More proof that people trust people rather than brands when finding out about stuff.

Future aspirations survey from Chartered Management Institute. If you’re a “young manager” fill it in.

If you haven’t found Groundswell yet. And make sure you follow Charlene Li on Twitter. And read the blog. And if you have any web 2.0 tchotchkes, please send to her for a project. 950 Tower Lane, Suite 1200, Foster City, CA 94403. If you have no idea wtf a tchotchkes is, try this. Look forward to seeing what the project is all about.

I might go to this next week. Anyone fancy holding my hand?

Image source

Heat maps of the world based on news coverage

10 steps to personas

WalMart time lapse video

Is web 3.0 really just skynet in the making? Reading this excerpt from Andrew Walmsley’s column in Marketing, you might think so:

If machines could understand the information we put on the web, they could share knowledge with each other, and make conclusions and recommendations based on the information they find.

The next step is deciding to nuke the human race. He does go on to give a less scary vision of the future though:

Websites would understand that the weather forecast in Barcelona is for rain on the date on which we have just booked a flight, recommending clothes we can buy, while events in the city on those dates could be presented and selections loaded automatically into our calendar and accounting software.

Audio sushi - personalised soundtracks tailored to your taste, mood or occassion.

Naughty kecks and get your illustration on a new set of playing cards with Lascivious.

A casual luxury hotel from Hyatt in London. What’s casual luxury? Swap check-in desks for a free bar, pre-loaded iPods and comedy and literary evenings. Hmmm.

Source for non-Terminator content: Toni & Guy Spring 2008 magazine.

Tip of the hat to Greg Verdino.

You may remember that I signed up to be a Bzz Agent a while back to understand how they use word of mouth marketing and indeed how I could use it for my clients. After all, you can’t win the raffle without buying a ticket. The Lucozade thing ended up being a bit of a damp squib with what happened with me personally at the time so I never actually got round to doing that so I wanted to give the next campaign a proper go (the Lucozade Caffeine tasted a bit grim to be honest and didn’t seem to affect my pathetic gym performance one bit).

So, another survey later, I got a jiffy bagged stuffed to the brim with Fruitabu samples, discussion guides, money off vouchers and a set of cards to measure the conversation I have with people. It goes like this:

- I talk to someone about Fruitabu, give them a sample, voucher and a chat threads card with unique ID.

- they go off and fill in their survey, I go off and send in my Bzz Report.

So the particpant rather than the instigator also gets to feedback which provides a balance to the conversation rather than one-sided conversation. Interesting to see how this progresses.

Quick round up of the conversations I’ve had (I won’t reproduce the reports I submitted as they are somewhat functional rather than providing any level of entertainment, information or education.

Basically I found it a little forced to start talking about the product and my role as a Bzz Agent. Almost like I was a salesman. Ewww. Anyway, I found it easiest to dump all the samples on my desk rather than introducing it cold. The basic premise of it being an easy way to get part of your 5-a-day was mostly accepted apart from a few who reckoned that if you couldn’t peel an orange or banana you ought to be shot. Fair point, well made. The biggest surprise was the taste of the apple “crisps”. They were flavoured with strawberry juice. A strange taste sensation: apple that tastes like strawberry? And odd juxtaposition of flavours? Especially when you only get the apple flavour after you’ve bolted it down. Tres strange, non?

The other major pushback was that it included a chemical to keep it fresh (I’ve ran out of samples so can’t remember what the actual chemical was - d’oh! details, details). Which kind of goes againt the idea of fruit being fresh and natural.

I still have some coupons if you’re interested (20p off!). If you want to chat to me about it email or IM me on nr_gill@hotmail.com

And if you want to report on this conversation, go to ChatThreads.co.uk and enter conversation ID 2011790703.

After being invited to collaborate on the Interact Congress blog, I finally got to write my first post. You can link to it here or it’s repeated below. Let me know what you think.

Here’s an interesting new way to look at consumer engagement with your online advertising: clickmaps from FlashTalking.

Clickmaps are essentially a heat-map showing where consumers interact with your ad above and beyond regular click tag reporting. As regular readers of my blog will know, I’m a sucker for cool visualisations and relate more to pictures than stats.

