I'm always impressed by the collaborative infographics created by Brian Solis and JESS3...and the 'Social Media Brandsphere' is no exception. It illustrates a transmedia approach to storytelling connecting brands with audience groups spanning five media landscapes:
"Social networks and channels present brands with a broad array of media opportunities to engage customers and those who influence them. Each channel offers a unique formula for engagement where brands become stories and people become storytellers. Using a transmedia approach, the brand story can connect with customers differently accross each medium, creating a deeper, more enriching experience. Transmedia story telling doesn't follow the traditional rules of publishing: it caters to customers where they connect and folds them into the narrative. In any given network, brands can invest in digital assets that span five media landscapes.
1. Paid: Digital advertising, banners, adwords, overlays 2. Owned: Created assets, custom content 3. Earned: Brand-related conversations and user-generated content 4. Promoted: In-stream or social paid promotion vehicles 5. Shared: Open platforms or communities where customers co-create and collaborate with brands
Any combination of the five media strategies defines a new Brandsphere where organisations can capture attention, steer online experiences, spark conversations and word-of-mouth, and help customers address challenges or create new opportunities. Each media channel connects differently with people and thus requires a dedicated approach integrating tangible or intangible value. Doing so ensures a critical path for social media content: relevance, reach and resonance."
A while since my last post, but the demonstrable influence of Steve Job's death has reignited my Cx3 blog posts - and in tribute, written and posted in totality using my iPad.
In the past few days, since Steve Jobs died, there has been an unprecedented global outpouring of grief, tributes and reflection. He is labelled a genius in parallel with Einstein and labelled the creator of the 21st century.
Steve Job's Apple empire touches the world, quite literally, as it shapes the way we behave and communicate today - providing platforms to connect, share, inform, inspire, influence, educate, perform and entertain.
I myself (as did many others) found out about Steve Jobs death via my iPhone and actively shared the news appropriately - via my iPhone, which can only be a fitting tribute to a man who revolutionised communication. Twitter recorded 10,000 tweets per second on news of his death - the highest ever.
Clips of Steve Jobs were shared including his Commencement speech at Stanford University 'How to live before you die' and multiple i-product launch performances, which have a presentation style of their own. The 'opportunity in death' that Steve Jobs actively talks about, provides the world with the opportunity to 'save to memory' recognition of a man's leadership genius, and a not-to-be-forgotten creative visionary.
London's spectacular 2011 New Year firework fantasia demonstrated to the world the vibrance and confidence of a city commanding contemporary modernity, integrating seamlessly with its solid heritage foundation. A powerful and explosive message (excuse all the puns) against a backdrop of austerity, political coalition and global economic uncertainty...but a necessary one.
Digital communication turned a transitional corner in 2010. Economic escapism embraced 'Club Apple' and 'Club Google' feeding an uncontrollable behavioural craving enabling us to dance with the seductive iPhone, iPad, Android, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare brands...the hedonisitic 1980's revival relived for a new generation as they indulged - ordering another bottle of digital Veuve, posting their Facebook status, Tweeting when the Champagne was corked and uploading a brand reputation damaging video of complaint to the world on YouTube.
Joking aside, 2011 does have a more serious corporate tone - Relationships; Partnership; Performance; Delivery. 2010 was also a transitionary cornerstone for businesses as they too played with new ways of communicating through emerging digital channels, however, it's now time for the maturity of digital to be realised and strategic long-term commitment to enable the returns of nurtured stakeholder relationships and sustained growth to be fulfilled.
The complexities of corporate communications are such that traditional communication channels will not disappear from the mix, however, the focus of reaching and fulfilling stakeholder audience demands will be key. Maximising performance will result in appropriate targeting to reach 'the right' stakeholders using their preferred communication 'channel of choice' - even if that is now a 140 character dialogue on Twitter.
