Archive for the ‘News’ Category
BBC Radio 4 You & Yours – forensic approach behind the daily consumer programme
July 15th, 2010
The BBC’s You & Yours consumer affairs programme has just covered research findings by our client, the search and social conversion agency Tamar. The patient process involved in getting that five-minute interview with Winifred Robinson (my vote for radio Voice of the Year) was another reminder of how much respect the Beeb has for its listeners.
I began talking to the producer/reporter Kevin Mousley months ago about the YouGov survey commissioned annually by Tamar – Search Attitudes. Kevin is a straight up professional who does not waste your time or his so the fact that we were able to continue the discussions was a big bonus for me.
Kevin prised apart the data, reworked the ideas and came back several times with detailed, probing questions about the value, relevance and legitimacy of the Search Attitudes series, as well as the current study. He then worked on the detailed outline script, which was revised and assessed by his team before discussing the question-set and interview flow with Neil Jackson, Tamar’s Search Strategy Director.
Kevin then arranged for studio time in London so that Neil could be interviewed by Winifred via direct link to the Manchester studio where You & Yours was being produced.
Put that all together and we’re looking at least a couple of days’ work, for five-minutes of focussed Radio 4 airtime. I was mightily impressed!
You can hear Neil’s interview and learn more about You & Your team here as well as review the Tamar research, blogs and news on its website.
End of history, the end of creativity
September 15th, 2009
Two articles in the Observer this weekend about history and the way we think now were more than a little chilling. Polly Curtis writes that thousands of UK pupils are being allowed to drop history at the age of 13 and three out of 10 schools no longer teach it as a standalone subject.
Tim Adams tells us in the same issue that in all fields of arts, there is a growing reluctance to engage with the present and instead to escape into the past.
To me, there’s a pristine contradiction apparent here. On the one hand, we seem to be accepting that history is not absolutely essential as a field of study that all children should be encouraged to play in – one that feeds creativity in so many different ways and encourages (if taught well) inquisitive, enthusiastic and balanced ways of thinking.
On the other hand, we fear the chaotic present and seek solace in an aesthetic that feeds on the past, a conditional and partial view that does not bear rational historical inquiry. Retro can be playful, but it’s rarely executed with any innovative style and induces a profound sense of dislocation because it’s not what we are. I feel repulsed by the Beatles computer game and the disinterment of the back catalogue because it does not inform my present in new ways.
But that does not mean that I find the past repulsive, quite the opposite. Learning new things about the past and knowing how to work with that information is a skill I was taught with great passion at school (thanks Mr Steynor) and has stayed with me ever since. It gives me a grounding, a tool for measurement and analysis, and a sense of time and place.
We could forget to teach classical and medieval history – maybe that would not matter so much. But to ignore the study of the richest period of all time – that embraced by modern history – is beyond belief. The past century has surely been the most profound and creative period in recorded history, with so many new forms of creativity and questionable aesthetics to be debated and enjoyed. We should also be bearing witness to the degradations of extreme politics and economics – and remembering the lessons from those appalling experiments.
Our digital economy depends on truly creative stimulus – and in this process, the fission and fusion from the study of history that feeds minds is absolutely necessary.
Actually, Will Hutton in the same edition of the Observer makes a passing point in his bravura defence of the rightness of having a huge national debt with a comment on the fact that the UK is catching up with competitors in innovation. While his main point was about science, the argument should be extended to include the arts. And history is a fine balance between both. That’s why it’s worth teaching.
Entropia Universe opens up a new financial dimension on virtual worlds
March 23rd, 2009
I’ve just had to pinch myself very hard … on hearing that sci-fi virtual world environment Entropia Universe has been granted a banking licence.
The game’s developer, MindArk, has received preliminary approval from Finansinspektionen, the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority which allows the company’s Mind Bank, which serves as a central bank for all of the different virtual worlds within the Entropia Universe, to function fully as a commercial bank.
