I've moved to the @Proximity blog

I've put this blog temporarily on hold as I'm putting time and energy into @Proximity; the all agency blog from Proximity London.

It's full of good stuff, and all the things I'd normally blog here.

www.atproximity.blogspot.com

www.twitter.com/atproximity

Best M
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YouTube the second largest search engine in the world

Many people think of YouTube as a video platform. The truth is it is the second largest search engine on the planet second to Google. The tweaks to the sites design last month helps emphasise this with the large clean search box in the masthead.

Combine this with the interactivity people are introducing to video and you have a great communications platform, that can be a much, much more engaging alternative than Google search connected to text and images.

Here are my two favourite interactive YouTube video examples. First up - I think one of the first examples, interactive streetfighter weighing in with 6.2m views.



The second, a website for a full service US agency Boone Oakley, weighing in with 500k views.



Lovely.

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iphone apps versus android revenue

Following on from my iphone app list, a perfectly timed link from Bruce on the relative values of i-phone apps versus android.

Although the gap between android and iphone installed base is quited as x15 (more iphones), the gap in terms of revenue from apps is enormous.

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/01/developer-offers-inside-look-at-sales-gap-between-app-store-and-android-market/


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My top ten iPhone Apps

After twenty years in this industry mobile is finally coming of age. I love the fact it is partly fueled by a galaxy of cottage industry created apps that is creating something for everyone.My top ten iphone apps at the moment:

1. Location aware Google Maps
2. Sky News for something to read where there's network access(much better than the BBC version due to usability issues)
3. iPod for watching Family Guy on the tube
4. Free RSS Reader for giving me something to read on the tube where there's no network access
5. Zuti London City for tube travel planning
6. Starmap for location aware star gazing
7. Wunderradio for bringing my favourite radio stations to everywhere I am
8. Rightmove for location aware house hunting to reassure me house prices are finally on the up
9. Geodefence for time wasted gaming
10. Doom Resurrection for nostalgic first person shooter gaming

In short, everything Useful or Entertaining. Losing my phone would be worse than losing my wallet.

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Deposit cheques by iphone

USAA Bank allows customers to make cheque deposits without ever seeing the cheque. Brilliant example of how a brand makes lives easier.

http://www.iphonebuzz.com/bank-allows-depositing-of-checks-using-iphone-pics-108140.php

In the UK people are more likely to change their spouse than their bank account, this app is one that would make me switch.

Great acquisition and loyalty tool.

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Small is beautiful in the bloatwide web

Remember all the exhortations about ‘bloatware’ in context of desktop applications?

Websites are the new bloatware experiences while the forced discipline of small patches of portable real-estate are where the action is at. Small is indeed beautiful.

I think you see the constraints of a small number of pixels and limited processing power forcng discipline on what is included in an app. While websites get heavier and more function heavy.

A good example is the iPhone Facebook app. They’ve stripped a huge amount of the site functionality away and focussed on making the best bits as easy to use as possible. Arguably, creating a better experience than the more ‘bloated’ website experience. I think this applies to a lot of the good apps that offer site functionality. My favourites are Facebook, Linkedin, LastFM and Sky News.

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Hatemail senders exposed in art work

This was in the printed version of Wired this month but not online.

Basically an artist who uses animals researched the anonymous hatemail she received to link it back to the original senders, and is publishing a book connecting the real people to the hate mail they sent.... all the information is public domain.

It raises interesting issues around the assumption of anonymity online, and how much information is easily available.

Wired reports the artist Tinkebell used Google, Yahoo, Windows Live search and a RapLeaf API to link social networking profiles with email addresses.

English article in Dutch newspaper NRC -
http://www.nrc.nl/international/Features/article2243400.ece/Artist_publishes%20_hate_mail_received_after_killing_her_cat

... and the artists website - www.tinkebell.com




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Growth and Mr Complete, finally final HD Youtube vids

These are the two final videos going on Youtube for these projects.

Royal Mail Growth

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Royal Mail Mr Complete



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Eternal Moonwalk

And this counts as the best Michael Jackson tribute I've seen.

The Eternal Moonwalk. People all over the world doing the Moonwalk. Although I can't help but notice most people jst don't have a clue how to do it. :)

www.eternalmoonwalk.com

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Best use of Facebook Connect I've seen

This is a great piece of work. Mixing personal data and images with movie.
Love it.

www.prototype-experience.com

I've seen this from a few people's accounts and the effect is very different. Basically, if you have an employment history, and pictures of your loved ones, it gets very spooky!

