NFC NVG (not very good)

 I am very proud of my new NFC enabled phone, in fact I specifically chose it over a slightly earlier model because I think NFC is going get bigger and more important in the next  couple of years and I like to be in with the in-crowd. So imagine my delight when I discovered that the bus stop at the top of Tottenham Court Road, which I use to catch buses back to Marylebone, has an NFC touchpoint on it.

The touchpoint promises – Travel information and extra information from brands.  And curious I tried it out. All it offers is a link to the TFL mobile site.

Ok, that is travel information, but that’s not extra information from brands. I was disappointed.

I don’t know, but I suspect that Clear Channel are charging brands to put content onto the NFC touch points which is why there was absolutely nothing from brands there.  I would suggest that brands are offered free access and the opportunity to provide any content they want – even a tv ad I’ve already seen would be better than promising everything and delivering nothing. In that way a growing audience will be built. Of course you can argue that these things take time, but why waste time? It doesn’t make sense to offer more than you are going to deliver because my expectation from now on will be that the content behind ad funded NFC will be thin at best and non-existant at worst.

Fiesta ST/Focus ST from Geneva Autoshow

Everyone loves a concept car, and it’s even better when they hit the streets. So here is the latest FordLIVE for your delectation all about the concept cars from Ford at the Geneva Motorshow.

A collection of predictions for 2012

I have been mulling over what I might usefully write at the turning of the year. I feel the need to mark the completely arbitrary distinction between 31st December and 1st January in some way. And the easiest thing would be to prepare some predictions for you to display my foresight and unbelievable genius. And my talent for sarcasm.

The fascination with making predictions about what the coming year will deliver online/in social/on mobile is a bit like the prediction frenzy that goes on in women’s magazines. Not so, you say. We base our predictions on understanding of the market, new developments we know about and our own razor sharp insight, you say. Hmmm. Who remembers the predictions around the Year of the Mobile? 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005…

And what about the various woolly predictions from last year? Here is one I read about Google+, and I kid you not,

“Someone will do something interesting with Google+”

Well strictly speaking there’s no way you could fail on that one. The writer didn’t say they were related to Mystic Meg…

Anyway – rather than attempt predictions of my own I thought I’d point you at some interesting ones on a variety of topics. If nothing else maybe you’ll get a laugh. Happy New Year!

What 2012 holds for social media on thenextweb
5 predictions for the Chinese mobile market in 2012 on Forbes
Online video predictions for  2012 from ReelSEO plus some good tips and info on searching and marketing on YouTube
*&%@#! and Other Ads Trends for 2012 from The Wall Street Journal
9 Facebook predictions for 2012 that don’t suck from NorthSocial

And finally, almost as accurate and certainly more amusing

What does the year of the Dragon hold for you? from gotohoroscope
Mystic Meg’s money predictions for 2012 from The Sun
Gung hay  fat choy! (phonetic chinese)

Goovies are great!

Hoorrah! The Goovies are on again. These are Cadbury’s Creme Egg sponsored animations provided by my favourite of all web amusement sites www.weebls-stuff.com.

I think these are a good example of an agency teaming with creatives to deliver something that really enhances a campaign and is really effective in its own right. The Goovies are true to the cracking (geddit) amusement levels of weebl and bob and the brilliantly off-kiltre and slightly macabre Cadbury’s Creme Egg goo suicide campaign and they seem to have let the creators of weebl and bob just get on with doing what they do, making highly amusing animations – which is I assume, why they wanted to work with them in the first place. Too often agencies see the creative work of others and rip it off. This is an example of how the brand and the creatives have worked very well, over a few years.

Anyway, here’s the first one – Eggvatar.

good viral

Kid + dancing + intelligence=  good viral for Samsung’s Galaxy 580 phone.

Relevant to the product, in the right place, with the right tone and product information and with a cute kid. Could it really have failed?

when it freezes over

Ogilvy are “freezing” the Senate building tonight using projection art from Seeper the art collective. There will be 4 lasers that you can interact with and images of people skiing, climbing etc. down the building. The aim is to draw attention to the latest model S-Max, the people carrier for sporty, male types.

http://www.ogilvy.co.uk/ogilvy-and-mather-advertising/new-ford-ford-s-max-launches-with-public-interactive-projections-to-freeze-over-uk-cities/

My questions are:-

How many of the target audience work around Senate House? Or is the aim to create an asset that goes on YouTube and can help win awards regardless of the audiencee?

