Tag Archives: digital

Down with this sort of thing!

Posted by alanduncan1980 on

Let’s not beat about the bush here. I’m not a fan of the Royal family. But, and I want to make this perfectly clear, that this is a digital blog and not a political blog. And bearing that in mind, I’m going to write something objectively that will actually be of use to them. The royals really need to learn about how to react should a potentially negative story break…

Regardless of whatever I think of the royal family, I fully admit and accept that there is a massive public interest in who they are and what they do. They sell papers and assorted tat however I disagree with them being good for tourists, but there is a genuine interest in them. Fortunately for the general public, there’s a media who are more than happy to give the public their fix of an old racist, a man who resembles a horse and his new wife, or the son of James Hewitt. In general, there is a happy coexistence between the media and royal institutions, but over the past month, two incidents have soured this relationship, namely photos of Harry appearing naked at a pool party, and some topless photos of the prole girl who will one day be queen. To be fair to the British media, they chose not to publish the pictures (The Scum aside), instead coming across as bloody hypocrites by continuing to print page 3 etc etc. Despite expressing disgust at the photos of Harry appearing in print, there’s very little that they Saxe-Coburg’s could actually do as Harry was probably fully aware that he was on film and was more than happy to act up for the crowd. But I do have a bit of sympathy for Kate. To an extent. She was shot on a very long lens camera from a considerable distance, which is arguably a huge invasion of privacy. But they problem that the Royals have, and they still struggle to get, is that because there is so much interest in them in general, they almost lose the right to privacy. I’m not saying that this is right or fair, but they almost have to live their lives under the assumption that their lives will be always be on camera. So, if Kate doesn’t want to appear  topless in the papers, she’s going to have to remain covered up outside the privacy of her bedroom or bathroom.

But what can the Royals learn about the digital world?

First things first, have you seen either the picture of Harry in the buff or Kate in the nip? Highly likely. In a pre-internet social media world, you wouldn’t have done thanks to the media blackout, but thanks to the internet, you can see the photos on any international website. They are there and thanks to the fantastically easy to use search functions on Google and Bing, finding those holiday snaps just got so much easier! The problem that the Royals have is that by threatening to sue media organisations who have published the photos left right and centre, they keep the context of the story in the forefront of the public interest, with the naughty photos, hidden out of sight. By having virtually rolling news on the story, the public are kept hanging on tenterhooks, wondering what the photos could possibly look like. Ultimately, the Royals have just got to accept that once they are out there, the photos are everywhere and you are not going to win by threatening to sue everyone. Instead, keep it simple. Issue an apology and criticise the press for intrusion of privacy, but kill the story. Let it die. Otherwise the more you try to ban or prevent people from seeing something, the more people will want to see it. I think that this clip from Father Ted best illustrates my point:

In conclusion: The Royals, if they are just normal people, as they’d like us to think they are, need to stop being so stuck up and faux moralistic. They need to embrace new technologies and retain a sense of humour. If anything negative comes out, laugh it off but make sure you are critical of the press. The people will eventually get sick of the press. Don’t try to sue everyone left, right and centre or enforce a ban as all you’ll do is fuel the interest of the majority. Once something is out there it’s out there. If you can retain your cool and sense of humour, people will actually respect you more as you’ll be seen as behaving like a normal person. 

Your digital life

Posted by alanduncan1980 on

Back in the digital stone age (pre-facebook) I often found the digital footprint of those online to be quite fake and false. Kind of like a dating site where people describe themselves as being how they would like to see themselves – then ultimately failing to live up to those expectations in real life. Then came Facebook and we all became totally transparent, sharing, commenting, saying who we’d dated and not really giving a shit about privacy and what we were revealing. Then came LinkedIn (in a bigger way, it’s been around longer than you think) and we upped our game professionally, enhancing our CVs, whilst at the same time, restricting who saw what on our Facebook. Somehow Twitter sort of sits in between, but that’s a discussion for another day.

My point is, is that we now have quite separate and distinct online profiles. Or personal and professional if you like. You don’t talk to your boss about the new band that you like so you don’t post links to tour dates on to LinkedIn, and you probably don’t talk to your friends about your company’s new brochure, so you don’t post it on to Facebook. We know the rules and boundaries and generally, we’re all a lot more savvy than we were 2-3 years ago (raise your hands if you lock your Twitter when applying for a new job? Thought so ;) ).

So, we’ve got the personal and professional lives nailed, in a social networking context. But there’s one area of our lives that is difficult to transfer online, and it’s not something that we give a lot of consideration to – your private life.

Earlier this year I made a decision that has completely changed my life. Those of you who I see in real life on a regular basis know what I’m talking about however this is a complete mystery to the majority. It really hammered home to me how important it is to manage various aspects of your life and ensure that all content that you produce online really is relevant to your audience – whether it you brand you, or brand business. As a business, you keep the internal stuff internal. All the politics and hassle that goes into producing the final product is all kept in house and all that the audience sees is the finished product. And I think the same applies when you are posting content on to social media as an individual. Is what you are saying relevant to your audience? If you start posting really personal things, you’ll turn your audience off and you’ll stop getting through to them.

