Happy Friday one and all, last week I got a bit carried away with behavioural and forgot to tell you all about my trip to the Festival of Media in Valencia ( thank you Adconion ) 

Sometimes I get a bit of a complex about being the digital geek and having read the attendee list I was humbled ( and to be honest shit scared that I’d be totally out of my depth ) by the list of names speaking over the two days – Dominic Proctor, John Charles Deceaux, Steve King, basically all that is great and good in the world of media. What struck me was that all these big fish kept coming back to 4 main points

1. agency remuneration models – commission doesn’t cut it anymore

2. social media – can’t afford to do it, can’t afford not to

3. value attribution – no one has the measurement model right yet

4. technology – is the future

So as the grand fromages mulled these points I thought about our stance with regard to them. 

1. we rebate all commissions and charge on a time based model with performance related uplift, always have, always will

2. yes you can if you get the above right and also have a bunch of people who manage to live and breathe this stuff even though its not in their job title

3. ok you got me but at least we are no further behind than anyone else

4. gave myself a self satisfied pat on the back as people talking about technology without actually having a tech team ( in our case an 80 strong one ) is a bit like me talking about the virtures of an Alexander McQueen dress without having ever worn one, aspirational and unfounded.

So that is why today is a Happy Friday,  I am not banging the drum and claiming the death of anything non digital however I thoroughly enjoyed the conference as it reinforced my belief in our proposition and I came away feeling not quite shark like but no longer a minnow.

There’s an ongoing discussion around our office about the viral WTF phenomenon.   There’s no way of explaining what a WFT (or wuttuf) is – they just are, and have to be seen to be understood.

So, King of the Wuttuf – Adam – has kindly put together a list  of his Top 5 wuttufs.  WTFFFFFFFFF?!?!?!

WTF 1 – Pretty Ricky – Late Night Special

WTF 2 – Techno Viking

WTF 3 – Angel of death takes life

WTF 4 – edarem – Pretty Woman

WTF 5 – Chocolate Rain

Nevermind the depressive recession, and more news that friends and families are losing jobs and homes, there is still affordable fun out there, especially in the city of London this weekend, as joy comes to a boat on the Thames River for the debut of *****Tropical City***** this Saturday evening.

Bright neon lights, a festive crowd adorned in day-glo colours that are sure to flip your switch from winter-blues blah to spring and summer super happy. The musical line-up will inspire the most devoted wallflower to venture out on the dancefloor and get down. There will even be a Krumping dance crew, Funk Physics, popping battles, and teaching a few tricks. This party is a celebration of a mix and mash of urban cultures from warm and cold climates. It is hip-hop and reggae meet electro, for what looks like Miami Vice, and the original UK combination of it all is going to see this boat quaking and shaking into the wee morning hours.

Organized by Fake Ornate, the producers of other creative London parties The Nativity Hoedown, The Human Zoo and Cosmic Disco, this new creation is a kick-off for the group’s summer festival tour season. Next stop, Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party and Bloom.

“Tropical City is a ghetto-fabulous themed party, run by Fake Ornate who are inspired by the underground scene, and comitted to bringing the world cutting edge entertainment,” said Kate Risker, aka the fabulous Miss Risk. “Think Santogold to grime to Krump battles. Let’s get tropical!”

Headlining the evening, and the group that inspired the tropical theme is De Tropix who will get the boat swaying with electro reggae step sounds and deep bass beats that will quiver up and down your spine. Also featuring:

Supreme grime from Conrad The Scoundral,

A.J. Holmes the king of the electric high-life,
The Heatwave – skankin dancehall and tropical tunage from DJ Gabriel Heatwave,

and sweet female vocals from MC Cherry B.

Want to come to the Tropical City?

RSVP through the Tropical City Facebook Group
Saturday, May 9, 2009, 8pm-1.30am, £7. Dress Code: Ghetto
Fabulous/Tropical/neon. Location: Tamesis Dock (on the Thames) SE1 7TP.
Street: Albert Embankment, London, United Kingdom.