Entropia Universe has a cash-based economy and players can exchange real money for game currency at an exchange rate of 10:1 (ten in-game dollars to one US dollar). Last year, the virtual economy generated nearly £290 million across hundreds of worlds on Entropia.
It’s an extraordinary time to be launching any new banking institution, let alone one that is virtual and real - at the same time. This conjunction is slightly bewildering and leaves me feeling more than a little dizzy. In one respect, it’s not that much more different than any online banking offering, but in another it’s very weird indeed, in that the goods and services being bought and sold are just code - zeros and ones. They exist virtually - and in transaction records.
Deposits made into the Entropia central bank will be under strict European banking regulation with continuous monitoring and audit by financial authorities. Customers will be backed by Sweden’s £41,000 deposit insurance and the Mind Bank will offer interest-bearing accounts have direct deposit options and let players pay bills online. The company will also be able to offer loans to customers and issue bank cards.
I’m not suggesting that there is anything amiss here, simply that a financial institution supporting economies that work in the virtual space is a little mind-boggling.
But I suppose that when players can reverse out of an in-game economy and exchange their virtual wealth for cash in the real world, the threat of inflation from lack of controls is present – but maybe not as much as in hermetically sealed virtual worlds, where we’ve seen hyper-inflation and serious economic malpractice by players. MindArk believes the bank will help to control inflation by regulating the economy.
I hope the instruments they use will be more acutely tuned to the changing needs of the economy than those we’ve seen deployed in the real crunched up world. It’s good to know that while Sweden is in recession too, the country’s banking system and financial leaders are considered very sound. President Obama cites Sweden as a potential model for resolving the current banking crisis, based on its highly successful handling of the previous crisis in the early 1990s.
If Mind Bank replicates the sound financial judgements that have helped to keep the Swedish banking system away from the worst excesses we’ve watched unravel, then Entropia should be a sound investment environment - certainly more appealing than the current crop of banks.
And it also underlines again for us in PR the need to keep pace with the rapidly maturing and economically significant virtual spaces where people will be buying, selling, investing and engaging.
E-consultancy Innovation Awards in digital marketing
December 3rd, 2008
Big thanks to Lemon Studios and E-Consultancy for great party last night at East Village where the E-Consultancy Innovation Awards 2008 were announced. Not much to add to the fact that recognition for fresh-thinking, excellence and success always produces such a positive response - and a much needed balance against the gloom that pervades the media.
So, a big hand (and big hurrah!) for:
E-consultancy Innovation Awards 2008
Innovation in Affiliate Marketing: TradeDoubler
Innovation in User Experience: Mydeco.com
Innovation in Web Analytics & Optimisation: TagMan/Positive Feedback
Innovation in Email Marketing: Thomas Cook
Innovation in Social Media & Communities: Photobox.co.uk
Innovation in Online Acquisition: GAME Stores Group
Innovation in Online Advertising: Ad pepper media
Innovation in SEO & Natural Search: Quirk eMarketing
Innovation in Online Conversion: Thomas Cook
Innovation in Multichannel Marketing: Lastminute.com
Innovation in Paid Search and PPC: Unique Digital
Innovation in Online Retention: Coast Digital
Most Innovation Person in Digital Marketing: Hedley Aylott, Summit Media
Innovation in Digital Marketing Team Management: Jellyfish
Google Lively shuts as there is no second life for flat virtual worlds
November 25th, 2008
So farewell, then, Google Lively. Six months into development and soon (December 31) the virtual world is to be no more.
A deluge of news and opinion, and not a few blogs, have followed the announcement this week and from my scattered reading focussed on the economics and cultural reasons for the search company’s decision.
Google has made so many good calls in its 10 years that it’s weird to think it could make a bad one. But in the case of Lively, it does appear to have burnt considerable cash and resources on the construction of a useless product.
In the few times I ventured into Lively, there was an overpowering sense of pointlessness, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t a manifestation of mid-life crisis because my mood lifted as soon as I exited the virtual world.
