Digital Agency - Beyond Digital Media Blog

Google shows Sydney Wave User Group how it's done #gwsug

BeyondDigitalMedia — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:43:39 +0000

I have finally found a moment to sit down and write about the wonderful experience our BDM team had at the Googleplex, Sydney on Wednesday night (3 March) with the Google Wave Sydney User Group (#gwsug) and the Google Wave Team.

For those unfamiliar with Google Wave, it is essentially "an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more," to quote Google. It is currently in a "preview" release and being trialled by inviation only.

For all the misinformation and confusion running around the inter-waves at the moment about what Wave will become or not be, it was refreshing to see inside the collective mind of the development team and the respect they held for the comments coming back from the floor about user issues and problems "beginners" were having getting involved with Wave. This included lack of tutorial videos and on-page instructions. It was clear, however, this is all coming soon and that Wave is being improved on a fast paced week-to-week development cycle.

We had both Lars Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon (Senior Wave Product Manager) in the room taking questions and explaining the thinking behind each element of Wave, showing genuine interest in the feedback they were receiving from a highly motivated and digitally aware audience.

Thanks to Pamela Fox and Dan Peterson from the Google Wave Team, Frances Jones (@FrancieJones), Tony Hollingsworth (@hollingsworth), Mark Anson (@nowWw - who has developed a snazzy email notification app for Wave which we are using), BDM's Iggy Pintado (@IggyPintado) and Tony Consentino (@thewordpressguy) for their presentations, and to Brett Morgan (@DomesticMouse) for organising the event and his wise words over our late dinner at BBQ King!

Inspired by Pamela's presentation on how the Wave Team use their own product, Sean Carmody (@SeanCarmody) and I decided to use Wave to manage a project we are working on - and I can report that Wave shows its business benefits immediately. You can add users to your Wave, edit entries like in a wiki, adding "blips" (additional comments or sub-comments), all of which can be edited, deleted or played-back to find earlier versions, as well as link-to or upload relevant files and then create a final file for storage, emailing, or whatever. I won't go into all the gadgets and other innovations because it will just make it seem complicated. It is certainly a sophisticated product that needs to be used, and maybe even demonstrated, to feel comfortable with it at this stage in its development. However, email must have seemed daunting to those used to just picking up the phone or sending faxes.

For more comments about the evening and a video of Pamela Fox talking about her experience on the night have a read of Roger Lawrence's blog on Channel 42 (@chnl42)

Here's a picture of our Heidi Allen (@dreamingspires), myself (@cbishops) and Frances Jones by Tony Consentino concentrating with laptops open. I'd say he sketched it himself, but I believe he used an iPhone app called ToonPAINT.

And here's Iggy Pintado addressing the room about the business applications and necessary approaches to maximise the benefits of Wave. (Sorry about the quality of the image, that's me using an iPhone from the back of the room.)

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Jeremiah Owyang summarises the rapid evolution of social media

BeyondDigitalMedia — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:54:53 +0000

Altimeter strategist and partner, Jeremiah Owyang neatly sums up the impact of disruptive social products such as Facebook Connect, Open Social and Google Sidewiki. He touches on the need for businesses to develop new social strategies, ensuring social entities are centralised on corporate websites rather than allowed to "float out there" and why they need to stay on top of the significant information being produced about their brands across multiple web 2.0 platforms.

2010 is a time to understand your presence in the online world and involve your staff and customers in your communications strategy.

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How will the Apple Tablet change Australian publishing

BeyondDigitalMedia — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:25:43 +0000

I had lunch last week with a client who had just returned from attending the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES) before heading on to New York to visit a number of his own high-profile media clients. His impression was that many larger print media organisations in the US were waiting with great anticipation for the official announcement this week of the Applet Tablet, and were hoping that Steve Jobs would direct them forward through one of the most confusing business periods of their history, much like he did for the music industry. The same can be said of Australian publishers, although our market is about eighteen months behind the US because of the late introduction of the iPhone, Kindle and other eReading devices. That gap is closing rapidly and after tomorrow (depending on Australian access to Apple iSlates, iGuides or iPads) it could slam shut and the Australian publishing industry may end 2010 entirely transformed and shaken out.

I have included two recent posts from Mashable that summarise some of the current thinking about the Apple Table and its potential impact.

Apple tablet confirmed in McGraw-Hill interview

The idea of the Apple Table vs the reality

Video: Interview with CEO of McGraw-Hill, Confirms Apple Tablet

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Five of 2009s top ten marketing disasters are social media fails

BeyondDigitalMedia — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:17:28 +0000

If you look at mUmBRELLA's top ten marketing disasters for 2009, five of these are mismanaged social media or digital marketing plays. I thought this was interesting given a video I just watched from the 2009 TED conference of Alexis Ohanian of Reddit complaining about social media experts, and then giving a brief example of how Greenpeace used Reddit to select the name for a humpback whale which was used in an anti-Japanese whaling campaign. The video says:

The lesson of Mister Splashy Pants is a shoo-in classic for meme-makers and marketers in the Facebook age.

Whether generated by "Social Media Experts", Traditional Agencies, Social Agencies or others, the key thing about these campaigns seems to be that they have failed or succeeded based on the control that the client's marketing department has been persuaded to give away.

