Do your customers trust you? Or do they trust “me”?

Struggling to keep up with how communications technology is changing consumer behaviour? And how this impacts on how you should communicate with your customers? Join the club. What we all know though is that being able to drive cost efficient messages out into this ever fragmenting media landscape is becoming more complex and more expensive. But for consumers the world has got easier to navigate and they’re the ones helping doing the steering. As an unorganised group they work like a digital ant colony, building and adding little pieces to a communications jigsaw free for all to see. Blogs, social networks, video walls, photo sites, forums, websites and now Twitter. All of them reviewing you in detail, giving each other tips on how to use your products and services, helping to show how to short circuit process and looking at every move your brand makes with opinion and commentary. Then through the power of Google this is seamlessly indexed ranked and served online right next to your own corporate marketing. One is a gritty social community “Truth” and the other a glossy beautifully polished version of a corporate “Truth”. Neither probably quite reflecting reality, but one considerably more influential than the other. Hence my question – do your customers trust you? Or do they trust “me” as a fellow consumer? The reality is that the power of consumer “Truth” is something all brands ignore at their peril. As a timely example, take the new Sacha Baron Cohen film, Brüno. In a recent Time Magazine article by Richard Corliss he suggests that despite all the media hype and great reviews driving interest in the film, Twitter may have been the reason that it went from looking like a roaring success on the Thursday night to audiences plummeting by nearly 40% on its second day.

The film managed to upset a whole host of groups and the speed with which this message was “Tweeted” around the world may have had a substantial impact on the box office takings. Of course, in the greater scheme of things Twitter is not that big a channel itself. But it is used by a lot of influential people who have influential followers. It’s also not widely known that Google indexes Twitter and anything said there appears in Google alerts, news and automatically on many blogs. As a result it’s very easy to see a cascade effect with information being pushed to a vast global audience very quickly. Connection is the key. Of course consumers can also support brands when they believe in them and can act as powerful advocates. But if you don’t get the customer experience right, you don’t listen to them or you upset them, then with the ease of a mouse click they can send their stories out and update their six billion “friends” around the world. This, combined with websites and automatic translation tools, means that every search, in any language, can instantly be read by anyone. And, of course, all this is happening against the backdrop of a severe global downturn which is testing the very best of businesses. So what’s the answer? It’s actually what the answer has always been. Know your customers, stay close to them, listen to them. An article in Business Week summed it up perfectly in one sentence: “It’s always important to stay close to consumers but never more so than in an economic downturn.” Of course these days, in a rapidly changing, media fragmented, world, that’s easier said than done. The good news is that most businesses have the customer data that can be the starting point to understanding their customers and their behaviour. And there are now a host of tools available that can unearth consumer insight, track attitudes and behaviours in real time. Coming out of the current crisis the successful brands will be the ones that pay attention to the detail. The ones that listen to what their customers are saying and act upon it, examine their data to see what they are doing and proactively provide better services from what they see. Ultimately it’s a very simple recipe for success. Understand your customers, look after them, be honest and they will tell the world how great you are, become brand ambassadors, twitter about you, digg you, find you del.icio.us.

Filed under: Marketing, Opinion, Russell Marsh, Twitter

Will mobile kill digital radio before it begins?

If video killed the radio star will mobile be the final stake in the heart of radio as tries to go digital?

 

Westminster eForum (a group set up to help inform government policy makers) do run some very interesting sessions although they do feel still a little slow in catching up on how fast the digital world is changing at times and are very reactive which is a shame. I have just come back from an interesting meeting at the House of Commons where the session was to discuss the impact of the digital switch over to Digital Radio and TV. They had some interesting digital radio technology on show like the Pure Senisia (very nice looking technology) which is a DAB radio that is very nice looking and tries to pull together other feeds like Twitter and Facebook into a single unit.

 

Pure Sensia Digital Radio

Simon Mayo (Radio DJ – BBC Radio 5 Live) did an interesting speech where he talked about his 18-year-old son and radio – qualifying that given it was his son it was probably not a representative sample to highlight how he used radio.

