Creative Agency Secrets

The marvelous British Olympic Association has launched its Beijing website….. and boy oh boy, it has ALL the features that were cool in 2006 and NONE of the community uptake.

A list of handy functionality and features:

    * Home page with latest news - very up to date but every 'news' item is published by the BOA's press office
    * Podcasts - 10 uploaded.  THe most recent being 30th April (Taekwondo).  Also present - beach volleyball, diving, BMX, modern pentathlon, hockey, sailing, cycling.  Three uploaded from 29 - 30 April and then the previous ones all date from 2007
    * Videos - Leon Taylor form the synchronised diving team is pretty active having uploaded 6 videos since 29th April and Barry Middleton (hockey) has done one.
    * Athlete Diaries - grand list of 3 athletes: Euan Burton, Amy Terriere, and Denise Johns.  Who manage 4 entries between them.
    * Messages of support (5 displayed - but probably huge numbers in archive!)

Then there's the background info: racing schedule, qualification, currently selected athletes, stuff about the Games, about the sports (accurate, short and scraped from another website I've previously seen), a Gallery of photos by Getty Images from past Olympiads - there are five rowing photos displayed.

And so what is the opportunity that has been lost / missed?
Well, there could be

    * A link to a twitter feed (if No10 manages it, surely the BOA can???)
    * Upload your own photos from flickr while at the Games
    * links to athletes' own sites
    * Share travel plans with others
    * Desktop viewer for instant updates customised to your sporting interests
    * News feeds from other sources for your sports
    * Plan your viewing schedule tool linking to the TV guides for the UK terrestrial and satellite broadcasters
    * Live video streaming athlete interviews
    * Forum for real discussions

And what are they doing to promote the site?  I got an email about the 'launch' because I'm on a journalist list.  Has anyone else seen it advertised, linked to from ANYWHERE?  e.g. ARA website or FISA or your local newspaper….

How on earth do they expect the general public to build the excitement behind the team (and of course get taxpayers ready to buy lottery tickets to fund the next Olympics) if they can't promote the HELL out of this event.  We want to become a world showcase in four years time.

Who is advising these monkeys and can they please get an informed digital strategist/planner onto the team, fast.

Oh, did I forget to mention the handy "countdown" tool on the header bar which says how long we have to wait until the Games open?  Neat, but old technology!

Steve Moore has launched a new breakfast event, called One Morning, the launch was yesterday at the glamorous One Alfred Place business club.

Steve asked me to help out by chairing the three fabulous presentations - each one answering the question "What Happens Next?" for TV, book publishing and newspaper publishing.  I love doing this stuff… and being in the front row for three articulate and very persuasive presenters was a blast. 

I will summarise their arguments below - but for the New Biz Development readers of this blog, here are some short sharp actions

1 - Have you got any clients in publishing or broadcasting… send them here to read about what key organisations think will be happening in the future

2 - Do you ever put out campaigns on TV, newspaper or book publishing?  Send your account teams and planners here to think about what you will do in the future when those campaign methods no longer work. 

3 - come to the next event.  They are due monthly.  The sign up for this one is here … presume it will be updated.

Jeremy Ettinghausen is Head of
Digital Publishing at Penguin

The publishing world is polarising, books online and videos are leading the charge for technology versus traditional methods.  The scientific/technical/academic press is further along than consumer fiction. 

E-books started in 2001 and they still haven't really taken off 7 years later… but it may happen this year that they join the mainstream.

Books in print are not redundant yet.  But paid for digital content is increasing - the question is how much people will pay.  What is clear is that if your content is entertaining, valuable and drives a good user experience, there is an audience who will pay for it. 

However, reading habits are changing and how we view web pages affects our reading habits.  This is a non-linear process.

Looking forward, what is a publisher? Are they book makers and marketers and book distributors?  No more they are disseminators of entertainment and ideas.

A quote from Chris Heuer of the Conversation Group (at SXSW) "the Best stories will win". 

The vision is for the "integrated" book delivering image, sound, vision in multiple media.  I read, I get into my car and continue the story in audio….

Kevin Anderson is the Blogs Editor
at The Guardian

We are taking the tools that are disrupting our business model and applying them to our business.

New media does not support the traditional business model for newspapers because the young do not read newspapers.  We are not replacing old readers.

A news company needs a new vision and positioning and new audiences - not just for newspapers.

Industries need to identify their core market and focus on new markets in order to survive,  Open source tools enable editorial experimentation.  This is really important because at present it takes us 6 - 12 months for new product development.  We need to lower the cost and time of innovation. 

