FRANKthoughts

The times are a changing and the good news is that we can now measure what we’ve all been doing for years…time shift viewing on free-to-air networks and subscription TV using VCRs, DVD-R, TiVo, Foxtel IQ, Austar’s My Star and others

There are three viewing definitions, basically;

 ”LIVE” – viewing TV content as it goes to air

 ”AS LIVE” – viewing TV content at a different time to the live broadcast but within the same day 

 ”TIME SHIFT” – viewing TV content 24 hours after the live broadcast

As i write we have one week’s data…so it’s ambitious to draw any trend conclusions, however here are 8 observations to be getting on with (when i talk about time shifting here it includes ‘as live & ‘time shift’ viewing…makin’ sense?)

 1. News and sport are the least time shifted content (not surprisingly) and drama (particularly US drama) is the most time shifted

2. In the US and UK where such viewing has been in place for several years only 10%-15% viewers time shift

3. The current level for time shifting is only 4% viewers (less than we may have anticipated).

4. The introduction of time shift viewing in Australia has coincided with the establishment of the additional digital channels Go, 7two, One, ABC2 & SBSTWO. The net  effect of these has been a reduction of about 7% viewers on the ‘parent’ networks

5. The loss to digital channels is likely to be made up by time shift viewing

6. We must anticipate that time shift viewers are largely skipping the ads and this may well increase in-programme integration

7. Last ad in break will become more important as ’shifters’ possibly fast forward too far and rewind back to the last ad

8. The networks will no doubt try to increase their rates even more than during their annual negotiations and we can anticipate a ding-dong battle with buyers as the months unfold.

If you have any other questions or points of view please let me know, by commenting below and i’ll get back soonest.

KeepCUP, originally uploaded by FRANkVizeum.

We all have degrees of environmental engagement exemplified by Tamir’s excellent slideshare .
An easy environmental new year’s endeavour is to buy your own KeepCUP .
For years there has been the guilt of tossing out the used ‘disposable’ coffee cup each day. No longer. We bought five medium cups @ $12.20 each.
Chucking some numbers around….we now pay 50c less per coffee per day so in 25 days the KeepCUPs will have paid for themselves. Great.
From an environmental point of view the collective impact of the five of us (assuming 1 x coffee per day) over a year will be to save

* 1600 paper cups
* 4kgs plastic lids
* 23kgs landfill
* 76 KeepCUPs-worth of plastic
* 0.2 of a tree…

Not bad for just five people. So let’s kick off 2010 in a sympathetic way. I feel 2010 is going to be good to us all so let’s be good to 2010.

As a marketing communications company we owe it to ourselves and our loyal clients to stay abreast of the ever evolving communications-shift that is in play. One of my solutions to appear knowledgeable is to surround myself with people and companies who are pioneering change.

One such company is Lookout Mobile who make iphone apps, jointly managed by Patrick and Daniel. One of their hero app is Aussie Rules Live and they are one of the leaders in this emerging market.

I was talking with them yesterday and they remarked that app development is now in its third-wave, which intrigued me. Wave One…all the way back in July 2008 largely came from 3G backyard developers and in hindsight were kind of crude, but fun. Wave Two emerged with 3GS. The “S” is for speed and gave birth to funkier apps such as the compass, improved gaming and augmented reality. A great example of the latter is in this clip.

Wave Three is capitalising on “second-mover advantage” which revisits existing apps and simply improves upon them. Weather apps are a good example with Pocket Weather emerging as one of the most popular.

From an iphone owner’s point of view there are so many new apps emerging and that awareness of the best apps is largely through friends and “have you seen this app?” conversations. It occured to me that aside from itunes there is no destination which provides independent, user generated, reviews and views. Apps are currently ranked in the app store by 1-5 stars which is fine but limited. I thought such a site might be called iphoneappreview.com.au. To my surprise i was able to register this url, which i did yesterday. Dot com was taken and takes us here, a site developed by doshdosh and the wrong advice  it has over 14,000 app reviews and currently ranks 328,000 on alexa.

The iphone app market is in early stages of development and penetration and i figure with the right collective attitude and experience now is a good time to explore the opportunity to provide a UGC app-review platform as a destination in a market that is destined to grow dramatically. So is  there anyone out there who agrees with the opportunity and would like to contribute at this formative stage in the life-cycle of apps? Please let me know.

Back in June we first spoke about Guvera . Well  it’s finally launching in a few weeks…15 December we’re told. The Guvera model is based on engagement in favour of the classic advertising-interruption model. From their eDM “Instead of advertising being perceived as disruptive or annoying, Guvera allows the advertiser to align their brand with their customers passions, allowing the brand to become the hero that provides new ways to find and get music, for free.”

If you think about your own experiences in meeting people you’re more likely to end up talking with someone who is approachable and listens rather than someone who just wants to talk about themselves.

