This year we holidayed ‘staycationer’ style in Cornwall. Rock, to be precise, where the large gull wing houses remain unsold amongst the debris of the banking crisis. This being peak season we thought that it would be a good idea to organise an online shop to coincide with our arrival. The only online store that delivers locally is Tesco.com. Admittedly the night before leaving London probably wasn’t the best time to visit Tesco.com, there being a myriad of items that needed to be packed carefully into our Volvo jalopy to ensure fun could be had by all regardless of the weather.

To be brutally frank we don’t normally shop normally at Tesco, our location in Battersea means that we’re in a black-spot, out of their reach. However, I had used the site many years ago when I was a bachelor. How difficult could it be? I logged in and happily clicked immediately to the grocery section, omitting to read any of the notifications on the home page (in the same manner as most men disregard all technical documentation supplied). This was my first big error, having spent just under an hour faithfully adding products to the basket I decided to proceed to the checkout to pay. I needed to book a delivery slot though, the address shown for the delivery was wrong as it displayed my bachelor pad. ‘There must be a simple way to change this’ I thought optimistically. No such luck, going into my profile and adding the new address meant that the entire contents of my basket were lost. My wife looked bereft and began muttering about the benefits of shopping local. So, we tried again, spending another 40 minutes dutifully adding products to the basket, ‘all done’ I chirruped to my harassed wife packing in the hallway. My good luck ran out when I tried to book a delivery slot, not only were they all gone for the day that we were to arrive but there were none to be had for three days either side. Biting my lip I explained the situation to my incredulous wife, who swore that she would never, ever use Tesco.com again.

I managed to get some small revenge in the local Tesco in Wadebridge where the staff were dressed in beach outfits for the day whilst the rain lashed down outside. The lady at the till looked at me when I rolled up with my trolley full of exotic goodies and asked if I would like help packing it? ‘Yes please’ , I smirked as she muttered under her breath about shandy drinking Londoners whilst I chatted merrily on my phone…

It is the end of paper publishing; we have reached the point of no return. There I said it – and I am not alone. It is now the global common, spoken or unspoken consensus that the publishing industry’s paper products have reached the end of their lifecycle.

More and more great titles from glossy monthlies to super size dailies are closing down the print issue and are focusing on the online product and many are consolidating several titles to offer a wider choice to its readers and maybe, maybe keep a few more staff on its roster. Even Arthur Sulzberger Jr of the New York Times said just the other day that it is a matter of time before The New York Times will no longer publish an actual paper. The question is, where is the revenue going to come from, the heavily underpriced online advertisement or paid content? Read More »

There may once have been a time when a Yahoo! product launch, even if it is a sneak-it-out-the-back-door Beta style event, would have been a hot topic for discussion so it says a lot that many readers may not even have heard of Yahoo! Meme, their attempt to move into the world of Twitter and Tumblr. As Yahoo’s first move into proper user-generated content creation for some time (ignoring purchases and Yahoo Answers) you would think they have spent their time coming up with something worthwhile – unfortunately it’s a little difficult to avoid the feeling that this is a rushed job.

Currently Meme is only available in Portugese and that, to some extent, may justify it’s existence. Indeed, our own international PR work at LBi has taught us the value of understanding different market’s approaches to social networks. Unfortunately there does not seem to be too much to Meme beyond that. It differs from Twitter in that it lets you post text, images, MP3s and YouTube videos and it doesn’t have a limit on the length of posts, unlike Twitter’s restrictive 140 character limit. Other than that the main difference is that in order to comment on anything on Meme you re-post (an equivalent to a ‘re-tweet’ on Twitter) it on your profile and then add your thoughts, meaning other users get to see what you are reading.

These features may sound interesting but I can’t help but feel Yahoo might have missed the point. Firstly you can fairly easily post any of these types of content on Twitter already using links to third party sites, with more and more companies springing up aiming to make this as seamless as possible. Admittedly it means users have to go outside of Twitter to get the content but this has the benefit of making Twitter much easier to consume on the go and has made it very easy for almost endless third-party systems to plug in to the Twitter API. More to the point, if you want to share this type of content you are probably already doing so on Facebook or Tumblr anyway (or even a proper old-fashioned blog)! Even the re-post feature / requirement for commenting, which may be a good way to stimulate connections (as users will quickly see who other users are following), won’t take long before it starts to interfere with the difficult signal to noise ratio that Twitter itself stuggles with.

