stick with the world you understand?

Whilst you decide, Accenture continue to add to their capabilities, with another $300 acquisition; digital marketing firm Acquity. Adobe also added to their marketing capabilities this week, buying app makers Thumb.

Mobile

At Mobile Engage last week Richard Eyre makes a very eloquent case for mobile as the catalyst for marketing, rather than just another channel on then bottom of the media plan. It’s a 15 minute video, but it is well worth watching as Richard makes the case for brands needing to be trusted, as that is the only way to get the permission from customers, that will unlock the value of mobile. We also loved his quote urging brands to make their sites mobile friendly;

Mobile fluidity isn’t creativity. Its hygiene

Forrester have a new way of emphasizing the importance of mobile – the Mobile Mind Shift Index where they use data from their Technographics study to see how mobile ready people are. They blend data on the devices owned, the frequency they use them and the diversity of locations.

The results are surprising. Across Europe the average score is 25 out of 100. As with nearly all Forrester data its terribly complicated but our take is that, despite all the momentum in mobile, there is still huge upside as mobile crosses the chasm and goes truly mainstream

Twitter

As US research shows Twitter is getting great traction with young people – use amongst online teens in the US has jumped from 16% to 24% in the last year – they are pushing new tools for brands.

Amplify enables broadcasters to share key video clips on Twitter, with brands able to facilitate the content through a pre roll and letterbox branding around the clip. Along with more focus on 2 screen Twitter is building a symbiotic relationship with TV, and according to a Mondelez tweet, it seems to work;

“When we combine Twitter with our advertising on TV, we see twice the effectiveness. This stuff works.” @boughb at #Twitter4Brands

Mobile Money

Following the Google announcement that US users can make payments by email, Square have announced a similar service. With more banks mimicking Barclays Ping by rolling out payment by SMS in the UK, it’s clear that payments are being disrupted.

A smart banking analyst told us a while bank that payments aren’t really about banking – it’s just logistics, albeit focused on money.

iZettle seems to be doing well in the UK – in the last few days we have seen Hackneys’ finest cupcake vendor using one and you can pay for your Shiatsu massage with one too. But Square doesn’t seem to be getting any closer – they have chosen Japan as their first overseas market.

An Australian ex banker thinks we are just at the start of banking disruption, making the point that the network effect of these peer to peer payments methods will make them ubiquitous.

Big Data

We draw a Venn diagram when discussing big data. One circle is people who talk about Big Data and the other is people who actually know about Big Data. There isn’t too much overlap.

Deloittes have published a useful paper on the subject and McKinsey have a good piece on using data in FMCG companies. In the Richard Eyre talk mentioned above, he makes the argument that we don’t want Big Data, we want clever data. And David Edelman of McKinsey reminds us of the value of insight and intuition when using data.

This look at Google data centres shows just what is behind big data.

Tumblr sells out

The Yahoo purchase of Tumblr is going to be interesting to watch. Is it another case of a old(ish) player buying something new in an attempt to recapture youth? News Corp ended up regretting the MySpace purchase and AOL had a similar experience with Bebo.

But Yahoo does seem to have a better take on the world with Marissa Mayer so this may be different. But all those extra young eyeballs are only valuable if they can be sold to advertisers. So we think the future of native advertising will be made or broken on Tumblr.

Their most recent sales deck suggests that advertisers are very welcome – it remains to be seen if users feel the same way. And Yahoo will need to be careful to keep brands well away from all the porn on Tumblr. (Someone suggested that Yahoo was now a major player in porn – but the only people not making any money out of it.)

Quick reads

The new xBox could be a significant player in newTV

One of the many announcements at Google I/O last week concerned new features in Google Analytics. This could be a big deal as it appears to track users across devices – the holy grail for many digital marketers

One thing that didn’t get mentioned last week is that the plethora of photo functionality launched included a very clever photo search. Using the visual recognition tech that powers Google Goggles search can find anything in your photos – the best example shows a search for snakes pulling up 7 untagged photos showing snakes.

The research which shows the popularity of Twitter amongst teens is worth a look as it appears teenagers are using Facebook somewhat reluctantly.

McKinsey reports on 12 disruptive technologies with the potential to deliver $33 trillion in economic value. And Mobile Internet is the biggest

Finally……if you want to ruin someones life (get them fired or divorced) introduce them to DOTS – a highly addictive mobile game. Consider yourself warned.

Mobile Fix – May 10

Posted by Simon Andrews on May 10, 2013 Comments Off

The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed

Whilst the pace of change of GAFA and the huge scale remains a key issue for any brand, its still worth looking around the world to see how people are using mobile and social in a simpler way.

The geeks amongst you will recognise the William Gibson quote – and nowhere is it truer than in mobile.

Take the Unilever campaign for Wheel detergent in India. Promoted on radio and by outbound calls people were encouraged to call a 0800 number, then hang up. They were called back and hear an entertaining clip from a well known comedian and his endorsement of the product. 16 million calls drove higher brands awareness and a spike in sales. Watch this video for the full story.

Still in India, Intuit has developed a new mobile service for farmers that gives free advice and information on agricultural issues by SMS. For example, helping the farmer make more money through telling them crop prices at local markets – so they can go to see at the one paying more. And Intuit make money by selling advertising on the service.

In Africa IBM are using mobile data (looking at where SMS messages are sent from) to map bus services and look for ways of improving the routes. A similar service in the West is Waze where 47 million drivers share their location and traffic news – and it seems Facebook are about to buy them.