Greenpeace Whale - SUCCESS - Greenpeace controlled the original three names they put up to the market for voting. They were decided in-house with branding in mind (perhaps!), however the team knew they would be happy with all three results. Even though they wanted the other two more sophisticated names, Mr Splashy Pants still worked and probably worked extremely well with the Japanese market which likes that type of branding. We don't know the details, but perhaps that was strongly embedded in the thought process.
Westpac – Banana smoothies - FAIL - It seems this was a breakdown internally over customer communication policy and digital strategy. Who gets to make decisions about sending information to clients and what to put up on the company website and let it "out there in the wild", to quote Stilgherrian.
Toyota Yaris – Clean Getaways - FAIL - This could be looked at as the opposite of the Greenpeace success. The Agency, Saatchi & Saatchi took complete control of the project. "Voting is done on hits and comments," said an email sent out to encourage submissions as deadline approached and entries were thin. So the authenticity that Saatchi's were playing to for their social media experiment was, we must select the entry that stirred the most hits and comments regardless of strategic positioning, thinking about the market for Yaris, comments from the marketers at Toyota etc. It comes down to social marketing experience. But also integration across the marketing and communication mix. How can you have a social media campaign that doesn't think about the market your talking to and your other communications?
Kraft – Vegemite iSnack 2.0 - FAIL - See Greenpeace and Toyota Yaris above.
Witchery – Girl with the jacket - FAIL - This is a story about so many FAILS. Poor production, poor strategy, falsehood, misunderstanding the market and then public bitterness, revenge and demise. Shakespearean in scope and scale. Aristotelian in tragedy. I think we all know this one. I don't know where Witchery was on this, though.
Tourism Queensland – Fake tattoo - UNSURE - Here's a case of Australia's media losing the ability to investgate properly and agencies happily riding on the back of that. That's as opposed to others seemingly going out of their way to mislead in order to tell their story of romance.

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Google Chrome Videos par excellence from BBHLabs

BeyondDigitalMedia — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:08:49 +0000

If you haven't seen the latest Google Chrome videos from the UK have a look below. From BBHLabs, they are outstanding. If you want something to go viral, this is the kind of work you should be aiming at. 367,461 views on the YouTube version posted here since December 9, 09. Of course, that's easy to achieve, you say, when you're Google - yet there are many other large budget players who are missing the mark with their online creative and producing product that is well below par. Or allowing agencies to convince them into UGC (user generated content for advertising, even) that will be seen by many un-targeted users and damage their brand. Want a recent example - Toyota Yaris. You knew I was going to say that...

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IKEA create Facebook campaign to launch new store

BeyondDigitalMedia — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:24:38 +0000

Iggy Pintado identifies this Ikea social media campaign on his blog. On his YouTube page, Jimmy Wulff from IKEA's agency Forsman & Bodenfors, Göteborg, Sweden says:

For the opening of the new IKEA Malmö store, we created a Facebook campaign. The mission was to create something engaging that would have the potential of spreading by itself beyond the borders of the Malmö region. But at the same time staying relevant and focusing on IKEA's offer, their products. Without messing around.

As Iggy says, if you're not sure if Facebook is for business use, watch this 93 second video.

Time Inc, Wonderfactory, E-Readers, Tablets and 2010 the Tipping-Point for Print Publishers To Go Digital

BeyondDigitalMedia — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:45:40 +0000

With the large number of e-readers and tablet products promised for the market in 2010, it seems clear next year will force print publishers to address their digital publishing strategy. If readers are investing $300-$400 in handheld devices that read magazines, newspapers and books, then they will want to maximise their value. Publishers whose titles can't work with these devices will lose out to competitors' titles that can.

Major publishers such as Time Inc are developing their own reader applications in collaboration with technology firms to ensure they stay ahead of the curve. News Corp has joined forces with Hearst, Conde Nast, Time and Meredith to try and control the e-Reader market by creating a common platform on which readers would pay for content from their publications. The business model is to create revenue from content and advertising sales, as well as from print subscriptions.

2010/11 will still be experimental as far as technology and business models are concerned, however, I believe during this period we will see consumption via mobile reading devices significantly pushing print sales in key demographic segments and industry sectors such as business and sport for magazines, and broadsheet / business newspapers. Womens' mass market magazines and books following over the next 2-3 years. Business books are already being heavily consumed on the kindle in the US. To see the rapid adoption rate of successful mobile products, think about the explosion of iPhone users over the past eighteen months, and now Android powered phones.

Although The Sun Newspaper UK viral I wrote about was amusing, it is a bit like the boy sticking his finger in the dike holding back the sea. Have a look below at the Time Inc video about their collaboration with The Wonderfactory. As the The Wonderfactory say, "it is an excellent example of how tablets will enable the creation of innovative, addictive experiences by publishers, media companies, and advertisers."

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The Google Story in a Two Minute YouTube Video

BeyondDigitalMedia — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:00:10 +0000

This video is a quick and easy way to follow the development of Google over the past eleven years, from Sergey Brin and Larry Page meeting at Stanford University to the recent testing of Google Wave.

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Is Social Media the Rock’n'Roll of HealthCare?

BeyondDigitalMedia — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 05:29:50 +0000

Dr Mike Cadogan, our Digital Strategist: Health Care, has an excellent post on his blog, "Life in the fast lane", about social media and the health care industry accompanied by the video below.

To read the post visit Mike's blog here.

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The Sun Newspaper is the best handheld device spoof

BeyondDigitalMedia — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:21:13 +0000

Newspapers are fighting back against a digital onslaught on many fronts. Here is an online advertisement, ironically, for The Sun newspaper from the UK claiming they have been the best handheld device for the past 40 years.

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