 

Simon Mayo

He said that he had asked his him about radio and what stations his friends listened to. After a pause his son said that his friends didn’t have radio. Part of me was quite shocked at that and another part of me not unsurprised. As a kid growing up I remember listening to the radio and recording the top 40 on Sunday nights and the nostalgic memory of how “cool” and exciting that was. It was a whole routine I had and one that I never really thought about how teenagers now engage with radio. At the same time the fact that none of his Son’s friends have radio also did not surprise me. When you have access to the internet with hundreds of online stations from around the world and new music tools like Spotify why do they need a radio? A radio will never have the most up to date bleeding edge bands on them, they come from underground networks or are trying to launch them selves on sites like MySpace. Teenagers of today can now choose exactly what they want to listen to and when, rather than some DJ making the choice and then talking over half of the track. It’s lost its edge. When cool is all about being the first, radio is just too slow. When it comes to slow even online via your desktop computer is now in question. Mobile phones are now used more by the younger age groups to access the internet than desktop computers. Mobile is always on, always connected, is personal and always with me. It’s likely that the next music frontier will be battled over mobile phones why does the next generation ever need a digital radio? Don’t get me wrong I think digital radio is very interesting and has place with some groups but it does feel a little too late to the digital party.

 

There is a danger that by the time it hits mainstream the new youth audiences will be gone leaving digital radio a dying technology before its time.

 

 

Filed under: Gadget, Opinion, Technology, DAB, Digital Radio, House of Commons, Mobile, Pure Sensia, Russell Marsh, Simon Mayo, Technology, Westminster eforum

Microsoft Hohm Beta Launch

TodayMicrosoft have just launched a new site called Microsoft Hohm.

http://www.microsoft-hohm.com

The site will let you track your energy consumption in the home either by entering data manually or by allowing it access to a smart meter.

Smart meters in the UK are due to be rolled out between 2012 and 2020 and will potentially revolutionise the energy market.

From this point onward you will have the ability to track all of the power consumption in your home. The smart meters will allow you not only to look at the overall power consumption but in some cases could even let you monitor this by room and all the way down to the appliance. All very clever.

This could be technology that starts major change in consumer behaviour.

Both Google and Microsoft have there eyes set on this opportunity to collect more data and it will be interesting to see how it all gets used should the power companies or consumer decide to go down this route of allowing it to be shared.

Microsoft has already laid its cards on the table and will look to use this data to sell additional marketing ads. Google is yet to declare a position but with the ability to generate so much insight on the consumer I am sure it will be a hard temptation to resist.

Interestingly enough as I write this at 4.30pm on the 7th June it looks like the site is down.
HTTP 500 Internal Server Error

I hope that does not mean that they have not paid the electric bill and the servers have been switched off !

Filed under: Creative, Marketing, Opinion, Technology, Energy, Environmental, Green, Green Power, Microsoft Hohm, Power Meters, Smart Meters

A Storm Cloud Ahead?

It’s interesting to see Microsoft jumping on the cloud band wagon recently with Azure a cloud version of Windows. It seems that a lot of the major players are now looking to follow the Google route of trying to get their applications and document storage on-line . Apple with it’s “Mobile Me” that takes email, contacts, diary etc and allows you to access them from any where.

Google with numerous tools that link photography, documents, email.
Adobe now has a version of Photoshop up there and there are now even video editing tools available from companies like Jumpcut.

Even Amazon are in on the great migration to move into the cloud with the development of some of their services like S3 and hosting. All very well and good but there are a couple of things that make me a little nervous.

I am a big user of these types of services and there are couple of things that concern me. The first is what happens if I accidentally break the “rules” or am even just reported for breaking the rules? My account and all my connections and tools get “killed” or at least suspended until I can contact someone. Given there are never any “old school” phone numbers to call and the chances are that your integrated email also gets suspended then this could be a problem. The second is what happens to the usability, lag and service when the system gets stretched? As more data is transferred over the Internet and the growth of video content this is inevitable.

The idea of cloud where we can all store oodles of data forever and access it from any where at any time is a very seductive proposition, but if you or your business is depending on this type of integrated on-line connection then there could be some major problems brewing for the future.

With the potential of an Exaflood on the horizon there are more and more conversations about prioritizing data packets over the networks and charging for the privilege (Net Neutrality).