Back in India, an IT company called Mastek have taken the traffic idea one step further. To help make the company buses that pick up employees more efficient, they developed a featurephone app so the driver of each bus has their phone on the dashboard.  This means their system can poll the app for exact location of the bus at any time and send a SMS to the employees waiting for it, when it is 10 minutes away then 5 minutes away. There is a big opportunity in apps that work on featurephones, but this tends to be overlooked as developers focus on smartphones. Back in 2005 we worked on the market entry of Refresh Mobile – now better known as Mippin – and did a lot with java apps. There is a lot of friction in developing for phones with small memories and requiring lots of accepts to install etc – but it can be done.

Of course GAFA is active in these emerging markets. Facebook have a team focused on partnerships with operators to encourage Facebook usage whatever sort of device you have. Google are pushing NFC payments in Kenya and their very interesting Trader platform – where you can buy and sell just about anything – works on SMS in Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana.

“It’s the medium of future and the future has already arrived”

Eric Schmidt has caused a bit of controversy this week by implying YouTube has already crushed regular TV. We’re not sure he actually said that; and we do have some experience of journalists misquoting you to make their story hang together better – especially when Google is involved.

For us the two key quotes were Eric Schmidt saying;

“It’s not a replacement for something that we know,” “It’s a new thing that we have to think about, to program, to curate and build new platforms.”

And Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks saying;

“This is a whole new form of content, content delivery and content consumption,” “It’s the medium of the future and the future has already arrived.”

This NYT video on the video upfronts shows how seriously people like AOL, Yahoo and Hulu etc take this . OK, Sarah Jessica Parker presenting a series on ballet isn’t much of a threat to the Village or Broadchurch but it compares well to the typical programming of those channels not on the first page of the Sky EPG. The key thing with all these new opportunities is can they get the scale advertisers like

The Head of Fox this week agreed that things are changing and the broadcasters need to adapt;

…broadcast TV remained “the dominant form of event television” but was stuck with “historical practices” such as creating hundreds of pilots for series which never air. Broadcasters needed to target investments to fewer shows, he added

As Amazon have entered the world of Pilots it is clear that everyone now see the web as a video medium rather than the text one we have grown accustomed to, because of bandwidth restrictions. Looking at the Amazon initiative the LA Times puts it well;

..what makes the Amazon pilots impressive is not that they create something radically new but that they do “real TV” so well. Their true message is that there are new Big Guns in town, and that, just as broadcast TV lost much of its market share to cable, both are going to have to make room for the major players of digital television — not the diffuse, if sometimes brilliant voices of the medium’s shoestring pioneer age, but rather highly professional ones, well-funded and well-positioned to own the Web-based future

The VC community also gets this opportunity. Mark Suster – who just hired the former head of Endemol – summarises the argument well;

  • People watch 5.3 hours of TV / day. They read less than 30 minutes. You can’t change media consumption patterns easily. The future of the Internet is video. Full stop.
  • Production costs have fallen more than 90%. Distribution costs have, too.  This is classic “Innovator’s Dilemma” market conditions.
  • My estimate is that the top 5 YouTube networks will do > $200 million net revenue in 2013 (after Google’s share)
  • These same top networks – Maker, Machinima, Zefr, FullScreen, BigFrame – and the like have create nearly 1,000 new tech / media jobs in LA in the past 3 years alone.

The ad industry already gets this to some extent – just look at the YouTube leader board where ads are getting 10s of millions of views – through paid and organic views. And an event we spoke at last week, organised by Brainient, underscored how well developed the ecosystem is for video on both the desktop and mobile – although the creative community have yet to really step up.

Branded Content  – back to the future

We have talked about how The Hire from BMW set the bar for branded content some 10 years ago and now see that Jaguar have taken some inspiration for their latest launch – even using the same production company.

Their film for the new F type is interesting but doesn’t seem to have got much traction yet – 67k views on YouTube after 3 weeks doesn’t seem too impressive, but we don’t know how many views there have been through the Jaguar website.

Still it doesn’t quite have the panache of the BMW films. Our favourite Beat the Devil, featured one of our heroes James Brown – who would have been 80 this week – and was directed by Tony Scott. Well worth 10 minutes of your time.

Content is the hot topic amongst brands and the response amongst agencies has been quick. This US blog lists out some of the responses by US agencies. A key quote is

Before a brand hires an agency for content marketing, they should ask to see the work they’re using on their own behalf.

Given you’ve chosen to read our content, we’d like to think we get this space well and we’re looking to do more for our clients. It’s clear that modern digital marketing has to deliver in content, social and mobile to be effective.

Mobile & OOH

After a big consultancy project around this topic recently, we were very interested in the excellent Mediatel event on this subject this week. It is clear there is a real synergy here. We think things like the ClearChannel 10,000 bus shelters across the UK with NFC and QR built in should drive innovation in this space.

But we believe the real opportunity with mobile and DOOH is the ability to create campaigns that match supermarket catchment areas. Few brands are stocked in all supermarkets – and even within, say, Tesco products may be in a limited set of stores. The ability to target people who can actually buy the brand advertised should be a big boost.

But we wonder whether the big retailers could play a part in making this happen. As both Tesco, Amazon and others start to play in content and start to use their customer data to help brands reach consumers the game changes. Tesco want the advertising on their developing media platform to drive sales in Tesco – and they will start to expect brands that want to be stocked to invest in these new opportunities.  But given it will take some time to build their own audience, why wouldn’t they buy DOOH around their stores and resell it to brands – with mobile geo fencing as well?

Sound farfetched? Well how about Target building a tool with Facebook to offer deals that can only be redeemed instore.

We will see retailers collaborate with all sorts of media owners to better drive sales. Interesting times for SoLoMo and for retail.

