Conversation and networking will turn an eye toward the future of using social media for branding tonight with The Future Laboratory hosting a gathering that will introduce some of their clients to a selection of speakers who have expertise in reaching audiences through new methods of engagement.

 I’m thrilled to be joining the impressive line-up of speaking guests to help shed some insight on how brands should be thinking about approaching the social media landscape. On the panel tonight include: 

• Dave Cloud, who  runs SoundCloud, now seen as the new Flickr for the music industry
  
• Hugh Garry
  who is a Content Producer for BBC Radio 1, and whose recent projects
  include a ‘Shoot The Summer’ a user generated collaborative film based
  around the BBCs music festivals across the country and shot by
  attendees on their mobiles
• James Bull who is a founder and creative director of D&AD nominated digital brand agency Moving Brands
  
• Darika Ahrens,
  who runs grapevine consulting and specialises in training media
  professionals on the principles of Social Media in order to inspire
  dynamic campaign creation

 The Future Laboratory also publishes trend forecasting resource LSN Global, and keeps agencies and brands current on the latest emerging trends from across the world.

Looking forward to being in the future lab,

-Lisa

The Apple Store went down today. People panicked, speculated and gossiped – some suggesting that the servicing was due to the launch of a new iPod Shuffle. A few moments later, they were correct.

When the Apple Store returned, users were met with a promotion for the shiny new Shuffle. Smaller, sleeker and undoubtedly sexier (they claim it’s the size of a AA battery, yikes), it has new VoiceOver technology which speaks song titles to you, updates you on your battery life, etc., in several different languages, but really who cares?

The Shuffle solely comprises Apple’s “low-end” product range, if the company ever had such a notion. It’s the mp3-player of choice for gym rats and gutter rats alike.

Any worthwhile innovation on the Shuffle will eventually make its way to the better iPods, in which I will happily and fervently empty my wallet.

What is interesting, however, nearly escaped my eye when glancing over the photos… how the hell do you change the songs?

Upon closer inspection, confirmed in the excitable press release, the volume and tracking controls have been moved to the iPod earphones.

The earphones, proprietary earphones… why Apple, why?

Seems like a kick in the shins to devoted iPod users, just what happens if (when) you (eventually) lose the earphones, besides obviously shelling out £40 for another set?

An explanation? Are we granted an apology? A hand written letter from Steve Jobs with a dab of his Apple musk sealed in the envelope?

Since when is the World’s Nicest Company^TM so mean?

Proprietary earphones have been the damned nuisance of many failed mp3 players, but it’s doubtful the Shuffle will be the next.

It’s interesting to see how this one plays out, if it manages to slip under the radar, would it be feasible if it sneaked its way into Apple’s other products?

Or is this just bad design, a “mistake” made by Apple (it’s silly that saying those to words in the same sentence feels blasphemous) that will be quietly removed when the Shuffle launches a new campaign, in a myriad of ridiculous colours with the latest pseudo-indie hit playing in the background?

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If you’ve had the opportunity to visit our office you’ll have been struck by the black and white photos adorning the walls. Louis Armstrong, The London Playboy Club, Black Power, Swinging London and the Beatles. They’re left over from a ‘dot-com’ idea we had back in 2000 when we hoped to sell framed photographs via the web. The photos’ came via an ex Spitfire Pilot called Terry Spencer who amongst other things is in the Guinness book of records for the lowest ever parachute jump. After the war he bought a plane and flew with his new wife, without a map, down to South Africa. There he started working for Life magazine, returning to the UK in the 60′s to photograph the defining moments of the decade.

Terry was thrilled by the idea of selling his photos online and we spent many hours in his study carefully reviewing negatives and selecting the best ones for hand printing and drum scanning. Despite our best efforts we didn’t manage to sell sufficient prints to make the site a success and so shut it down and decorated our office with the remaining pictures.

