Oomph's log

How attractive is another new marketing concept – really?

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:37:00 +0100

Location-based marketing does have a ring of slightly desperate and frighteningly intrusive promotions being shunted at you as you trot past a store but it may be an interesting marketing tool.

Whether it justifies a new tag of ‘magnetic marketing’ is another question. Neither push nor pull, or in fact both… depending upon whether you’re nearer north or south pole is a lot to figure out.

We’re only just getting our heads around UGC and Web 2.0 – as evidenced by the proliferation of ‘top 6/7/8/9/10 tips for guaranteed social media success’ (try googling it) so it doesn’t feel right yet to introduce the next marketing planning J curve into the mix.

I’m reminded of the last significant disruptive change over the Millennium with the dotcom boom. Many were persuaded at that time to leave some of the established planning and communications craft skills behind in favour of innovative new tips and tricks using the ‘net’. The key result was a number of poorly performing brands and business that lost their investors a great deal of money.

I look at flip.to in the referenced article and am impressed with the innovation and technology – but have no clue as to whether it will fly past beta into the welcoming arms of an economically successful business model. Maybe.

Meanwhile, location-based marketing is interesting but whether you’re being magnetic, pushing, pulling or permission-based prompting, you can follow some pretty traditional rules when planning end-user based communications. Its job in some form is to sell product or brand using a relevant combination of information, education and entertainment. Oh and it helps to know as many insights as possible about the person to whom you’re communicating. Where they’re standing at a single point of time may well be one of them.

How many bottom lines do you have?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Apparently you need 3 - and they all begin with 'P' - that's handy. In the newly cool world of social marketing, according to international highbrow journal "The economist" a triple bottom line of profit, people and planet are where it's at.

Is it really possible to add people together with the 2 types of very different green stuff and get a single measurement? And where do you start - are you people or profits driven? Does saving the planet keep you awake at night, or saving your flagship account?

What's interesting is that as sustainability of our lives and the environment becomes an increasingly Zeitgeisty topic of pub banter and social profits are discussed outside of the community centre, then creative edge will increasingly move away from FMCG frippery and into issues, arts and the environment.

Oh....

Remember 1970 anyone?

Run Basecamp as a desktop application using Mozilla Prism

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:52:00 +0100

As we start to use Basecamp more for our project management, I am finding that just having it open as a tab in my browser is becoming quite difficult to manage. Thankfully Mozilla (the guys who give us FireFox) have stepped in and provided a neat little program called Prism.

Prism is "an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop". It is very handy if you have web applications that you use regularly and worry about loosing half written messages if/when your browser crashes, slows down or becomes unstable in some way.

Luckily, it's incredibly simple to setup a web app to run from your desktop using Prism, and here is how you do it (If you want to use the Basecamp Icon, for the last step of this process it can be downloaded from 37 Signals:

The FireFox way.

If you use FireFox, you can use the Prism add on:

First (Using FireFox) vist the Prism add-on page at: Firefox addons site.
Click "Add to FireFox" and then click install from the popup box.
Restart FireFox.
Once restarted, visit the Oomph Basecamp site.
If you are not already logged in, do so.
Now click "Tools -> Convert Website to Application".The default settings should be fine, though you may wish to add remove shortcut locations under "Create Shortcuts".
Next, if you downloaded the Basecamp logo above, you can use it for your icon by clicking "Settings" under "Icon" and then selecting choose. Now navigate and select the icon.
Finally click ok, and a new shortcut will be added to your chosen locations.

The Standalone way.

If you do not use FireFox, or would like to keep FireFox and Prism totally separate:

Visit the Mozilla Prism downloads page and click "Download Prism".
Install Prism, and run it.
Now, under URL enter: https://oomphagency.basecamphq.com/
Under name enter whatever you would like your shortcut to be called.
You may wish to add remove shortcut locations under "Create Shortcuts".
Next, if you downloaded the Basecamp logo above, you can use it for your icon by clicking "Settings" under "Icon" and then selecting choose. Now navigate and select the icon.
Finally click ok, and a new shortcut will be added to your chosen locations.

In both instances Running the created shortcut will open the Basecamp as a separate application, detached from your browser. Just enter your login details and away you go.

