TRACTA :: 4eyes

The people have spoken, and New Zealand’s favourite websites have been announced in the Netguide People’s Choice Web Awards 2010.

Amongst the results, Stuff was awarded the Site of The Year prize, but missed out on Best Media Site, to TVNZ.  TradeMe came top in the Trading Site, Property and Employment categories, and runner-up in the Mobile Site and Site of the Year categories.  And international trends are reinforced by our votes for Google (Favourite Search Engine, Best Homepage), YouTube (Best Entertainment Site) and Facebook (Favourite Social Networking Site).

In other trend-watching news, an American university does an annual survey of incoming freshmen to find out what they are doing, thinking and believing.  This year’s incoming class were born in 1992.  Amongst the insights:

- Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.

- Czechoslovakia has never existed.

- Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

- Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.

- They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

This is the voice of the new generation, where communication technologies are omnipresent and information (but not knowledge) is available at the click of a button.

In Social Media News, Facebook is starting up location-based services.  This means users can tell Facebook where in the world they are, and Facebook will tell the world.  This will offer more chances to meet your virtual network in real life, and more opportunities for nearby businesses to promote their products/services to you.

Facebook are also launching a live video streaming channel.  They are using it for Facebook information and promotion at this stage, but there’s obviously the opportunity for it to rival TV channels for audiences, if they can gather enough “Live” content.

Still on Facebook, a bit of research has revealed the obvious.  Brands that are most successful on Facebook are those that have multiple pages, each cross-promoting each other; use easy-to-find names for the pages; adopt a conversational tone; update often; post video and other rich-content types; allow fan-initiated interaction; and encourage fan-to-fan conversations.

And finally, in more “so-obvious-but-we-had-to-do-the-research-to-prove-it” news:  A Twitter user is more likely to be a brand advocate or influencer than your average Joe.  They engage with more brands partly for the benefits such as discounts and new product knowledge, and partly so they can be seen by their followers as being in-the-know.  It’s largely a self-fulfilling cycle, and those of us that understand the need of these influencers to have “prior knowledge” can use that to  the advantage of our businesses.

That’s enough heavy stuff for a Monday.  Be careful out there!

Cheers,

It’s Friday the 13th.

That might be scary, but this assortment of news from around the web sure isn’t.

(Unless you’re centophobic.)

Facebook News

A new application for Facebook on mobile allows users to make free phone calls from smartphones to other smartphone users. Try it out here.

You can now access your Facebook pages, friends and conversations, through different software.  The Wowd software client (available here) includes real-time search and a “social dashboard”.

And if you’re worried that some of the stuff you (or others) have put on Facebook might come back to haunt you in the future, it might be time for you to hire an online reputation manager!

Google News

It’s an ongoing battle between Facebook and Google to become masters of the online universe.

Google has recently purchased or invested in two of the most popular apps developers for Facebook: Zynga and Slide.  This gives Google a very strong foothold with Facebook users and their data.  Where to from here?

You don’t hear much bad news from Google, but the much-hyped Google Wave is to be shut down.  The service that was supposed to allow freer sharing of content between users just hasn’t got to the critical mass of users that Google was hoping for.  Or is there something else in the pipeline that’s going to replace it really soon?

That’s not to say Google are sitting still though (as apparent from their multi-million dollar investments).  They have also just released an updated interface for GMail, showing that email is still a core activity for them.  It won’t be long until GMail includes all social media activity too, I reckon.

Twitter News

In previous posts I have highlighted how Facebook has set up policies for dealing with its users who have died, either removing their profiles or keeping them (minus some personal details) as memorial pages.  Twitter are catching up, and now doing the same.  Or if you’re willing to keep on your online reputation manager after your passing, he/she can take care of it for you!

Police News

This may seem an unusual category to include in Four Eyes, but these stories are all about technology and communications in policing…

Boston Police catch flasher via Twitter

NZ Police radio encryption is working

NZ Police using radio programmes to educate Samoan parents about the dangers of youth gangs

A couple of cool websites

To stimulate your creative juices…

The V Isokinetic website.  Very interactive.  Very cool.

A new shoe website.  Again, very interactive.  Quite sexy.  And the shoe has fingers for your toes!

Cheers,

Artistically driven, this press ad from MAF highlights the dangers of buying imported timber.

Here’s an excellent example of integrating real-time content (in this case, Twitter feeds) into an ambient experience, from Tourism Canada.