If you ever have any doubts about whether your postings are relevant to your audience, maybe don’t post it. It probably should be kept in house.

Excuses excuses

Posted by alanduncan1980 on

This morning, as is now my routine, I was listening to the Today Programme on Radio 4 when I heard a rather peculiar article about Yell rebranding as Hibu. That’s Yell, as in Yellow Pages. Y’know, with the Yellow branding that’s really recognisable in the UK. Now, the new identity has been developed by Landor to be rolled out across all offline and online channels to reposition the beleaguered company. To make matters worse, Mike Pocock, the CEO of Yell/Hibu has claimed that the name Hibu ‘doesn’t mean anything’. Pretty shocking considering how powerful the Yell brand is within the UK.

Now, I mentioned above that the company is ‘beleaguered’. Let’s just say it isn’t doing very well. However, not so badly that they can’t scrape together a few shekels to appoint one of the costliest agencies around. But there’s a bigger issue at hand here. Have you tried to use Yell? It’s shit! Seriously! I tried to use it to search for the service of my present organisation, using the office postcode as my location and guess what? My company was not top recommendation. In fact the top recommendation was for a firm based in Bromley – over 9 miles away! Obviously this firm has bought this space to promote it’s business but I don’t really care whether they can serve me or not. I want to use a location based site to find an organisation as convenient to my location as possible. Yes, paid ads must be a consideration to make the business work however failing to deliver results that suit customers just isn’t going to wash. Which leads me to conclude that the problem is not the extremely recognisable brand, but the service that’s actually on offer. Rather than spunking a fortune on appointing an agency, Mr Pocock would have been better investing said fortune on improving the service.

Which leads me on to GM. Last week GM announced that they were pulling $10m worth of ads from Facebook because they just weren’t working and that it was so hard to get cut through via social media.

Yawn!

Seriously? They attempted to back up this claim with an illustration of social media to demonstrate how difficult it was to get your head around social media and make that impact. Oh, woe is me GM. Poor you.

Now, isn’t this the same GM that is rife with bureaucracy and incompetence, that had to drive to Washington 4 years ago, cap in hand, looking for a bail out? It’s it also the same GM that produce crap cars.

But obviously, it’s not GM’s fault that their social media campaigns are not working. How could it be? They only produce crap cars and those that use social media are clearly incredibly stupid. Yeah right. Conversely, those that use social media are incredibly savvy and if GM had decided to listen to what people were saying about their brand rather than picking up the metaphorical megaphone and shouting at them, maybe, just maybe, they might get an insight into the issues that people have with their cars?

Ultimately, it’s easier to find a scapegoat for your company failings however blaming social or digital channels for your failings is simply not on. Rather than attempting to ride the social media wave to guaranteed profitability (as realistic as the American dream), why not invest in listening to what people say about your brand, harvest this data and use it to improve your product. If you listen to your audience and apply their (tested) suggestions, you’ll create an army of brand advocates who will be more than happy to talk about your brand in a positive way on social and digital channels.

A blog about a blog about a blog…

Posted by alanduncan1980 on

Still with me? Phew, thought I’d lost you there. Yes, you read that right, this is a blog about a blog about a blog. Make sense? Don’t panic, I’ll explain…

Last month I wrote a blog about  an advertising campaign on the London Underground from the creative agency Clinic. Thusfar it’s been the most popular blog that I’ve written since I launched this blog at the start of the year, not by people coming to read my blog (if I’m honest, I haven’t really promoted it – I want it to be read by word of mouth) but from search. Basically people who were googling or binging (is that a word?) ‘creative agency london’ were finding my blog on the first page of search results. Which obviously made me pleased at the upsurge in traffic. Well, I was approached by Smart Insights to republish my blog on the Smart Insights blog site. Rather than just copy and paste the blog, I figured I’d do a bit more research into the campaign, including interview the agency themselves in order to add a bit more detail to the blog. So, the blog went live on Thursday last week and it went about as close to viral as a blog on a site of this nature could. So far, it’s been liked 15 times on Facebook, tweeted 39 times, +1′d 9 times on Google+ and shared 17 times on LinkedIn. All sounding pretty good however I was looking to find out a little bit more as to how people were sharing my blog.

Now, there are lots of great free tools that you can use for measuring social media impact. As this campaign was primarily shared via Twitter, I decided to use ‘TweetReach’ to see how far my blog had travelled.

As you can see, the tweets and retweets of the article reached over 80,000 Twitter accounts. Ok, not everyone read the article, but looking at the number of tweets, and retweets from a diverse range of individuals, the blog was certainly impactful. Additionally, I got back in touch with Clinic to inform them that the blog had been published, and they confirmed that they had had a number of inbound visits from Smart Insights. All in all, I’m really pleased that a blog that I wrote has been so effective.