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XBox 360 is a Howler

Microsoft are making great efforts to position the XBOX 360 as a contender to be the centre of your digital entertainment. They've done a good job of streaming video through the box as part of XBox Live, and recently announced plans to allow XBox Live users to access Sky channels directly through their console. Microsoft also recently announced they will allow users to access Facebook and Twitter from within their Xbox 360 consoles.

XBox has a good claim to this role, its much more open as a platform than the PS3 and talks easily to Vista PCs and is happy to play DivX movies stored on people's PCs across WiFi or wired networks. It also integrates conveniently with music, and is a good enough DVD player. For highend AV enthusiasts the fact the remote is controlled by IR makes it easier to integrate with AV systems, compared to PS3's Bluetooth remote.

Its got everything going for it from my perspective, except one big problem; it's a howler.

The console sounds like a harrier jump jet landing. This doesn't matter when you're deep in a fragfest, but is a real problem if you're trying to watch Britains Got Talent or The Wire, where the fan noise is a big distraction.


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Facebook + eCommerce = Adword scale revenue

All eyes have been on how Facebook is going to turn its massive user base into the kind of revenue streams that something as simple as Adwords created for Google.

My money is that fusing social networking with ecommerce is that way that Facebook cracks this. If it works social media connected to convenient payment opens up a business model that makes iPhone apps look like a mere pecadillo.

Facebook aims for revenues with e-commerce credits
http://digitalmedia.strategyeye.com/article/b95c80dc9f/2009/06/01/Facebook_aims_for_revenues_with_site_credits/

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Google Factoids

Was recently at a presentation by Bruce Daisley of Google who threw some nice little factoids out:


15 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

17p in every pound spent in the UK is spent online

1 in 3 of the UK Internet population have posted a comment

Apple iPhone users make x15 search requests. They tend to be shorter and location based.

In the UK, people make 15 searches before buying a plane ticket, 9 before buying a lap top

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A horn for your iPhone

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Something good for your desktop

Love this. Graze will send daily nibbles to your desk. Based on the take up in this building they're onto a winner.

http://www.graze.com/

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Did You Know? 3

An oldy but a goody. Fast changing world.

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Three things a digital marketeer needs

OK, OK, does it need to be said? But someone asked me recently, so there you go.

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1 - A strategy

It sounds obvious but it is essential to have a framework that helps prioritise and focus effort. This can be at a business or product level and should consider audience, audience needs, audience behaviour, stakeholders, business objectives, existing assets. A digital strategy is the first step to investing successfully in digital to create value for a business. It puts the basics in place to allow informed decisions and can act as a roadmap and touchstone for the many digital activities that are possible. Digital creates unique opportunities for brands to be useful and valued by people. It can build strong relationships, create meaningful experiences, be a powerful research medium, capture data, or be a compelling direct or awareness medium. It is also an increasingly powerful facilitator of opinion. A digital strategy will help you judge what is the best use of digital to achieve your business objectives.

2 - An understanding of your customers

Understanding customers is essential to creating effective advertising and marketing communications and digital content. What kind of content or functionality will create value for your customers? How can this be leveraged to increase loyalty, or use?
Customer insight allows you to apply the strategy effectively.

3 - Valued content

However it is delivered, wherever it is. Valuable, searchable content built on customer insights is an increasingly important component of digital. On a website, in a community, as forum members, in a CRM programme, on Youtube. Wherever it is. Content that adds value to your customers lives is essential.

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What does Web 3.0 mean for marketers?

Have been asked this question quite a bit lately. The short version is "not much for the mo and not likely to matter in '09. Concentrate on giving customers what they want or need online."

Slightly longer version below.

Web 3.0 is an umbrella term to cover off 'what's going to be the next big thing on the WWW'.
More than anything specific within the Web 3.0 lexicon, the 'browser war' going on will have an enormous influence on what happens next because it will dictate whether we live in a Google or Microsoft vision of the WWW. On one side we have Microsoft and Explorer, keen to keep people running applicatons on their PC in Windows; on the other we have Google and Chrome aiming to move people off there PC, out of Windows onto the Web. If this view prevails people will spend much more time doing all of the functional activity most people associate with applications like MS Office.