Quick Reads

45% of Groupon transactions are now mobile

This is a good look at the fascinating work done by MIT – robo cars, air gardens, bionic men and lego.

And the MIT view of breakthrough technologies for 2013 has just been published.

The iPhone is big in Japan

We use LinkedIn a lot as a way to keep connected to people – but as Ben Evans points out it needs some work.

Half of brands still don’t have a mobile optimised site. And of those who do, too many still have a rubbish one. In our experience the quickest ROI is building a really good mobile optimised site and unlocking the huge value in mobile search.

Book of the week

Another brand new book – but pretty much everything Brian Solis writes is worth reading.

So our book if the week this week is What’s the Future of Business by Brian Solis

Finally…..More evidence of the annexation of marketing by tech and consulting firms. The very smart service design firm Fjord has been bought by Accenture. The AdAge headline Agencies, Look Out: Accenture’s Invading Your Turf in a Bigger Way Than Ever is slightly hysterical but there is something significant here.

A couple of weeks ago we quoted Antony Mayfield and his Firestarter deck where he said the challenge for agencies was become McKinsey faster than McKinsey becomes you. It looks like we need to get a move on.

Not convinced? How about this then; BMW have appointed Accenture to manage their global digital presence, all their digital marketing and the agencies. And in the US Amazon have given Accenture the job of managing the review of their media buying account.

Can agencies get past their old business model and be credible partners to brands in the age of GAFA? It requires taking digital much more seriously than most currently do.

Mobile Fix – April 12

Posted by Simon Andrews on April 12, 2013 Comments Off

Facebook Home

So Home from Facebook has arrived and it’s … interesting. Because of the limited range of android handsets that Home will work on, its initial impact may be a little muted. And as a sort of modern equivalent of a Google Toolbar it’s likely to only really appeal to hardcore users. But with a billion users you don’t need big percentages to make a big impact.

Home underlines the laser focus on mobile that Facebook now has and is a clear signal of intention – so the reaction of Google and Apple will be interesting.

Does Google tighten it’s hold on Android to curb the enthusiasm of Facebook and Amazon to hide data from Google? Or do they push forward with Chrome and evolve that into a mobile operating system?

For Apple this is also an issue. There is no way that Apple would allow anything like Home, but on the basis your enemies enemy is your friend, we should expect to see even deeper integration of Facebook on the next version of iOS. For a more in depth look at Home, you should read this Guardian blog.

Advertising will be included and we think Facebook may be about to realize one of the most enduring mobile business models – homescreen advertising. Lots of people have tried to build a business monetizing the fact we look at our phones 150 times a day – but outside Celltick in Asia no-one has made this work. Maybe Facebook can

This good Vanity Fair article on Facebook is worth a read too – a typically thorough look at how their approach to advertising has evolved.

But just out is some really big news from Facebook; Partner Categories - a new targeting option that uses data from 3rd parties such as Acxiom and Datalogix. This allows brands to target people based on actual purchase behaviour – although anonymity is preserved.

This ability to blend the precision of direct marketing with the scale of Facebook is really exciting.

Quantity – now what about Quality?

The recent mobile push from Facebook isn’t reflected in these figures but the new numbers on mobile advertising in the UK are impressive. At £526m it’s up 2000% since 2008 and now accounts for around 10% of total digital spend. The £300m of fresh money accounts for half of the overall digital growth over the last year.

Search is still dominant at 69% of the mobile total (versus 58% of all digital), so Google are the major beneficiary. With both Apple and Amazon hiring salespeople we can expect lots of energy from GAFA helping drive this space forward.

Clearly there is still lots of potential growth but any brand should question why mobile isn’t a substantial part of their digital marketing now.

So the quantity of mobile advertising is doing OK – we would argue that the quality has a way to go. But with that level of spend we’d expect brands to start investing in creative that makes the most of the opportunity. However we see mobile suffering from the issues that plague digital as a whole – a lack of focus on how creative can transform the economics of digital marketing campaigns.

Some former colleagues from our Modem Poppe days talk about how they see online;

My philosophy has been if you’re not serving the customer with what you put online you’re going to end up in a bad place. Most [banners] aren’t serving value. They’re in the business of interrupting what you’re doing. There’s a limited creativity that’s been applied with what you can do with that space and the space itself is very limiting

The Brazilification of advertising

(This has nothing to do with Agencies being scalped by client procurement teams…. )

With MadMen back, there is quite a lot of looking back at the golden age of advertising. In one piece Keith Reinhard of DDB points out;

A lot of bad ads were created at that time too that we don’t remember and that we shouldn’t remember

But in that golden age the craft and tools needed to make advertising were rare and expensive. Laying out and typesetting the VW Lemon ad was a craft, as was preparing it for printing. Now it can be done by anyone on a laptop really quickly.

So it seems prescient that we come across Blur in the same week. This UK start up acts as an exchange for business services and a large proportion of the jobs are around marketing. In the FT they report 359 briefs in the first quarter, with an average value of $11k.

The live briefs cover all sorts of marketing needs, with a lot having a budget of £2500. That would buy around 3 hours of a designer at some London agencies but the site has lots of big clients listed and glowing endorsements; Butlins were…”thrilled with the results at half the price of other alternatives for our apps” Now some Butlins apps look like they were designed and built by Redcoats, but others aren’t bad, so this service works for some clients.

Brands are waking up to that fact that making stuff has never been cheaper – - we are seeing clients realize that the assets inexpensively created for Facebook and YouTube can be used in traditional media – causing them to question the usual cost structure for traditional media production.

