Defining Johnnie Walker's brand persona

Top1 Video Ad. at Creativity-Online

Blab! Blab!...Blab! - Wave

I've just been humbled by the Google Wave Demo which, as big as it may sound, could possible redefine the social web as we know it.

Currently this social web allows me to blab and allows you to blab back.

With Google wave, I will blab and at the same time, you could edit my blab or blab back. The blabs could come from anywhere, be it the wave client or any other blabbing medium such as twitter, facebook and all. We were amazed with an app that allowed us to blab in twitter and update our facebook status at the same time, now get that and make it the norm, and don't even limit it to text, include images, videos, links, documents, etc.

Obviously, to add more colour to the wave project, the wave client can be embedded in any social web tool, making the conversations (Blab!, Blab!...Blab!), the same one, irrelevant of the tool.

In conclusion, who will need websites anyways. Website links will feature in waves and the online widget for that web will feature in the conversation.

Ironically, all this happens in the browser. Would I be wrong to say that once the desktop becomes the browser, the offline content is stored online...then it is a series of waves and blabs...and it is one big thing.

It's late and i am hyped up, so I'll stop here!

If you are geeky enough, spend sometime watching the 1.5hr demo http://wave.google.com/ (I am open to a demo night with lots of popcorn and lots of discussion)

Monday blab: websites and the 5 eras of the social web

I have come across a chart promoting one of Forrester's Research tackling the future of the Social Web. The chart has been sitting on my desktop for quite some time. Over this weekend I have also dedicated sometime to the Razorfish Feed report. The latter is a recommended read for anyone flirting with the 2.0, cutting edge interactive technology or digital overall. It offers brief chapters about anything from the device, to the browser, to the end of the browsing content itself.

In this context I believe the Forrester chart may in the future conflict with the 'Razorfish vision'. Rightly so the Forrester research speaks about the evolution of social WEB and assumes websites will be at the heart of the social web (at least in the above graphical chart). Really and truly though, web sites may soon come to an end. As Kevin Kelly rightly explains, the web of things will replace the web as we know it, away from the screen or standard device. However the chart may not say it all. Finally I managed to find an interview with Jeremiah Owyang which explains the future eras much better than the chart and complements Kelly's vision. The question though remains, will there be any website in 5 years time?

I am posting both videos below:


Kevin Kelly predicts the next 5000 days of the social web


Jeremiah Owyang on the 5 eras of the social web

Countdown to 'The Chaos Scenario'

Read read read! This is what I did not do best lately. Digital is interesting and very powerful, however digital is also very futuristic and as a result highly unclear. August 3 will mark the launch of 'The Chaos Scenario'. The book is written by Bob Garfield.

Quoting from the adage site 'the book documents the converging forces he believes doom mass media and mass marketing as we've always known them. The historic disintegration of "mass," he writes in the introduction, "will change your media environment in dramatic ways. It will change the advertising industry in melodramatic ways."

In the second half of the book, Garfield goes on to discuss what he calls the "art and science of Listenomics," which begins with the recognition that neither marketers nor any other institution accustomed to dictating from the top can do so for much longer. Garfield prescribes a series of measures in the digital-technology and social-media realms for not only listening to the "group formerly known as the audience," but treating them as stakeholders with much to contribute to a brand, and to every aspect of the economy and society.'


More about this at the adage site: http://adage.com/article?article_id=138006

Barclays Fake World: this is worth a sincere blab!

The above ad is the latest ad by Barclays. The ad has made it to Creativity-Online top 5 of this week. The ad reminds me so much of The Truman Show film. The Barclays spot wisely puts the Barclays brand above all other brands in context of the current economic crisis in which big banks caused so much trouble!

Espresso and aggregation

Here it goes, TimesofMalta has upscaled its aggregation efforts, and it style if I may add. The new Espresso section aggregates the top stories in one simple page. I would add an RSS feed to the site and possibly a twitter status update!
Have a look: http://www.timesofmalta.com/espresso

Should brands be afraid of 2.0?!

The below BLAB is features today in Technology Sunday, a supplement of the Sunday Times

If the online space were an offline physical environment, say a massive open market, it would consist of at least 62.4 million stands and 93.6 million other booked spaces awaiting their owners to fill up the stand with stuff ready to be sold, shared or exchanged. Some 1.2 billion prospective customers would be able to visit the market 24 hours a day whilst four billion other customers would be allowed to take the millions of stands with them wherever they are.

With all these numbers you would expect huge queues and confusion but in truth the market allows each visitor to go directly to the stand he or she is looking for, skipping any possible queues and speaking directly to the stand owner. Some stands have even invested in multi-lingual staff who can communicate in any language, even Maltese at times. Others have even bought additional space just next to their stand. Here customers speak about their purchases and recommend champion products and services they themselves have tried out.

For frequent customers stand owners offer a more personal service by only showing what they think are the most relevant products. They base their assumptions on the customers’ past purchases and interests.

Some companies have come up with easy to use directories which search for specific stands or products and guide new customers around.

Clearly the web space is a very big virtual world with web pages being added everyday and online users being able to access it from any imaginable device. There are on average at least 52,000 customers on each stand and this is good news for brands because now they have a much bigger audience with which they can relate in a flexible and personal manner.

However this is not the full story and some brands may need to revisit their positioning online. Back to the open market analogy, customers are visiting the stands much less often than before because now they are allowed to set up their own stand, equally attractive and probably more entertaining and personal than the other stands. Instead of visiting the other stands they invest more time in customizing their little space and hang out with their friends in their own social network.

This is very bad news for brands. I pity brands because offline they compete with other brands for a mindshare, but online, brands compete with us, their current and prospective customers. Susan Boyle’s Facebook page has over 1.7 million fans exceeding by far fan pages of established giant brands such as H&M.

All these shifts in the online space led some brands to consider socializing with us. Some brands have joined Facebook or Twitter and have their own profile or fan page. Other brands have tried to get some space on our personal profiles by launching branded wallpapers and viral applications. In some cases, established brands have been successful in acting as a channel, enabling us to meet and discuss their products on their own branded space. Some brands have actually managed to do this successfully thanks to their well planned strategies and brand appeal. The buzz generated over the iPhone has garnered Apple the top place on a list of the Top 100 Social Brands. Suddenly it seems the story ends and we (brands and customers alike) lived happily ever after.

However some giant brands have spent huge amounts of money in bombarding our humble online spaces and failed. At the end of the day, why should we be-friend a marketing guy hopelessly trying to make the numbers at the end of the month?!

Chris Anderson, an online marketing expert, highlighted two reasons why we tend to be willing to be-friend a brand, blog about it and become brand ambassadors. None of these are financial.

The first reason is time-related. Useful or entertaining applications allow us to make better use of our time. When a brand comes up with an addictive application we are willing to spend some (or a lot of) time with that brand.

Customers are keen on being the centre of attention as much as brands would like to be. Brands who manage to put the spot light on the customers are guaranteed to make friends with these same customers and never be alone again! Similarly to hanging out with the in-crowd or wearing branded clothes, some brands add value to our reputation and it’s worth carrying them around, even when browsing online.

There you have it; money is not the be all and end all, especially during the recession. The good news for brands is that in 2.0 mode they have a choice. They could add value to our time and reputation in return for some attention or alternatively be stubborn and hold on to their confined online space. In the latter there is a high probability they will be left alone with ample time to think of how small they were when they started off, simply because online they are.