This week the infographic platform and search engine Visual.ly opened up beta access to create.visual.ly which lets people create infographics for free and automatically.
Create a few infographics on the platform and you will discover that not every infographic is equal; not even if it uses the same template. Some infographics work better than others. Some are certainly easy to outreach with or engage audiences with.
After an eventful trip involving engine problems, missed connections and cross country transfers the UKTI SXSW mission group found itself arriving bleary eyed at Dell HQ in Round Rock Texas to a pre SXSW kick off “Unconference”
If you haven’t been to Dell the comparison to the Death Star is entirely apposite with 5 Hangers named appropriately Dell 1-5, as you drive up you see Michael Dell’s very own 501 Legion of Troopers arriving in their SUV’s – polo shirt and chino clad clutching their silver coffee travel cups – Dilbert is alive and well and working as a stormtrooper in Texas ! Read More
As the Leveson inquiry rattles on, every day seems to uncover a new angle to what can truly be called a scandal (today whether Rupert Murdoch is a fit and proper owner for BSkyB)- proving once again that sometimes truth really is more bizarre than fiction. Headline-writers had a field day when it emerged that the Met Police had ‘loaned’ ex-News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, a horse. In the midst of allegations of bribery, corruption and inappropriate relations between the media empire and the police force, this slightly surreal turn of events did nothing to stem the rising tide of evidence against News International.
Events took another dramatic turn when James Murdoch resigned as News International’s Executive Chairman. The official line was that it was to focus on ‘international television’ but it’s clear that the only way the Murdoch empire might truly recover from this mess is with a clean slate – a new paper (the Sun on Sunday) and a new public face. Which may potentially be another Murdoch. Read More
Ever wondered where Foursquare was launched, where Twitter hit the big time or where you can hear keynotes from the likes of Jimmy Wales, Guy Kawasaki, Craig Newmark, Evan Williams or even Mr Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, himself – well Austin, Texas is where it is at in March as SXSW comes to town.
And next week we will throwing ourselves into the madness of SXSW Interactive as part of the UKTI Trade Mission along with 39 other companies from the UK and over 25,000 others from round the Globe. We will endeavour to bring you daily updates as to themes, new ideas and creative technologies on show along with the weird and wonderful from Austin. Read More
Everything is becoming more complicated.
It’s a given that consumers are spending less time on more tasks, giving everything less attention, and generally skipping around loads of subjects at any one time on Twitter, Facebook, TV, email, text and a thousand other digital touchpoints.
Now, the challenge of the digital marketer to gain entry into the consciousness of the time-and-touchpoint-squeezed consumer is greater than ever.
So it struck me as interesting when I read a quote in an essay by Lera Boroditsky, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, that ‘consciousness is not unlike Twitter – millions of mundane messages bouncing around, all shouting over one another, with only a few rising as trending topics’.
Meme: ‘A self-propagating unit of social imitation; something that people repeat and pass along’. Or, ‘Memes replicate data. And just as genes replicate genetic data, memes replicate cultural ideas’. Or, ‘lolcats’.
However you describe them, everyone loves a good meme. And, since the term was popularised by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book ‘The selfish gene’, advertising has been responsible for generating many well-known examples. (Here’s one, oops sorry…no, two examples (in one): ‘Will it blend?’ for Blendtec.) And with the connectedness and social media channels offered by the web for brands to spread and share content, you would have thought that conditions were perfect for many more… Read More
You’ve already heard my views on the subtle ways that realtime media, user-generated content and networks are fundamentally changing the world of journalism. As digital technology weaves its way into every part of our lives, it’s also starting to drastically change consumer behaviour – and with it, the industries and products around us.
The publishing industry has seen some dramatic changes over the past year, and that shows few signs of slowing down in 2012. A few years ago, it was simple – books were published by publishing houses, we bought them from bookshops or online retailers such as Amazon and the author was paid a small royalty for every sale. It was a formula that worked on a basic level.
Comedian Louis CK has announced the initial figures from his experimental $5 download scheme for his new DVD special. By skipping the traditional distributor model and offering the DVD directly to fans for a $5 download, sales within the first few days have topped $500,000.
Since 10 December, the comedian announced that over 100,000 $5 downloads of Live at the Beacon Theater had been purchased by fans—covering the initial production costs and earning the comedian a tidy profit.
As the esteemed American marketer, Brian Solis, recently pointed out, we are entering an era of ‘Digital Darwinism’. That is: “the evolution of consumer behaviour when society and technology evolve faster than our ability to adapt”. With the digital landscape developing at such a dynamic pace, it’s no wonder some companies are nervous about taking that bold but crucial decision to go truly digital.
Gartner research predicts that by 2015, 50% of traffic and orders to retailer websites will be from social media and mobile. So it could be argued that to undervalue digital is to severely compromise future revenue flows. Yet, some companies are alarmingly slow to adapt. They may have a basic e-commerce strategy in place. But it is really integrated? Is it mobile-friendly? Does it use social media to maximum effect? Read More
Several years ago I grudgingly set up a Facebook account, joining an online community that now has over 800 million users across the world. I’ve never been Facebook’s number one fan – I use it minimally and mainly to not-so-subtly spy on my 16 year old son, to make sure he’s behaving himself as much as possible.
However, even a skeptic like me couldn’t fail to be impressed after a sneaky look at the developer’s preview of the new Facebook timeline. Put simply, when it rolls out across the site’s user base over the next few months, Facebook’s new layout is set to be a game changer. Read More
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