See below for the TweetReach report and click here to read the article on Smart Insights: http://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/campaign-creative/tube-advertising-example/

 

Mr Luddite and Dr Digital

Posted by alanduncan1980 on

Throughout my career, I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve had people referred to me to help them with a digital problem. ‘Talk to Alan, he’s the digital/social/SEO/LinkedIn/Twitter guru’. Or ‘Alan, I’ve got a problem with my privacy settings on X/Y/Z social network’. And yes, I can solve the majority of problems that come my way (or I’ll figure out how to fix it). Add in that I had an iPad before they were even on sale in the UK, had a digital camera in the 90′s and am constantly on the look out for new technology to make my life easier, I’ve created an image of a digital native who consumes all content on a lightweight slimline shiny piece of kit. But you know what? And this may come to you as a bit of a shock – I’m a complete luddite.

Ok, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. But it’s true when it comes music and books. Yes, I’ve downloaded music and books to my devices in the past but I’ve always felt that there was something missing with my purchase.

I pre-ordered the new Quantic and Alice Russell album on iTunes a few weeks ago and as soon as it passed midnight on the day of release, the album uploaded itself automatically to all my devices via iCloud. Amazing! What an age we live in! Now, this week, Spiritualized released their first album in four years. If you’re not familiar with Spiritualized, I’d advice you check them out on Spotify however one thing noteworthy about Spiritualized in a non music sense is that their albums are always beautifully designed. Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space came packaged as a giant pill, Songs in A & E was a medical notebook. To say that there’s love put into the package is an understatement. So, there was not a hope in hell that I was going to just download this record as I knew I’d feel like I’d missed something. But I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t I just order the album from an online retailer and have it delivered to my door? Yes, I also buy albums via Amazon but for this release in particular, I really wanted to get the record store experience. So, I went to Fopp in Bloomsbury after work on Monday and spent a good 30 minutes or so just browsing. Obviously the Spiritualized album was the first thing I picked up (what if they sell out??? I imagine that there’s huge demand for this release ;) It came in a white box with slipcase if you’re interested in the packaging) but I spent the rest of the time, looking at the new releases, staff recommendations, speaking to the staff about new stuff they’d heard and what they were looking forward to. In the end, I bought a few extra CD’s, and some cheap DVD’s and despite the fact that I spent more than I’d have paid either downloading the albums or even buying them from Amazon, I had a shopping experience that was worth so much more than just ‘adding to my basket’ and using ‘one click payment’.

The same applies with books. I’m reading a book called Responsive Web Design which is a gripping thriller about a renegade cop with a heart of gold who infiltrates a thai drug ring (It isn’t. It’s a very technical non fiction manual). Anyway, point is, the book is on a digital subject. It’s just screaming out to be read on an iPad or Kindle. But you know what? I bought the paper copy. Yes it cost me more and I got stiffed on postage (thanks international orders!) but the book is part of a series that looks absolutely gorgeous. I worked in publishing for three years which was the logical conclusion for a lifelong love of books and whilst I have some books on my iPad (last download – I am Zlatan by Zlatan Ibrahimovic) I can’t think of anything worse than reading a book on a Kindle or iPad on the tube. I love the physical experience of reading, turning the page on a novel, which I’ll read and re-read to the point that I’ll break the spine.

Now, as I mentioned at the start, I’m not a complete luddite. I’m listening to Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia/Ultra right now, procured through ‘digital means’ (figure than one out) and am going to read an e-book on SEO shortly but the one thing that the music and publishing industries cannot do in a digital world is replicate the experience, look, feel and smell of their products in their non digital forms.

So why would Facebook blow a billion on a free app?

Posted by alanduncan1980 on

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or stuck in post Easter commute), you can’t have failed to have noticed that Facebook acquired Instagram for an eye watering billion dollars. If you’re not familiar with Instagram, it’s a free photography app which has been downloaded around 30 million times. The company Instagram itself employs 13 people.

Now Facebook have stated that they intend to keep Instagram independently managed. So… why have Facebook spent a billion dollars on a company that develops a single app, and have yet to turn a profit?

Well, there are a few potential reasons:

Secure the expertise – Facebook bought Gowalla a few years ago, redeployed the staff, integrated its functionality into Facebook, and then wound down the app.

Photos – Since the advent of Digital Cameras, people have take a lot more pictures. Some would say, ‘wasted a lot more pictures’, but taken a lot more pictures all the same. In fact, Facebook has made it a lot easier for you to take and share your photos, tag your friends, even identify your friends. So, why not utilise an app that is smokin’ hot?

Mobile development – Let’s face it, Facebook is so noughties! It’s a desktop website. It’s average on tablet and whilst it’s a bit better on mobile, it’s not great. Instagram however is great on iPhone. And it’s now on Android (a million downloads in 12 hours).

The real reason – when it comes to the crunch, Facebook is in a war with Google. From a social point of view, Facebook is king, but it lags behind Google in most other aspects. By building Facebook as the place for photos, Facebook has the opportunity to map the world. By you. And you know what Mr or Ms Facebook user? You’re more likely to be predisposed towards the Facebook platform if you feel like you own the content. Not that you will by the way? Yes, you’ll contribute but don’t forget that Facebook own everything posted to the platform. Check the terms and conditions. ;)