The search for the human element of Digital Britain

March 13, 2009 | 1 comment | Tweet This

As we have mentioned to some of you, Amanda and I were a little miffed coming out of the Digital Britain session with Lord Carter last month.  The fact that the government has recognised the benefits of supporting digital developments is awesome don’t get me wrong, however the report focuses predominantly on industry and fails to mention how they are going to help get more of the UK population online and support smaller start ups.  We hosted two seminars at Amplified that afternoon to compile people’s feedback with the intention of submitting a response to the report.

The other day I was having a nice cuppa with Mr Earls when we both realised that responses to the report had to be in this week.  Hauling ass Amanda and I have put together our 5 point proposal of topics we feel need to be included within the report and submitted this to government yesterday.  You can view our response here and Mark’s here.  Will keep you updated.

By Jamie Coomber | Blog  | 1 comment | Tweet This

Wearable Gestural Interface

March 13, 2009 | 1 comment | Tweet This

You gotta love MIT.  Sixthsense is a wearable projector that interacts with your surrounding environment by overlaying interactive content over everyday items that allow the user to find out more information.  Nice.

By Jamie Coomber | Blog, Data Visualisation, Innovation, Technology  | 1 comment | Tweet This

The future of Social Media; how conversation and behaviour is changing

February 13, 2009 | 2 comments | Tweet This

I was asked to give a talk on this at Use8’s recent conference on Social Media. I am not claiming to have all the answers as I don’t believe we ever will have, but a few of you have asked to see it so here you go. Most of my slides are just images, so if you view it through Slideshare, I have inserted notes so the presentation will make more sense.

The future of Social Media; how conversation and behaviour is changing
View more presentations from Jamie Coomber. (tags: socialmedia social)

By Jamie Coomber | Blog, Conference, Social Interaction, Thought pieces, Youth  | 2 comments | Tweet This

Who do you think you’re talking to?

January 5, 2009 | 4 comments | Tweet This

no-hear

Not one to beat around the bush, this year will obviously prove challenging for many companies, and out of it I think a lot of `dead wood’ (in the nicest term) will be removed from the equation.  In order to survive the year ahead, companies must now more than ever, put themselves in the shoes of their customers and talk to them in a way that would be welcomed in this economic climate.  Well done for stating the obvious, but what’s my point? To let you into a secret, sometimes on a weekend one of my favourite guilty pleasures is buying a couple of trashy women’s magazines (In Style, Elle etc.) and lying on the sofa with music on in the background taking myself away from real life for a couple of hours.  Reading this month’s array of articles (not for intellectual satisfaction of course) I found myself getting more and more frustrated.  It’s January.  The month of the year when most of us find that we are skint and just to ensure I stay away from the sales we are officially in a recession.  Have the editor’s of these magazines been on another planet?  One article entitled something like “101 quick outfits” or something just as uninspiring, offered to provide ideas on what wardrobe stables I should be searching for.  Not a single one of the solutions presented cost less than £150 per item.  Now I don’t earn as much as I would obviously like to, however I don’t do badly either but do the editors of these magazines really think this is the time when I would consider going out and spending £250 on a jumper for work or that I would really think I need to be buying those £300 Joseph trousers this month.  No!  But it’s not the actual content of the article that offends me as if I had read this 4 months ago say, I probably would have enjoyed it a whole lot more.  It’s the fact that in this instance, the magazine editor seems to be affraid to discuss the issues that we are actually facing.  They are making no effort to show me they understand what I am thinking at this time and empathising with decisions that I may face.

As human beings, we want to feel that we are being talked to by someone who understands us and this must be the same principle that all companies adopt for 2009 if they want to come out the other side unscathed.  If a client were to approach me now with a high priced product to market, and state they feel their `brand’ were enough to convince their audience to buy it, I would have difficulty not to laugh in their face.

We need to take into consideration issues that we may have not necessarily wanted to be associated with in previous campaigns.  People will make their own mind up if they want to buy a product or not, but painting a rosey picture in order to push it is not an option.  We are pretty intelligent really, a notion that appears to be lost on some brands (Elle you can step up here), and by showing us beautiful artistic shots of products we may want but simply cannot consider at this time will in the long run be damaging to your brand as I will remember that you rubbed it in my face.  If you have a high priced product to sell you can still survive in the forthcoming market but you will need to find other messages to show the benefits that people will be getting (low upkeep costs, holds it’s value, additional free items.).

I can understand why some companies will prefer to bury their heads in the sand, but in order to come out the other side unscathed use this as an opportunity to allow people to develop positive associations with your brand, they won’t forget it.  At the end of the day do I want to support a company who shows me they understand my current concerns and talks to me at my level, or one who encourages me to get into debt so I can also look like a airbrushed waif who does not have a care in the world?

By Jamie Coomber | Blog, Marketing  | 4 comments | Tweet This

When quality should overcome quantity

January 4, 2009 | 5 comments | Tweet This

Like any other blogger who likes having conversations, I have Google alerts set up for my blog name so I can see who is saying what and take the opportunity to engage with them.  I received an alert last week which initially confused me somewhat.  It led me to a spread sheet containing the URL’s of 62 likeminded blogs similar to mine.  Now, i’m guessing this probably wasn’t meant for public use however, it was good to see that I was in good company (Helen Jaz and James).  The list was categorised by ID, blog URL, date of most recent post, date of first post and number of posts in December.  Given that this appears to be a blogger hitlist, I assume it was probably compiled by a PR agency.

As you all know I like to see bloggers being engaged by brands as it encourages a two-way conversation so I think it’s great that more and more PR companies are approaching bloggers and involving them in product launches so I don’t have any problem at all from this list.  What I would ask from reading this list however, is what the profile of the blogger they are looking for is.  As you will see from my previous post, I am blogging less and less because I am finding that I am now using a variety of outlets to post my thoughts as opposed to just my blog, that combined with actually having more in-depth real life conversations, an observation that I know a lot of you share.  So bearing this in mind, maybe the focus of selecting bloggers shouldn’t actually be “number of posts in December” or “Date of most recent post” but rather trying to look at the potential influence a blog has, an outcome neither of these fields will provide.  I could write 50 posts in one month but if no one reads my blog then it’s pointless in wanting me to write about a brand launch.  How about looking at how many people read the blog, then look at how many people leave comments to posts to see how engaged the readers are with the author.  Looking at other online spaces where the author posts, would also enable you to get a better understanding of they talk to.

The company who can measure influence enabling targeting messages to a handful of people and avoid spamming the masses  will be one of the big success stories of 2009.  After talking to many companies who “offer” this I am yet to find one that fills me with confidence, but will be keeping fingers crossed.

By Jamie Coomber | Blog, Community, Marketing  | 5 comments | Tweet This

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