There are some significant data security issues around this approach to the networked world we live in that may well create a backlash against much of the crystal ball gazing about the WWW.
Web 3.0 is broadly agreed as being built around themes of networked computing, collaborative code platforms, tagged and interrelated content.

The last of these is perhaps the one that will have the biggest impact on advertising and marketing. This is because it will become increasingly easy for people to access and navigate tagged and linked content, and manipulate data in different ways.

A good Web 2.0 example of this is how a technology as simple as RSS is slowly changing the way people access content, which has an implication for publishing.

The idea of a 'website' or homepage for news (which attracts revenue from display advertising' starts to become irrelevent as people self select streams of content that they are likely to be interested in. Inserting text based advertising into these messages becomes a new method, that offers up significant personalisation opportunities. This will put a greater empahasis for marketers of adding genuine value to people to affect how they feel about a brand, rather than pushing 'advertising messages'.

What does it all mean for marketing? Marketing needs to continue to innovate, experiment and learn from people's behaviour.

As usual... marketing will need to join the conversation with a credible opinion rather than chest beat for attention.

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Soundbites for '09

OK, here were some of my comments, published late.

“The biggest feature of 2009 will be how the economic gloom and forecasts play out. Previous recessions have traditionally pushed marketing budgets into measurable and accountable media. This is likely to be good for more measurable digital activity.”

“The browser war will progress but we’ll not see much change as this is a longer play. Does the future of applications live on a desktop in a Windows environment or on the Internet? The latter of these will create some interesting opportunities for how brands can add value to people’s lives, as more of the useful stuff you do on your desktop moves into a more dynamic and personalisable webspace. There could well be a back lash against this approach as people become increasingly concerned about identity fraud and data security.”

“The loose collection of what Web 3.0 might be will continue to unfold. Connected content (data) is one theme likely to affect marketing and advertising in 09, as it becomes easier for consumers to use tagged and linked data. Consumer power will not be going away any time soon. Buzz, its measurement and influence will attract more marketing spend as people become more familiar with the link between buzz and sales.”

“API’s still haven’t made the big impact their potential suggests. I can’t wait to see the first uber-bank offer a white label API for personal banking services that other ‘bank brands’ can sell on with other value services attached.”

“As it becomes easier for people to self select content and functionality in their own personal digital environments, webpages in the traditional sense (like news homepages designed to generate revenue through display advertising) will give way to more intelligently targeted marketing messages.”

“Welcome back copy, and the rise of the micro-niche! We’ll see more relevant tailored text based advertising to niche audiences in niche places being delivered on a large scale. Marketers will have to focus on adding genuine value rather than pushing traditional advertising messages.”



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How depressed can you get?

University College London depression predictor.

The predictD research group is made up of mental health professionals and academics from Europe and South America who undertook research into predicting risk of depression.

The study was led by Professors Michael King and Irwin Nazareth in the Research Departments of Mental Health Sciences and Primary Care and Population Health at University College London, and was funded principally by a grant from the Vth Framework of the European Commission’s Scientific Research Programme.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/predict-depression/demograph.php

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Make Me Super

Visual v text search

I love the searchme search engine which displays results as website screen grabs alongside text.


Text based search technology is all well and good, but if you're looking for a towel rail, or a lamp, visual search is the way to go.

It seems that Google haven't moved into this space yet, but you can already see more visually cued navigation emerging in their new browser; Chrome, which features thumbnails of your most visited sites as your default home page.

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Amazon takes frustration out of packaging

Hallelujah Amazon, for making the world a better place by taking a first step towards stripping away the unnecessary packaging so many consumer goods are wrapped in with their Frustration Free Packaging.













A great example of extending a user experience of site and into the real world.

As a dad who has to cut kids toys out of their wrapping I am loving this. I hope it bumps their Xmas sales. :)


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Google v Microsoft - Browser Wars

Google v Microsoft v Apple v Mozilla

Google surprised everyone with the launch of Chrome which was their first salvo in the ongoing Browser Wars raging across the Internet.



The browser war is all about owning the user and is being most fiercely pursued by Google and Microsoft. Google want people using apps independent of OS across the Internet, Microsoft want people firmly in applications on people's desktops.

Whoever win will inherit the user, and the revenue those users represent.

About a month into learning to live with it, I love Google's new browser; Chrome. It is a fabulous first move in the Browser Wars, that has pretty much immediately made Safari irrelevent, and pushed IE way to the back of the queue.