NUFC - long term planning best practice

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:17:00 +0100

Been a bit quite on the black and white front here for a while. But I think it's worth dispelling the myth that newcastle United are a shambolic, under-achieving, over-supported, shareholder-exploited, worst-example-of-Premier-League-excess, prima-donna-littered excuse for a football club.Stefan Stern in the FT believes that Interim management can be the best way of injecting energy, strategy and momentum into an organisation.

As Newcastle have had more managers than well defended set pieces since the first Keegan era and a spot of the saintly Sir Booby Robson, we're clearly on strategy for a world beating next decade with our next new interim about to take up his second stint.

That's right isn't it Stefan?....... Stefan??

Newsweek magazine says we now have "The first disaster of the Internet". So which famous law has this followed?

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

With some challenging thinking from Paul Kedrosky at Newsweek about why the Internet is to blame for the current financial tsunami (in brief: as it has created a perfect market of accessible, mostly free, information, why didn't everyone use that perfect market of accessible information to make correct decisions?), there must be a law somewhere that rationalises the market's behaviour. You know, something like the infamous Moore's Law: "The number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every 18 months" (usually translated as the amount of information in computer memory will double every 18 months) or the well rehearsed Murphy's law: "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in catastrophe, someone will do it".

Whilst these laws may not have the syntactical nor analytical prose of a Newton's 3rd law of motion "to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction", they do result in a certain amount of head nodding deja vu which is almost satisfying. So, in my search for a law that has some degree of empirical history and a twist that raises an eyebrow of recognition in real life, I present you with "The law of false alerts", posed by George Spafford in June 2004. Whilst George was mostly pondering on how security systems are compromised by systems crying "Wolf!" so often that those monitoring them become slightly bored with the red lights and as a result modify their reactions to one of apathy rather than apoplexy, it does seem to ring some bells (sic) with the current crisis. Is the financial services network a complex system? Most definitely - even with Robert Preston's rather mangled and strangely intonated protestations. Have there been alarms over the last 2 years. Yes - see Robert Peston above. Have the alarms been false? Well house prices kept going up, shares increased in value, bonuses got paid, nothing changed. Were we all guilty of looking rather shiftily at each other for the first head-shake showing rejection of the alarms to justify our non-action? Unfortunately probably so.

So hats off to George Spafford for being the first person (bar Robert Peston obviously) to clearly and succinctly describe the current crisis.

And when your alarm goes off this morning, don't switch it off and turn over. It really is time to get up.

Kreppa -the ultimate onomatapeia

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0100

What a great word - in Icelandic it means 'in a pinch'. Or it used too. Now it means ' in the s..t'. Apparently. And that's the Economist.

So come on - who will admit to being part of the reason for the current economic trauma? Surely someone would like to lay claim to influencing the biggest change in received wisdom since (including...) the collapse of the Soviet Union?

In fact: Is capitalism any less flawed than communism? Come on Sarah P. let me know your views. Or perhaps you'll 'check it ahht 'n' come back to me laytrrr'.

Anyway, we all know better now.

Houses are for living in.

Savings are for a rainy day.

Risk is for risk takers. (And good luck to them by the way. What's the key word in the previous sentence. Clue: it begins with 'l').

And as marketers how do we behave? Take stock (sic) in a safe haven? Buy at the bottom? Make hay with new propositions to acquire new customers and growing market share while everyone else pulls in their claws? The truth is all of the above. Out job as marketers is to determine the best strategy for the products, market and business we're working with. That might mean spending less. It might mean spending more.

Have the balls to do either. Cut the Kreppa.

Now that's what I call creativity.....

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Next Wednesday, September 10th, two protons will collide at something approaching the speed of light each with the power of an aircraft carrier traveling at 30 knots.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) switches on at CERN next week to try and get to grips with how the big bang banged. Whatever agency the scientists appointed, coming up with names for some of the 16 fundamental types of particles such as gluon, up quark, charm quark, muon neutrino and tau deserves some sort of pencil.

Two fundamental questions seem to remain:

1. Where's the Higg's boson - which should exist if 'the theory of everything' is to be concluded- but hasn't turned up to the party yet?

