00:00 on Saturday 10^th January 2009 was meant to be the launch of the new site for Monster, the UKs largest jobs board. I was talking to a friend of mine online last night and they pointed me to the site where there was a countdown to the big launch. I watched the seconds tick down to midnight eagerly awaiting a great new site. Midnight came and went and the countdown was at 0 days 0 hours 0 minutes and 0 seconds and I waited, and waited and waited. No new site just a timer. I finally went to bed confused as to why the new site hadn’t launched on time. Continue reading

It’s that time of year when people reflect and project. Rather than review what has happened in 2008 I am more interested in what is going to happen next year. What will be the ‘next big thing’ and who we should be watching.

After much reading over the last couple of months I have noticed an increase in chatter about Location Based Services (LBS). This is all about providing and aggregating content that is relevant to your location. For instance you may wish to find out where the nearest cash machine is to your current location or to track friends, colleagues and even children! It can also be used by businesses to provide location-based mobile advertising (something which has been done previously with varying success with Bluecasting).

A key enabler of these new services is GPS. Previously the size and cost of GPS receivers had ruled out their use in mobile devices (a rough location could be estimated by the cell site it was connected to) but now that are almost ubiquitous in new devices on the market. And with the explosion of the GPS enabled iPhone 3G and the Apple Apps store have exposed a huge number of people to LBS and created a real buzz. T-mobile’s G1, Blackberry and touch screen Android (Google’s phone operating system) based phones are following closely behind.

Who should we be watching? There are numerous LBS’ out there with huge variations in their usefulness but the following is a pick of what I will be watching: Continue reading

During a recent marketing training day delivered by IE to attendees from not-for-profit organisations, MD Ollie Leggett made a couple of seemingly commonsensical points about the need for brands to behave with integrity. You probably don’t even need to be involved in the marketing/communications-related industries to understand that the ‘Three Cs’ – or credibility, clarity and consistency – are the life blood of the healthy brand. However it seems that sometimes even the pros let one of marketing’s golden rules slip by.

In a news item appearing in Marketing, CEO of The Partners Jim Prior provides an excellent and highly topical case study of the consequences of disjointed branding by analysing the decline of one of the long familiar faces on the high street, Woolworths. The article is worthy reading material on several levels. Even if all it does for the reader is reaffirm the need for brands to behave in a ‘joined up’ fashion, then it does this in a succinct and persuasive manner. Prior writes: ‘[Woolworths] is a proposition of authenticity, of democracy, of variety, of carefree, guilt-free indulgence… a proposition that everybody wanted but that just never got delivered against. It went unnoticed by the management of the company who, instead, pointlessly fragmented the brand into the Big W warehouse stores and a wholesale distribution business. Did anyone there have any idea what Woolworths really was?’

Prior doesn’t allow Woolworths the luxury of economic downturn as an excuse for the decline which does, granted, seem ruthless, but again he has a point. The weak spot much of the UK had for Woolies just wasn’t enough to compensate for the meagre experience of visiting a store. Do many of us actually know anyone who shops there regularly? Probably not, and there’s a reason for that. To what extent can a couple of generations’ nostalgia for pick n mix sustain a business that actually has little to offer to most shoppers?

I wouldn’t like to claim that IE’s branding experts could have saved the long-ailing Woolworths had they been brought in to do so. However I do think that in the current climate, where already-stretched businesses are competing for the few pennies their customers can afford to part with, an identity crisis – where tone of voice, visual signature and customer experience simply don’t correspond – represents a lot more than just a hindrance on the path to marketing bliss.

You may have heard the term ‘Social Media’ being banded around lots recently but what does it really mean?

As with any new term there are many different definitions of exactly what it mean and I liked this one from Web Pro News

Social media describes the online tools that people use to share content, profiles, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media itself, thus facilitating conversations and interaction online between groups of people. These tools include blogs, message boards, podcasts, micro blogs, lifestreams, bookmarks, networks, communities, wikis, and vlogs.

Still unsure? The following YouTube video does a great job explaining the term (even if the guy commentating does have a pretty annoying voice!)

An advertisement for children’s charity Barnardo’s that aims to raise awareness of domestic child abuse seems to have hit a raw nerve. The ad – which depicts a young girl caught in a cycle of violence, underachievement at school and drugs – has led to some 400-plus viewers complaining to the Advertising Standards Authority about the nature of its ostensibly distressing and offensive content.

You only need to watch the ad once to gain an understanding as to why the response was so strong. Yes, the ad is distressing – but what it does manage to do with some success, I would argue – is communicate the underlying message with clarity, which is vital to any campaign with the primary goal of awareness-raising. The ad only airs after 9pm – not a slot ideally placed to be accessible to young children, one of the demographics most likely to be ill-equipped to deal with its content. An issue like child abuse is unpleasant to confront, so why should its treatment in the media be lighthearted? Many of us claim to be virtually desensitised to what we see on our screens. If so, perhaps this ad is an example of when so-called ‘shock tactics’ are necessary if not just.