Here's my current browser round-up.

1 - Mozilla Firefox; open source community, stable, quick, great features, good compatibility across majority of sites. Browser of choice for everyday. 8/10

2 - Google Chrome; fabulous new kid on the block. New approach, stable, but not enough compatibility across websites yet. Will be browser of choice for me as soon as possible. 8/10

3 - Apple Safari; Good enough. A kind of 'better IE' in that it does most things IE does, but slightly quicker with an Apple interface. 5/10

4 - Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE); Dog of a browser. Unstable, heavy, slow, bloated, heavy-handed security. 2/10

If you haven't spent some time with Chrome it is worth the time investment.

Google v Apple

Everyone seems to be dissing the new Google phone as big and ugly which from first looks seems fair enough.

Dissing the phone though is missing the point that Android, Google's open source platform has little to do with the hardware and everything to do with the user experience.



I’d put money on open-source Android beating proprietary Apple in the long term.

Apple seems to be moving to represent bloaty proprietary apps that run slow on PCs (i-Tunes/Safari) compared with Google’s user centric approach that is hardware independent (Chrome, Maps, Mail, etc etc).


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Unfinished Swan

Love this interface/environment idea.


The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

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LinkedIn apps to reach business/professional audiences

LinkedIn has opened up to allow 3rd parties to develop applications for their platform using Google's Opensocial development model.

This has real potential for clients looking to make contact with business/professionals. There are already some good apps that offer real benefits and value to this much more business focussed social network.

I particularly like Slideshare, Bloglink and Huddle that look like they'll add a lot to the experience and utility of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has quietly and solidly built its audience and reputation over the past few years and is absolutely one to watch in the future.

Royal Mail and growing your business

OK so I don't normally do this however after about twelve months of graft we went live with the digital and direct elements of the Royal Mail Grow campaign.It's a good example of digital, direct and data working together, and of integrated comms that works on different levels in different media, rather than being matching luggage.



“Royal Mail is a partner that can help you grow your business.” This is the message Royal Mail is sending out loud and clear right now.

AMV BBDO's TV


There's also some lovely print work AMV have done that has a different look and feel but the same strong message about how Royal Mail can help your business Grow.

This work (along with promotion on RM.com) suggests an end destination of www.royalmail.com/growth , which along with the online advertising and direct comms is where Proximity London came in.

When we looked at the small businesses that this message is aimed at, our research indicated that time poor business leaders valued advice tailored to their particular business type above all else. We realised that if we could deliver this advice it would form the first step of delivering on the promise made in Royal Mail’s brand advertising, by giving them a road map to how Royal Mail can help them grow their business.

This line of thought lead to the creation of the Royal Mail Growth website. It is the final destination for all Growth related communications. If you tell Royal Mail a little about your business on the site, they will send you a tailored growth pack that is full of information and an action plan about how to keep customers, find new ones, and save time and money.

In effect it aims to be useful to people, and 'walks the walk' of the claim in the ATL by producing tailored relevant information.

Check it out here

"Physical Digital" delivers results

When you combine off and online marketing communications into a single user experience then the overall effectiveness is much higher than either channel being used in isolation.

I'm calling this 'physical digital', where we use digital to increase the value or meaning of physical objects, which results in much higher effectiveness/response rates.

The Mr Complete work we did at Proximity earlier in the year is a good example of this. By interacting with the character online, the physical origami man means much more when you get to touch him for real.

Uncle Ben is Twittering for Rice

I like this from Uncle Ben's who are mad about rice and like to twit about it.  And why wouldn't they?

http://twitter.com/UncleBen

We're all gettin old, UK Online Usage Figures

• Over the last year (Oct 06 – Oct 07), the share of the UK Internet population made up by under 25 year-olds has decreased from 29% to 25% - a relative drop in share of 16%
  
• During the same period the share made of 55+ year-olds has increased from 16% to 19% - a relative increase of 22%
  
• Overall, the average age of the UK Internet population has risen from 35.7 to 37.9 in this period

Some great Internet usage figures aggregated here:

http://www.etcnewmedia.com/review/default.asp?SectionID=11&CountryID=53

Chevrolet's yah-boo at Citroen

Citroen had a big hit with their Citroen C4. The car attracted praise even from Jeremy Clarkson in the UK. It had a good ride, and an incredible technical spec for its category and price point (including electronic gearbox, xenon directional headlights, full colour satnav, lane departure warning, etc). Citroen backed the car with a slick TV ad under the strap "Alive with technology" that brilliantly dramatised this product truth.