Maybe at the root of this is an indication of what virtual worlds must have to thrive – a sense of belonging, of purpose, of achievement and, whisper it quietly, a sense of fun. I don’t think that these are easy elements to conjure up in a virtual world (and I did try to build one commercially some time ago) but without them, there really is no point in construction.
The knives are out now for Second Life but at least that environment does offer some of these key elements, albeit in a clunky, steam-punk style (without the Gothic class). We can watch SL fight for survival and keep an eye out for Sony’s Home - and gaze with mild disenchantment at the XBox Experience… but also remember that virtual worlds are still very little to do with state-of-the-art 3D and much more about a gentle ecstasy, joy or something close to that.
Social media from a PR’s perspective
November 21st, 2007
I stopped in at the NMK Beers and Innovation: ‘Clients in the wild’ event last night and it was certainly an enlightening evening for a number of reasons. Ian Delaney and the NMK team put on an interesting panel discussion, featuring: Will McInnes, co-founder Nixon McInnes, Sarah Ogden, MD Midnight Communications and Drew Benvie from Hotwire, who all waxed lyrical about social media, or blogging in the main.
There were some pressing questions put to the panel by the great and good of the PR industry that were in attendance, including asking how the panel would have handled the Northern Rock crisis and Facebook’s recent targeted ad launch.
Overall I felt the crowd were quite guarded, me included, either because they we not confident on the subject, or probably because they were surrounded by their competitors. This is an all too familiar problem in the PR industry and the issue seemed to surprise the non-PR panelist, Will McInnes, who had kicked-off by asking who among the PR attendees could measure the results of their campaigns, to which he was greeted by a deafening silence.
Will made a number of good points, but the one that stuck in my mind was his analogy relating PR to the web, confirming PR cannot continue operating in a web 2.0 environment with a web 1.0 approach. For me this encapsulated the most poignant issue that we as PRs face in a social web environment.
The PR profession as a whole is guilty, to some degree or other, of trying to place the social web into a nice little ‘channel’ box. We continue to apply traditional rules of control to a long since departed way of communicating. On last night’s evidence it seems we’re all still struggling with the concept that communications is going through its most rapid stage of development to date, let alone devising new strategies to cater for it.
Of course there are exceptions, and some of the leading lights that attended last night certainly added to the discussion with examples of their own insight. However, I noted that much of the discussion was based around tactics – I.e. blogging, rather than a strategic conversation based on communicating in the current environment, which would have been more revealing.
At the end of the day, I think NMK did a great job to pull the PR crowd together and this shows there is an appetite to learn, which was the main point of the event after all.
Technorati tags: NMK, PR, social+media, innovation
Liberate Media celebrates 1st year
October 29th, 2007
It’s been a busy but very rewarding year for Liberate Media, and an evening of shenanigans was definitely called for!
On Thursday we celebrated our first birthday at Bar Red in Soho with an eclectic mix of clients, industry contacts and journalists - all who’ve shown us incredible support from day one.
Guests included Arjo Ghosh from Spannerworks, Marty Carroll from Foviance, James Booth (founder of Tangozebra), Justin Pearse, Danielle Long and Alex Farber from NMA, Jane Wakefield from BBC Technology Online, Neil McGuiness from Creative, Paula Byrne and Eugene Lacey from Pushbutton.tv …and the list goes on.
With further business growth on the cards, we’re optimistic that 2008 will be just as exciting for us. We’re proud that our client portfolio has been built entirely through word-of-mouth, and pleased with the positive reaction that we’ve received to the small consultancy approach.
Throughout this week we’ll be sharing multimedia coverage of the party with you, and a videocast offering our insights into what the future holds for the UK PR industry as a whole. So please keep watching and reading!
Many thanks,
Wendy & Lloyd
Technorati tags: liberatemedia, anniversary, spannerworks, tangozebra, creative, bbc, nma, foviance