Digital dreariness, user experience & other musings

Wow. Something of a milestone. My first blog post since March, and it's almost August.  Rubbish.

I can make plenty of excuses...part ongoing deadline hectic-ness at work, part offshore racing season making demands on my time both in terms of time on the water and behind-the-scenes onshore and online, and maybe some small part of me (irrespective of the lack of either spare or available time to devote to writing), just hasn't been really excited by much in digital of late.

The march towards mobile / multi-device behaviours goes on a-pace, display /video formats evolve, (Solve Media's genius idea being one of my current favourites),  Facebook adds new formats, integrates vertically with handsets more, the measurement debates continue to rage, the data data everywhere meme continues to evolve and accelerate, but all are established themes now.

Nice touch from Barnes & Noble... make sending a baby gift super simple and immediate. Native Advertising can work!

There are still an astounding number of businesses large and small failing to grab the bull by the horns properly, standing as timidly on the edge of the digital diving board as I was standing on an Atlantic beach in Portugal a month ago.  The difference being after a test-the-water paddle, I took a deep breath and took a run at it and had a very lovely swim.  It's rarely as bad as it initially feels once you are in. Digital is no different.

Creatively there are more and more brands experimenting and learning which is great news for everyone, more and more campaigns that are properly integrated on and offline, but equally means I'm wowed less perhaps than I was 4 years ago.

Content is a recurring conversation in meetings everywhere. YouTube in May announced it's now seeing 100 hours of content being uploaded a minute. I even updated my annual tracker chart... just never got the chance to post it at the time:

Whilst you could argue around data protection, and Big Brother, I like the fact that Coke have created a feel good content opportunity from the cameras that constantly survey our world.  Don't suppose this will ever be an ad, it's content I found via social referral, and I'm going to share it again because it made me smile and engaged me. The formula for good content doesn't change.. it needs to engage a reaction, and it needs to be visible and discoverable, be that naturally, socially or with some paid-for firelighters underneath to get it going.


But beyond those very human moments captured and shared by Coke, user experience be it at a corporate / company level on an on-site /device level is finally getting more of the attention it deserves... but there's so much room for improvement.

I was astounded recently to find that the HeathrowExpress train website doesn't render properly on a mobile. Really!? Appalling.  A service aimed at business travellers? Primarily, only needing to answer 2 simple questions... what time are the trains and how much will the trip cost me... get a mobile optimised landing page at least.  Fine there's an app if you pinch and swipe around the site long enough... unless you've come in to a page other than the homepage via sitelinks in search.... but this is basic. Hygiene in todays world.

Google & Amazon however, won me over this week, not with their attempts to de-clutter my inbox with new tabs and categorisations but by simplifying my click journey... I didn't even need to read beyond the subject line of this Amazon delivery notification in my inbox to be able to click straight through to a USPS specific delivery page with the status of my order. No need to open an email, click through to a site, copy and paste package tracking numbers, just one click... and there's the info I wanted.

Work smarter not harder. It's a cheesy maxim frequently over-used, but it's those little things in a busy world that will keep me coming back.

Happiness is so often the simple things in life. Sunshine, things that make you smile and fewer clicks :-)

Coke leverage mobile to share brand love

I just tripped over this neat example of how brands with big global footprints, big ideas (and arguably big budgets to experiment) are leveraging technology across the digital/mobile eco-system to deliver brand experiences.  Coke have revived their original 1970s "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" campaign and given it a digital twist, leveraging mobile advertising, handsets and capability to bring virtual Coke giving to a new generation, beyond some of their various mobile vending "surprise" models.

Driven by (mobile) banners, consumers can send a surprise Coke via text message to a series of locations around the world where specially equipped vending machines can receive and display a gift message sent by text, and capture video footage of the surprise and delight moment to share back with the donor. Nice loop.

Clearly not a massive scale initiative but one which does nonetheless have nice global reach and touchpoints, which lends itself well to Coke's very publically stated ambitions to drive earned media as they increasingly focus on the value of content to their business.

Watch:

6 minutes worth spending on branded entertainment c/o Coca Cola

Call it AFP (ad funded programming) or BE (branded entertainment) as you wish, but here's a stunning piece of animation from Coca Cola as part of their Happification series. Take that as praise indeed from someone that's worked in the industry and knows a thing or two about quality production values. Maybe it's my inner industry nerd but I was rather disappointed not to find any credits on the end.  Nevertheless, nice storytelling, composition and animation and a pleasant way to spend 6 minutes of distraction, that will no doubt engender positive feelings towards the brand and I don't even like drinking the stuff!



AFP & BE are both terms which are increasingly being bandied around by clients and agencies at the moment, but there still seems to be far too much hot air and not enough commitments made.  There are many many marketers who frequently can't see beyond a 30" or 60" commercial, ignoring the talent of the many many uber creative little production companies out there (and some of the bigger ones too) that can make a lot of great content for very reasonable money considering it's value stretches way beyond the average wear-out life-cycle of product related advertising now that we live in a multi-media multi-platform long tail world.

Sure, 6 mins of high quality scripting, storboarding, composition and animation / post production won't come super cheap but divied up across a brand with a worldwide presence it's tantamount to peanuts.  I see so many times that company structures from a pre-digital mass age crippling opportunties. Such a shame.

Coca Cola Light encourage participation in Spain

Lovely example a friend just shared with me of Coke creating a framework for celebration of brand loyalty, participation and advocacy.  Yet another brand that shows that it understands that the cumulative effect of lots of small gestures can create a lot of noise.  Propagation planning nicely done.  I think too many brands get hung up on terms like participation and advocacy and think about them as if they were these giant beasts that have to be executed in CAPITALS, momentous things like creating a super swanky cinema ad, but the reality is that it is far from true.

Coke Israel bring location to Facebook (before Facebook did!)

Just tripped over this interesting example from Coke Israel who ran a summer camp style event at which participants were issued with a wristband with an RFID chip embedded that enabled auto-posting of what activities they got up to at the event & auto-tagging of  themselves in photos.

Arguably this is Facebook Places without the requirement to check-in via mobile & occurred ahead of Facebook Places launching but it illustrates quite well the scope location /technology can add.  Without question it also highlights some of the concerns over privacy and sharing too (read the comments below the video if you choose to watch it on YouTube rather than here), but presumably the teen participants were made aware of how the thing worked given that the chip contained their Facebook login data so they must have agreed to making that available.




Diesel created something similar with Facepark -an offline Facebook-esque experience