The ad spoke directly to a male youth audience by picking up on some cultish Transformer animations that had been circling on Youtube. The ad quickly gained cult status online. It's been viewed plenty more than 2 million times on YouTube over the past two years or so.



It has spawned lots of parodys online.

This one from Chevrolet is remarkable and funny.



But what is it doing?

Citroen dramatised a product truth in a memorable way.

Chevrolet assert an attitude. They claim their car is the 'Real Deal'.

My take out is: "hey, we make dull cars and have nothing to say about them, so we're gonna poke fun at our competitors instead.... yah-boo Citroen we can animate robots to"

At the end of the day the Chevrolet ad reminded me of what a great tech spec the Citroen has, and made me go watch the Citroen ad again.

Maybe that C4 is worth a test drive....

BBC reveal iPlayer usage info

Most interesting figure for me here is that 5% view iPlayer on a TV connected to their PC. This is a trend I predict will steadily rise over next 12 months.

http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39268400,00.htm

Direct + Digital, the ultimate superglue

The role of digital in the direct space

Direct communications traditionally aimed to go ‘direct’ to consumers to stimulate a response. Measurement of direct comms has focussed on tracked responses, which means marketers can make a statement about its effectiveness.

Key strengths of direct comms include:
1 - Targeting – An important aspect of direct is its ability to precisely target customers
2 - Personalisation - Direct can be tailored to customer needs based on data
3 - Optimisation - Direct can be tested to optimise before roll out to a wide audience
4 - Analysis – Data allows statistical analyses which leads to better future comms
5 - Accumulation – Direct learns more about customers over time

Criticism of direct comms include:
1 - Cost - The cost per thousand will be higher than almost any other form of mass promotion (although the wastage rate may be much lower). Also, development costs in database acquisition/development.
2 -Waste - Large quantities of paper are thrown away (see below).
3 -Alienation - Some recipients resent direct marketing being "forced" upon them, and boycott companies that do so.

Digital is represented as a perfect direct medium because it plays so well to the strengths of direct comms and avoids most of the criticism.

These are the key digital channels that have been used to for direct:
1 - Display advertising (online advertising)
2 - Search Engines (Google, Yahoo etc)
3 - Email inboxes
4 - Website content/functionality (corporate sites/microsites etc)

Which map out as:

Acquisition: finding new customers
· SEM Paid for Search Engine Marketing (bought by media agencies)
· Email (led by direct and digital agencies)
· Online advertising (often on a Pay per Click basis, bought by media agencies, created by direct, digital and creative agencies)

Retention: keeping customers and increasing their value.
· Relationship Platforms built around website functionality (led by digital agencies with website expertise)
· Email (led by direct and digital agencies)
· Content and functionality that enhances existing web platforms/sites (led by digital agencies)

Digital Direct is often seen as needing to be ‘offer led’ to illicit a response. This works well and is an established direct approach.

People generally accept that there is a huge opportunity to engage people using digital in ways that are not offer led based around being either useful or entertaining to earn the right for people’s attention.

Being useful to people offers a genuine reason to create a relationship over the longer term.

Being entertaining fulfills the need people have to be distracted from the day to day.

Digital has opened up new territories where brands can potentially be useful or entertaining in order to illicit a response or desired behaviour from people. It is a quickly changing list, but could perhaps be chunked up as the following, all of which planners and creatives should be aware of to inform their thinking.

Web Services (APIs) – services and information are increasingly available ‘off website’. The easiest form of this is widgets and gadgets that connect to universally available web services across the Internet.

Opportunities
1. Create content or functionality that is useful or entertaining.
2. Apply existing web services to clients business (eg use Google Earth power to dramatise global activity)
3. Reuse existing client web services to create new touchpoints

Web 2.0 – Web 2.0 exists alongside Web 1.0. Its mostly about technologies that allow people to create, publish and share content. Advertising and marketing is figuring out how best to engage in this space, for example applications in Facebook are proving difficult to make work successfully.