Of course some brands will always be happy to pay top dollar for the top talent and the top tier agencies – especially the ones owned by a tech firm – have a fairly secure future. And there will be a growing market for the people who offer their services through Blur and all the similar services.

But for the agencies in the middle, Brazilification is real.

Brazilification – the widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the accompanying disappearance of the middle classes.

–      Douglas Coupland – GenerationX

The rebirth of branded content

Content marketing is getting a lot of attention right now and Buzzfeed are the most obvious example of how successful it can be. With link baiting headlines and lists of the cutest cat photos the new UK version is similar to the US one – but tailored for a British sense of humour.

It’s easy to dismiss this, but they are getting client traction – this in depth look at the US business suggests they could make $40m in revenue from brands like Pepsi and Virgin Mobile. One thing that is really interesting is their thinking around how and why things get spread – they believe there is a Bored at Work group who drive sharing and they make viral hits. This deck from the founder gets into more detail on their approach.

We’re very interested in this space, especially as we see native advertising as being a driver for mobile advertising. Of course the space is not new – we launched Big Picture as a content agency in 1995, but got distracted by social (My Space) and mobile apps for Java phones. Back then the hot term was Branded Content and whilst much of the work focused on brand funded TV there was one example that demonstrated that done correctly, this stuff can work incredibly well. BMWs  series of short films The Hire was viewed over 100 million times – in the days before YouTube so each episode was watched on the BMW site in a special player that had to be downloaded. And before Facebook, so all the sharing was done via email.

newTV

One of the factors that makes content marketing so promising is the constant evolvement of new TV. We looked at how Hollywood is embracing YouTube last month and there is now a good look at the UK scene. As well as this article there is a good series of YouTube shows exploring the whole sector . Not its unlikey any of these people will turn out to be the next David Frost or david Attenburgh. But there is a good chance that the next Piers Morgan or Ant and Dec will emerge through these channels, but we don’t think the transition to traditional TV is as likely as it once was.

There is so much money in TV its hugely attractive to new players who want to disrupt it. From Google investing in content through YouTube channels to Tesco investing in content and launching Clubcard TV there is lots of change. The games consoles and tablets are preparing the way for connected TVs and people are looking to learn now. This interview with the head of Tesco Digital Entertainment is worth reading;

We believe we are well placed to ride the entertainment on demand swell at this critical time as entertainment migrates from physical to digital.

And technology could play a part too – in the US a start up called Aereo is shaking the market up by allowing people to watch the key channels on their smartphones, tablets and PCs by exploiting a loophole in the US legislation. Backed by Barry Diller this could have a huge effect on the US market.

TVCatchUp is Europe has a similar approach, but its unclear following a new European court ruling what will happen next.

Neither of these players affect the advertising within the channels they carry but Michael Woolf has written a good piece on how advertising is so easy to avoid these days. He argues that – over the 6 year life of the MadMen series – the way people consume content has changed, whilst industry hasn’t.

In a very interesting talk, Susan Wojcicki of Google makes the case that – in the future – ad views will be voluntary. With TrueView ads on YouTube Google only get paid if people choose not to skip the ad – and around 70% of all YouTube ads are now TrueView.  There has been a 40% drop off in ad viewing but one 4 minute ad for Pepsi has been seen 33 million times.

Is this the future? If so the Brazilification continues – only those that can create content people want to watch are going to get paid.

Quick Reads

Google have upated their excellent Think Insights with new content around mobile Gen C – their take on the YouTube audience.

Saul Klein shared his thinking around the fact that the internet economy accounts for over 8% of the UKs GDP. This world leading position makes the UK a great place to be involved with digital. The presentation is a must watch.

Google + is now bigger than Twitter.

Foursquare has raised another $41m  – can they now define their business model?

Yahoo is wooing Apple to get more of their content onto the iPhone. Is this a threat for Google?

Some clients  and Agencies are skeptical about the rush to Exchange or Trading Desk buying in media

Google Blink seems to have restarted the browser wars – and may slow down the rate of adoption of HTML5

Book of the week – Paul Adams is the man who architected Google + before moving to Facebook . This book is a really good look at how people are connected and how sharing works. Whilst it draws on lots of academic thinking Grouped is very readable and highly recommended.

Finally ….one  of the true MadMen Maurice Saatchi has weighed in with some smart thinking on mobile advertising;

A good specialist mobile agency will help to reduce the complexity of mobile and retain the simplicity that needs to govern a brand’s advertising outlook. Brands need to be free to focus on the age-old truths of advertising which is getting clear and impactful messages to the right customer. Mobile even extends this to delivering it in the right place and at the right time.

We’ll be talking about this sort of thing at the Facebook mobile event later today – if you are there do come and say hello.

Mobile Fix – March 8

Posted by Simon Andrews on March 8, 2013 1 comments

Facebook Remix

The big news this week is happening as we write Fix – Facebook are to launch their latest redesign. Rumours suggest that the key feature will be to atomise the news feed making heroes of music feeds, photo feeds and perhaps even feeds of links friends have shared and updates from other apps like Instagram and RunKeeper. TechCrunch also remind us of a rumoured radical redesign of the mobile app that could be part of the redesign.

In a New York Times piece Zuckerberg is quoted as saying that;

“Advertisers want really rich things like big pictures or videos, and we haven’t provided those things historically,”

Remixing the experience so it looks more like Flipboard, Google +, Path etc could create an environment where ‘richer’ ads feel more at home. But will users go for that?

Teenagers over Facebook?

Stories of user malaise are circulating again, with new reports that teenagers don’t like Facebook and prefer to spend their time with Instagram and Snapchat

As we have talked about with Apple, with big success comes a big problem – early adopters want something new. Facebook crossed the chasm a while back and they can have a great future as the ITV of social – and let Instagram be the MTV.