Every one who visits the office comments on the pictures, how great they are and their depth of character. Whilst I’m sorry that we couldn’t get that business model to work I’m glad we tried because we learnt from the experience and have applied the lessons to make others a success. And heartfelt thanks to Terry who was prepared to have a go.

Terry Spencer died on February 8, 2009. His wife pre-deceased him by 24 hours. You can read his obituary at the Times Online at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5688664.ece

So the record companies have pulled music videos from YouTube. I think anyone with half a brain knows that if you want to get free music now you can and YouTube can make or break a star so it seems a little bit silly, but whatever. For me the more interesting question is why record companies think the deserve to get paid what they did before the internet.

I have often wondered why somone like Robbie Williams or Noel Gallagher, or the most annoying one from Girls Aloud feel like they deserve millions of pounds for singing a song. Probably they never dreamed they would but they got lucky and had a good manager and so if you did before, why not now?

There is nothing to suggest that these people are the ‘best’ at their jobs. There are better singers than Robbie, better guitarists than Noel and better karaoke singers than Cheryl Cole. The record companies seem to think that because they were able to charge 10 quid for a product that everyone knows cost about 10p to produce that they still should be able to. But the internet has changed that. 

Peoples notions of delivery and usage have clearly changed but I don’t think people realise that this means there is just not the money about in music anymore. Is that so bad? (same could be said for the Automotive Indsutry)

What’s a decent wage for a singer? Someone who works hard and is good at their job, actually enjoys their job. Why should it be 1 million pa. Surely 100k would be ok? No? 

Oh and just in case you were in any doubt about how passionate YouTubers are about music check out this amazing film that makes a track out of YouTube samples

75% of the world’s top advertisers and 80% of the UK’s are working with Facebook, says Blake Chandlee at today’s FT Digital Media conference [#ftmedia]. I love getting predictions right. Now the debate has moved on. It isn’t about getting it, it’s about measuring it. Doh. Instead of reach and frequency, we should be measuring interactions and engagement. Doh. Expect to hear more of the phrase ‘user connections per year’ in the coming year. Doh.

Now over the past couple of years in my companies we expended hours of angst and technical effort to build models that link online advertising activity with website traffic. It’s amazing to me how separate these [still] can be in the corporate world. Especially when it comes to business audiences, who spend most of their time online using client (that’s a technical term) communication tools. Interestingly, the 20th century model of agency infrastructure – a more generous definition than ‘BDA’ perhaps – created discipline specific revenue generating lines that often struggled to combine forces and do the right thing for the Clients’ brands.

The Clients (the ones that pay the bill) were excited by these efforts. But not everyone was. The new measurement system exposed some quite glaring weaknesses in the world according to GAAP (that’s my personal definition of Generally Accepted Advertising Practise). Oh, how we argued wth all our other agency colleagues. We had simply set out to get a better bang from the online buck, we said. We weren’t planning to solve world peace or reorganise the entire marketing communication process. But in the end, that’s what’s needed, and that’s what’s happening too.

I’m not keen on creating yet another social media discipline-specific argument. I am interested, however, in how brands go to market, how media is organised, how consumers engage with media, and how consumers engage or ignore brands. It’s clear from Facebook’s numbers that brands getting it isn’t the problem. brands are having a go. If you’re not online, you’re not on the map. It’s a more a question of how much control the brand’s prepared to give up in the process, and who to turn to for advice.

George Parker on this site been railing at the average adverati’s incompetence with these social technologies and facile obsession with the next big thing bandwagon. He’s right (with notable exceptions on Brand Republic, of course) in the sense that there aren’t many agency CEO types who write their own blogs or twitter much. Funnily enough, a survey in October last year by Sapient* put understanding digital as a top priority for global CMOs, and agencies that understand digital as a DNA thing rather than an acquired thing should do well. I’d argue that there’s a starker truth behind this. Clients don’t want to pay agencies to learn on their paid time.