Opportunities
1. Target the alpha members of social spaces to influence the audiences they are already connected to
2. Create social environments for brands to create relationships with them
3. Add value to existing social space consistent with a brands values and ambitions


Mobile – Enormous hype and overpromising around the opportunities of mobile. It is slowly gaining credibility as technologies and networks mature. Apple’s i-phone is one of the first credible mobile browsers of existing Internet content. New image recognition technologies make mobile and increasingly credible bridge between off and online communications.

Opportunities
1. Find and use mobile response technologies (eg image recognition/digital vouchers in print that can be photographed etc)
2. Use as bridge between on and offline comms
3. Use as an immediate response channel
4. ‘On phone’ applications that can be useful or interesting

Video and ipTV - Video will grow in importance and work alongside rather than replace interactive text and image based content, just as Web 2.0 co-exists alongside Web 1.0 content.

1. Video will be an increasingly important type of content we will have to produce


Other areas include [no doubt lots more here]:
Paid for Media – display advertising, sponsorship, what is available, how it works.
Gaming – on console, on mobile, online
...
...

Finally, Web 3.0, is not an immediate opportunity but one to watch closely for trends. No-one knows what might happen next however the following are interesting futures that will be important to relationship building in the future:

1. ‘Social Graphing’, which can be interpreted as richer interactive experiences and new interfaces for exploring content, based on showing how content is related depending on how people have ‘tagged’ them

2. Semantic web – ‘soups’ of content linked by meaning, rather than the more rigid information architectures that the Internet has inherited from the physical world (digital spaghetti becomes digital soup).

Advocates of digital marketing often see direct and brand comms as inseperable. This is because of the flexibility and ‘total journey’ that digital already offers, and because of the promise of rich media experiences that advocates believe will outstrip linear audio and video as the emotional experience of choice for consumers in the future. This is backed up by the recognition that console gaming can already offer a deeper more emotional experience than a trip to the movies.

A definition of digital’s role in direct space could be that is the ultimate superglue that can connect people and brands, in exactly the way people want that connection to be.

Google Trends

Great tool for exploring search trends and sites. Better than some commercially available services for searching hot topics, buzz, and traffic etc.

eg search for 'Halo 3' in the UK over past twelve months

http://www.google.com/trends

Usability is maitre d'

Have you ever walked into a restaurant or shop where you didn’t quite like what you saw, but got sucked in anyway because the Maitre d’ welcomed you and made it hard to leave? A good maitre d’ is worth their weight in gold. Online, usability is the maitre d’.

The Internet is the easiest medium in the world for a prospect to change his mind and walk away. Regardless of your no doubt great content and fabulous functionality, if it is hard for prospects to use they will walk away and check out your competitors.

Creating a memorable experience that can cut through clutter is as important online as anywhere else. But it needs to be memorable for the right reasons: because the experience, function and content come together perfectly. There are plenty of examples where creating a rich interactive experience has got in the way of the basic fundamentals of good marketing online.

Google created a great user experience by making the decision to have a simple text entry box on an essentially blank page, harnessed to great search technology. In a world of cluttered portal pages it stood out: perfect usability coupled to a focus on user need.

The best interactive moments are those when the content and experience of media exactly responds to the needs of the user.

Nice word cloud application

I love word clouds and this simple app is great fun.

http://wordle.net/

Self selected URLs and Searchable Flash

There's been a lot of comment about icanns decision to allow self selected top level domain names

What does this mean?

Well not a lot really, other than brands should invest in their TLD and hodl onto it for future URL strategy, and in the short term it might be useful for some tactical campaigning.
My own view is that over time URLs will sink below what users want to use to find content online. A good analogy is phone numbers, we used to need to remember them, but now there are other layers of data on top of them that are more useful. ie You browse your address book of names, and the phone does the rest. You'd expect the same to happen online too... URLs are important, but to infrastructure rather than to users.

Much bigger news that is mostly ignored in the press is searchable Flash, which will make it easier for people to find rich interactive content within Flash. One of the problems with Flash has been that it is time consuming and therefore expensive to make Flash content searchable, so it is big (and good) news that Adobe, Yahoo and Google are working on this.

Google - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html

Picked up here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-google-yahoo-spiders-can-now-crawl-through-flash-sites.html

The Great Digital Britons

What makes us UK folk love the Internet so much?

I wrote this for Campaign's Digital Essays supplement last week.

