Bent out of shape

Now that the registered user numbers of Facebook and Twitter have reached a target audience of all bipeds it may be time for a bit of illumination. That illumination is about the frequency distribution curve of actions among their usage base.
Put simply what % of all tweets are accounted for by what % users and what [...]

Biting the hand that feeds you.

“Best Buy is even using one of the creepier technologies out there known as retargeting. If you shop for blender online but don’t buy it, you may well be surrounded by blender ads on other Web sites.”
The quote above appeared in the New York Times yesterday in an article about Best Buy’s truly innovative and [...]

Strategy and tactics

I had the mixed fortune of being a media buyer on the Virgin Atlantic account in the very early stages of their international expansion. We, the agency, were constantly minded to develop strategy and were frustrated (albeit sometimes delightedly so) that the airline’s communication strategy comprised a series of one-off ads and the high profile antics [...]

Life is full of surprises

But this is not one of them. YouGov’s Brand Index tell us that brands that have invested in marketing in the first half of this annus horribilis have created more than their fair share of buzz. Buzz in this sense is measured in the broadest terms by monitoring volume and sentiment in online conversations and by search [...]

How mobile drives friends and followers

Mobile advertising is worth no more than $150m in the US in 2009. Given the distribution of devices, the growth of data usage, and the increasingly centrality to the lives of Americans this is somewhat surprising.
It’s likely that the significant gating factor is the fact that few advertisers have hit upon a reasonable business model where [...]

Google – new rules to play by

Google is big enough and significant enough both societally and commercially to attract scrutiny that others may not. This week the company had a service outage that provoked wide reaction and made a commercial announcement that brought to light some behavioral issues that are unattractive in a monopoly.
Specifically Google announced open season for ‘trademark’ keyword [...]

Not all bad news….

The New York  Times has published a fascinating piece today http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/start-ups/27global.html?_r=1&hp that examines the questionable economics of the global march of digital properties into markets that are unlikely to generate sufficient revenues to cover the consequent cost of infratructure and bandwidth.
The article points out that Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and others are faced with the possibility of [...]

The Clement Freud joke – Parental advisory

If you are a sensitive soul best not click on this link. On the other hand….
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfK0jUycNR0

All the news that’s fit to print?

The New York Times masthead has carried this statement (without the question mark) since 1896 when the Ochs family acquired the newspaper that it still controls today.
There may have been a sharp intake of breath this week when it was deciding how to report its own financial results which like those of its peers in [...]

The Greta Garbo solution

If you truly want to be alone try spending an hour in menswear at Neiman Marcus in Dallas (I needed shoes, what can I say).
The store was empty and the beautifully merchandised departments with the new spring / summer ranges looked as if they were closed. I am guessing the same picture was replicated across [...]