Car advertising taken to the next level, with a virtual test drive from Toyota in Germany.  A number of advertisers are incorporating “augmented reality” into their campaigns, such as 42 Below.  This sort of thing can definitely generate increased brand interaction within a loyal audience, and create interest while the technology is new and interesting.  There must be more potential than just delivering cool pictures on a screen though… that’s what I’m waiting to see!

Here’s the best collection of old NZ ads I’ve seen, from the Film Archive.  With classics such as Mr Dollar introducing decimal currency, Raro the instant breakfast drink, Cadbury Crunchie train and heaps more (did you know there were ads for bananas in the 1960s?  Maybe you do, if you were alive then..).

Finally, here’s another chance for you creative types to get something for free.  Design your own personal wrap for a new Mini Cabriolet, get it made and keep the car (for 4 months).

Cheers,

I’ll keep it simple this week…

Online research sources

You probably know about Google Alerts, which trawl the web for mentions of your selected keywords/brand names/people and report on website, news and blogs containing them.  I recently found another tool that does the same thing, but reports on mentions in social media.  Social Mention trawls through over 85 sites, including Facebook and Twitter, for mentions of your selected brand etc, and also gives rankings in the strength, sentiment, passion and reach of those mentions.

And thanks to Mr Walker for pointing this one out: Attitude NZ is a  6-monthly population survey put together by market research company Perceptive.  It includes a plethora of information from demographics, to brand awareness, favourite media options, business decision making and “how do you feel today?”  Registration is free so I recommend a visit any time you ask yourself “what do people really think?”

Media developments

TradeMe have gotten on the one-day sale bandwagon with a new section of their site.  At this stage the products and deals aren’t really exciting, and looking at today’s deals they seem to have only sold about 50% of one product, 10% of another and none of the third product featured.  They have some catching up to do, to gain ground on Off The Back and 1-Day (who TradeMe seem to have copied for page layout and everything!)

If you’ve been watching the Warriors on Sky, you may have seen a new interactive ad for Super Liquor. The Super Liquor Warriors Red Button Competition allows viewers to click the red button and enter their details via their Sky remote, while the game coverage continues uninterrupted in a corner of the screen.  Wish I had a video to show you how it works, but if you’re keen just check out this weekend’s Warriors game!

For fun

Who is the most popular celebrity on Facebook?  On Twitter?  The answers may surprise you!

What do graphic designers do when they are bored?  They play with themselves Photoshop!

Enjoy your weekend.  Farewell Martini.  See you on the other side!

Cheers,

Another week gone.  Two weeks, in fact, since the last Four Eyes post.

So there’s a bit to catch up on…

And what do you know?  Google just continues to grow!  They are now looking to infiltrate two of the biggest media industries we have: television and music.  Google TV is set to roll out on Sony televisions and with set-top boxes.  In short, it’s going to be an interface that allows your TV to connect to the internet, and gives access to all the functionality that represents.  It will be interesting to see whether Google TV will only present Google-owned sites (such as YouTube and Picasa), or give them prominence in search functions. Watch the video at the bottom of the page linked to above for a super-easy explanation.

Google is also setting up to take on the monolith that is Apple, as they prepare to launch a music download service in competition to iTunes.  Google isn’t confirming anything at this stage, but the news broke via the Wall Street Journal, a publication that does tend to check its facts before printing!

In Social Media news, the news is… there is no news.  Or at least that’s what marketers seem to think, as nearly half of corporates using social media are doing so with no strategy behind it.

Other corporates, who you would think do have a strategy, are seeing the benefit of just getting friendly with social media “influencers”.  Virgin Airlines are inviting selected social media influencers to fly for free, in the hope (we’d guess) that the influencers will write something good about VA.  Poignantly though, VA make the point that they don’t expect anything from the influencers.  Whether they say anything or not is up to them.

What are we going to call this new breed of social media influencers?  How about Hypersuaders??  Any other suggestions are welcome!

For some good examples of how social media can be integrated into above-the-line campaigns, check out my What’s Hot posts.

According to Wikipedia, Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.  With the mass connectivity of the internet, crowdsourcing is influencing everything from journalism to fashion.

You may have heard that Stuff.co.nz has recently experimented with crowdsourcing, asking its readers to go through thousands of MPs’ receipts, looking for “anything we can turn into a story”.  But did you know that YouTube has recently launched CitizenTube, a facility for anyone to load newsworthy videos, thus cutting out the need for news networks entirely.  As this article explains, the site is more than just a repository for videos, but is sorted and presented so that breaking news comes first, and only decent quality footage will be selected.