I have heard both the UK government and the newly elected President Obama US claim that they are not in favour of this but if the infrastructure can not be put in place fast enough and bandwidth usage continues at its current rate then they may not have any option and our nice, friendly, useful cloud may have some shocks in store for us all.

Filed under: Marketing, Opinion, Technology, Amazon, Apple, Exaflood, Google, Microsoft, Net Neutrality, Obama

Changing – Digital Britain

On Wednesday (14/01/09) I was at the Westminster eForum at a keynote seminar on a new report due out this year on Digital Britain. Lord Stephen Carter, Minister, Communications, Technology and Broadcasting was outlining what he felt were the key issues that Britain needed to respond to to stay ahead in a new digital future. He did not reveal a great deal about the substance of the report but did raise some interesting points and emphasised that it is very clear that digital is critical to the future of Britain in an ever developing global economy.

The Panel

He outlined that he was looking for legislation to make it a legal right for everyone to have access to at least 2MB broadband in every home in the UK by 2012. A bold vision but one which may bring the infrastructure to its knees if we continue to follow the trend towards greater use of video content on-line. A typical HD film downloaded over the Internet is like downloading 35,000 web pages. A country downloading this type of content will quickly eat up any bandwidth and this trend is increasing.

He raised points about finding an alternative to the BBC long term and opening it up to more to competition which was later picked up on by John Tate – Director of Policy and Strategy at the BBC who spoke about the possibility of opening up the iPlayer (which receives about 40 million programme requests a month) to other public service channels including iTV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. He went on to talk further about how this may work through the implementation of project canvas which is a joint venture between the BBC, iTV and BT to combine terrestrial and web based TV into the TV in the lounge.

Carolyn McCall – CEO of Guardian Media Groups said that there was severe difficulties for regional reporting because of convergence. She went on to say that the role and dominance of aggregators was damaging the quality of reporting and that the current model for providing local journalism was becoming uneconomic, reducing the incentive for commercial players to get involved.

This did feel a little like sour grapes to be frank. It felt like she was complaining about the fact that the media industry is fragmenting and consumers are now finding their news from other channels. This suggested that it is  impacting their sales of both advertising and the news papers and as a group they are not happy about it.

The whole media industry is changing and all journalists and content providers need to get used to this because it is not going to change. The BBC is a great example of an organisation who is recognising this and actually looking to find ways to engage with their consumers in a new way.

I would argue that if the on-line public really felt that the quality of the content they were being provided was genuinely better than what they can find through aggregators or other on-line channels then commercial publishers should have nothing to worry about. Unfortunately the reality is that often its not. What is very clear to me is that as more people are encourage to migrate on-line (which I think is fantastic) through the governments policies, there will continue to be a change in how society consumes information and entertainment content. There is too much other “good” content out there for the mediocre to have a voice and compete. Only exceptional organisations that can change quickly and provide a genuine differentiated offering are going to survive in the new world Lord Carter has painted – and rightly so.

It will be interesting to see what is in the rest of the report.

Filed under: Marketing, Opinion, BBC, Carolyn McCall, Digital Britain, John Tate, Lord Stephen Carter, Marketing, Project Canvas, Technology, Trends

Look out, Microsoft Surface – the iTable might just trump you in every way

It is quite amazing how fast this industry moves. Microsoft comes out with an expensive but very cool surface computing system and before they have even made market headway a competitor is already there. A very clever bit of kit that allows you to turn pretty much any flat display into a touch screen.

more about “Look out, Microsoft Surface – the iTa…“, posted with vodpod

Filed under: Marketing, Opinion, Technology, Microsoft, Technology

Interactive Possibilities

One of my favourite blogs and web sites at the moment is by Johny Lee. (If you are not familiar with him go have a look at the link and be amazed).

Johny is taking very simple objects and turning them into new ways of interacting with our digital environment. He is a new breed of “technology hacker” that is making us think differently about what can be done with relatively cheap hardware. One of the objects he has been experimenting with is a simple Nintendo Wii controller.