More information here.

I’ll be on the boat,

-Lisa

A little over a month ago, the French composer Maurice Jarre died. Ashes to ashes, etc., but emerging from his death comes a tale not of our frail humanity, but rather a sprawling yarn revealing the impact of the internet, globalisation, Wikipedia and it’s role in journalism.

Yawn. But bear with me, it’s a morbid and perverse anecdote almost too good to be true.

It starts with Shane Fitzgerald, a 22-year-old sociology student at the University College Dublin, and apparent average bloke, who on the evening of Jarre’s unfortunate end, mere hours after his death was announced, took it upon himself to edit the composer details on Wikipedia. All in the name of research.

As news outlets came round and began their regulatory obituary routine, it soon became clear that many journalists, including those from the BBC, Guardian and Independent, were citing Jarre’s Wikipedia page to supplement their articles.

As far as I know, a major faux pas, but who can be sure these days.

Fitzgerald had edited the page to include a benevolent, serendipitous quote from the music man, which read: “One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear.”

The quote was included in several of Jarre’s obituaries, the Guardian even electing to open with it, before the hoax was made public many days after the fact.

Wikipedia initially removed the quote because it gave no attribution, but thanks to Fitzgerald’s perseverance, it remained on the site for more than 24 hours.

The offending publications eventually redacted and retracted, but the damage was done.

Fitzgerald claims his actions were based in research, despite his reluctance to defile a dead mans legacy, and wanted to show that – with startling clarity – Wikipedia was a primary source for many of the world’s elite journalists.

In defence of those scribes that were caught redhanded, it’s probably a result of our, as in we, a culture, yearning for an ever-churning 24-hour news cycle. Sprinkled with a hint of laziness.

I won’t be enticed to say anything along the lines of, ‘no wonder print is dead’, so please hand me my 56-inch Kindle so I can help bail these yobs out.

Just back from a trip stateside (bimonthly visit to our New York office) and while crunched up in my economy seat I began to ponder over the transfer of skills between the US and UK, which has always been a hot topic for me. While reflecting on the debate about whether the two markets were ready to benefit from each other’s styles, particularly within e-commerce I concluded that the big difference is that Americans generally think differently and expect a different type of advertising and marketing to Europeans and this is apparent in their respective approaches to digital. The most obvious driver for this is the sheer size and disparate nature of America, which goes some way to explaining the brash nature – at least by European standards – of their marketing style.

This difference in styles – the real difference in terms of skills, is that the US suffers from a shortage of what I believe is good creative talent whereas the UK has fewer outstanding digital strategists, marketers, optimisers, researchers or analysts. It is common knowledge that the US is at least a year or so ahead in these areas and much more advanced in techniques such as multi-variant testing, data analytics, information mining and ECRM – all things your average ecommerce marketing director barely implements in the UK.

On top of this, Americans in general have a much more “online” mentality, they are far more plugged in to technology and proud of it, and this tends to be reflected in the fact that their technical development skill sets are much more advanced than ours. Many of the cutting-edge concepts like Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 were born in the US. Indeed the current thought is that the future of the web will be about apps living online, and the US is way ahead in this area. Their skills base (in terms of creating user interfaces that cross from desktop to online and working in environments such as Adobe Air & Flex) are beyond anything we are producing in Europe.

I think it’s time to admit that we can learn a lot from our cousins Stateside (and vice versa), specifically within the ecommerce arena, and start pooling our resources. Now’s not the time for being coy.

A few weeks ago I highlighted the need for both the consumer and the advertising industry to embrace behavioural targeting – in a climate where both consumers and advertisers are becoming increasingly frugal and many want to see more with less it really does have a future.

