Great technology is no excuse for a bad idea

...just one of the quote's from today's Contagious Magazine Now Next Why event doing the Twitter rounds. Wise words indeed, and some that should be heeded by adlands all over the world. Just because you can doesn't mean you should!

But as a counter to the many bad, trying-too-hard examples that populate the webs' trends blogs everyday (this week there's been various debates around Nestle's GPS enabled chocolate bar prize promotion for example), sometimes you see an example that just makes you want to applaud. Ideas that combine good insight, with good harness of technology and good design to provide smart solutions: I offer you (via the ever fab Trendwatching) the phone charging handbag. Nice thinking and collaboration from Vodafone UK & designer Richard Nicoll.

Genius. Now if only they can develop a version that means if I throw my handbag on the floor as I walk through the front door and it will charge contact/wire free.... and then it will monitor the charge levels of my phone and kindle and wirelessly charge as appropriate...

Digital Dissent & Discontent

Nul posts for August, and I'm only just going to squeak in for September. Rubbish.

Yes, I've contributed to other digital spaces but not my own. Poor show. It's not even been for a lack of digital treasure or disaster. Just a lack of time either to keep a finger on the pulse properly or process it enough to put fingers to keyboards.

I'm not alone. Amongst more than a handful of my digerati brethren, the sparky digital brains I respect and love to kick ideas about with, I am detecting an autumn of discontent.  I've been under too much pressure over the last few weeks for my brain to have the space to properly put my finger on the cause, but the fact that I'm detecting a trend should be setting alarm bells ringing in more than a few board meetings.  There's talent turmoil in the offing.

And it's not just agency folk either.  What I'm seeing is a growing discontent between the few marketers who really "feel" digital and the organisations that are constraining their attempts to adapt and innovate, and, on the flipside, senior level digital bods in agencies equally frustrated about clients that aren't making enough true commitment to do digital properly, leaving us bored, dealing with tedious detail, and fighting the same political battles over and over, not focussing on the future which is what we should be doing.

Just increasing your investment in digital 1% is not enough. We're in 2012 not 2007. I've seen cases recently where organisations are talking up digital and its importance to the future of the business but can't step back far enough to realise that they are never going to drive digital thinking through the business without proper training both at grassroots AND board level, AND a proper commitment to investment in IT infrastructure. Just for starters. What sort of message does it send to the organisation about your commitment to digital if you are still asking your staff to use a browser that was released in 2006?!  Ask most people whether they have more up to date tech at home or at work and the answer will predominantly be in favour of home.  Sure there's good reasons in a BYOD (bring your own device) to work / cloud technology world why data security should absolutely be taken seriously, but again that's about corporate focus and investment in the right places. Investment to ENABLE a business to work efficiently in a fast moving world.

Maybe it's a level of digital maturity occurring that's fuelling our frustrations. Sure, we're all guilty of getting bored easily, we like problem solving and moving on, but endless repetition makes our souls shrivel, a state we can only cope with if we're being challenged elsewhere. iPhone 5, iOS 6 releases, yadda yadda, these things don't excite us in the way they used to, we've adapted, embraced and moved beyond that. The digital brains know that mobile OS devices are the future, that they offer many greater possibilities  on so many levels that still aren't getting enough attention, but we're still dragging along the baggage of 3 years ago when social was becoming the shiny toy.  Everyone has a "counting paperclips" element of hygiene factors in their job, the "are you spending enough money on search, is your website optimised, yes you could have a Facebook page but what are you going to talk about and how are you going to ensure people see what you do say" conversations we all have to have repeatedly, but there's a lack of focus on the future that's getting nearer faster all the time.

Data data everywhere, but not enough work being done to assimilate it into manageable and moreover useful information to react to. Identifying the data points is a good start, working out what they can tell you is progress but pushing investment on how you fuse them together, de-dupe and not just analyse the outcomes but drive "so-what's" that businesses are set up and ready to action is still far too far out for many. Yet I've seen various forecasts recently that suggest that by 2016 (yes, that's just over 3 years) CMOs will control more IT budget than CTOs/CIOs.  Right now that feels a stretch.

How do organisations marry us  savvy, commercial digerati who might not be formally IT trained but tend to have geeky leanings with the IT nerds to make that shift happen?  I can see the opportunity but not the organisations open to investing in talent with fuzzy edged remits and questioning minds.

There's a a whole bunch of talented, intelligent, creative people around looking for opportunities to make a real difference to organisations that are ready to be challenged.

The definition of insanity is oft quoted to be doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results, so why are so many businesses just tinkering around the edges? Madness.

Celebrating sport not just Olympians

The Olympics are in full flow here in London, my train this morning was full of excited spectators, and the sun's still shining. The opening ceremony was by all accounts spectacular,  and worthy of it's hefty budget, so I'll be catching up on that at some point soon having been out the country on Friday. I've enjoyed watching Her Majesty the Queen & James Bond this morning.