In other YouTube news, you’ll soon be able to edit your videos online with their new “cloud-based” video editor.  You can try it out here, or read about it here.

Thanks for reading!  I hope you learned something.

Cheers,

Inspiration below!  Some of the more creative ad executions I’ve seen lately, both on and offline:

McDonalds makes outdoor advertising interactive. Using a big outdoor video screen in Sweden, McDonalds invited passers-by to take a photo of products appearing on the screen, which they could take to the nearby store for FREE FOOD.

A tactic that has been taken up recently by big brands is to create a story.  A big story that dedicated fans can follow.  Like sending someone on a world trip and documenting their travels (with brand association thrown in).  Coke are doing it with something they call Expedition 206, sending three “ambassadors” to every country where Coke is sold (there are 206 of them) to find out what happiness means around the world. And KIN - an American smartphone – is sending one person around the world to meet all of her Facebook friends in real life.  Follow the journey on Facebook.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, we are seeing the evolution of music videos. Shihad’s new music video has an interactive edge.  Watch it here.

And the evolution of music marketing.  We know people are passionate about their music, so why not draw them in for prolonged engagement in the lead-up to a new release?  That’s what 30 Seconds To Mars have done, with a local online scavenger hunt.  Details here.  It seems complicated, but this sort of communication (it all starts with Twitter) to dedicated followers is becoming more common and isn’t as hard to set up as you might think!

The online job search market in New Zealand is highly competitive.  Seek is trying to generate brand loyalty and ongoing engagement through the creation of online games that tie in with their advertising campaigns.  Meanwhile, TradeMe has started a video series following four job-seekers, tying in advice and tips for others looking for work.  It is being promoted heavily across the TradeMe suite of sites, and you can see it here.

Until next time!

Cheers,

Welcome back!  After an absence enforced by “technical issues”, I’m stoked to be back bringing you the latest internet news, digital developments and advertising awesomeness.

I’ve got a bit of catching up to do, so this post is all about developments.  What’s happening in the online world?

Limewire has lost a court case and been found guilty of facilitating copyright infringement.  What a surprise!  The upshot of this may be the closure of the site.  That would no doubt lead to a new file-sharing site taking prominence until it faces legal action.  And, unless the music (and movie and TV and gaming) industries can work out some technological fix to completely prevent copying and file-sharing, that’s how things will stay.

TVNZ continues to develop its commercial-free channels on Freeview/Sky platforms. On 1 June the Heartland channel launches on Sky only (they’ve run out of Freeview channels to use).  It will be running a mix of old and not-so-old NZ-made dramas, documentary series and nostalgia.  Lots of Gary McCormick and Marcus Lush, by the looks of it.

Taking a more cerebral direction is TVNZ-7, which has recently formed a partnership with the Royal Society of NZ to bring us a series “designed to excite and inform with great stories of science and technology in contemporary New Zealand”.

Meanwhile over at TV3, they are slowly catching up!  This month they launch a new Video on Demand service, promising more content (most of their top programmes) and a better viewing experience.  Here’s hoping the programme selection interface is more engaging than the interface they have now!

In social media news, Air New Zealand has reinforced its dedication to social media with a quirky PR response to a “critical” editorial piece in The Listener magazine.  The piece was released through social media (and, no doubt, emails to media organisations), with a guaranteed distribution to nearly 20,000 “likers” on their Facebook page and over 13,000 Twitter “followers”.

Finally (well… nearly finally… at least finally before the stuff that comes below), I got an email from Metservice.com – NZ’s most popular weather site and 7th most popular site overall – announcing some new things.  Most interesting is the fact they are launching a mobile site (mobile internet is slowly gaining traction).  But also check out the creative they’ve done with EECA, incorporating live weather stats into banner ads.  Unfortunately it’s not live any more, but it shows the potential for incorporating live data into advertising creative.

Have a lovely week and just for fun…

Headline of the week

Bravest client of 2009 (32nd John Caples International Awards)

Most awesomest thing ever (this one is a bit noisy, but fun!)

Cheers,

As we March on through the year (geddit?) I realise there’s a need for entertainment as well as education in these posts.  So here goes.           I hope there’s something in here that tickles your… well, whatever you like to have tickled. Careful though, you might learn something!

Email marketing: how to ensure your message gets read.  The Marketing Association show they know how to utilise word of mouth.