I would probably be prepared to give Meme a temporary reprieve, however, if it were not for one thing… The fact that it has launched as an invite only beta. Spot the problem? Invite only betas are a great way to carry out a controlled launch whilst you iron out teething problems / get a handling on bandwidth costs / figure out a business model / boil the kettle, provided the service doesn’t need critical mass to be useful. Gmail launched invite only – it didn’t matter because you didn’t need to know people who also used Gmail for it to be useful. Social networks on the other hand live or die by user numbers – I might use Facebook or LinkedIn because other people do, but if everyone left so would I – and if they weren’t there in the first place (because they had to be ‘invited’) I might never have joined.

Seems to change dependant on which company you ask. I have personally seen here in Finland most major ad and media agencies lay-off people. It’s very difficult to fire someone here in Finland without real cause & hence in some ways the economy has helped these agencies to go into this process called “cold termination” – which essentially is a BS way of saying we are gonna fire a whole bunch of you and give you some legal mumbo jumbo that its up the company to decide who goes! It has given agencies the opportunitiy to review their strategies & get rid of the old useless people who have no understanding of the ad/media landscape today.

Right now, lots of talk is going around about new divisions specializing in digital opening up, ROI based models and so on – Funnily enough friends are telling me that these are radical new ideas when really, is it just that Finland is two steps behind the rest of the world – creatively there are great guys/girls here but strategically I really can’t say I have seen anything that would meet the standards I have adhered to in the UK, Australia and other major markets…

Old colleagues in Australia have said by January 2010 brands will be recruiting again – 90% digitally focused… Here in the Nordics the market is quite stale – companies are not sure and in most cases companies in the Nordics are very “safe” and don’t take big risks. 

Simply interested to hear whats going on out there… Finland is slowly curving back up I think and by the end of the year/beginning of next year gaps will start to be filled. How about the UK?

 SPAMBOOK – Is Facebook becoming the next SPAM medium?

Facebook… the new giant that has a generation almost attached to it. Generation F some call it! The 70′s were “free love”, the 80′s were “rock”, the 90′s were “grunge”, and now… “Social networks – FACEBOOK”.

So is this new so-called generation soon going to get angry? Why? SPAM…. While many successful brands are moving forward & embracing social platforms and new avenues of reaching their consumers, many are misusing these channels & quite frankly just ruining them for other brands. I’ve noticed an influx of brands in particular one or two in the Nordics simply attacking Facebook & using it as a personal source of SPAM. At this stage I am really narrowing down my friends in Facebook and what I see on the homepage. I really don’t want to see 20 updates on my homepage about one brand – SPAM SPAM SPAM. Too some extent its becoming a little like MySpace but at least we as the user, do have somewhat control but seems rude to delete all your fan pages and friends.

In the past 6 months a massive explosion of brand pages have been created. Facebook has become like the web during the dotcom boom – brands then said “we need a website – just create us a website” & now they are saying “we need a Facebook page – just create us a Facebook page” – So what’s the long-term strategy, what’s the point of difference, how will Facebook align with all your other marketing channels, how will you engage your consumer more so than other brands, without spamming them? Yes, another SPAM giant was email – no segmentation, no behavioral targeting, no strategic approach at all – just spam those consumers and hope for the best – What ever happened to first impressions last? Well it seems to me like Facebook is slowly moving towards this & if brands don’t follow a marketing strategy to align all their mediums and have “original concepts” to apply to Facebook then well… soon We’ll be seeking the next “anti-spam” platform.

One thing is clear that we need to build up our brands across all channels – and yes, we have to start somewhere, but not SPAM. Somewhere means having an in-depth long-term strategy as to how you will use these new channels of media to promote your business. Being marketing professionals we are obviously much more critical of the way brands place themselves to the consumer, but the consumer remembers – they are not dumb! Assume the consumer is smart, savvy, and intelligent – tell them what they want to hear, give them what they want to see… Target them & be their friend – But guys… Stop and think & ask yourselves one question – What are you trying to do in the long-term and are you going to achieve it with your current approach? I for one object to being spammed in anyway – email, facebook, telesales, forums… – Leave me alone

Love to hear anybodies thoughts on this on a regional level. Examples would be great but I am personally trying to stop myself from attacking individual brands.