by nick on March 26, 2010
Twitter is on a meteoric rise. In 2007 folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day; 300,000 times a day in 2008; 2.5 million per day in 2009 and now it’s 50 million tweets per day. This month the whole shebang crossed the 10 billion tweet milestone.
Which of your eyes would sell for a growth chart like this?
But dissenters say that folks don’t stay involved. That 60% of people who sign up, get bored within weeks and don’t return. That the noise from the few is deafening and that the many just listen and regurgitate. They’d say (ironically, probably via a blog) that it’s all a narcissistic fad.
Businesses are looking at Dell as the poster child of Twitter use and think they can all show offers in 140 characters that convert highly. But the fact is transactional sites get less than 10% of Twitter’s exit links, the majority goes to other content driven sites (social media). Others take a more puritan stance and think it’s the conversation – engagement – that wins in the end.
Personally, I’m likening the whole thing to cricket. Is there a more polarising game in existence?
Chances are if you like cricket, you’ll love cricket. You’ll want to skive off work and sit for hours watching what many would call ‘nothing much.’ You might even want to drop your fabulous music career for cricket commentary (Lily Allen does). The non-believers would laugh at you and say the whole thing is a waste of good grass.
Understanding and liking Twitter is every bit as binary. You either do, or you don’t.
But the one marketing area that unquestionably lends itself well to Twitter is sport. Take Lance Armstrong. Lance is the Stephen Fry of tweeting sports personalities and his build-up and insight to the Tour de France will be fascinating.
F1 newbie, Lotus are also on the guerrilla marketing bandwagon, allowing chief technical officer, Mike Gascoyne and others to give us real time access to their thoughts. During the Bahrain GP he actually told us that Jarno Trulli was pitting on the next lap. In the ultra-competitive and secretive world of F1 racing that level of engagement with outsiders (fans and rivals, obviously) is astounding. I’d argue that it’s to the benefit of the Lotus brand – to its share of mindset, to its growth, to its media coverage (as others write about it) and to its value as we get closer to the heart of Lotus as an organisation and build a relationship.
What about you and your organisation? Will you be donning your digital cricket whites this summer or would that be a time-wasting bore?
by nick on March 29, 2009
The Old (Barrichello), the Pretender (Button) and the Skint (the Brackley team) have pulled off a spectacular one-two in Melbourne to kick off the Formula One season.
Continuing the B fest, they’ve shown:
Belief – evidently they kept working hard when a full closure was more than likely.
Brains – the clean sheet of ‘09 regulations allowed them to show innovation beyond McLaren’s and Ferrari’s dreams.
Bravery – in the management buyout (and subsequent cut backs).
Brawn GP, now a euphemism for ‘Giant Killer,’ really have shown us it all this weekend.
Commentators said the grid was turned on its head. That’s untrue as the back of the pack looked all too familiar. But the midfield have undoubtedly caused the former front runners a major headache. To the victor go the spoils. Well, perhaps a Virgin.
Side quote: The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was the genius (Sid Caesar).
Photo credit: cbc888
by nick on November 2, 2008
As a Formula One fan I’m sometimes asked, “Don’t you find it all a bit boring?”
How can you find the pinnacle of racing, boring? Okay, it can be a little repetitive because they ARE doing laps after all, but it’s where sport and engineering meet at their finest point. A combination of supreme teamwork, athletics, marketing and more than a sprinkle of show business all provide a wonderfully inspirational sporting event. If NASA decided to field a race team, they’d do so in F1.
And this season has been electrifying with seven different winners. Last year’s world champion lost his mojo and raced like a castrated stallion. Both McLaren and Ferrari teams and drivers made several errors that helped take the world championship down to the nail-biting wire. Alonso regained some credibility – certainly more than the sport’s stewards managed to withhold. And we waved goodbye to a great British driver in D.C., whose character will certainly be missed.
The best man won in the most exciting finale anyone can remember. Congratulations Lewis Hamilton; an eight-time world champ in the making…
by nick on August 9, 2008
F1 fans will know the popular mantra well-used across the sport, ‘If you’re not going forwards, you’re actually going backwards.’ It speaks volumes for everyone’s permanent devotion to improving through innovation (and invention of course). You see, over the course of a season teams will gain a handful of seconds per lap. Therefore, if you’re lapping at 1 minute 26 seconds and coming first on day one of the season, it wont be long before the guys running at 1 minute 27, 28 or 29 catch and then over take you. Improvement is a must. Every day.
Surely the metaphor is just as appropriate in your market as it is in Bernie Ecclestone’s? Yes you’ve done well and that industry recognition was deserved but now you’ve taught others what success looks like. You’ve actually made their job a little easier by blazing that trail, by launching that product, by being number one. They’ve had a chance to calibrate their effort, probably finding more finance, stronger personnel and creating a better infrastructure. This (on right) is Mozilla’s Songbird music application. Look familiar? I hope you pushed on when it was good.
Chris Bangle, BMW’s much-maligned chief designer provides me with a worthy example. He hasn’t just sharpened his CAD pencil, he’s completely rewritten his (and everyone else’s) designs. Don’t use wasteful metal, give it skin. Don’t have one style, employ a morphing one. George Lucas couldn’t do much better. Improve every day or get left behind.
As ever: simple, yet very difficult…