The problem about users not liking advertising is an industry one rather than  just for Facebook (and everyone else in GAFA). We are always quick to argue against the myth that people don’t like advertising. People don’t like irrelevant advertising but they do like relevant, useful advertising – and it doesn’t hurt if it’s entertaining too.

Messaging Tapestry

We’ve been spending quite a lot of time looking at the ad opportunities on Facebook and they are quite intoxicating.  The wonderful granularity of targeting that Facebook allows means it is quite easy to find the right people. And there are now some really interesting rich media ad formats with video, through vendors like Celtra and Moontoast. Combine these with the huge reach that Facebook can deliver and it’s hard to argue with the Facebook pitch – especially when it comes to mobile.

But of course we see that many agencies are missing the opportunity by eschewing the targeting in favour of mass reach, with just one or two ads used. The real value of Facebook can only be unlocked with lots of creative work where each message is relevant to a specific target group. Building a messaging tapestry like this can still deliver huge numbers – and everyone sees relevant ads; it’s just a bit more work for the agency. But we are convinced the returns will make this worthwhile.

MIT has a good look at the considerable progress Facebook have made on mobile so far – with a good quote

Everyone, including Zuckerberg, worried that users might balk at ads mixed with posts from friends. So far, that hasn’t happened. Tests that Facebook ran found the insertion of ads reduced comments, likes, and other interaction with news feed updates by 2 percent, a small decline that the company deems acceptable.

Carolyn Everson, the head of sales at Facebook, shares this illuminating quote in a good interview;

“When Mark [Zuckerberg] first interviewed me, he said: ‘I want the content from marketers to be as good as that from your best friend.’ That was his vision – I don’t think we’re there yet; I think it’s a long-term vision that we have to get to – but the goal is to have marketing become as integrated an experience as any content you’d get from your friends.”

It’s our job to make this happen.

Google Delivers

In an interesting video interview the Google head of sales Nikesh Arora makes a similar point about advertising – people want advertising that’s virtually indistinguishable from information. Google built their business doing this with adwords – which 40% of UK consumers don’t know are ads.

Of course the key factor that caps adspend is the uncertainty over whether it works. And the best way to know whether it works is to be involved in the sale – something Google has got closer and closer to with analytics etc.

Now it seems Google want to go further. They capture the intent, they can facilitate the transaction with their wallet and now they are going to deliver the goods on the same day.

“The transaction is the ultimate click,..”

This takes them head to head with both Amazon and eBay who are trialing similar services.

As Marc Andreessen has said, all (most) of the dotcom ideas were good ideas, just too early. Kozmo was heavily backed and its model of 1hour delivery was popular with people  – they just burnt through their VC money really quickly. But just as ASOS looks a lot like Boo.com and Groupon like LetsBuyIt, maybe the Kozmo idea will actually work now.

But as the supermarkets know, it’s not hard to acquire customers for home delivery services – it’s just hard to make money. For all the vans tearing around London streets delivering groceries it’s rumoured that the supermarkets lose £15 on each delivery.

Given that lots of people just aren’t at home to take delivery, we wonder if these same day services won’t be part of the colonization of the High Street by GAFA. eBay have experimented with popup stores, Amazon have lockers in Spar and the idea that Google should have retail stores in getting traction.

In a neat demonstration of just how intertwined GAFA is we saw data this week showing that the biggest user of Google paid search is Amazon – by a huge margin.

One group that does seem to buy the Google story is investors, with a lot of money switching from Apple to Google.

“It’s no coincidence that Google’s rise has coincided with Apple’s demise,” Elsheshai said. “Making money from services versus devices is growingly perceived as a better business model.”

Tesco TV

Tesco continue to build out there content play. They have hired top talent to run their book and music divisions.  And in an audacious move they are taking on Amazon and Netflix with a film and TV streaming service – which is free for their 16 million Clubcard customers.

With all the data they have on customers brands will be able to target advertising precisely  – and in theory they should be able to measure effectiveness through sales. This is a very significant move and we’ll come back to look at it in more detail soon.

Quick Reads

This week Amazon kicked off its new advertising play, with the launch of their mobile ad network for Android devices,

More smart thinking on how marketing is changing – this time from Forrester.

Nature thrives on complexity and so too does innovation. As of yet, few marketers are meeting the demands that accompany this seismic shift in consumer behavior, and the effects are showing

Growth hacking score high on buzzword bingo right now – this article explains and demonstrates how crucial this focus on the detail is. We think MoneyBall Marketing is a better term.

Our friends at eBay have shared their plans for this year;

In 2012 we exceeded our original targets for mobile sales reaching $13 billion and we’re expecting to see this grow to over $20 billion this year.

Ever wondered just how search actually works? How your esoteric search query triggers millions of results all nicely ordered in terms of relevance  – within a fraction of a second? Google shows you here.

This is a good round up of the current state of mobile advertising  - agreeing with our take that its still early days yet. Yet again we find ourselves agreeing with Marc;

“I think mobile advertising is going to be more lucrative than Web,” said Marc Andreessen, the tech entrepreneur and investor, during an interview in New York City in December. He described a smartphone that knows you, your money, your habits, your wants: “The targeting is going to be amazing [and] more valuable.” He paused, and added, “These formats don’t exist yet. They have to be invented.”

Since we covered MWC last week we have read a few other reviews and these tow are well worth a look; Thomas Husson from Forrester and mobile guru Chetan Sharma

We have never been convinced by NFC, suspecting that something new will make it redundant before it gets anywhere near massmarket take up. And now we think we know what will take its place – Graphene.