Wii Remote (Contoller)

The work Johny has done has been picked up by Electronic Arts, who have now built an “Easter Egg” into a new game called Boom Blox that utilises some of the smart ideas he has had. What interests me about this is the future possibilities. How it has the potential to change how we interact with digital media of the future in many different ways. We have already seen companies like Apple revolutionise the mobile phone market with the introduction of the iPhone. The touch screen and motion sensing capabilities of the phone give it a whole new dimension in how you ”play” with it, making the usability a joy in comparison to some of the other phones on the market.

iPhone

Wii Remote, the Wii controller is actually pretty sophisticated and is a cheap, Blue Tooth capable, Infrared Camera. What Johny and others have been playing with, is how to build interactive experiences of the kind that we have seen in films, like Minority Report. The sort where Tom Cruise interacts with a screen via hand gestures and head tracking and all of this for under £50!

Microsoft is also pushing this type of touch technology with the development of Surface Computing.

Surface Computing

Surface computing allows the user to interact with objects via a table based touch sensitive screen. Some of the demos they have put together are quite compelling, showing the ability to drag and drop photos and music from one device to another just by placing it on the table and dragging and dropping.

When you have chance to try one of these devices you very quickly realise that there is a whole new interactive dimension that we have not yet begun to explore that is just around the corner.

Interactive experiences of the future will be on a whole new level. No longer will you have to learn how to use a mouse to interact, it will become a seamless experience of every day movements and gestures. This transition will allow you to touch and feel the products and environments in an entirely new way.

The latest gaming developments about to be released in the next year include brain wave reading headsets. Currently there are a couple of companies developing these – Emotive Systems called EPOC and Neurosky .

EPOC

Both of these neuro headsets will read your conscious and unconscious thoughts and turn them into actions on screen or allow you to control electronic devices. Absolutely amazing!

With development of these types of technology the whole interactive experience is going to take a huge leap forward and we are going to start to find very different ways of interacting beyond our current screens!

The future is unimaginable but no doubt will be very exciting!

Filed under: Gadget, Opinion, Technology, Interactive, touch screen, virtual

Ohhhoooo It’s Big!

Every day I am more amazed by what is going on in the digital world and how it’s changing.

In 10 years we have manged to create the most complex “thing” humans have ever built - which in that short but complex time has never broken down.

It spans the world, has millions of users, billions of connections, trillions of bits of information and almost all of the world depends on it for commerce, communication, entertainment etc. In my opinion it is without a doubt the most important and influential development in our history.

What I find even more incredible is that the majority of what we have built we can’t easily find and we have huge amounts of “Dark Data” lurking out there un-indexed. The Internet is growing at a stupendous rate as people become more accustomed to applications like Flickr, You Tube, Facebook, Myspace etc more data and information is being added into the system.

In October 2005 Eric Schmidt from Google said that, “…a recent report shows that there is about 5 million terabytes of information in the world”. Google at that time had only managed to index around 170 terabytes. If Google was to index the remaining 3.3 terabytes at the same rate it would take about 300 years, and that’s assuming that no one added any more to it.  Since then the amount of information in the world has continued to grow exponentially. This massive increase is raising some interesting problems, questions and opportunities about who and how we index all of that data if it’s going to be of any use.

There are also questions being asked about if this “unbreakable system” we have, can actually cope with so much data and there is a risk that there will be so much that it generates something being coined as “The Exaflood” (a film title there i think). This is where there is so much data it clogs the whole system and it grinds to a halt on a global scale. Is this possible? I think that you only have to look at what happens to the UK connection speeds when the US comes online to get the answer.

In 2006 International Data Corp estimated that we would generate about 160 Exabytes of new data that year. That was 2 years ago, since then many more video sites have come online, along with growing economies like China and India. (India’s film industry is also bigger than Hollywood’s so there is plenty to go at film wise in terms of getting it online).

Now when I first heard the term Exabyte it did not mean that much to me so let me explain.

One exabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes (dependant on whether you are sticking to decimal – click the link earlier, to see what I mean but it’s a big number).

If you were to take that 1 Exabyte of data and turn it into DVD quality video footage then it would take 50,000 years to watch – and that’s only 1 Exabyte!

Ironically (and not helping the problem) this video from You Tube gives you a great explanation of the potential of an Exaflood

What is obvious to me, is that being able to make sense of all of the data online, from a business and consumer stand point, is going to be critical and we need to find ways to simplify it all.

Filed under: Creative, Opinion, Dark Data, data, Exaflood