There seems to be a growing tension in the world of social media!

Almost every client brief now asks how we would place brands within the social environment. And I find myself questioning if there really is a place for every, or even any brand, within our personal pages online?

Aren’t the likes of Facebook and Twitter the realm of mates rather than marketing, of chat instead of commerce, of sharing, not shopping?

Perhaps it is for these very reasons that brands are so keen to be part of the social sphere? Marketing managers doubtless recognise this ‘emotional’ environment as very different from the “rational” destinations they create for their own brands online. They no doubt also note their own changed state of mind, when looking at their Facebook pages or writing their latest Tweet? These are times when we are all off-duty, open-minded, less cynical and potentially more receptive.

As an agency, we DO believe there is a place for brands within the social sphere, but only if a certain mindset and approach is applied:

• social media is a personal, emotional space – standard advertising and promotion isn’t appropriate
• context and personalisation are key, relating to users, their likes and dislikes, preferably on an individual basis, are likely to engage and, therefore, succeed
• considering and involving friends and groups is a powerful way to achieve relevant and timely interest
• overall, this is a pretty intolerant space – ‘road-blocking’ or ’spamming’ is guaranteed to create a negative brand reaction

In summary, our belief is that there is no problem combining brand messages with our personal spaces, as long as sensitivity and care are used.

Playing devil’s advocate now, allowing advertiser access to our beloved social media sites may be a necessity anyway! Facebook, Twitter and other social spaces operate under generally unsustainable revenue models today. Inviting brands to get more involved may be the only way we can hold on to these sites we have become so attached to.

Indeed, it would appear that Facebook’s recent news about imminent profitability is heavily driven by The Gift Shop, Facebook Connect, and other ways brands can engage on a deeper, better informed level with consumers, as opposed to monetisation of display advertising alone.

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“Above all else, getting serious about digital means getting serious about creative, whether you’re talking about a simple banner ad or a cutting-edge viral campaign. After all, big ideas move successful campaigns in any medium, and the web is no exception.

But as larger agencies struggle to redefine themselves in the lean-and-mean digital ecosystem, a grassroots army of smaller, specialty shops is raising eyebrows. Some work on assignment from larger agencies, but others have begun taking ownership of the client relationship for themselves. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, these are some of the independent agencies that made us stand up and take notice with campaigns and ideas that push web creative forward.”

Full article on iMedia Connection.

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Considering the sophistication of humans as mammals, it is still interesting how we are doomed to repeat the same behavioral patterns as our primate ancestors, even when is comes to social media.

Full story published on Marketing Daily here.

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Way back in 1992 in the UK there was a hotspot based phone service called Rabbit, launched by Hutchison (now Hutchison Whampoa).  In essence a user bought a handset, resembling something between a mobile and a cordless phone that could be used to make phone calls within 100 meters of a hotspot.  My home town, Manchester, had more or less full coverage by late 1992.

According to wikipedia 12,000 base-stations were live and at the peak the service had 10,000 subscribers.  The service ceased in late 1993 due to price drops on the analog cellular networks and the ability for those networks to accept inbound calls.

The phone-less sibling of the iPhone, the iPod Touch, is now becoming the successor to the Rabbit.  Loaded with Skype (or equivalent VoIP service) and a headset with microphone the iPod Touch is now a nearly fully fledged phone.  With the new 3.0 iPhone / Touch operating system it will be a fully fledged outbound and inbound phone experience.  Of course, the only place you’ll be able to make or receive calls is within range of a subscribed wifi hot spot.

The irony is that the cellular networks superseded the Rabbit, but the iPod Touch and VoIP could supersede the cellular phone.

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Automotive Perfection

A new client in the automotive sector generously treated us to a VIP tour. This has an immediate consequence in that you arrive quite fancying a V8 Vantage ‘one day’ only to find that this was a school-boy error. You now need one very urgently and contemplate serious crime to have the keys to a DBS tomorrow.

It works like this. The seduction begins with the sheer architectural class of the buildings, the charm of the reception team and a selection of cars on which to gaze (including a cut away revealing a quite incredible attention to detail). Things move up a gear when you peruse the collection of historical cars, all immaculate. With the lineage as the appetiser and James Bond as your host the production line itself is almost too much. By the time you have seen gearbox-meet-driveshaft-meet-engine and the whole powertrain bonding with its body in the marriage station you are very excited indeed. Raybans are needed for the grand finale; inspection bays with zillions of lights to show up the slightest blemish. From my vantage point I couldn’t see any whatsoever; just a car parked in each that was automotive perfection, attended to by people who cared, and took pride.