New thinking from John Willshire is always welcome and this new deck is really thought provoking

Finally ….  we sometimes get stick from people over our constant refrain that our business is changing . Lots of people think it’s still pretty much business as usual – as long as you throw in a bit of social and use the latest buzzwords. This piece from the media team at New York agency Kirshenbaum shows the profound changes that result from embracing the new opportunities. – Everything you know about the media business is about to change.

We are out and about speaking at the moment. We have another talk at Google next week  – this time as part of their Squared initiative – then we are talking about Tablets at the WARC  Measuring Ad Effectiveness conference. And next week we will be taking part in the MediaTel Media Playground event  - always a very interesting event.

If you are at any of these events do come and say hello.


Mobile Fix – January 18

Posted by Simon Andrews on January 18, 2013 Comments Off

Music Disrupted

The demise of HMV and Blockbuster hasn’t surprised many people (except those of us amazed that Blockbuster still had over 400 stores). But it does disappoint. There is still a huge value in advice and discovery that the online players don’t do that well  – yet.

Just 5 years ago HMV was worth around £500m. All the factors in it’s demise were already here; Amazon was a major player, iPods were everywhere, Facebook was taking off. Whilst Spotify wasn’t around, LastFM was. And the VAT loophole that enabled people like Play (which is also closing its retail business) to undercut UK retailers has been closed. So why was the business valued at just £5m before they went into administration?

As we know smart retail businesses are combining their high street presence with online; for example most fashion brands sell through eBay and ASOS as well as their own stores and their own websites.

Whilst HMV diversified into other aspects of music such as live venues, and sought to innovate around eBooks when they owned Waterstones, they were slow to innovate around their core business.

The one bit of the business that really worked was (is) Fopp –who HMV saved from closure a few years back. With a big selection of music, books and DVDs (in quite small stores) aggressive pricing and helpful staff, we have spent much more time -and money – there than in HMV in recent years.

As the recent revival in local bookstores has shown, there is a market for good selection and advice, so people can discover new content. Even Amazon struggle with discovery – other than the simplistic people who like this, like this.

We think the next big step in this space is social discovery – where knowing what your friends like is a big help, but still quite unstructured. And where you could see what people who like similar things to you, are enjoying. We have a concept in this space we have been working on, so happy to share thoughts with anyone in this space.

Facebook does Search

Social discovery came into the spotlight this week with Facebook announcing their Graph Search – enabling users to see what their friend have done and what they like. It feels like this is still early days, with a limited beta program. By the time it goes public we expect it to have evolved – and to have some advertising opportunities baked in. John Battelle has some smart thinking about Graph Search here, where he speculates it will (eventually) extend to content and to all the stuff that gets into Facebook through the Open Graph.

One thing he mentions is that people will work to polish their profiles as they understand how people use search. So will people still check in to cool bars o Foursquare and review the new local restaurant on Yelp, when doing so in Facebook will better populate your profile?

Recall that when Google burst onto the scene, it prompted a dramatic response from owners of web pages, who immediately began rewiring their sites to be optimized for search. Similarly, Facebook’s Graph Search will incent Facebook users to “dress” themselves in better meta-data, so as to be properly represented in all those new structured results. People will start to update their profiles with more dates, photo tags, relationship statuses, and, and, and…you get the picture. No one wants to be left out of a consideration set, after all.

There is also a new requirement for brands on Facebook – working to ensure you get found in the right kind of searches. So SEO comes to social.

It is another example of how Facebook is slowly sucking the oxygen out of the web ecology, increasingly positioning themselves as a rival to Google as the one stop shop for brands looking to reach people online.

The FT points out that Google anticipated this move and that’s why they launched Google+. They also say;

The battle lines in the new search wars have now been drawn. From Amazon, which handles more product-related searches than any other company, to Apple’s iPhone-based Siri and now Facebook’s social search, the new combatants are starting from their own positions of relative advantage.

Retail Disruption

Last week we saw how some of the big retailers had fared over Christmas. We now have eBay sharing their success story – sales up by 18% in the last quarter with mobile for the year hitting $13bn. And Paypal did $14bn across the whole year.

Their CEO has been outlining plans to push Paypal into more retail partnerships – and says

Mobile is quickly becoming the new normal,

His forecast for this year is both eBay and Paypal to reach $20bn in sales. Of course in a flat economy that is a huge chunk if money that someone else is going to lose – so the tough times on the high street aren’t over yet.

Another big factor on the High Street is delivering targeted discounting and we think the best people in this space are ShopKick. This app has 4 million users making it the biggest shopping app other than Amazon eBay and Groupon.

They have announced they are profitable and their deals drove sales of $200m across their partner retailers. We expect them to arrive in Europe some time soon.

The interesting thing will be when they embrace payments, as without that they remain vulnerable to people like PayPal

Industrialising Creative

We were invited into Facebook this week to share our views on mobile and social advertising. We talked about the need for ads that fit into the Flow of content and discussed the depressing fact that most campaigns use a very small numbers of creative and there is little creative testing going on.

So we were please to see our friend Rob Norman articulate the issue in his own inimitable way;

.. levels of targeting granularity at IP, individual, household, set top box, zip plus four, zip and zone level and you can safely conclude that delivering exactly the right message to the right person at the exact time and place required, overlaid with feedback loops and data is a reality.

In all this lies a problem and it’s all about manufacturing the assets to populate the opportunity presented by the changes above.

As we keep saying, we need to find ways to industrialise creative production, without losing the magic of the idea. Are there any startups making any progress on this?