2. Will we all be eaten by a black hole next Wednesday? Decent and reasonable enough question but apparently not. Still, if anyone is able to place a bet on it not happening, then why wouldn't you?

What's this got to do with advertising?Not much but it's talking my mind off the saga at St James' Park for a few minutes at least.

Death, taxes and good ideas from The Economist...

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

....things you can be sure of.

This was spotted by one of our resident technoratis, Mo.

Voted by Time magazine as one of the top 10 best mag covers of 2007, it's an idea from the Economist. A thoughtful reminder of what lies at the heart of good communications - just in case we were tempted to forget in the face of the slightly pressing economic times. In fact they turn out this sort of quality pretty much every week.

Just to check that's true - have a look at this week's cover. Not quite premiership winners but no danger of relegation. So, even when it's dog eat dog; time is money; it's a jungle out there and lunch is for wimps, good ideas still win.

Who's Who?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

The beauty of HDD and digital meant I just watched last Saturday's Doctor Who last night. Is it really possible that David Tennant's about to be regenerated? Is it plausible that the actor who's brought the behind-the-sofa genre back to life is about to lose his? Where plausibility and possibility are concerned I tend to put my faith in the scriptwriters. Following the 'you can't have too much of a good thing' philosophy, I suspect that there's some parallel universe thing going on (as does Lucy Mangan in The Guardian).

However, if he were to be replaced then who?

Given Andy Murray's comeback from the dead last night, then he seems to have an air of temporary immortality. Tautologies aside, the only option surely is Eddie Izzard, dialing up the wit and bringing some transverse dressing to the role to give us some relief from the natty suit and converse plot currently in vogue.

He'll probably call himself Dr. Qui.

The Emperor's new gorilla outfit

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

So the drumming gorilla ad has landed the main Cannes Lions prize and plaudits deservedly to Fallon.

Stopped buying Galaxy and Yorkie bars anyone?

What I have done is Simponsize me and seen a ton of Simpsonized pets, celebs etc. posted all over the blogosphere. In the world where Burger King as a brand has the reputation management job somewhere between Britney Spears and Ashley Cole, getting half the world to have a smile sponsored by you seems to me to be a pretty decent advertising job.

Well done Crispin, Porter & Bogusky.

Getting adland to have a self-congratulatory smile at the innovation, style and creativity of its own work ? Not exactly herding cats.

By the way I loved the Gorilla too.

Gorillas in the mist

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

With all the chatter about Phil Collins and drumming gorillas in 2007, it's good to see the Tefal Heads at adliterate take on the compelling question of whether the ads really worked.

Apparently Cadbury's reported sales of Dairy Milk up 9% in December - but they had a rubbish 2006 so who can tell really?

Here's a simple approach - bringing black and white to the colourful world of advertisng: 1. If business was good and the advertising was liked then everyone's a winner; carry on. 2.If business was good and the advertising was disliked then either check your research or thank the markets for serendipity 3. If business was bad and the advertising was liked then have another look at the competition/service etc and/or start a talking to some real customers. 4. If business was bad and the advertising was disliked then some people/agencies/you may be in the wrong place.

Of course you may have some analysis that's looking across channels and shows you've increased awareness through classical offline advertising to key high margin audiences that have been failing to buy and continued to convert low margin volume business online with strong tactical promotions. Net margin has dipped but you look set fair for 2009.....

Or is that cover fire from your agency for some bad advertising?

You choose.

Time is money....

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

...dog eat dog.... it's a jungle... lunch is for wimps....

As we rapidly approach another Yuletide (time and tide wait for no man) holiday season the concept of time passing is perhaps more considered than at other months in the year. Questions often posed on personal achievement, balancing work and life, success at work, resolutions to do better all have the idea of time teetering precariously at the back of mind.

It's no different for Oomph. Time has played some sort of warped trick by suddenly presenting us with the fact that we are about to close on our 2nd full financial year. What we have achieved has been (mostly) outstanding and funnily enough, quite fun. We're still on good speaking terms with our parents and the kids all seem to get on quite well. Cue sound of backs being slapped. This blog itself was meant to follow the arrow of time and record a sort of potted history of our development - clearly the pressures brought on by our old lag, (sic) time, have significantly increased the level of pottedness to said record.