 The Guvera approach allows brands to be able to fast-track engagement via an understanding of consumer preferences across a range of crieteria. Registering with Guvera is like speed dating for brands. To register you’ll be asked about your prefences on holidays, sport, music, gadgets & things, web activities, countries, books, films, food and charities. Just the kind of topics any one might ask in getting to know you.

I’m currently reading Mike Walsh’s excellent book, Futuretainment. In this he says “The challenge/opportunity for brands to benefit from an engagement-approach is to shift their brand strategy focus and to start behaving like media companies. Great brands engage consumers through telling stories. By learning more about the stories that surround a brand we can form our own impressions of their products/services and what they mean to our own lives and experiences. As audiences fragment one of the few ways for brands to achieve mass awareness is for their message to be compelling enough for consumers to do the distribution for you.”

It’ll be interesting to see how brands manage this opportunity with Guvera. In this emerging era of brand engagement it is clear that some brands (just like some people) are socially inept and there are likely to be degrees of sensitivity between the one-night stand approach and building longer term relationships.

As Mike says “the future of entertainment is not advertising- the future of advertising is entertainment.”

I’m in Singapore for a few days as one of the judges of the inaugural Nuffnang blog awards. Great result for the Aussies, we have about 1% of the bloggers that make up the 100,000 community and picked up 25% of the awards!

 Congratulations must go to everyone who was nominated and who made the event such a success.  More about the winners later.
On my strolls around Singapore i came across a new twist on reflexology which involves hundreds of fish nibbling your feet to remove the dead skin. Check this out 

We asked “In the face of dynamic pull-social media platforms is there a long term future for data bases and pushing information via data bases?”

I’ve been wrestling with this issue for the last few weeks and i’m not sure i’ve resolved my head. The shift in emphasis for me is feeding value-information to an opt-in data base versus having a dialogue. The theory of opt-in data bases is fine but rarely do they deliver on the promise. I don’t know what the norm and i accept that opening rates will vary but an opening rate of 10% or less for most eDM’s might not be far off….even a bit generous. By comparison a healthy dialogue with a brand takes us to a multi-segmented, bespoke relationship.

My view, and i’d love someone to challenge me, is that databases will be dead in 3-5 years as social media chatter eclipses their relevance. Here’s some other opinions.

Tim Pethick, entrepreneur at large, brand guru and founder of Nudie, said

“I don’t believe so. We all find our way onto databases at specific moments of time in relation to a particularly relevant context in that moment of time. Change the context and the time frame and a push to the database just becomes more spam. Consumers want to be in charge and that will mitigate in favour of ‘pull’ based solutions.”

Ben Freund, CEO of goswitch, said

“I believe that data base marketing will always have a place as it gives consumers a chance to register for offers that of interest, and it gives marketers the ability to target their offers for specific market segments.”

Josephine Evans, Marketing Director of Tireworld, said

“When considering our specific industry, we do believe there is a long term future for databases and pushing information via databases.  For most part, the products and services we provide are a need and not a want and as such, databases enable us to cost effectively communicate with our customers with timely and unobtrusive messages.   The ongoing challenge for us is to better educate our employees on the importance of capturing the “right” data so that what we communicate is always meaningful and relevant to our customers.”

Adam Garone, co-founder of Movember, said

“It’s depends how the data base is sourced. If you are purchasing a database from a third party and sending them an e-mail or direct mail then, in my view there has never been any value or long term future in that.  If however your data base has been sourced through building your own community, then there is absolutely a future in continuing to provide valuable and timely information to the data base. The key being valuable and timely information.”

 ”The dynamic pull of social media has added a new dimension to how brands can communicate which presents a huge opportunity.  In this environment the tone of the communication needs to change as you are participating in a two way conversation.  That demands that you are transparent, real, don’t attempt to control the conversation and provide value to the conversation and the community.”

So opinion is fairly evenly split…i still think that databases will die a slow death. Thoughts anyone?

We asked some of our clients “As services in the  marketing industry explode beyond strategy, creative, media, PR, social media, web development, research etc. is the challenge to manage the various suppliers or is the inclination to consolidate?”

Adam Garone, one of the founders of Movember said 

“We will continue to engage the very best staff and agencies to perform these roles.  Some roles such as social media, PR and brand strategy are best done in-house.  Creative, web development and research require a range of technical skills at varying resource levels throughout the year which are best outsourced.  I prefer multiple agencies that are experts in their fields over a multi faceted agencies.”

Josephine Evans, Marketing Director from Tireworld said

“Ideally the preference for us (being a medium sized privately owned company with a small marketing team) would be to consolidate these areas as there would be obvious advantages and synergies using one agency that could provide the whole gamut of services.  Admittedly it may be an initial challenge taking that leap of faith and assigning all services to one company, as the sceptic in me would be concerned that it is less likely that one company could specialise in every marketing service and deliver a better result than individual companies that dedicate themselves to only one specific service.  Considering that agencies are becoming more and more accountable in  delivering results and achieving their clients’ KPIs, maybe it wouldn’t be such a scary thought to entertain.”