So the prospect for digital corporate communications in 2011 is positively coming of age. A solid strategic communication tradition is the foundation for confidently commanding new channels (including digital) to realise sustained performance and nurture ongoing stakeholder relationships and reputational brand loyalty.
London's New Year fireworks chimed positive sentiment for London to be sustained throughout 2011 as the world's eyes become focussed on the city as the stage (and worldwide tourist destination) for the marriage of Britain's future King and Queen, and on the upcoming London Olympics in 2012...oh my, I've embedded a YouTube video of the fireworks into my blog post - Let the digital games begin ;-)
HTC's Hero is based on the Google Android system, boasts greater personalisation and an angled design...and not much else. It's going to take more than an attractive handset to challenge the market position of Apple's iPhone now. The new iPhone 3G S is a must-have desireable and sustains the iPhone's iconic status as the smartphone of today and the future. With a PR buzz protecting the iPhone, competitors need to dent this before standing a chance of being a commercial threat.
‘Citizen Journalism’, ‘The Conversation’ and ‘The Buzz’. These are 2009 buzzwords that describe mainstream consumer behaviour of interacting with social media, the social media vehicles that interact with each other to carry a voice, and the amplification of the voice by social media influencers.
Powerful stuff if the voice is talking positively about your brand!
Growing social capital enables a brand to more easily and cost-effectively influence via social media networks. Creative guerrilla tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace as brands start to leverage social media and grow their social capital. ‘The buzz’ has to start somewhere, and that somewhere is creativity that attracts the attention of 'citizen journalist'.
The Sony Bravia Balls campaign is a well documented case study as the benchmark for how to successfully use social media on the back of simple guerrilla creativity. This was complimented by the consistently creative Bravia paint explosion on a Glasgow housing estate.
T-mobile’s Liverpool Street flash mob dance campaign is another example of guerrilla marketing generating a social media buzz.
Both of these examples leveraged upon today’s consumer behaviour of recording videos and taking pictures on their mobile phones and sharing these via social media. Both brands listened to the unfolding conversation and encouraged the buzz by feeding consumers with more of what they wanted to hear. As a result, the social capital of both Sony Bravia and T-mobile brands established.
Social media communications are now mainstream and fully integrated into consumer behaviour, and it is this evolved and powerful consumer behaviour that brands need to be aware of and leverage upon. So Brands, what are you waiting for? Venture into the concrete jungle and go guerrilla – your citizens are waiting for you with their mobile phones!
Microsoft Tag is Microsoft's version of QR codes and works in an identical way to the QR code system (download an app, take a photo, decode the photo through a gateway and deliver you the content). Read the full article on Techno Marketer: Microsoft Tag takes on QR codes.
Shaping the future of social media, the Social Networking World Forum is being held at the Olympia Conference Centre, London on 9th and 10th March 2009. The event includes:
- Two day conference dedicated to social networking. - Co-located conference on - mobile social networking. - Featuring key speakers from global brands, organisations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers plus many more. - Joint exhibition combining social networking and mobile social networking formats. - Evening Networking Reception co-hosted with Mashable. - Co-hosted workshops from the Facebook Developers Garage. - Free to attend exhibition only pass available.
Over the past twelve months, the use of Twitter has grown by nearly 1,000%, according to industry analysts HitWise. The Twitter site jumped from 2,953rd most popular site in the UK in 2008 to 291st as of mid-January 2009.
Hitwise research director Heather Dougherty said "A big driver of traffic to Twitter last week was around the US Airways plane crash in to the Hudson River last Thursday, driving many posts and updates about the situation." The first picture of the crash was posted to TwitPic, and has sparked a new era of citizen journalism.
The dominance of smartphone mobile technology in 2008, the integration of social media and social networking user behaviour becoming the norm can be attributed to Twitter's growth.
Twitter still has a long way to go. The ‘Social Networking and Forums’ communications category for week ending 17 January 2009 ranks Twitter as 23rd based on site visits – only 0.24% for the category. Facebook sustains its leading position, with nearly 38% of site visits, twice as many as YouTube and four times more than predecessor Bebo.