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The Great Digital Britons

I picked up a book recently called “Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain 1942”. It was published by the United States War Department to reduce friction between American GIs and the local populace. Three insights into the British stood out for me:

1 – “THE BRITISH ARE TOUGH… The English language didn’t spread across the oceans and over the mountains and jungles and swamps of the world because these people were panty-waists.”

2 – “DON’T BE A SHOW OFF… The British dislike bragging and showing off.”

3 – “INDOOR AMUSEMENTS… The British make much of Sunday. All the shops are closed, most of the restaurants are closed, and in the small towns there is not much to do.”

I think these observations still ring true today. We may be a fading global power, but when it comes to the Internet, there is no doubt we are a global player, and a leader in Europe.

This is thanks to the efforts of ‘The Great Digital Britons’, who spend more time and money than anyone else in Europe online.

Who is the Great Digital Briton?

In 2007, nearly 15 million British households had Internet access, two thirds of which were broadband. These people have the highest average number of daily visitors online, the highest usage days per month (21), and the highest average time spent online per month per user (34.4 hours) in all of Europe. Digital Briton’s are the Euro Net-Heads.

And they’re not afraid to spend money online either. They shop online more than any other Europeans: three quarters of Digital Britons buy goods other than groceries online, compared to only 60% of people on the continent. In Xmas 2007 the UK saw £1 in every £7 spent online.

And it seems they can’t help but talk about it either.

About one in ten have created a blog and nearly a third have read one. More than half our 16-24 year olds use social networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo at least once a week.

So now we’re spending more of our time and money online what’s going to happen there next?

My prediction is that our Great Digital Britons will spend the next eighteen months figuring out how to connect their Internet to their favourite piece of indoor entertainment kit, the TV.

And there are some big brands who are keen to help them do it; Microsoft, Apple and Sony lead the charge to bridge the fifteen foot gap between people’s TVs and their computers. From new set top boxes to games consoles that make it easy to take content from a PC and displaying it on a TV.

And it will be this new bridge, that’s will inform digital content over the next few years. Couple this to the massive roll out of broadband we are experiencing (we are likely to become Europe’s most broadband connected country in 2008) and video content online is going to be legitimate and mainstream.

Last week my father-in-law asked if I had used BBC’s iPlayer yet. He explained that it allowed him to catch up on his weekly viewing, and that it was so good he’d got someone round to wire it up to the telly. We celebrated his 70th last month.

This surprise moment of unprompted advocacy underlined how huge video content on the Internet is going to be. The BBC’s iPlayer (bbc.co.uk/iplayer) is the carrot that will lead people to change. It is a compelling reason for people to connect their TV and PC because it creates a better viewing experience than traditional broadcast, and Grandpa has figured this out for himself. The BBC, a Great British Brand is showing Digital Britons the way forward.

So what might this mean for advertising and marketing?

People have talked a lot about the waning of TV as the primary advertising medium, however this new bridge between TV and PC will put linear sound and vision back on centre stage. Sure there are lots of innovative new ways of engaging people in the interactive space, but this combination of TV and broadband is a biggy for video content.

Along with new advertising and commercial models (see ‘music’ for clues), Internet content on TV will support traditional models like ad breaks and sponsorship bumpers. This is because people are happy to accept commercial messages in return for free quality content. This will be a fillip for the traditional ‘media owner’ model of content that digital has been eroding.

And this not necessarily a bad model because it forces media owners and content creators to give audiences what they want, because the value of media is driven by the number of eyeballs it commands. This has got to be good news for consumers.

This model also suggests a ‘de-emphasis’ of the technology that can drives digital communication, because it creates a commercial imperative to focus on people and what they want.

Agencies that can demonstrate they come from a background of understanding people and their behaviour are well placed to take advantage of this.

Everyone in advertising and marketing is going to have to get into the film and video production business. Brands are going to have to think about how they use and integrate video into their existing content.

Internet on TV will make Internet content more emotional too. There will be a demand for lots more content you can sit back and enjoy, rather than sit up and interact with. YouTube is all about short clips, when its connected to TV it will go more long form. You can already see how it is starting to create ‘channels’ of video rather than serve up individual clips.

In a world where Britain is taking a back seat in global affairs we have found a new world to influence, and the British are made of the right stuff to pioneer it; we’re as tough as nails, don’t show off, and like being indoors. And now we have the carrot of BBCs iPlayer, we’re going to rewire our houses to watch the Internet on TV.

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