The business model is eroding advertising and uses outdated distribution and delivery methods.  WE need to innovate frequently and fast and 'fail forward' when the innovation cost is £0. 

Delivering into a community with connection is possible future for newspapers.

Matt Locke is a Commissioning Editor at Channel 4 

Befreo the mobile phone device we had more divisions between our public and private spaces.  Compare a phone box (private) with a mobile phone conversation (private or public?).

ATMs are the ultimate - a private transaction within a public space.  We develop body language to communicate our intention to be private while outside at an ATM.

The personal and social have replaced the private and public.  These are more fluid and the gestures and etiquette is different.  We need to understand this in broadcasting.,

What young teens find hard to understand about the world in 1990 is not the paucity of channel choice, it is the fact that in order to speak out publicly in 1990 you needed permission.  This is not needed today.  Talking in public is easy now.  

Key issues:

Data - being misused or mis-released.

Playfulness - find how technology can help your life and find play within it

Vernacular - what is the new language of who our relationships are with?

The goal for technologies that allow us to make the shift to personal and social.  And do it simply.l 

If you are interested or curious about what the Current Big Thing called Social Media is, who does it and what they are working on / talking about.  There are a wide range of great groups mainly based inLondon (sorry outatowners) that happen most weeks / months.

If you ahve a reason to come to town.  Try and drop into one or other of these.

Listen, Learn, Talk….

Chinwag event  NMK’s Beers & Innovation, Minibar, London Geek Dinners, MoMo London, Social Media Club, Creative Geeks, She Says, Swedish Beers, Open Coffee, Tuttle Club / Social Media Cafe, Girl Geek Dinners, Wiki Wednesdays, Next Wednesdays 

 And of course the BIMA events

Thanks to Dierdre of Chinwag for the summary list. 

Links to some sessions that I wanted to attend but couldn't / didn't.

10 Ways to Piss off a Blogger  Follow the other links from the piece for different attendees' take on it

The Art of Self-Branding and another one here    Wesabe is an interesting site because it's ostensibly a personal finance management tool but it has great VRM possibilities.  And slides here

Stories Games and Your Brand which Rachel Clarke was speaking at (she invited me to come over here) 

(or five huge egos at one table….)

Chris Heuer   Partner,   The Conversation Group
Tara Hunt   Co-Founder,   Citizen Agency
Jeremiah Owyang  Forrester
Deborah Schultz   Founder/Chief Catalyst,   deborahschultz.com
David Parmet   Owner,   Marketing Begins At Home LLC
Hugh MacLeod   Grand Pooh-Bah,   gapingvoid.com

How to market into community without appearing totally overbearing?
How do you build the community around what you are doing for your company?

TH - the more I gave away my expertise the more expertise I seemed to get.   this giving away stuff led me to give my time to creating new communities (barcamp and co-working). People open up their offices and lives to me when I do this.  Social capital - the value of the relationships and your reputation. We are raising our own social capital with what we are doing. online it is about how much you can give away - the best way to get your own stuff you should give more away to help others.  You need a patronage model of people in large companies who are prepared to pay for it.

CH - you need a way to sustain your life as well as giving things away free.  Tools creating for Web 2.0 is democratising and enabling good to be given back. 

HM - STormhoek - sent out 200 bottles of wine to bloggers who asked for it from Hugh's website.  And then they sponsored the geek dinners.I never thought of the drinkers as 'the stormhoek community' it was just wine drinkers - but the conversations happening around the wine were interesting.  Social gestures beget social objects and these beget social markers.  The new N95 and IPhone are territorial demarcations in the phone geek community.

DS - spend your marketing budget by getting out and meeting customers e.g. go to conferences and see what's happening at the fringe.  Find the customers who love you and talk to them.  In start-ups you have a low ratio of employees: customers don't put up an FAQ, use humans to answer questions.  This is smart marketing and customer support.  FAQs are for big organisations. (more…)

Just look at what is possible for a live event…. Google and Twitter combining to give up to the minute information on the Super Tuesday results in map format (around the world) plus the actual results on the LHS as they come in.

I am wowed.

I have a friend, former international GB rower, Alison Trickey who has retired from top level sport and started a fabulous floristry business called Pollen Nation.  We had breakfast a fortnight ago and I said I’d help her out getting some top sales going for Valentines day.

Because this is my business blog, I’m not going to be punting the promotion to my readers here (but you can see it here and here)

But I thought I’d share some low-cost marketing tips that are part of this promotion in case you want to try them out.