Reflection from the digerati at the FT conference so far is positive, and notably setting the agenda for everything else in adland. Plenty has happened in the last year that elevates the argument about common metrics, engagement, redefining media, redefining content and the role of the brands in providing the financial oxygen upon which media has traditionally depended. We have a long way to go, but it’s good every now and again to recognise how far we have come.

*Sapient is an interactive agency. Survey results: unsurprising.
*Sapient’s numbers look quite good at the moment.

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Over on Jamie Burke’s blog, a conversation has been sparked about who’s who among female social media experts in the UK, and the result is that this week a contest he’s initiated will elect five women as the UK’s top social media gurus.

The idea got started when Brand Republic’s editor Gordon MacMillan put out a request on Twitter asking for suggestions for female social media speakers for an upcoming conference, and Jamie and I helped suss out who people think the top women in social media are. So far more than 20 women have been named to the list, which will be voted on this Thursday, 12 March 2009.

Picks so far include Suw Charman-Anderson, Aleks Krotoski, Laura Oliver and Joanna Shields.

 The winners will be invited to offer a 20 minute presentation that will be held as a charity event to raise money for Macmillans.

Cast your vote or pitch in your tips for who the top female social media experts are this week here, or on Jamie’s blog post.

Jamie is also the creator of a social media networking forum for PR professionals called the P2PR network, where a lot of conversations get started.

Making my social media guru picks,

-Lisa

Suw Charman-Anderson

 Aleks Krotoski

 Joanna Shields

We all know how hard it is to win accounts, and how easy it is to lose them.  Complacency is a disease that can attack the big networks at the core. Everything seems fine one minute, and some random project done by a tiny agency in Latvia suddenly gets dumped in your lap as the new global campaign idea. As Jerry Della Femina wrote, “The Client is lost as soon as it’s won, it’s just a matter of time.” And this doesn’t just affect the big networks; the tiniest agencies of all remain at the beck and call of outrageous fortune too.

The one thing that the smaller agencies can say truthfully though, is that it usually is down to them. In the networks, it’s easier to point the finger at others. And it frankly, often isn’t “the London Agency’s fault.” I’m sure we’ve all got hard and good experience of that, winning awards in the outposts of global marketing effort, but the client moves because the ‘global’ guys aren’t up to the mark or whatever. (I’m told that actually is the most common reason.) In the small agency, you live or die by your relationships and the value you bring on a daily basis to the Client’s business. The smaller you are, the more you tend to think about that, with no cushion of ten other global clients competing for the attention of your best people. People move, jobs change, markets change, yes, we all get that. But forgetting about what the Clients are worried about where and when it matters, usually before notice is served, remains unforgivable.

Another angle on this nutty little problem centres around where innovation comes from. A very clever marketing director told me once that in our business, innovation comes from the edges; sustainability comes from the core. Harsh, but fair. That’s why the Lithuanian mobile voting project on Twitter tends to get arguably more attention than it deserves from the CMO. And is used as a stick to beat the ‘big’ agency with. Turning ‘experimental’ work into a central platform for communication strategy is not simple to pull off, and there is bitterly argued example of this from all sorts of businesses around the world. (See lots of Cannes winners for details.)

So what’s the answer? Wouldn’t it be great if everyone the Client knew who was really good could think about the problem? Unfettered by agency P&L walls and wars, and the political machinations of control, how much fun could be had by everyone. This is what Clients (or some I’ve met recently, anyway) say they want. Paul Phillips at the AAR did a talk at the back of last year, for their relaunch, confirming that there were less and less ‘discipline specific’ agency briefs, and an increase in ‘marketing problem’ specific briefs. It’s a clue, isn’t it. Of course it still remains vital that Clients believe that you know what you’re talking about, get the space and the problems they face. They want senior people with insight and foresight. They often want things to be simpler. One agency rather than nine. And boutiques as well.

We’ll see more of this in the coming months, I’m sure, as Clients shrink their budgets and look to the agency supply chain for savings/value/people they want to stick with. At the school debating society, we used to have balloon debates, you know, where you argue who should be thrown out of the balloon as it ran out of air and descended slowly towards shark invested waters. Each debater booted extended the life of the others, until there was only one left. (A concept popularised by reality TV in more recent years). Well, balloon debates with clients are back. Big time. Make your cases sharp and quick, everyone.