"Twitter receives the largest amount of its traffic from the USA, but its penetration is greater in the UK market," said Robin Goad, a research director at Hitwise.
"However, the US may overtake the UK the week following the surge in Tweets during Barack Obama's inauguration. The new American President is already the most followed person on Twitter."
This week, the expert landing of the Hudson river plane crash was captured by Twitterer (a noun used by the BBC) Janis Krums and uploaded to the social networking site via his mobile phone. His remarkable Twitter picture of the Hudson plane crash instantaneously became an iconic representation of the arrival of social network reporting and raised the profile of Twitter as a global communications network.
Citizen journalism is not a new phenomenon, but what has got the media industry reeling is the fact that traditional reporting media channels were beaten at their own game as they struggled to broadcast the story. Mobile technology combined with social networking consumer behaviour and a newsworthy event has propelled an age of accessible consumer-driven journalism.
The BBC advocates these emerging communication channels and integrated Twitter into its online reporting of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Also, Robert Peston’s BBC blog became a credible source of information for the unfolding ‘credit crunch'. Other media heavyweights can only follow suit and embrace new media channels in order to attain maximum audience reach.
This does raise the question, to what extent are these new channels going to become the norm? Currently, event-based reporting leverages the viral nature of social networking, and the popularity of social networking providers (e.g. Twitter) piggy-back off of this, but will social networking ever take over traditional media channels?
2008 was the year of the smartphone The last 12 months has seen the launch of iconic devices such as the iPhone 3G, Google G1, Blackberry Storm and Nokia N97. 2008 also saw the emergence of the electronic ecosystems needed to get the most out of such handsets. However, the popularity of these devices has brought to light several problems that look set to become acute in 2009.
2008 mobile success factors - Consumer social networking behaviour. Access to popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.
- Applications. Applications introduced a new content category. Apple said more than 100 million applications had been downloaded from its App Store between July and September.
- Speed. 3G started to deliver on its promise and has been attributed to the use of a technology known as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) - the original 3G service, but on steroids. The service speed is set to increase with the introduction of HSPA+ in 2009, which allows up to 42Mbps (the maximum at the moment is 7.2Mbps in the UK).
2009 mobile switch-off expected Mobile analysts CCS Insight predict 2009 will see sales of handsets shrink. They say this slowdown could be blamed on the global economic downturn that will hit every part of the mobile industry.
Handset sales look set to dip in 2009 following years of growth. As a result it is essential mobile operators ensure that greater numbers of people pay for data traffic.
Google launched its long-awaited G1 mobile phone this week. There is no doubt that the Google G1 is credible competition for Apple's iPhone, therefore, expect flying baubles at the annual Christmas bun-fight this year.
So what's so special about the Google G1? Well, Google has taken the best bits of iPhone touch and added some of their own, integrated a slide-out Blackberry-style QWERTY keyboard, increased the camera picture quality, and boasts a faster connection speed to the internet - oh yeah, you can also make a phone call if you so desire. The Google G1 may not be the design classic as awarded to the iPhone (Apple will always have that sewn-up), but to a customer audience whose priority is functional integrated communications, the Google G1 is a winner.
Apps and widgets will be key to maximising the G1's success as an integrated mobile communications platform and Google's Android system aims to achieve this. The Google G1 is affiliated to the T-mobile network, who have been busying themselves in developing their own version of the very successful Apple App Store. Google has the opportunity to leverage its existing application empire via T-mobile.
Skepticism of Google entering the mobile handset marketplace in order to extend its advertising reach is rife, but so what? Currently, there is a troublesome lack of mobile channel advertising regulation, and if this is tightened by Google entering into the marketspace, then surely this can only be positive?