I have one thought on time as we exit 2007, inspired by a couple of things. An article in the FT today posed the idea of spending time thinking and still seeing it as valuable - in relation to the time saved by the high speed UK rail link to Paris. I like that 'spending time thinking' notion. A few weeks ago we visited a client whose business was importing French wine and I was presented with a wonderful example of encouragement to spend time thinking - a meeting room that also served as a dining room with chef-cooked food provided to all (about 40) staff and a dedicated lunch hour in which to eat it. And yes, people still answered the phone and considered their customers. This is a very successful, fast growing business with a family mentality at its heart that did not get in the way of returning value to customers, staff and shareholders.

Whilst apparently someone has done a study a few years ago and proven through research that 'time actually is money', we can be pretty certain that spending time thinking will more often have a much richer creative outcome than the 10p per minute time was seemingly worth in 2002.

So the thought is this. In 2008, spend your time wisely. Have a think.

Social Navigation...

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Another blog about Web 2.0? No actually, this is about how consumers buy online. According to a survey recently run in the US with 1200 online shopper respondents, 'social navigation' is a phrase coined to describe the ability to narrow product selections based on reviews from like-minded people with similar interests.

Apparently two thirds of online shoppers actively use social networking as a decision maker between products. This has implications for shop assistants in bricks and mortar, for consideration of drop out rate in shopping basket and ecommerce sites (when was the last time you heard someone at a shopping till say to the assistant and everyone else in the queue - "hang on a mo', I'm just popping out to check someone's review of this food mixer") and clearly for site architects in considering review content.

The car industry found the shift in consumer footfall from uninformed to spec. ready tough to handle and have had to consider sales retraining over the last 5 years. It looks like the '4 out of 5 people that research cars online before buying' metric is one that all retailers of items with £10+ticket value might have to consider.

And why not? It's always been that way with buying ad agencies.

Open and shut case

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

So Google shares hit an all-time intraday high of $730.23. It's clearly doing some people some good.

More thoughtfully, a couple of the bigger stories around Google this week responsible for these stratospheric movements are to do with the invitation from Google to welcome all (well, nearly all) and sundry to enter its doors and share in the gains. Whether it's social networking with friendly mobs such as LinkedIn, Plaxo and Oracle or handsets and networks in developing a mobile platform with a group including Motorola, Samsung and T-mobile, they're all at it.

The Economist suggests that they may be avoiding the mistakes of the 90's and Facebook could be about to experience a "Netscape moment" with the new Google sponsored OpenSocial set of standards going directly against Facebook's proprietary (closed) approach, while the FT reckons "Google is not about to eat (Nokia and Microsoft's) lunch" with their new open source platform Android.

I reckon the difference between opening one selectively inclusive door and closing another exclusive door is a matter for some philosophical debate

In Google we trust.

By the way. Is anyone really using this social networking mallarkey?

"Ban facebook" say the techies who are all of a twitter

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Ban Facebook?

IT management news service Silicon.com say half of businesses have restricted use of social networking sites.

It's because they're using up all the disk space rather than avoiding doing their day job by sorting out dates with the good looking account handler who just walked into the print room.

...or is it just a better way of passing information around for work or pleasure, email schemail....

what do you think?

Social networking. In or out?

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0100

You know a trend is a convention when the ad world starts picking up on it...

Russel Davies might think of social networking as the new revolution but if we took away all the people talking about social networking in the social network, what would be left?

Who remembers those dated Year 2000 discussion about the next Web killer app after email? It's portals, no it's manage your own financial services, no it's trade affiliations, no it's advertising, no it's spinning trainers, no it's commerce.

Actually, it's just regular life, online. And email.

So what does bebo replace - talking? - getting a red face being turned down by a prospective date? And what about LinkedIn? Does anyone use it for anything except accepting invitations to LinkedIn?

I think this. Social Networking=Own life directory enquiries. With no telephone. And with pictures.
In 5 years we'll all do it. Even if we're 70 as then you have much more stuff to remember.

Advertising squared. Some questions. No answers.

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0100

How do you advertise an ad agency? Surely we should know best.