Tim Pethick, entrepreneur at large, brand guru and founder of Nudie, said

“As the environment becomes more complex typically service providers become more specialized. We’ve seen this in other industries or professions in the past. For example, accountants and lawyers have become increasingly specialized as the legislative framework has become more complicated. I think the same will inevitably need to happen with marketing services. No one provider can competently span the range of specialties dictated by the explosion of requirements. I think the trend will be for clients to manage a variety of best-of-breed specialist suppliers. This is in the best interests of the client and it also ensures service providers continue to develop deep domain expertise.”

Please join me in thanking these three for finding the time to provide their opinions. I have posted Adam’s photo in honour of Movember 2009 having its official Melbourne launch tonight.

 Next week’s question will be “In the face of dynamic pull-social media platforms is there a long term future for data bases and pushing information via data bases?”

It’s been about 3 months since Vizeum launched in Australia through FRANk media, in Melbourne, to become FRANkVizeum. Finally we have Vizeum’d up the building with the global yellowness and the tree as seen here on the London site.

We’ve put our own spin on the ‘look’ with an intricate stencil on our walls thanks to signaction who have done an awesome job. Here’s a short movie using our new flip video camera which gives you the general idea. Enjoy.

We are into day 2 of Darren ‘problogger‘ Rowse’s guide to 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (31DBBB).

Day 1 suggests you develop your blog’s BBQ-moment to crystallise what your blog is about. We settled on ”The FRANkVizeum blog helps marketers understand and exploit the ever-changing marketing communications landscape, with particular focus on brand strategy, media innovation and social business strategy with a twist of frivolous topicality.”

Day 2 suggests you post a comment which includes a list…lists are scannable, succinct, neat, persuasive and viral with many more attributes. I have no intention of replicating Darren’s 90 page work book and suggest the $20 to download it is money well spent.

So here’s my, albeit short, list. My list is one of ‘could try harder.’

1. Prahran Aquatic Centre : for the last 6 years i’ve been a regular swimmer at this excellent 50M pool and really miss the around-the-corner convenience when its not open during the day which is generally mid May to early October. They have my email, mob and address by virtue of me being a season card holder. So i’m checking the opening date for this year and find to my utter suprise its been open since 10th August. Stonnington council please….would it have hurt to tell your biggest fans?

2. Greville Records : awesome music destination in Greville Street. I’m a big fan of supporting local, independent retailers but there come a point when it can become too hard. Ordering music through them is my want rather than heading down to Virgin or itunes. But their inability to provide a reliable service is frustrating especially when you want them to still be around in 5 years. Get organised guys we love you.

3. Across the road is Greville St Bookstore, similar situation. An institution, a destination and a part of the Greville St thing but there is a fine balance between hippy/green/bibliophiles and efficient follow up/customer service. Buy some software lovely ladies.

Ok my list of three is on the gripey side BUT you can never underestimate the value of a loyal, passionate and regular customer. Never take anyone’s custom for granted.

Yesterday i made it to Marketing Now @ the Sofitel in Melbourne. The flavour of the event was “How to use Social Media and Online Marketing to reach customers directly, and keep them.” Here’s Dave and myself courtesy of David Armano, as are all these shots gratefully borrowed from his twitpic

Some spectacularly credible speakers sharing their wisdom yesterday were Gavin servant of chaos Heaton, Laurel silkcharm Papworth and Darren problogger Rowse.

As someone who is hungry for social business learnings i found Laurel and Darren (unfortunately i missed Gavin) both generous and inspiring. I came away enriched and wondered why every seat wasn’t filled. The entry price was a $100 donation, $50 of which went towards thankyou water so it was all very affordable and worthy. One of the concepts Laurel touched on was COI, the Cost of Inaction…worth bearing in mind.

I would say that the majority of marketing directors out there are tussling with the concept of infusing social media into their businesses and brands. With a few exceptions the results so far are indifferent and yet if they’d broken away from the slavery of emails and meetings their understanding could have been mightily accelerated. I wonder if in 12 months the same speakers are assembled there will be a queque to attend?

Moving on…i took the opportunity to promote Nuffnang by stickering the venue at strategic points as in the photo…nicely spotted by Mr A.

For those who missed the event here’s Darren talking about how to promote a blog. This is from his blog not yesterday’s session, but similar content. Laurel’s presentation is available here. Many of her slides are minimalist and need Laurel to do them justice but my favourite slides are 18-24 inc. Judging by the comments flying in on twitter David Armano’s session is along these lines.

The social business challenge as we see it here at FRANkVizeum is to take social to market pitched at a level that integrates a brand’s current investment in paid for media activity and does not leave marketers thinking “What are you talking about?” and “How is this possibly relevant to my brand(s)?”  We have our social media infusion process, some case histories and we run our free FRANkademy session each month to introduce social thinking within a traditional media context. It’s working for us and our clients and i would encourage any brand with just their toes in the water to dive in and splash about.

Anybody who went to MarketingNow (or didn’t) want to add their thoughts?