However, and a big "however", as much as the Google G1 may be a strong player, network loyalty to O2 and aggressive churn tactics may determine that the Apple iPhone remains in consumers' pockets. To benefit consumer choice and ultimately integrated communication reach, exclusive handset-network affiliation needs to change.
Ofcom's 2008 communication report covering the UK’s £51 billion communications industry was released this week. Its key finding was that people in the UK are spending more time using communications services than ever before – but paying less for them.
The Ofcom report covers broadcast, internet, mobile, landline and radio communication channels and shows that in 2007 we spent an average of 7 hours and 9 minutes a day using communications services - up by 6 minutes from 2002.
The UK's mobile and internet usage increased by the greatest amount. Between 2002 and 2007 the time spent talking and texting on mobiles doubled, up from 5 minutes to 10 minutes each day. Meanwhile, time spent on PCs and lap-tops grew fourfold between 2002 and 2007 - from 6 minutes to 24 minutes per person every day.
Using more, paying less Despite the growth in communication channel usage and take-up, consumers are paying less with overall average household spend on communications services falling 1.6% to £93.63 a month in 2007, a saving of £1.53 on the average spend compared to 2006, and since 2004, a saving of £4.31 (4.4%). There are three main reasons behind the fall in the price of communications services:
Discounts from bundles: Consumers are increasingly buying bundles of communications services - paying one fee for multiple services, which is generally cheaper than buying individual services from different providers. The number of households buying bundles of three or more services – for example landline, broadband and pay-TV – has almost doubled up from 18% in 2006 to 32% by March 2008.
Lower prices for broadband: The average household spend on internet and broadband services fell from £9.87 in 2006 to £9.45 in 2007.
Bargain hunting: An increasing proportion of consumers are switching between providers in order to get the best deal. By March 2008, 27% had switched internet provider at least once; 37% had switched landline provider and 41% had changed mobile provider.
Broadband at home and on the move Take-up of broadband through a landline grew from 52 per cent of households to 58% in 12 months, mainly as a result of consumers upgrading from dial-up access to always-on broadband. Increased sales of laptop dongles enabling internet access via a mobile network nearly doubled from 69,000 to 133,000 a month between February and June 2008. As a result, there were 511,000 new mobile broadband connections in the UK.
60% Growth in 3G mobile connections: More than one in ten mobile phone users have accessed the internet on their mobile phone with the number of 3G mobile connections growing by 60% in 2007 to reach 12.5 million subscribers – an increase of 4.7 million in 12 months.
Online and on-demand Whilst there has been a small increase in the number of minutes spent each day watching the TV (218 minutes in 2007, compared with 216 in 2006), there is an increased trend for consumers taking control of TV viewing. Viewers are watching programmes when they want and how they want, rather than just relying on the TV schedules.
Growth in online TV watching: The proportion of people with an internet connection who are watching TV programmes online more than doubled from 8% to 17% in twelve months. The BBC iPlayer, which enables viewers to watch programmes up to a week after they were broadcast, delivered more than 700,000 daily video streams in May 2008.
Growth in online video and webcast viewing: Nearly a third of internet users (32%) watched video clips and webcasts in 2007, compared to a fifth (21%) in 2006. The number of UK internet users who watched YouTube, reached 9 million in April this year, nearly 50 per cent more than a year ago.
IM preference over email for Generation Y: Instant messaging is more popular than email amongst children with 62% of 12-15 year old sending an instant message, compared with 43% of them sending an email. Adults prefer to email – 80% of adults sent an email compared to 34% who used instant messaging.
Increase in online radio listening: The number of people listening to radio via the internet has increased to 14.5 million by May 2008, up 21% from 12.0 million in November 2007.
Slowdown in VoIP usage: The number of people using voice over internet protocol (VoIP) fell from 20% in 2006 to 14% in the first quarter of 2008.
