Cx3: Burberry digital runway

Burberry's 'holographic' runway show in Beijing is one of my favourite videos on YouTube at the moment. There are only six real catwalk models in this show and it is quite mesmorising. The full show (see video below) also includes avatar models and an Inception based environment that has Burberry models parading up walls and on the ceiling. Full credit to Christopher Bailey's genius.



RELATED LINKS:
Cx3 blog entry: Digital renaissance of Burberry
Cx3 blog entry: Royal change management
Cx3 blog entry: London calling
Cx3 blog entry: Brand Beckham ambassadors

Cx3: Japan earthquake and tsunami

In the wake of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, the maturity of digital networks and social media is being demonstrated.

Less than an hour after the earthquake, Japan's phone system was knocked out and Twitter became the go-to place in the emergency - the number of tweets coming from Tokyo topped 1,200 per minute according to Tweet-o-Meter.

Google has set-up its Person Finder service so people can look for others, or post information saying they are safe - more than 4,000 records were posted in the first hour.

On YouTube the Japan tsunami channel hosts official news and user generated videos. The video below has already been viewed more than 3 million times.



Mashable has posted an article Japan earthquake and tsunami - seven simple ways to help in the aftermath of the disaster.

No-one can say that the devastation of Japan's earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant explosion isn't shocking, and the essential need of digital and social channels for connecting people and connecting the world with information is clear.

RELATED LINKS:
Mashable: Japan earthquake and tsunami - seven simple ways to help
Cx3 blog entry: Iran's social media voice
Cx3 blog entry: Twitter flies Hudson plane around the world

Cx3: 2009 social media highlights

2009 is almost over, and no blog would be worth its salt without the obligatory picking out of choice highlights from the year - and Cx3 is no exception. Yes, I may be slightly biased with my selection towards the UK and my indulgance in the banal, but hey...it's Christmas!

Twitter
What can I say? 2009 was the year Twitter went mainstream. Twitter progressed from the techy early adopters to the majority in the product lifecycle. Why? Most noticably was an acceptance by traditional media broadcasters that Twitter was a powerful channel for real-time news distribution (that acctually beat them at their own game). The publicity and exposure Twitter received with the Hudson plane landing and Iran elections catapulted the Twitter communication channel into the spotlight. Secondly, the increased share of the iPhone in the smartphone mobile market allowed the mainstream masses access to a multitude of Twitter apps.

Susan Boyle
Who would have believed that Britain's Got Talent would be the source of the most watched video on YouTube in 2009. Susan Boyle, the fiesty wannabe singer from Scotland, became a worldwide conversational buzz overnight. Yes she didn't win the show (and maybe this was a blessing in disguise), but it's not stopped the '#susanboyle' having the UK's Christmas number one album in 2009.

#uksnow
Us weather obsessed Brits demonstrated our need to share our meteorological interest when, in February 2009, we suffered the worst snow for 20 years. The '#uksnow' hashtag trended on Twitter, and mobile pictures / videos were uploaded to Twitpic, Flickr, blogs, Youtube etc...The world suffered a global drift of British snow - what are we like? Sorry world.

iPhone
Ok, so I finally succumbed to Apple's charms and purchased the iPhone 3GS in July 2009. Seriously though, Apple has made a major dent in the share of the UK smartphone mobile market with the iPhone, and is doing the same in the US. The iPhone has been elevated to a desirable must-have object that is transforming the way we communicate..."What iPhone apps have you got?"

Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry has become the unlikely champion and celebrity spokesperson of Twitter in the UK. The expert wordsmith and linguist, has perfectly tweeted his intelligent wry wit to the score of 1,000,000+ followers. A worthy face to represent British Twits (that didn't come out right, did it).

Citizen journalism
The Iran election (influencial event rather than highlight), proved the demonstrable truth that Twitter had arrived as a channel for citizen journalists to broadcast real-time news worldwide, where traditional news broadcasters failed. The Iran election was also a milestone for integrated media channel broadcasting - BBC TV news adopted to broadcast YouTube videos when their reporters were denied access by the Iranian government, in order to sustain a newsworthy story.

Facebook v X Factor
The might of Facebook against the might of X Factor saw a historic battle to reach the prestigious number one spot in the UK Christmas singles chart. A Facebook campaign 'Rage Against The Machine for Christmas No1', created by Jon and Tracy Morter, was a reaction against X Factor potentially spawning the UK's Christmas number one single for the fifth year in a row. The Facebook campaign captured the public's imagination and Rage Against The Machine's 'Killing in the Name' successfully beat 'The Climb' by X Factor's Joe McElderry into second place by 50,000 copies.

2009 really has been a year where social media 'est arrivé'. In observing these choice highlights, there is a bridging commonality of the seamless social media integration with mainstream communication channels - predominantly broadcast and mobile.

Marketers realise that social media reaches an audience, and its dynamics sit within the holistic communications mix - let's see how marketers maximise the effectiveness of social media in 2010.

Merry Xmas!

Cx3: Who is Gio Compario?

Absolutely loving the 'Who is Gio?' PR campaign to support Go Compare's ATL advertising starring the coffee shop opera singing wonder that is Gio Compario (and he's only a tenor/tenner...oh how we laughed!). Inspired by the Google Latitude stunt, the search for Gio is on, 39 people, 39 locations...But who is Gio?



The rising Go Compare star introduces his own Gio Compario campaign site. You can join his many fans on Facebook, and also follow operatic antics on Gio Compario's Twitter.



Following this one closely to see where Gio goes next.