It is one thing to see any sort of manufacturing going on in this country of ours; it is quite another to see a facility that is very likely without equal anywhere in the world. If you are considering a 911 do go and just make sure you don’t deserve something with a little more class. Quite wonderful.

Image used under a Creative Commons license, courtesy of char1iej on Flickr.

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Virgin Atlantic advert

As the resident retro geek at Last Exit, it will come as no surprise that I enjoyed the Virgin Atlantic ‘25 years and still red hot’ advert a great deal. Our Price records, Wimpy and a brick mobile phone – sadly destroyed in the making of the clip and therefore not available as an exhibit in the Last Exit collection – all set to the thumping tunes of Frankie goes to Hollywood. There is much to love here. And there is much to love here, to – your correspondent writing to you from (sadly) seat 42H on their VS001 flight to New York. It seems incredible that it all began so long ago – or that those of us who grew up with Virgin have now grown up. It was and remains my favourite airline, and I have flown on most of them. Us brand people sometimes have a hard time convincing sceptics of the value of branding – but you only have to look at Zavvi (closed for business 15 months after buying Virgin Records) and Absolute Radio (20% drop in listeners since changing from Virgin Radio) to see the power. I think the key to the Virgin brand is the ability to inspire and motivate both customers and their own people. The crew aboard this A340 all look just a touch over 25 themselves, but red hot? You bet.

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Modesty prevents Gary Lockton penning this column, but suffice to say his friends and colleagues are delighted to see his return to the pages of the press. An excellent article, written by a talented journalist – well worth a read.

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Following from this post about a UK skin cancer awareness campaign, the BBC reported that a 14 year old girl suffered 70% burns after using an unattended coin-operated (!) sunbed.

Having moved from the UK to the US 8 years ago I was blissfully ignorant of this invention.

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During the fog leading up to the festive season at the end of 2008, I totally neglected to post the interactive greeting we created. Fortunately, we did send it out to our contact list(s) and if you weren’t on it, or didn’t receive it, I most profoundly apologize. No matter though, as you can see what we created by clicking here.

Built in Flash and utilizing the Papervision3D engine, the hottest thing to happen to Flash since Flash, we’ve built a cube with images of our team on four of the faces. Clicking on each image will reveal our Christmas alter egos. Fred’s Mr. Hankey is my favorite

Last Exit Festive Greeting in Paper-Vision-3D

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Brilliant though Google and other search engines are at bringing some level of sense and order to the billions of web pages out there, they all still rely almost completely on our ability to look for something in the right way. Keywords are really that – KEY!

Luckily as the amount of content online grows so does the average level of skill of people using search engines. Two years ago the average number of keywords entered into Google’s search field was not much more than 1.5, today it is more like 3.0. We are being more specific when we search which is a good thing – finding a million or more results is hardly a badge of honour now is it?

In spite of this there remains the ‘Did you mean?‘ problem or the ‘Did we mean?‘ problem as I would describe it.

As an agency advising our clients on SEO or search engine optimisation one of the toughest tasks is convincing businesses to think like customers and ensure the way they write about themselves online does likewise. By all means ‘build it’ but they won’t be coming unless the way you talk matches the way they search!

Take Last Exit and PaperVision for example. We are a Papervision3D agency and would like to be found as such when potential clients search for this kind of service online. Because PaperVision is a new technology however the challenge is to make sure we talk about it in the right ways. The correct description for this Flash plug-in is PaperVision3D but a quick check within Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool reveals a whole host of ways people are looking for it – papervision 3d, paper vision 3d or even pay per vision 3d are all commonly used. 

This wouldn’t be a problem but as I say above search engines rely on keywords in a very exact way. Try it yourself – a query of ‘paper vision 3d agency‘ will deliver very different results to one of ‘papervision3d agency‘ regardless of the fact both may be intended to find an agency supplying PaperVision3D.

Granted this all sounds very anal indeed but the truth is that Google and the other search engines are very anal indeed! Words, and the exact way they are used, are all they have to go on when routing that important query of yours to a handful of those 3 billion web pages!

The solution is writing for the web, making frequent reference to important keywords, and writing like the customers you want to attract would ask for you.

The solution is really not rocket-science, or should that be rocket science!

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