The creative and strategic implication being that it helps us to garner better understanding of what drives consumer engagement. Or in regular parlance, draws the eye.

Here’s some examples. To make it work, use the fade option - fade out the map, watch or interact with the ad, finally fade the clickmap up again for the interaction view/heat map.

Sony Playstation - the Call To Action buttons seem to be getting the most of the action.

Virgin Mobile - clearly the opportunity to wax the guy and then wax him him more at the end wins out. Poor bugger.

Social networks - see the social media options, especially share trailer being high points of engagement.

I certainly know some peers and clients who would also appreciate this more visual representation of data than having to wade through reams of stats to the point where they’re pushing pins in their eyes for blessed relief. You get what’s working in an instant.

Be interested to know what you think.

While I’m getting my holiday stuff written up, photos uploaded, Spam Show scripted, feeds read etc. here’s some stuff and things.

I think I swear too much. But apparently not. This site says I only swear across 7.1% of my site which is below average of 9%. I’ve never been below average in my entire life (apart from Math A-level which is another story). Must try harder. Cock. Tit. Wank. Fuck. I’m still at a-hole level on the dashboard image though. Found here.

Test yourself on the randomness of You Tube comments.

A whole load of randomness

Pumpkins with human faces. I can’t decide if this is freaky or funny. Or both. It comes from Ohio (sorry, Norm).

Carrie supplied all of the above - ta!

Download the latest report from Trendwatching on all things Eco.

Interact Congress 2008 is a conference about Connecting European eMarketing to be held in Berlin across 2-3 June. And being in Germany, it’s hosted by the German IAB and supported by all the national IABs (UK link here) and the European IAB.

And I’m truly honoured to have been invited to collaborate on the Interact Congress blog for 2008. I look forward to sharing my thoughts and ideas with some of Europe’s top bloggers on the blog when I get back from hols in 2 weeks. Please drop me a line either through the comments section below or direct to nr_gill@hotmail.com and let me know any thoughts or subjects you’d like me to raise.

I wonder if my new employers would like to send me out there to hob nob and spread the love?

And download an IAB report on UGC here.

I was watching the news a couple of weeks back when that plane crashed near Biggin Hill and all I could think of was why were they calling a fire engine an appliance? Has the world gone mad?

It was, and always will be, a fire engine. I found these examples too to show how the world truly has gone mad. Words in a before (real world) and after (mad world) order.

Retard - Mentally Impaired.

Handicapped - Physically Challenged.

Midget - Little Person.

Indian - Native American.

Oriental - Asian.

Stewardess - Flight Attendant.

Waiter/Waitress - Food Server.

Mankind - Humankind.

Postman - Letter Carrier.

Unemployed - Job Seeker.

Boob flash - Wardrobe Malfunction.

Rubbish Man - Sanitary Engineer.

And lastly (for now)… Focus Group - On-Demand Customer Collaboration.

(I think I may have found some of these via AdRants. Image.)

Was invited to present to some students at my old haunt the Solent University today. A bit of a digital 101, here it is for general consumption. And after uploading to slideshare makes me realise we need to change our font from StoneSans to Arial, Helvetica or Verdana!

For anyone who was there, thanks for listening and not throwing things at me & feel free to contact me using the comments below or email/IM me at nr_gill@hotmail.com

And the links in the deck are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le4aUAV1fA4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0

http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/?l=runs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT4dpFpiTgk

http://diesel.adidas.com/83ways.php

http://www.subservientchicken.com/

http://unlimited.orange.co.uk/flash/go

http://www.diesel.com/lockin/index.php

http://www.night-driving.com/

http://www.greenmyapple.org/

http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/home/home.jsp

http://www.membersproject.com/

http://apps.facebook.com/protectedpoke/ProtectedPoke.aspx

http://www.runlondon.com/RouteFinder

http://www.willyoujoinus.com/energyville/

http://twitter.com/direct2dell

http://twittervision.com

UPDATE 07.05

Thanks to the MA students today for listening to my ramblings.