Mobile telecoms By the end of 2007, there were almost 74 million mobile connections serving a population of 60 million in the UK. This was an increase of 3.7 million connections since the end of 2006. The total number of mobile connections increased by 48% in the five years from 2002.
Mobile preference over landline: Seven out of ten people with a mobile phone and a landline use their mobile to make calls, even when they are at home. One in ten people with a landline at home said that they never use it to make calls.
UK text messaging addiction: In the UK, nearly 60 billion text messages were sent in 2007 - an increase of 36% since 2006 and up by 234% since 2002 when 17 billion texts were sent. The average mobile phone user sent 67 texts per month from each mobile compared to 53 texts per month in 2006.
Generation Y gender channel preferences: The majority of children have access to the internet and most have a mobile phone but there is a gender preference. Boys aged 8-11 are twice as likely to use the internet every day compared to girls of the same age (45% compared to 22%). Meanwhile girls aged 12-15 are more likely to use a mobile phone than boys of the same age (74% compared to 65%).
Generation Y mobile phone dependency: When asked which media activity would be missed the most, 42% of these teenagers said they would miss their mobile most. Watching TV came next at 20%.
Television and Radio Digital television and radio penetration continued and by July 2008, nearly 9 out of 10 households had digital television (87.2%) compared to 7 out of 10 twelve months ago. By March 2008, 7 million households (27%) had a DAB radio set, up from 17% on last year.
Increase in DVR penetration: More consumers are now able to choose when to watch, pause and rewind live TV. At the end of 2007 nearly 6 million households (23%) had a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) up by 53% in a year.
Broadcast advertising reach affected by DVR consumer behaviour: The vast majority of people (88%) said that, when they use their DVRs, they use them to fast forward through advertisements.
HD television becoming the standard: By March of this year, nearly 80% of all TV sets sold in the UK were High-Definition (HD) ready, up from 50 per cent in twelve months. The number of HD subscriptions more than doubled to reach 829,000 over the same period.
Television most-missed media channel overall: More than half of consumers (52%) said watching TV would be the media activity missed the most, up from 44% in 2005. The next highest ‘most-missed’ activity would be using a mobile phone at 13%, up from 10% in 2005.
Advertising Internet advertising spend greater than broadcast: Online advertising spend is up by almost 40% year-on-year reaching £2.8 billion in 2007. For the first time, more money was spent on internet advertising than the combined advertising spending on ITV1, Channel 4, S4C and five (£2.4 billion).
Paid-for search advertising spend domination: Paid-for search advertising spend was up 39% during 2007 at £1.6 billion. Classified advertising saw the largest increase in 2007 – up 54% to £600 million while display advertising grew by 29% in 2007 accounting for a further £600 million of advertising spend.
Apple have announced that its newly launched App Store that enables users to sell and buy third-party applications for the iPhone was making an average of $1m (£500,000) a day, and had served downloads for over 60 million programmes since its launch last month.
Apple's developer revenue-share programme takes a 30 per cent cut of all revenues generated from the applications. Chief Executive Steve Jobs said
"if sales continue at the current pace, the firm stands to make at least $360m a year in new revenue".
He also predicted that the Apps Store could eventually pull in up to $1bn.
T-mobile have already been prompted to work with developers to create their own version of the App Store.
Despite the reported success of the App Store, concerns have been raised about the validity of some of the applications and guaranteed quality assurance.
Either way widgets and applications that connect communication channels are here to stay.
The BBC is continuing to embrace its approach to integrated broadcast/online communication channels by extending the reach of its news coverage of this year's Olympic Games in Beijing - and this time, Twitter enters the arena.
Ongoing mobile updates via Twitter provides journalists with a restriction-free channel to communicate an up-to-the-minute personal style of reporting from the ground. BBC sports journalist Tom Fordyce writes:
"15 minutes and counting. The stadium floor is now packed with drummers, all crouching in the dark. We're almost there..."
"It's like being at some sort of mystical rave. The scale of it is almost frightening. Although the fireworks are tremendous."