Quick Reads

Ben Evans has found a way to hack Facebook to show what apps are being used and hence what mobile devices users have. There is some good detail in the data – and the key story is that Android is growing faster than iPhone. And there is more growth potential in Android too – so that’s why Facebook is hiring Android developers really fast.

Google have launched a new app that showcases some of the best mobile ads. Right now it’s Android only, so another reason to beg, borrow or steal the Nexus.

Following the success of PingIt for Barclays the ability to pay by text will roll out to the other banks in 2014 – without the need to set up a separate account as PingIt does.

These are some good examples of mobile ad campaigns that worked.

The new edition of Think with Google is now out. There is a good section on mobile and a look at the ads that did best on YouTube.

Finally we spent this evening listening to Seth Godin talking in London as a promotion for his new book. With a sell out crowd, he spoke for over an hour and was as inspiring as usual.

The best quote?

We live in revolutionary times but we have forgotten how to see opportunity

Mobile Fix – January 11

Posted by Simon Andrews on January 11, 2013 Comments Off

This week lots of the ad industry has gone to Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. We’re not sure why people schlep there to wander around something like the Worlds biggest Currys store – but with even more annoying staff.  Seeing the latest hardware seems to miss the point that most of the innovation is now around software. The futility of the event seems best summarized by the Qualcomm keynote, which looks truly terrible.

Along with all the crystal ball gazing of 2013 predictions, we worry that this fixation with the latest and greatest gizmo is ultimately self defeating. Focusing on what’s next means you risk missing out on what’s already here.

In the last 100 days we have seen amazing new devices bought by millions of people – with the ‘old’ devices expanding the total reach of smartphones. In the US it’s estimated that 40% of homes now have tablets; wondering what will be the next big tablet seems less useful than writing a strategy to get your brand onto the tablets already out there.

Around half the population now have smartphones (and they are the half most brands need to reach). Around half of all social media users access Facebook and Twitter through mobile. And around half of all emails are read on mobile devices.

So our 2013 advice for brands is;

Park the future for the next few months and instead deal with the current ecology.

Make sure your marketing is truly Fit For Mobile. Over the next few weeks we will be sharing our Fit For Mobile audit which we have trialled with a couple of clients.

Lots of startups are looking to disrupt your industry. Do you know who the key ones are in your sector. Have you a strategy for how to benefit from these opportunities and limit the risks of new gatekeepers emerging?

As VC Saul Klein pointed out last month the average business in the UK is doing 8% of their business online – how do you do versus your competitors?

The latest Most Contagious covers loads of great marketing innovation – all delivered using the current ecology. Creative guru Steve Henry calls out some of best examples here. How does your marketing compare?

When you have got all this sorted, then you can start thinking about driverless cars and watches that act as phones.

Old media not dead yet.

New new thing myopia can also lead people to forget the strengths of traditional media. As this reports shows most old media business did very well in 2012 – with surging share prices – largely driven by the fact that money hasn’t followed audience. One of the ironies of this is that a lot of the money being made by old media is from selling access to new media – as the TV players still control lots of broadband access from the days they were selling the triple play – TV, Broadband and Telephone.

One of those three legs is very shaky as people move from landlines to mobile and the opportunity to sell expensive broadband is probably closing too. Not least because people like Google are getting into the business – launching a service in Kansas offering a service 100 times faster for around twice the price of ‘traditional’ broadband. They also offer a slow service – the same as the competition – for free.

Most media businesses have a strategy for how to evolve in a digital world – and  some actually seem to be working – so for brands the opportunity is to get the best of both worlds. And you do that by focusing on the here and now, rather than the now and next.

Santa delivered for some retailers

As the sales figures for the Christmas period come out it’s clear that the high street is a tough place right now. We were interested in how online sales have been a defining factor for lots of sectors. John Lewis were a clear winner - with online sales up 44% year on year and now accounting for a quarter of all sales. Debenhams online sales grew by 10% and now account for12% of all sales.

In the supermarket space the proportion of online sales continues to grow – Sainsbury online sales grew by 15% masking the poor performance in their stores and players like Morrisons who don’t have online (yet) are suffering.

The big problem that traditional retailers have to wrestle with is that online sales can be much less profitable. In Grocery most people accept that a delivery costs around £20, yet most customers pay around £5, if they pay anything. Some argue it’s a business model supermarkets like Morrisons should ignore.

eBay report their figures next week so we’ll see how the pure plays did – and an analyst expects that mobile will be around 16% of the total sales at $10bn.

Amazon is reported to be doing 8% of their sales on mobile – which seems low to us.

Nexus 4 As good as the iPhone and half the price.

One of the key devices launched in the last 100 days is the Nexus from Google (and LG). With a great spec and a great price, the sales of these devices was not handled that well, with the product coming in and out of stock and delivery dates a little opaque.

But the phone itself is very impressive. It’s had great reviews and we tend to agree with this former iPhone lover who is swooning over the Nexus 4. Is it better than the iPhone? Not so sure. But there is not much in it and it’s half the price.  We still tend to carry the iPhone around, because lots of apps aren’t yet available on Android. But that is changing. Fast.

We’re convinced that the Nexus5 – which we think will come from Google owned Motorola – could be a real game changer. They just need to get the retailing bit right.

And one of the reasons we switched to Android is to try Google Now – which is really impressive. An app that anticipates your needs is quite compelling; transport advice on how to get to the next meeting, share prices when stocks on your portfolio move, the weather forecast and by how much Leeds are losing. All ‘pushed’ to you.

The next generation of this will be amazing. We are seeing apps evolve into real services.