The challenge to this is that the general perception of behavioural targeting technology is a negative one and there is one party in particular that has done an awful lot in recent months lead to a negative perception of the use of technology in advertising.  Ask most people how they would feel about a TV that only showed them advertising for car insurance at times when they have a car with a policy that was coming up for renewal and they would understandably think this a good thing, yet if you asked if they would opt-in to behaviourally targeting to receive car insurance adverts at a more relevant time there is a good chance they’d walk over hot coals rather than grant permission.

If, ultimately, behavioural targeting is about receiving less ads but them being more relevant why are consumers and the media so against them?  After all, behavioural targeting is obviously good for the advertisers (less ads doing the job of more) yet it is good for the consumer too (less ads and more content) and let’s not forget – the media, who are often quick to judge the technology, do still rely on advertising (and ultimately its effectiveness) in order to pay the bills.

The reason for the resistance is ultimately quite simple.  It comes down to trust.  Consumers can’t be expected to know the specific details for how every single piece of advertising technology works – all they require is some transparency and some honesty.  And it is in the areas of transparency and honesty that advertisers, media owners and third parties succeed or fail.

Of all the news stories within this area none has hung around like a bad smell quite like that of Phorm, which partners with ISPs to provide a level of insight and targeting that doesn’t rely on cookie data and extends beyond the walled garden of sites with advertising on.  In some ways Phorm is no different to any other behavioural targeting technology – the data is anonymous so there are no personal details attached and users can opt-in and out when they want.

So why the problem?  Why the negative press?  Sadly it comes down to a case of once bitten, twice shy.  The legality is still being debated, although many believe there is little doubt that laws were broken, but rather than trialling on users that had opted in Phorm instead ran an initial test of the technology in partnership with BT but without notify or seeking permission from the individuals’ whose behaviour was being tracked.

It’s a mistake that has haunted Phorm since ever since.  I recently saw Phorm present at the Festival of Media and the presentation did a good job of demonstrating the product – unfortunately much of any potential goodwill was undermined by the fact the presenter felt the need to ban all questions.  Behaviour that doesn’t exactly exude confidence.

In response to the criticism Phorm have launched StopPhoulPlay.com, a site which attempts to quash the rumours and speculation by discussing the facts.  It actually puts forward some strong arguments in places but sadly the message gets drowned out by the angry paranoid tone in which the site has been written, and the very fact they feel the need to create a site that responds to the criticism speaks volumes.  The launch of this site has understandably generated negative, not positive, PR and this has been compounded by the recent allegations of collusion between Phorm and the Home Office to the point where many are calling time on the technology provider.

If you play nice then the outcome can be vastly different.  Google recently announced the introduction of behavioural targeting on their massive display network (the UK’s biggest in terms of impressions served).  As is often the case there was some mild initial criticism but this soon died down – the targeting is now live and in use.  The point of difference is that, as part of the press release, Google also announced an area that explains the new targeting to consumers and enables them to manage the data held on their advertising cookie, giving users the ability to not only choose what types of content they are actually interested in but also to opt-out completely if they choose.  It was a first for the industry to give users this level of control and is likely to be a sign of things to come if technology providers and publishers want to avoid the controversy that dogs Phorm.

Hats off to Justin Staple who has just launched a fantastic new website showcasing Bristol’s street artists www.bristol-street-art.co.uk

If you’ve got a spare 5 minutes I thoroughly recommend you take a look. Justin’s done a great job – the Google maps integration is a particularly nice touch.

Justin has sent me some background on what inspired him to go to all this effort:

“Just over 2 years ago I arrived in Bristol to work as a graphic designer. During my early explorations of the city I was struck by the amazing array of street art, sometimes lurking in dark corners, sometimes as prominent features. I was soon following my other passion, photography, and photographing them whenever possible. Over time I began to notice how pieces of street art were changing, often they were being scribbled over or even removed by the council, in other cases they would be completely painted over with a new piece of artwork. It became clear to me that it was important to keep some kind of record of these pieces as they could disappear from one day to the next. So the natural follow on for me was to develop a website to display these photos.”

Good work Justin!