I know. Identify comms objectives, find target audience, consider what media they consume, plan communciations, then execute......
Did someone mention budget?
Of course within budget.
And resource?
We're bound to have a team free for a couple of ads and the website.
I see. Priorities?
It's VERY important.
More important then earning us fees then?
Er...
You'll provide all the sign off protocols that you demand of your clients too?
Come on, you've got my mobile number. Im always around.
Hmmm. You'll be writing the copy too for the home page?
I'll do it on the train.
Can I have a client project with a deadline, a budget and some objectives please?

Well, we have relaunched our website with (most of ) of work now displayed beautifully and we still have the rabbit (even though Simon pressed the launch button) and our Marketing Forum prospects can see what we do.

Of course it's not finished but you can always improve.

It's that easy. Thanks Mo. Thanks Adam. Thanks Spence. Very much.

Nice guys & Newcastle

Tue, 08 May 2007 00:00:00 +0100

It would be remiss of me not to mention a changing of the guard at St. James Park. Good guy Glen Roeder steps down (with a light if unwielding push from the Board), wheeler dealer, dull football, rainbow coalition team man Big Sam Allardyce stpes in (Probably).
What do we think of this?
"Buy the shirt, live the dream" was the phrase loved by punters and shareholders both. Do we think Big Sam can release the pent up desires of a footballing Unitary State by bringing home silverware? If he does will that actually disappoint the masses that thrive on the reputation of being supporters of the biggest club never to.....(insert as appropriate)?

Here lies the dichotomy. I always thought my dream job would be Commercial Director of NUFC - then I thought how on earth do you market a thing that already has a 90% share of purse of most families within a 50 mile radius of HQ (excluding a little hub of disinterest around Wearside) - 100% on matchdays.

Surely it should just take a great manager who knows how to tactically to run a football match? Enter Ruud, Kenny and Sir Bobby. Zilch results.

OK Souness was a (big)blunder but the rest had form. And Glen was a return to loyalty in a club that hadn't been awash with that quality in the Boardroom for a while.

And who has been the closest to success? King Kevin whose only thought of a back four were the seats on the bus that the poker games was played from but whose marketing credentials - all the way back to that great smell of Brut - are unquestioned.

There you go Freddie. Install a brand guru as MD and let Terry Mac run the football team. It'd be a laugh anyway. Something we've been a little short of for a while.

Adobe Apollo

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Adobe has recently released an alpha version of their new Apollo runtime.
From adobe:

"Apollo enables developers to create applications that combine the benefits of web applications - network and user connectivity, rich media content, ease of development, and broad reach - with the strengths of desktop applications - application interactions, local resource access, personal settings, powerful functionality, and rich interactive experiences."

Basically Apollo allows web applications to be brought to the desktop so that a user can use local resources like accessing files and interacting with other applications but also the application can access the internet transparently without a browser.

Here you can see how ebay are thinking of building a desktop application to allow users to use their site.

Oomph will be keeping a close eye on Apollo as it moves towards a full release.

The Speed of Technology

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It has come to my attention recently that in web world certain programming technologies are progressing at a far greater speed than some of the systems we use to process and view them.

In this instance I am referring to a project recently undertaken that required some "fancy effects" to happen on the site after a user click. Flash could not be used and so the only other option available was JavaScript, using some special effects plugins. The idea of these is quite cool, they allow you to add extra functionality and effects to a website without needing to use Flash or some form of multimedia software.

The plugins themselves though are a quite new technology and it seems that some firewalls you can buy block them, even though they still enable JavaScript. It also seems that the exact firewalls doing this are quite random.

In retrospect, working with these plugins can be very rewarding and produce websites with very clean flash free sites. The downside is that any user with a firewall could find themselves missing out on what you have produced. Overall I would say that if you want to use one of these plugin effects libraries research who the site is for thoroughly as there are no published figures for how many firewalls block them. If a lot of users are going to be behind intricate firewalls then it may be worth looking somewhere else until this problem is solved. In this instance the programmers making these plugins appear to be outpacing the firewall makers.

It seems a classic Tortoise and the Hare race, but in this situation I hope the Hare comes in first.