But for all the hype, the buzz statistics about more tweets during the opening ceremony than for the entire Beijing Olympics, the medals tables, the marketing messages, so far this piece from non-sponsor Nike is the piece that's touched me most. Nice observation & sentiment, along the lines of sponsor P&G's "Thank you Mum/Mom" work, it's well executed, embracing and makes you feel good.  Video content alchemy. Watch:



Now admire this piece that sees Nike taking a different tack, leveraging technology to deliver innovation & participation. Good stuff.

Samsung : Empowering people to do what they want to do

Happiness came to my inbox two days ago. This is a rare thing.

Touchnote, possibly one of my favourite favourite apps (which for the uninformed means I can send postcards all over the world from photos I take on my phone (and / or upload from desktop, not that I use that function much)) has partnered with Olympic sponsor  & leading smartphone manufacturer Samsung.  They sent me an email to tell me that thanks to Samsung, I can "share great moments" free, i.e send postcards all over the world. At least until the end of August at any rate. 

The trade off - well I have to allow a little Samsung / Olympics Sponsor branding on the cards I send & my pictures get shared in their gallery.That's a value exchange I can live with.  

This is one of the nicest examples I've seen recently of a brand understanding that they can add value and bask in a halo of positive brand sentiment from helping people do what they want to do anyway rather than trying to shoehorn people into doing what the brand wants them to do.  

Along the way they are also cleverly "earning media"  - not only do I get a Samsung related Olympic sponsor message going through the postcard sending process, chances are I'm using an image I took on my phone so I'm linking device to brand which may influence favourability for future decisions, and, the recipients of my cards (and I can send as many as I like - 2 so far) also get exposed to the brand message. 

Super smart. Well done chaps. I wish more brands could recognise the benefit of partnership and generosity of action and spirit rather than contriving awkward interruptive experiences that real consumers see little benefit in participating in or interacting with. 

How socially active are you?

My lovely buddies over at Global Web Index have recently shared this nifty Slideshare deck looking at social behaviours - who's active where and what are they up to - very pertinent in a world where there is no shortage of platforms to choose from, and where clients too often default to Facebook without really thinking about what the real barriers they want social engagement to help them to overcome, where the communities they want to engage with play and what content they need to serve them.  Enjoy.

Facebook Beyond the Hype - GlobalWebIndex july 2012 from GlobalWebIndex

Then as a variant on the socially active theme, I struck social listening gold this morning (well bronze at least): I found a tool that appears at least to be a useful start point (wearing my training hat) to get people to think about how language rather than geographical borders define the word on the web.  I seem to have stood on that particular soap box rather a lot on the last month for one reason or another.

Tweeting Earth is a data visualisation of who is tweeting about the topic you specified where across the globe... here's one I did for the Olympics early this morning, bearing in mind I'm in London and as host city and with the Games starting this weekend, there's lots of marketing activity live, travel chaos warnings rife etc...

Then here's another taken just now (late afternoon UK time now, and the US is well and truly awake east to west), predictably it looks rather different to when I found the tool this morning given a broader perspective on interest around the Olympics elsewhere. For me, the key indicators are the number of tweets and the content angle if you look closely (Click to enlarge the images). 

I can't find any technical details so I presume it's just an API scraper at a given moment but nonetheless potentially interesting as a discussion igniter around listening. Have a play.

Clever new toys as technology integrates more and more

It's been far too long since I've written a blog post.  Blame workload, holidays, too much crammed in (she says guiltily having read this very interesting article from the NY Times on "Busyness" ), and perhaps just a tad of digital jaded-ness.  2 weeks entirely disconnected from the digital world might just have cured me of that, even if my friends didn't believe I could do it!

So.. here's one of the first things that's tickled my digital fancy now that I'm back and reconnected...

Pebble: An ePaper watch that can be customised in both design and function to deliver not just the time but against a range of other tasks via connectivity with your phone. Fun and functional, not extortionate, and fuels my "turn data into useful things I can readily understand" soap box of the moment.  Watch: (forgive the pun)

Turning tears into smiles with technology

After a month of rain, the sun has finally come out and to add to my buoyant mood I spotted this piece of  digital treasure this morning.

I've been boring anyone who will listen for months now on the opportunities AR(augmented reality) can bring to enhance product experience beyond the functional, harnessing accessible technology to great effect, and how I believe that we will see more and more of this going forward.  Brands continue to hesitate around content creation investment in a world troubled by economic pressures, yet because of those economic tensions, the importance of brand love and the willingness to pay more for those brand enhanced differentiating experiences should be getting a lot more focus than it is.

Character licensed Band-Aid (sticking plasters) aren't a new thing, I remember loving my Mr Bump plasters when I was 6 way back when.  Throw in some technology  and the possibilities are now so much greater. Anyone who's helped a little kid who has fallen over knows that "I'll kiss it better" is vital, but far beyond that, distraction is every grown up's gold card, which is why I LOVE this use of the Muppets not just on the plaster itself but enhanced by AR interaction via iPhone or iPad. How could you not forget something hurt when Kermit, Gonzo and Miss Piggy are casting their magic?  Gold.