"In the 'Cube waiting for our first sighting of the Phelpmeister. What a pool. Mind you, when you're used to Putney Leisure Centre..."
"Just spotted former 100m Olympic champion Maurice Greene watching the swimming at the Cube."
"Now at the fencing. Talk about gladitorial - it's riveting, even though the finer points are a touch over my head. En guarde!"
This Twittering is supported by BBC Sport's interactive Olympic map that not only geographically pinpoints the mobile Twitter updates, but also provides links to BBC blog updates and information on venues and Beijing landmarks.
The latest report by Nielsen Mobile, Critical Mass - The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web, provides insight into today's mobile internet usage behaviour. Coming out of the report's statistical analysis, it states that "Mobile internet reached a critical mass this year, offering a large and diverse enough base of users to support large-scale mobile marketing efforts".
Globally, 16% of the US population browse the internet via a mobile handset, closely followed by the UK (13%) and Italy (12%). Nielsen found that 82% of iPhone owners access mobile internet, "making them five times as likely to do so as the average mobile consumer".
The report says that "PC internet users visit more than 100 domains per month, on average", however, 'mobile internet' users (in the UK) visited on average only 5.5 select websites per month...oh, to be on that precious '5.5' list.
The user profile of the iPhone owner has evolved over time. The first generation iPhone aligned itself with the lifestyle and psychological profile of early adopters:
- For 'Lifestyle seekers' it was new, shiny, latest 'to-be-seen-with' phone; - 'Apple supporters' purchased the phone for its aesthetic appeal; - 'Techies' purchased the phone to access the web and the widgets.
However, O2 then slashed the cost of the iPhone by £100 that opened up mass availability to wider audiences bringing the product into the mainstream.
The just released second generation iPhone comes with 3G, allowing faster access to the web. This can only support the growth of mobile internet usage that opens up opportunities for web marketing trends, whose target audience's contact point is the mobile phone. As the report says "Mobile internet users are 60% more likely to be open to mobile advertising than the average mobile data user".
When the marketers latched onto the potential of the mobile channel for communication purposes blue-sky ideas were plentiful. The concept of targeted mobile communications, contextual advertising and location-based messaging were glittering flames of desire hypnotising many a marketing department.
The flames of contextual advertising opportunities (e.g. sending a text message to a mobile phone within a clothes store highlighting the in-store offers) glittered and died. The systems were available, however, consumer fear of the invasion of their privacy took over, driving opt-in guidelines. Location-based messaging (e.g. text messages to cinema audiences encouraging them to turn off their mobile prior to the movie) suffered the same privacy fears, but in this example, mobile phone etiquette matured and user behaviour now drives the silencing of phones prior to a movie or theatre performance, which can be prompted by a more cost effective audio message.
Over time, the mobile phone market has evolved and key behavioural usage trends have thrived:
- traditional voice calls - text messaging - photography - listening to music - accessing the internet
The QR code is maximising upon behavioural usage and is a tool that is changing the way consumers interact with other communication channels and diversifying mobile phone usage. QR codes photographed and then texted to receive targeted news updates are appearing in the printed press. QR codes are also embedded in text messages and subsequently scanned as proof of identity to grant entry to venues such as clubs and sports arenas. In Japan, mobile phone QR code scanning is already being used as an alternative to credit cards.
Currently, one of the key challenges facing the mobile communications sector is the lack of disclosure when consumers text a response to a competition, or vote in a game show. Is the QR code a veiled way of obtaining mobile data from consumers by wrapping a text message in a pretty barcode picture? Or, are previous privacy fears being turned on their head and are consumers willfully submitting data and accepting to be branded with a simple dot matrix barcode as a means of identification?
Potentially, the mobile QR code is revolutionising mobile channel communication and how other channel communications interact with mobile. If this generates profitable targeted communications to consumers, the marketers won't be far behind.