1 - Set up facebook page for Pollen Nation - Ali did this herself after about 2 seconds tuition from me

2 - I am sending her page round to all my Facebook friends based off a Fun Wall post

3 - We discussed finding an audience group that other florists won’t be targeting - athletes and coaches from rowing (obvious really as she is a big name in the sport).  And so I have sent it to my rowing club’s email list (with a unique code to redeem her special offer), and posted it up on a couple of rowing forums online,  and via a rowing business that I have an interest in…..

I’ll let you know the outcomes in due course.

And if you should need some fabulous flowers for ANY occasion (Ali is one of the Top 10 wedding florists in London!!) just get in touch with her - she’ll do you proud.

Had a fantastic evening (I always do) at the BIMA dinner “The future for PR in a digital World” with Jamie Galloway, Director of Digital Media, from COI speaking.

I took a couple of clients Hugh Birley from Lexis and Lorraine Jenkins from Wildfire PR (sadly got blown out last minute by Mat Morrison). We made up a strong PR contingent separate from the mainly digi-types otherwise represented!

Jamie spoke based on some work he’s done for the Cass Business School a dissertation about how clients have created silos of information based on the medium of delivery - TV, Press, Digital and this leads to isolation of messages and confulsion for consumers. Overall he thinks OTL agencies now have a decreasing influence on the marketplace

In his Governmental world, ministers are leading conversations on how we should engage with social media. [this is far more advanced than I had expected]. Traditional agencies are not aware of online conversations that are happening and this represents risk to them and theiur clients who rely solely on their guidance for marketing execution. In his view, the Government needs tio be where the conversations are happening.

In Jamie’s view, PR specialists are fantastic at research and crafting a message. They understand issues, message immediacy and have a great ability to react fast. And good PR is both open and consultative. Therefore PR people are a ‘helpful’ runway for advertising, particularly digital advertising. In fact, it’s a perfect skills fit.

Agencies should be working to integrate more closely with PR. [Mark Adams, working with me at Pembridge, tried hard to persuade Advertising agencies to buy PR teams and clearly he was ahead of his time because he failed to find buyers from OTL businesses.]

Interesting job movers - Jimmy an ex-10 Downing Street webmaster has joined Freud Communications. Antony Mayfield is at Spannerworks. Daniele Fiandaca from Profero didn’t wholly agree saying that PR techniques don’t work online. And Jamie agreed but countered with the observation that advocacy for brands works best when it comes from a PR agency much more effective than from a digital or online media agency.

Further clarifying the fit between PR and digital, Jamie cited the tight targetingt of audience research and understanding, the ability to build networks offline where PR is good and online where digital leads. PR is less good aty measurement compared to online where he thinks the ‘gold standard’ has been set. [this squares with Andrew Walmsley in Marketing this week who says “The easy results achieved by search in improving the accountability and effectiveness of advertising have created one of the marketing phenomenons of the century.”]

Jamie also likes the fee structure of PR agencies where they are pre-agreed or set as hourly rates enabling realy understanding where value is applied. And there’s an active involvement at senior level. Hugh Birley agreed with this saying that when PR works well it is because it’s honest counsel.

Felix Velarde asked how online copes with negative PR and Jamie said that he thought this was untapped opportunity because PR agencies aren’t looking at this area. It is important to know when to respond and when not to. Print media has to check its sources but online (blogging) media does not have the same responsibility. Mike Teasdale reminded us that Amazon is now a social media space because new listings now attract reviews from people with real names not avatars and they are rated as reviewers. You can clearly see the % of good and bad reviews.

Clare O’Brien agreed saying that there is a time and a place to respond and she advises her clients to ‘pick their battles’. Being in an immature industry populated by ‘excited’ people, wading in has its risks. This can lead to cul de sacs and pointless arguments [what Mike called “Dad Dancing”!!! touche]

To summarise “Digital offers high involvement strategies to PR in real time” and its important to know where the conversations are going on.

Thanks to Damien Mulley and Peter Kim for this link….to wired magazine’s diagram of the lifecycle of a blog post.

Read it.

The Telegraph (canny folk) have signed up Sir Martin Sorrell as a blogger to cover the Davos World Economic Summit.

In his post on 22nd Jan he says

Seems to be total disregard for the stock market meltdown. Not only a disconnection between the financial markets and the real world at the moment, but the new media world too.

All new media models seem to depend on advertising for their future, but very few are willing to reveal their advertising revenues. Monetising, or in English making money, is difficult, especially with social communities, when they don’t join up for commercial reasons and really want to connect. What we used to call writing letters to one another.

Seems the man has a sense of humour!