thoughts from marketing week live July 1, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in american express, data marketing show, digital marketing show, dotdigital, marketing week live, propellernet.add a comment
Tweets from the Marketing Week Live show today (you’ll need to zoom in to see all and scroll through). Or take a gander at the gazillion tweets @nicholasgill for train of thought & thinking.
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what’s stopping the URL land grab on facebook? June 10, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in facebook, personal brand.add a comment
Remember the court cases that went on around brand protection and ownership for URLs? Is the same thing about to happen with Facebook? As of the wee small hours on June 13, you will no longer be a number. You can be a name. But you’ve got to get up early to make sure you get yours. Do we really need this? Of course we’ll all do it to preserve our own personal branding but I’m fucked if I’ll promote myself as NicholasGill423 just because all the other Nicholas Gill’s are better at getting up at 05.01 GMT than me. Frankly Twitter, blog and Linked In are better personal branding starters.
But the real question here is not about me or individuals. But brands. What’s stopping me grabbing all my clients and super star brand names and then charging them extortionate fees to buy it off me? It’s like the late 1990’s again and one that was always close to my heart as I worked on the brand then was Mr Nissan. Whose surname was actually Nissan and therefore had every right to the nissan.com URL. Lawsuits and millions of dollars later, Nissan realised they should have been nice to him rather than starting with a letter from their legal team but there we go. Shell have the same issue with one of their former employees. Deja vu with Facebook?
I’m sure in the c. 44,000 comments (!) there’s reference to this but I, for one, am not trawling it. c. 35,000 like it too so a good baromoter of getting the people’s vote.
All I can suggest is you get your online reputation management dudes geared up to wake from their slumber early on Saturday and get registering. Who knows what’ll be left for me.
Update 12.06.09 – found this and found it funny so thought I’d share.
Update 13.06.09 – what’s left is what I would have gone with anyway. Surprised. I am now facebook.com/nicholas.gill
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get creative, get noticed May 28, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in MOFILM, You to the power of 12-U12, film, user generated content, video.1 comment so far
MOFILM have created a unique user generated content competition called “You to the Power of 12- U12”. You get to create video content for any one of 12 global brands including Vodafone, PepsiCo, AT&T and OMO (that’s Persil for the UK readers) to represent their propositions for 2009. For example:
Nokia – creatively show what “connecting people” means in 2009
Philips – showcase the emotional power light has on our lives
Vodafone – how do you make the most of time in a world where time is precious.
I’ve seen video competitions before but nothing on this scale and with some intriguing creative options. Be interesting to see what the brands do with the content. American Express Tribeca (created by Digitas) still holds the pole position in my book for innovative video-based UGC. The copy on the site does have a disclaimer about 50/50 profit share with the winners of any profits garnered from the content so one assumes intent is there rather than just being participatory.
Entries will be judged by Spike Lee and the winners will be showcased at Cannes Lions in June. Find out more and send your video. You can also get expert film-making advice on the MOFILM Twitter stream.
Thanks to Robin Pattinson @ Hill & Knowlton for sharing.
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what makes a good online shopping basket experience? May 27, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in IAB, retail, shopping basket, user experience.1 comment so far
For Five by Five, I was asked to contribute to the latest in the IAB’s vertical handbook series: retail. With a focus on what makes a good online shopping basket experience, our top tips are below. You can download the handbook here.
Shopping basket drop-off can be avoided by learning from the benchmark leaders: Amazon, Carphone Warehouse and Figleaves. What they do is simply make it easy for you to buy, change your mind, save it for later and come back, and compile wish lists which others can buy for you. What makes a good shopping basket experience?
1. Clear product descriptions and price information so users are reassured that what they wanted to buy has magically found its way to their basket.
2. Images to re-enforce the product description because people think visually too, especially when it comes to color choices.
3. Easy removal, amendment or addition of items because they’re allowed to change their minds.
4. Clear navigation to proceed to purchase or back to similar products, back to home, or a new search as these are users’ typical next steps.
5. Clear labeling of the basket during the entire shopping experience so the user can see what’s in it at any time.
6. Ability to save.
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office flashprank, friday may 22 May 22, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in facebook, social media.add a comment
Staplers in jelly as famously shared in The Office. The late, great Mick Costella taping up everyone’s phones, changing homepages to bukkake.com and stroking your thigh in the biggest pitch meeting of the year. Writing “cock” on the back of Iestyn’s chair and photographing it for his bio for a client presentation. This kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore.
Where’s all the fun gone? Well, tomorrow is Office Flashprank Friday. Check out the official Facebook page with examples. Do something amusing and buck these heinous trends:
- Office laughter levels dropped by 50%
- 1 in 5 say they never crack a smile suring a working day
- 14% have stopped talking to colleagues for fear of being thought of as lazy
- Practical jokes have dropped 66%
And here’s step by step instructions on how to put a stapler in jelly.
Thanks to Melanie @ OnlineFire for sharing.
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currency replaced by kindness? May 21, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in absolut, kindness, social media, user generated content, we are social.add a comment
ABSOLUT vodka’s new campaign challenges us to look at the world differently: what would happen if we replaced cash with kindness. Spawned by the TV spot (below), this was taken experientially in various venues around London. At cinemas in Clapham and Islington, customers traded compliments and high-fives for free snacks and drinks, while others were surprised by a free coffee in exchange for a smile. More events followed such as free busking and free drinks in bars (where? where? where?)!
Conversation has been happening about what you would trade for currency on the ABSOLUT site and across their Twitter stream (#kindness) and images on Flickr.
Although the experiential activity was quite small and the conversations similar, I applaud ABSOLUT and their agencies for getting out there and doing it. Too often we get barriers put in place; part of our evolving digital landscape is about experimentation. Innovation doesn’t have case studies and predicting results is hard. It takes brave clients and agencies to leap. Well done to these guys for taking it.
[youtubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqLs2yyQUeA]
Thanks to Jonathan @ We Are Social for sharing.
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collaboration? 40% of us want to whack a colleague May 14, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in national office week 2009, office, survey, work.add a comment
Office life better in the 50’s than today. 40% of Londoners want to hit one of their colleagues. 80% of the Scots waste away thier 9-5 on the web. 52% of 18-24 year olds flirt in the office. Could be your average ad agency then? But no, it’s office life across the UK according to new research for the National Office Week 2009. Which is this week. Bet you didn’t know that either.
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sharing the love May 13, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in picture surf, social bookmarking, tagging.add a comment
Huge thanks to Bradon for sharing these new share buttons with me. I’ve tried finding them before on the hosted version of WordPress rather than the one where you need some spangly coding skills (I don’t) and just gave up. These work. Hurrah! Just install into your browser and they automatically plug straight in. Your stuff can be shared sweetly.
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practice what you preach May 13, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in ad age, digital, social media.add a comment
I like this article in AdAge about selling social media because it basically says to be credible, you have to practice what you preach. If you talk digital or social media, you need to live it and breathe it. What I’ve been saying for a long time and still adamantly believe. Simple really. Some excellent comments too.
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planner survey 2009 May 12, 2009
Posted by nicholas gill in account planning, heather le fevre.add a comment
Now in it’s 5th year, please take the time to fill in Heather LeFevre’s annual planning survey to know who gets what and generally a peek into the world of planning. You can check out previous results on Heather’s blog.
And this year there’s less of an American bias as Heather’s been living in Holland for a while now working at DDB so even more reason for my fellow UK and European chums to join in. And don’t forget to register for the results. Good luck on getting to 1,000 entries this year, Heather!