RELATED LINKS:
Cx3 blog entry: Grow social capital and go guerrilla
Cx3 blog entry: Virgin Atlantic Still Red Hot video
Cx3 blog entry: T-mobile Liverpool Street advert - class

Cx3: Big Brother's social media future

As an unashamed Big Brother fan (I indulge in its banality), and knowing for a while that Endomol's contract with Channel 4 was due to end in 2010 the recent spin targeted at Joe Public raising the prominance of a ratings slump was an amusing move in managing expectations.

I was interested to read Wildonion's insider thoughts on the subject and I totally concur with the opportunities mentioned that Endemol has for social network affiliation.

As Wildonion says "It [Big Brother] has a young audience. That audience don’t really watch too much TV", therefore, target the channels that they do access - does Endemol even need a traditional TV broadcaster to facilitate this? What we see today are managed bite-sized chunks of happenings in the house of what a Channel 4 producer wants a TV audience to see that supposedly makes good television and is an attempt to sustain TV viewing figures - but for what audience?

Big Brother started as a social experiment - a group of people cut off from the outside world and how they behaved over a period of time. As we all know, the programme became a perceived avenue for celebrity stardom. However, two interesting things happened this year that should not be overlooked:

- Firstly, the outside world came into the house for the first time in the form of a few 'celebrity gossip magazines', within which housemates were featured - their reactions were televised and it was a refreshing flashback to the original social experiment ethos of the first series.
- Secondly, conversations were encouraged by allowing housemates to discuss nominations.

In the future, why not give housemates ongoing access to social media whilst in the house so that they can view the conversations being said about them in the outside world - would this change an individual's behaviour in order to manage their own self's brand reputation? Housemates could engage with social media by recording their own diary-cam videos to upload to YouTube, they could write blog posts or interact with Twitter.

Ten year's after Big Brother started, social interactions have changed with the advances of social media. Therefore, it is these social media interactions that Big Brother needs to experiment upon again.

RELATED LINKS:
Big Brother - end of an era. Don't be so daft

Cx3: Powerful social media stats

Some powerful stats demonstrating why social media is not just a fad - if Facebook were a country it would be the fourth largest in the world...plus many more.

Cx3: Nielsen Iran social media stats

Nielsen has undertaken snapshot search results analysis from Google for Iran focussed key phrases (Iran; Iran protest; Iran election; Moussavi and Ahmadinejad) over a two week period. A number of insights have emerged about how the Internet and social media continue to be a transforming force for the news industry.

Findings from an Internet snapshot from June 18, 2009:
- CNN rarely shows up in the top five search results for select Iran Election terms, mirroring criticism from consumers that the global news network’s coverage of the Iran Election was lacking (#CNNFail).
- Wikipedia emerges within the top two search results for 4/5 of the leading topics.
- At least one social media source emerges within the top 10 search results for every term. In most cases, the social media sites emerge directly above a traditional, major news source, such as WSJ.com.

Findings from an Internet snapshot from June 24, 2009:
- YouTube emerges within the top 10 search results for all search terms in the second week.
- Wikipedia remains within the top three search results in the second week for four of the five search terms.
- Twitter emerges within the top 20 search results in week two, specifically the Twitter results for Moussavi and Ahmadinejad. Of course, traditional news sources such as the BBC (and CNN, in week two) bubble to the top of search results, as do general information sites such as Yahoo.com and Infoplease.com.

Nielsen say that it is "yet another watershed moment in the ongoing evolution of news and media, further blurring the lines between being, reporting, and following the story". Read full findings from Nielsen: The Iran Election and Social Media: The New News Revolution

RELATED LINKS:
Cx3 blog entry: Iran's social media voice

Cx3: The Domino’s effect - reputation management

This week saw Domino’s Pizza’s social media reputation management go into overdrive in order to prevent a global toppling of the Domino’s Pizza brand.

A couple of employees in one of its franchises filmed themselves interfering with food that was supposedly destined for customers - the Domino's videos were then posted on You Tube. The YouTube videos were picked-up by the Good As You blog, which has subsequently become in active conversation with Tim McIntyre - Vice President of Communications at Domino’s pizza.

To further counter the negative impact that the Domino's videos may have on its brand, questions are currently being answered on the Domino’s Twitter site in an attempt to quash concerns from its customers.

It shows that the domino effect (unfortunate, but apt naming) is alive and well with extra cheese on top when the social media conversation goes sour, however, Domino’s Pizza have clearly shown how to leverage social media vehicles in order to manage its brand reputation when damage limitation is required on a global scale.

RELATED LINKS:
Cx3 blog entry: Social media heads are round, is yours?
Cx3 blog entry: How social is your conversation?
Cx3 blog entry: Twitter, Stephen Fry and halibut
Cx3 blog entry: The growth of Twitter

Ofcom communication report 2008

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.

RELATED LINKS:
Cx3 blog entry. iPhone: Driving growth in mobile internet usage behaviour
Cx3 blog entry. Generation Y communicate, unite and shout

Generation Y communicate, unite and shout

The YouTube video above, uploaded by a 15 year old, is just one of many videos that have been posted remembering the life of Ben Kinsella, who was killed in a knife crime at the weekend.

Generation Y, moved by his death, leveraged their online social networks and called to unite and march against knife crime in Ben Kinsella's name. Dozen's of groups were set up on Facebook to remember Ben and recruited the call to march.

In a short space of time, social networking returned a 400-strong crowd to walk in the street and shout "What are we here for? Ben. Why are we here? No knives."

As a result, a united message was broadcast nationally on television and appeared in the printed press. This demonstrates how Generation Y achieve a motivated end goal by naturally harnessing the power of social networking and web 2.0.