And Field Trip – another Google app – is also very cool; it throws up information on interesting places around your location – and will now include offers from ScoutMob. An iPhone version is on the way.

OK – some trend thinking

In amongst the shiny object hype, there is some good thinking out there on how 2013 might shape up;

The smart people at Deep Focus in New York have a really good deck out with their forecast for 2013. Their thinking on the ‘Confluence of Mobile, Social and Content Marketing’ makes a lot of sense.

PayPal have some good observations from their CEO – and we love their recognition that paying for stuff is not the problem that needs solving – it’s about the context of the transaction. Hailo works because it gets me a cab – not because it’s an easier way to pay the fare. Starbucks works because it gets me my double espresso quicker – not because I can pay for it with my phone.

John Battelle is one of our favourite thinkers and his predictions for 2013 are based on what he hopes to see.

Fast Company has collected the thoughts of some of tbe best strategists on how marketing will change in 2013. We loved the views of ex P&G CMO Jim Stengel

We will drop social from social media as all media is social; we will drop digital and mobile from digital & mobile marketing as all marketing is digital and mobile; we will drop advertising from advertising agency as their future is in helping clients creatively realize opportunities; we will drop global from global marketing officer as all marketing leaders need to be global in thought and intent.

And the Frog Design people get into the more futuristic stuff here.

Quick Reads

The Wall Street Journal has looked in depth at what 2013 might mean for GAFA. A must read.

Facebook continue to pioneer measuring the effectiveness of digital. They are doing some fascinating work with Walmart.

Ad blockers are still active. In France the Government had to tell ISP Free that they can’t block ads. It seems that Google ads were the target as operators look for a share of the revenues earned by people using their dumb pipes.

eConsultancy research shows brands see mobile optimization as the top priority for 2013 – we agree and our imminent FitforMobile audit should help here.

Finally  – one of our house IP projects is launching but still in beta. We have been working on a social business aimed at facilitating communities. SkratchMyBack.com is a service that connects people with some spare time and skills with people who need a bit of help. It is still a little raw but we’d love your help on getting this working. Have a look and sign up, tell your friends and let us know what you think.

And next Thursday we’re going to see Seth Godin who is in London to talk about his new book. If you are going to be there let us know.

Mobile Fix – December 14

Posted by Simon Andrews on December 14, 2012 Comments Off

With Big Data (ok, the Metro iPad app) suggesting this is the day our readers are most likely to have a hangover, we’ve gone easy on the reading matter and gone heavy on video.

So if you are feeling delicate post party, you can sit back and soak up wisdom.

Google have shared what the world has been searching for in 2012, and promoted it with this charming video. The full data is here.

Larry Page the CEO of Google has given an interesting interview that is worth reading. One quote stood out;

We’re still 1 percent to where we should be.

Lots of people would argue that part of the 99% progress still to come is to sort out their ecommerce capabilities. The sales of the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 from Google Play have incensed lots of people as they are getting no feedback from customer service on when, or even if, they are going to get their orders.Given we have a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 7 on order as Christmas presents, we share the frustration. The thing is Amazon have set the bar for customer service so high.

One piece of good news for Google is that their native Maps app for the iPhone is now out and getting rave reviews.

The Apple CEO has also been talking to the press and one of the topics covered is the maps debacle.

The killer quote from the Tim Cook interview is;

Eighty percent of our revenues are from products that didn’t exist 60 days ago. Is there any other company that would do that?

One thing that the interview doesn’t get into is Apple TV. One of the best analysts is confident we’ll see it next year. This video predicts Apple TV and more phones, more often — including a cheaper one (under $200) by 2014. But if Jonny Ives were to fall under a bus – or get hit by a driverless car – things could be different. The charts from the presentation are here.

Whilst eBay and PayPal aren’t quite at GAFA level they are driving significant innovation and this interview with the CEO of PayPal is interesting stuff.

One of the topics we have been covering with clients quite a bit is the annexation of marketing by tech companies. Adobe has been buying marketing services firms, as have IBM, Oracle, Google and Salesforce.

So this interview with Michael Lazerow , the CEO of Salesforce is well worth watching. He mentions that;

Sales Force works with over 400m data points and their goal is to integrate marketers customer service, advertising, social and analytics to provide a single customer view which can be acted on. Successful companies in this space have to blend the science of data with the art of marketing.            

As these guys are close to the CEO and board of their customers, it does suggest agencies need to reframe their abilities if they are to get the attention of the decision makers at brands.

If you are still in a lean back mode, it is worth having a play with a new iPad app that we have been helping A&N Media on. Whirrld is a very cool way to discover what is popular all around the world. You can see what music, books, films, videos etc are trending in each city.

If you aren’t feeling too delicate, here is some more meaty stuff to absorb.

Firstly an apology. Last week the email gremlins broke the link for the new Mary Meeker deck – which is a must read; this one does work.

Ofcom have released a new study showing the UK is the most advanced market in the world for mobile, newTV and ecommerce. Are you making the most of this?

Fred Wilson has taken a good look at revenue models and advertising. Really useful thinking.

And the FT has focused on Big Data, with a number of very insightful articles.

This is the last Fix of the year and we’ll be back in January with our big picture view on 2013. If you want some trends in the meantime this deck from a smart friend is a good read.

Finally – last weeks offer of a free workshop got a good response and we have a number of sessions booked with brands. And we’ve been invited in by teams at Google and Facebook. But we still have some free time so if your team could use some provocative thinking about mobile and social, let me know.

And finally, finally we wanted to share our Soulful Christmas playlist with you. We find it goes best with a large glass of New Zealand Pinot Noir. Enjoy on Spotify