How many of the Visteon pensions action group will be there? (Potentially quite a few when you look on the Facebook group of the 150 people who have said they will be attending)

Would the lasers enable me to hack the climbers/skiers off the tower thus allowing me to fulfill my James Bond villain ambitions?

Sorry if I sound jaded, but to create an event that has any meaning it has to be in the right place with the right message, not just generate some beautiful assets for YouTube that reflect the tv ad campaign. And I’m sure they will be beautiful and fun.

But relevant?

Smell-o-vision is real!

A great example of mixing digital and physical to create a great  brand experience, and with a banner! I love this kind of creativity.

Something new and interesting for Friday

I received a rather interesting comment post, transcript below. They seem genuine and actually if they aren’t I don’t care – I’d rather be a wide-eyed sucker than a cynical and hard bitten old bag (I may be the latter already -discuss)

Here is the post!

“We are Robin of Shoreditch, an anonymous group of creative outlaws looking to take from the rich and give to the poor. In this particular instance, the people of Haiti.

How? Well, we’re not rescue workers. And we’d be no good on a celebrity single. But what we can do is provide creative ideas that can add value to businesses and brands. So we’re providing every one of Brand Z’s Top 100 brands with just such a creative idea. In return, all we’re asking for is 1/10,000,000 (that’s one ten-millionth) of the value of those brands as a fee. Not for us. 100% of that fee will be going to the continued relief efforts in Haiti.

So why should you care? Well, we’d like to ask a little favour. You see, the more people who know about this project, the more pressure will build on the brands to pay their ‘invoices’ and the more money will be sent to Haiti. So we’d really appreciate it if you could put the word out on your blog and send people along tohttp://www.robinofshoreditch.com. Hopefully that way news of the project will spread so that the brands in question see that it’s in their best interests to pay up.”

They asked me to post a link and I have. I watch with interest.

Get your rouge out

Rouge magazine logo

P&G continue their long tradition of creating content that speaks to their consumersand it’s great to see.  Content has always been a key element in their communications from product placement in As the World Turns to their new venture in China. And now they have launched some openly owned content online for women in America and Canada.  It’s not massively deep but of course  there are great contests and prizes to be won.  The main drive is possibly to the print magazine that you can subscribe to…

In addition they seem to have ignored the social media opportunities for this magazine – there is no way to post this to any network  on the pages and doesn’t appear to be anything on any other network.

Primarily it’s the principle I like – they appreciate that the channels are there for the taking, that their opportunity consists in delivering an experience of a high quality that is really wanted/desired as opposed to a message that can be screened out. In times of recession low cost – high quality experiences are always going to win out as people seek to entertainment to take themselves away from the low feeling “out there.” (That’s why games and cinema traditionally do well in times like these.)

If 80% of your custom comes from 20% of your customers then they only need to engage some of the people some of the time for this approach to bring dividends.

http://www.rougemag.ca/Home.aspx?LangType=1033

Non-planning books for planners 2 – The Time Paradox

Continuing my reviews or recommendations of non-planning books for planners I lay before you the latest one I have just finished for your consideration The Time Paradox. It’s a great popular pyschology book about the way that different people experience or relate to time in different wys, how that influences their behaviours and ultimately impacts on their lives.

When we develop ideas around a core proposition we consider many avenues – how the product is made, heritage, price etc. Of course we look at user characteristics too, but never explicitly at how their relationship to time influences their actions. And yet, we each of us view time through about 6 sets of very particular glasses – present hedonistic, future pessimistic, future optimistic, transcendent. All of these will influence our purchasing behaviour and our relationship to a brand.

So for examples, brands like WKD appeal strongly to the present hedonistic in all of us. Whereas brands like Burberry appeal to an intriguing mix of past positive, present positive and future optimistic. If you know you are targeting a group with a strongly past pessimistic focus how does that change your communications? How does it make your audience view your communications?

This book gives no answers to any of that, it simply explains the different perspectives. The paradox? We all experience time at the same rate but view it completely differently. There’s also a great explanation of why intelligent and souful young men become suicide bombers that you shouldn’t miss.

If you are looking for a new perspective  this book will give it to you in spades.