Heads have been rolling over Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent Twitter snub, when he called the ridiculously popular (too early, too late to call it a phenomenon?) microblogging service a “poor man’s email”, one he doesn’t “get”.

Personally, I didn’t think too much of the slag-off – he is Eric Schmidt after all, an “untouchable” in the digital world and despite what many, many (so many) news stories report, Twitter still retains a sort of subversive, grassroots air around it.

Cutesy, that’s the word.

Sure its mainstream, but not Google mainstream (even though Google seems a little cutesy too, which is no accident no doubt).

Anyways, techno-pundits have introduced an interesting theory, that Schmidt’s rebuke was an intentional act, a stroke, an attempt to devalue Twitter before either acquiring the company under Google’s own ubiquitous umbrella, or to sully its name before launching its own Twitter-killer.

The theories hold water, certainly, and for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, there is no way in hell that Google, or Schmidt, can ignore the potential behemoth that the cutesy-Twitter represents.

Behind it’s playful mask of those perfectly pointless 140 characters “tweets” lies a powerful tool: search. Something that Google might be familiar with.

In fact, Twitter is much like a chip-off-the-old-block, a spitting-image of a young Google.

A younger, fresher, dare-I-say better version of itself. Not only is Twitter search, but it’s real-time search. Something Google can not (presently) lay claim.

Schmidt knows, and his recent rebuff could really be a hairline fracture in his usually steely resolve. Has Twitter got Google sweatin’?

It’s pretty obviously that Facebook is rattled, which, after a failed acquisition of its own, subsequently introduced a swathe of similar services.

After spending the better part of his life putting the boots to Microsoft, painting the company as the evil empire, could “poor man’s email” be the crucial first steps towards an all out war against Twitter? Just what is Google planning?

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Who has a Jaiku account out there?

Jaiku was a product of Finland and when it came out some 2 odd years ago it was quite ahead of alot of other mobile devices. Essentially you can use it on the web but the key is to download it as an app to your mobile phone. Essentially you can do status update stuff but the winner here was the whole location based mapping – showing where you are so your friends could see on a map via GPS exactly whee you are via their mobiles (on the basis you are their friend).

Well anyway, Google bought them out some time back and basically Jaiku went of the map for that time – nobody was using it & people pretty much figured, that Google bought it just to keep it off the map for a while – it’s not like Google doesn’t have location based technology after all eh? And they didn’t have so many users when the acquisition took place.

So Jaiku is back on the map now but still has few users but here is my “annoying bitch” about Google today. If you have an account then search in Google your name. If I type in Mchael Trenerry in Google, Jaiku comes up first & you know what – I don’t use it anymore…

That’s what we call ownership but really, not fair game in my eyes. Defeates the rules of search!

 Tonight I was hoping to write up a sneak preview of Charlie Brooker’s ‘So Wrong It’s Right’ new Radio 4 show that was being taped in studio, but the show was overbooked by SRO and many of his fans were turned away at the door, despite having tickets in hand. So wrong!

I was really looking forward to an evening with him as comedy host of a panel of guests. The show promises to be a celebration of failure, in which “Charlie plunders his guests’ pasts, creativity and general knowledge over a series of rounds in which panellists have to be wrong to be right.”

Brooker is a guilty pleasure of mine, as his winge and whine television shows and column in The Guardian seem to state bluntly and without forgiveness what you may have been secretly thinking all along. Cheeky, and a dark pessimist who has been given a speaker’s platform, his formula of insults to the status quo and his twisted observances of life around us somehow make it a lot easier to take.

Oh well, that leaves me to read about the show’s taping on his Twitter feed, listen to it on Radio 4 and envy those who did manage to get into the show tonight. 

 Being a cranky fan,

-Lisa