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Cynical – but they do have a point about Facebook. At what point does the wisdom of the crowds become the exploitation of the crowds?
Archive for January, 2008
25
Jan
08
links for 2008-01-25
24
Jan
08
links for 2008-01-24
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Can’t wait to install this on my PSP – the more the PSP gets networked the better as far as I am concerned.
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I haven’t been tagged on this but I like it. Each person tagged blogs 8 random facts about themselves – like a giant blog chainletter. Harnessing the power of networks for fun, can use this method to harness them for brands and content communication?
15
Jan
08
Social reality
My most recent favourite deconstruction of an advert relates to the new First Choice Holidays ad.
This is an ad of our times in so many ways. It sets up expectations, then delights you by confounding them (romantic music but a meeting of a young boy and father); it really gives you time to think (the whole thing is in slow motion); though the tag line is “We understand family holidays” we aren’t looking at a nuclear family, a female is only present as a voice in this version or in another I have seen recently as a participant coming in from the side who may be a wife, could be a girlfriend, but essentially she isn’t part of the intense father-son relationship.
The whole feel reminded me of this Athena poster which was on everyone’s wall when I was 15…
which is no surpise. The ad, like the poster, appeals to women because biologically we are programmed to look for appropriate fathers for our children and who will provide love and security for them (ok all you feminists out there, we are certainly capable of rising above our biology!) both ad and poster use handsome men that appear to be responsible – golddust 
. And of course, it is mostly be women who organise and choose holidays and they are times when they dream of bonding, even better if their partner bonds with the children and gives them “quality time”.
What’s interesting to me is that the ad can also be read in a completely different way, a way that speaks to the single fathers out there who may only get 1-2 weeks per year to have this kind of “quality time” with their kids. The woman involved in the ad takes rather a back seat and could equally be a girlfriend as a wife.
So, I asked my divorced dad flatmate how the ad made him feel…he said, “confused”. He didn’t understand where the woman in the family was. I suspect that this is because he is still in the period of a divorce when being able to take your kids on holiday is just a pipe-dream. If his situation changes maybe I will bring it up again. But I would be interested to know if any single fathers responded to the ad positively.
PS For the sordid truth behind the man and baby poster check out…
15
Jan
08
links for 2008-01-15
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A little site i like because I can get seeds for good cheap prices, simple, they know what their USP is unlike so many other places. The slogan says it all “More bloom for your buck”
12
Jan
08
links for 2008-01-12
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I visit Worth Abbey for retreats occasionally and I think this is a brilliant. Google brought in a new monk to the fold. The power of advertising my friends, it can change lives!
09
Jan
08
links for 2008-01-09
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Recommended by Jane McGonigal. One of her key prediction for the future is that the public will expect tech companies to have a clear vision for a life worth living. I would say that this will apply to public expectations of all advertisers.
We all know that the advertising world is undergoing upheaval, digital seems to be taking away audiences from the mainstay of deliver, television; ad formats online don’t seem to be offering that holy grail of click throughs it promised; video pre-rolls, in-player and in-stream video are found “annoying” by a worrying 82% of the audience according to Forrester’s “Interactive Marketing Forecast 2007-2012″ . I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
But part of me feels that perhaps we are just seeing how things truly are at last, the wool is being rudely ripped away from our eyes. Let me explain.
Working in digital you get used to knowing fairly accurately how many of your audience are paying attention to you and what they are doing. This is scarey. If you can measure a click through you can directly assess the effectiveness of your visuals. But digital figures rarely have the impact of TV figures, even now – eg 17,000 online vs 1 million viewers for a typical one off doc on Channel 4. Such figures and the fact that they can’t be measured have meant that essentially advertisers have had an easy ride – the number of people viewing an ad is extrapolated from the number of people watching a programme. 3 million for the opening of Big Brother this year? Lovely.
However, collecting audience figures for TV has always been an arcane art and I believe that it’s been done wrongly and that figures have been over-inflated, contributing to feelings that a) digital isn’t delivering and b) tv audiences are dropping off massively, when they are probably reducing more reasonably. Here’s how it works.
BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) interview 52,000 people per year to determine various audience types and viewing behaviours. Of this 52,000, they then choose a number of respondents from different audience segments, 5,100 home to be exact representing 11,500 viewers, to receive a black box which connects to their tv and which records what they are doing, including what programmes are videoed, added to hard disk etc. All people in the household register their presence when they watch tv using a remote control. From the information that is collected BARB extrapolate total viewing figures. ie from a sample of 10,000 people they will extrapolate Millions of viewers. But there are 60 million people in the UK so this represents 0.0085% of the population….
Here’s a story I was told and was assured was true, though the cynical part of me thinks it is an urban myth. One programme regularly received high ratings but every 4th week they dropped to below 1 million. All sort of theories were put forward for this but in the end it transpired that every 4th week a long distance lorry driver on the BARB programme had to do a trip that took him away over night. He wasn’t around and his absence caused and extrapolated drop of about 2 million viewers.
All this goes to show two things -
1) digital works far better for advertisers than tv because it stops agencies from complacency about who is watching and why
2) get your measurements right or reap the reward.
04
Jan
08
Sony drops DRM
Hoorah! Sony, the last of the big 4 music companies to maintain their DRM (digital rights management) of music, have dropped it. Though theoretically DRM guards against musical piracy by preventing distribution in practice people were too cunning to be bothered by it – either breaking the DRM with downloaded tools from the web or just not bothering to buy Sony product. Now though we will all be able to circulate our music freely.
Now far be it from me to criticise the great golden calf of modern design and tech, but shouldn’t Apple look at doing something similar? After all, iTunes is a completely proprietory system and it’s rather restrictive.
It’s why I went for a creative Zen – that and the radio. Just a thought.
02
Jan
08
links for 2008-01-02
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Interesting and simple analysis of how different online communities, or community functions, fulfill different elements of Maslow’s hierachy. The holy grail? Creating reassurance and self worth.
