by nick on September 25, 2009
I recently heard comedian Frank Skinner being interviewed by Dermot O’Leary on his Radio Two show. Skinner, former host of his own guest TV show which ran for six years, said that TV is rather unreal. With his makeup applied, his shirt choice amended to avoid a camera clash, specific timing, outtakes, warm ups, breaks, editing and so on, Skinner called it ‘manufactured.’
He went on to say that radio is much more authentic – like two blokes sat at the end of the bar in the pub. Just raw conversations really, making radio much more true to itself (I’m paraphrasing here).
Social media is described as many things, both good and bad. How about thinking of social media’s offer of authenticity as an opportunity for companies to host their own radio show?
by nick on September 19, 2009
John Battelle recently said, ‘Marketing is now like moving quicksilver. The marketer is the publisher and visa versa; the consumer is now both… that we should rethink, ‘our brand in the market’ as, ‘our conversation with the market.’
I’d like to chirp a complimentary point about synergy with product (otherwise it’s all about the sell and very little about substance). As I see it marketing, branding and product are now *more* than joined at the hip. They’re our own holy trinity of business.
All three are separate but suddenly they’re one and the same. They’re more than interlinked – they are each other. If marketing was a message or a story about a product/service, it has now become the book itself.
Simple example: the iPod was an instant phenomenon because of the product and how it made people feel, not because of its raw above-the-line marketing efforts. Great products and services are a conversation starter for me, how about you?
by nick on September 11, 2009
Audi is on the change. Silas Amos over at JKR Design blog praises their logo touch up and I agree. They’ve applied some Photoshop botox to rejuvenate their concentric circles and the font choice has been modernised. Not particularly noticable now but, when viewed on a timeline, the amendments/path of change becomes significant. Check out Budweiser’s logo timeline to see what I mean.
Audi is also rumoured to be launching an electric car at the Frankfurt motor show. Again, not particularly groundbreaking until you look at the marketing that’s preceding the show.
They’ve launched a micro site with video clips showing the power of electricity. The lawnmower clip could top the YouTube spoof chart and clearly took some producing. They all finish with, ‘on 9.15.09 electricity will be untamed.’ That’s the date Frankfurt opens.
The thinking is that ‘untamed’ doesn’t sit too well with an A3 owner with a pram in the boot. So is it implying something far sportier? Perhaps a Clarkson-heart-attack-rendering electric R8!
I understand the concept of a hero product within the line – which the R8 surely is – and I get that the Prius is de rigueur with Californians, but if electric cars are to make a pragmatic difference then I cant help but think the world’s fleet managers need to get on-board. Reliability, efficiencies, keen prices and whacking great big tax incentives for an electric A4 sounds like a winner to me.
Either way, it’s a hat tip for Audi who’ve had a terrible year but look to be pushing on with aplomb.
by nick on September 4, 2009
Google are the hottest company on the planet and they have well and truly won the war on search. That aint news to you. Fighting them directly is a bit like voting Labour in the next general election – a waste of energy.
You can’t be more of a lion than the lion himself, so throw in the towel. Move on. Fight another battle. Use new rules or change the game (even slightly). Semantic search is the future battleground where the engine understands more of your searching needs and the data it’s mined.
To the untrained eye this looks like the same ball game but it’s a much cleaner slate. Rather like Formula 1 this year where the cars appear the same as previous models but they’re inherently different. The new rules in both fields promise some new victors.
What’s so new about this semantic search?
Data has moved on exponentially since Google’s inception in 1997 (or so). Blogs, microblogs (e.g. Twitter) other social networking sites and book marking services stream and highlight more information than anyone could’ve honestly anticipated in the 90s.
Harnessing this data torrent allows for real time search results. If you’d searched for “Iran election” in June you probably wanted the latest news and insight on the troubles, not a standard bit of Foreign Office research.
Context is also increasingly important. Typing “Jaguar in London” could produce zoo or a car dealership results. Intelligence is needed to distinguish which you needed (known as disambiguation).
Making sense of search based on context and fresh data is the Holy Grail (closely followed by monetising it). Semantic search is craving to do just that.
Who’s playing in the hit-Google-from-another-angle game?
Bing (from Microsoft)
Mahalo (50% original content, 25% search and 25% knowledge exchange)
Aadvark (Vark.com asks your network for answers)
OneRiot (a real time socially-relevant engine)
Kosmix (a web guide with a dashboard)
Hakia (tabs results: web results, credible sites, images and new)
WolframAlpha (type a question, get an answer)
Twine (a bookmarking site on steriods)
Some are more semantic than others but that’s just eight players who are all in their relative infancy. With Yahoo’s open API code, Boss, anyone has access to a huge engine and can adapt from the basic Yahoo chassis. Google may have called game over on search 1.0 but there’s a whole new future out there…
UPDATE: since drafting this in early August, Google have announced a “fundamentally big change” via their Caffeine update.
Clearly, this threatens to put Bing et al back into their corner while Google blazes ahead with market share aplenty and more advertising than MadMen could dream of. We all know that’s not guaranteed though.
