I was chatting with our Innovation Director, Rob Meldrum, the other day about what might happen if Google decides to officially make a play for developing a brain implant. As I tore an almond croissant into miniature chunks to enjoy with my yummington hot beverage, I began to wonder what the implications would be for digital advertising and permission-based marketing.

The Google brain implant is something that Eric Schmidt has spoken about before (or, at least, been asked about, to which he replied: ‘there’s what I call the creepy line. And the Google policy about a lot of these things is to get right up to the creepy line, but not cross it. I would argue that implanting things in your brain is beyond the creepy line…at least for the moment, until the technology gets better’.  He has to say that, doesn’t he, especially with things around such as H+, a new web series on a similar theme, produced by Brian Singer). Have a gander at the trailer here.
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Do you have the attention span of a spider monkey that’s drunk five cappuccinos?

I was delving into the issue of shortening attention spans recently, and one essay in particular caught my eye. Written by Douglas Rushkoff , media analyst and documentary writer, it was entitled ‘The internet makes me think in the present tense.’

Rushkoff argues that ‘the internet pushes us all towards the immediate. The now. Every inquiry is to be answered right away’. Then he states: ‘Once the internet changed from a resource at my desk into an appendage chirping from my pocket… the value of depth was replaced by that of immediacy masquerading as relevancy’. Read More »

Chatting to my good friend Jo recently, who is a primary school teacher, about methods of learning, it struck me that there are some clear parallels between classroom teaching methods and digital marketing.

As I took another gazzolop of sweet tea, I considered the fact that as education continues to gravitate towards increasingly stimulatory learning techniques, so digital advertising – whether it be online ads, social media campaigns or mobile marketing – also calls for similar measures to cut through and resonate. After all, success in both professions is essentially determined by how well you have inspired your audience to engage with the points you are trying to get across. Read More »

‘Why are your ears pointed, Mr Spock?’
‘To heat up butter popcorn, Captain.’

People will always be a bit interested when someone takes the very familiar, gives it a tweak, and makes you see it in a different way.

The appeal is probably due to the child-like excitement that comes when ‘What if…’ and ‘Why not!?’ prevail over sound reasons not to. It’s fun. It’s unexpected. It pushes the boundaries. It’s precarious, and there’s a bit of jeopardy involved. Throw some innovative technology into the mix and the result is an interesting trend for reinventing the familiar, using digital means. Read More »

This post is provided by our partner the Future Foundation, the leading consumer futures business.

The power of social networking – and the important position it has come to play in so many of our lives – has given rise to an entirely new discipline within marketing: that of the influencer.

To quantify consumers’ online influence, we created an index using our nVision Global research and then used it to gain an insight into who these people really are. First, we looked at how closely a selection of variables correlated with two statements: “People often come to me for advice in general” and “I’m always telling friends/family about new products and services I’ve discovered”. The variables in question included key factors like the propensity to share links on social networking websites, the size of personal friendship networks, willingness to talk about brands, self-perception of influence and strength of attitudes towards word-of-mouth.  By conducting several stages of factor analysis, people were then categorised as low/medium/high in terms of their influence. [Creative Commons image by Felipe Bachomo]

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When it comes to advertising, Facebook has often been compared to Google, with both being PPC advertising opportunities. In both, you bid on certain targeting perimeters and compete against other advertisers to get your advert seen by people and then convert these clicks into a positive ROI.

Even though these two advertising platforms have, in my mind always been completely different, the comparisons have always been made. With its latest ad product release, Facebook is changing the landscape and putting a firmer distinction between the two platforms making them no longer comparable. Read More »

Whilst trying to get to grips with the early morning at work I decided to tweet ‘I am very, very tired today…’ Shortly afterwards I received a tweet from a company named BioTherm asking if a free sample would help. Well, the answer was obviously yes… Read More »

Minneapolis ad agency Campbell Mithun is to select its next bunch of interns based on their tweets. This is so bound to catch on.

It plans to hire  13 summer interns based on an application of “13 Career-Launching Tweets” sent between the dates of February 13 – 25, 2011.  Read More »

I recently had the pleasure to visit the National Media Museum in Bradford. With time to kill before my meeting I looked around the exhibits spending time in the TV gallery. Learning about how television is created and broadcast was great to see, but what captivated me was the classic ads section. Read More »

Dear Rupert Murdoch,

Last week, on 4 August, Brand Republic reported that you ‘gave the first hint’ that subscriber levels to The Times pay wall are ‘strong’. Good on you. But what you have done has really hacked me off. You may not care about this. After all, who am I? Well, I am one of your customers. Read More »