Are you on Twitter?  Are you going to be away from home?  Probably not a good idea to post that information until you’re back, with sites like this one around.  It’s supposed to be raising awareness of the issue, but isn’t it doing that by inciting crime?!?

Some helpful advice from Stuff.co.nz on Facebook etiquette.  I initially thought this was a dumb idea for a news story, but in fact it raises interesting questions, especially within small industries in a small country like NZ!

For our design friends… Photoshop has just celebrated its 20th birthday.  See their reminisces and celebrations here!

The AXIS Awards… CAANZs’s’ celebration of those who are willing to pay to enter and pay to attend a back-slapping ceremony (no cynicism here).  They have however created one of the most addictive online games I’ve seen in a long time, to help generate agency enthusiasm for the event.  I just wonder if it’s original??

Amongst the media maelstrom that is the Olympic Games, I came across this Facebook Fan page.  Apparently Facebook took it down because it wasn’t actually a product, organisation or charity.  But under pressure they’ve put it back up.  Love those pants!!

And finally, can anyone tell me why cultural groups (and the NZRFU) may have been offended by this Coke ad from Japan?

Cheers,

Since it is Friday the 13th and we’re all petrified of black cats walking under our ladders and stepping on the cracks with their umbrellas up, I thought I’d keep this issue of 4Eyes fairly light.

But of course you can’t escape the Google Monster!  This week they’re in the news because they have completed StreetView mapping of all 50 US states, and are now ready to go off-road.  And in case Twitter, Facebook, Yammer et al aren’t enough to keep up to date with your friends, Google can now help find them in real life.  Also in the news is the newest iPhone feature “Monocle” which allows users to point their camera at a location and see real-time data about it, like restaurant reviews, movie times, sale items… the potential here is great!  No real Facebook news this week, but in a vote of confidence in the social network, major games producer Electronic Arts has bought Playfish for $400million.  Playfish make some of those annoyingly addictive Facebook games, but is not even the biggest player in that market.

Smart Wired

Kiwibank has launched its own social media site to connect young people in NZ (and connect them with Kiwibank by offering cool and relevant prizes a-plenty).

TVNZ are happy with their first foray into interactive web telly Reservoir Hill.

I enjoyed this site where you can mock up your own moustache (and see yourself morph really strangely), brought to you by Schick and GetFrank for Movember.

Weird Wired

Hastings new slogan/logo.  Contentious?  Check out the comments below the main article!

Tweeter lands book deal, sitcom.  Goes to show if you can create the content, someone else will market it for you!  Having looked at the twitter stream Shit My Dad Says (caution: explicit language) it could be funny…

The new Wii made especially for women (again, some content may offend…)

And with that, I leave you to your weekend.  Have a good one!

First things first, folks… what with Jeremy Wells’ new programme on TV and the “Bird of the Year” competition on National Radio, NZ birds are so hot right now.  And this one is definitely hot – from the BBC’s “Last Chance to See” documentary series.  I laughed!!!

The format of these Four Eyes posts is starting to look somewhat familiar.  A number of these stories seem to replicate or continue with themes visited previously…

For example, WiFi on commercial flights?  Google has teamed up with Virgin America to offer free WiFi on their services.  How cool are Google Doodles?  Google launched an NZ-wide competition for schoolkids to create a Google Doodle that will be used on the site.

But seriously folks, there are some interesting developments happening in the world of advertising media.  The biggest news is that in the UK, online advertising spend looks to have overtaken TV spend for the first time.  In New Zealand, online adspend is predicted to overtake radio and possibly magazines this year, making it our third most popular medium after newspapers and TV.

Another big story is that Microsoft has done deals with both Facebook and Twitter that will see the social media sites’ users’ status updates and posts included in Microsoft Bing search results.  Whether this means that your status update about the rip in your tights will become public fodder is unclear.  And if you’re searching for “McDonalds” do you want to see all the tweets saying “Just had McDonalds for lunch”?  One thing is certain – Microsoft has finally beaten Google to something!

and now…

MY COOL ADS OF THE WEEK

Auckland billboard for Yellow, displaying tweets in real-time

BNZ’s innovative display ad that took over YahooXtra’s news page

L&P’s Tourism Paeroa campaign running across multiple media

KFC in Dutchland take a novel, cross-media approach to fast food marketing

Fail!  Toyota’s “scare a friend” campaign backfires, agency gets sued!

Enjoy the sun this long weekend – I will be!