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Take a look here.
Give that man a multi-million dollar ad budget.
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Every cloud... as they say.
I had always thought Robert Peston looked more than a little uncomfortable when hauled in to do the science bit in the BBC News at Ten's business coverage. His delivery was that of a man enunciating his words very, very clearly to a dictaphone. He lacked the brio of geezer Jeff Randall who he had replaced as BBC business editor.
But that was all Before HBOS. Now out of the ruins of Meltdown Monday, Terrible Tuesday, etc - strides a colossus.
Not only has he become the semi-official source of disseminating (leaking?) market moving stories (who cares about LSE reporting, just get it to Peston's Blackberry, job done) but he is probably also more trusted by BBC viewers than the Chancellor on his grasp of the situation.
Here the Independent gives us an insight into the pressures of broadcasting live from the Peston Centre. Other Pestonmania here and here .
I wonder if he has an agent yet?
Tags: Robert Peston, credit crunch
PS - the one man newsdesk continues today.
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Bill Lee - aka Mr Customer Reference Forum - asked me for guidance to pass on to a member seeking to rebuild their customer success stories web site. I passed back some quick views and opinions.
Thinking this might be of interest to others, or perhaps start a discussion, here are my comments back to Bill:
Finding case studies is a top reason for visiting corporate sites – so it needs a place/link on the home page (don’t settle for less).
Sites tend to come at it from two directions:
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Sites that are effectively only aspiring to be a search capability on the front of a database of evidence and everything else is auto generated (so minimal web maintenance)
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Sites that adopt an editorial standpoint and seek to engage the viewer and recommend content that is topical and interesting just like any other content provider
My preference is the latter because I believe customers want to read about other customers (and it goes without saying any web presence needs a successful search capability too). To support this, day-in-day out we see that any link/headline that features a customer name (ie Wells Fargo explains its new social media initiative) gets x3 the number of hits vs a generic headline without a customer name.
Good examples? Here’s a reference site we built recently for Microsoft's Innovative Schools Program.
Aside from being a bit more funky and consumer than usual, we:
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Sliced and diced the video content so that users could group and view content across different case studies by subject matter, their role (teacher, parent, IT Manager), or simply watch a whole individual story.
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Likewise the media player allows you to simply watch the soundbites that interest you.
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There is also a BackPack feature that allows viewers to gather content they want to keep for later download (and collect email signups to do this).
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The site also promotes other ‘call to action’ materials at the bottom of the page, which can be gathered up in the BackPack, so in a more commercial context, would become part of the lead generation process.
Those were my topline comments to Bill, interested to see / hear of any other examples people may be particularly pleased with...
Tags: customer references, Bill Lee, web sites, customer advocacy
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The ads are out there.
Opinions, links and comments on the ads from Joe Wilcox, TechCrunch and Steve Clayton.
Not seen themself. So I have no opinion, yet.
UPDATE:
TechCrunch praise them, almost like them, Mashable are neutral, VentureBeat likes them and Ben McConnel adds a bit of perspective on the whole exercise.
Have any ads been as analysed as these? Not sure I have the energy to actually watch them after all that.
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Having started this theme, I'd better follow the story through.
The New York Times (thanks Steve) has a piece here on the next stage in the Microsoft Bill'n Jerry ad campaign. Sounds like it's taking a direction I wasn't expecting - confronting and subverting the I'm a Mac campaign from Apple. But we'll need to wait and see the adverts tomorrow.
According to the NYT, while being peppered with celebs, the stars of the piece are everyday PC users (although perhaps some are a little on the exotic side - see the shark hunter below).
One question, when they come to do the analysis of the campaign, I would love to know how much of the impact came from the word of mouth around the adverts, and how much from actual 'bought' media?
Tags: Microsoft, advertising, sharks
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There have been some interesting, vaguely connected, posts this week contributing to the discussion around where we are with the adoption of social media, particularly among larger or more conservative organizations.
A bit too much to think about all the implications late on a Friday evening, so here are the posts that caught my eye with a few thoughts appended.
- In his post Getting Started with Social Media, - and track down the comments too - Ron Shevlin ponders how and where enterprises should experiment with social media. Ron's focus is in the financial services sector, which is a tough audience to get to take risks (unless its with your savings, hoho).
- In fact Ron's piece is his take on this Jupiter post also titled Getting Started with Social Media by Emma Riley, which is a great post and highlights the chasm between early adopters and laggards. Emma's advice is hot off the press for the insurance company she was advising but would be very old news among the usual blogging suspects.
- Peter Kim posted a List of Social Media Examples, which has now grown to 200+ examples of corporate use of social media. Compelling proof of adoption? Not really. For me it just opened the debate around what do we mean by adoption? Surely adoption means more than just using social media as a platform for pumping banner advertising, having a few employees who blog, creating a Facebook group or a viral tagged onto an ad campaign? In fact examples of corporates that apply social media, in a really social and deeply interactive sense is far more limited.
- Then there was a sign that perhaps big enterprise was finally cracking, when the world discovered (summary by Carter Lusher) that 50+ Gartner analysts could now create their own personal blogs. Perhaps if Gartner now enjoys and endorses the experience, the word will get out inside the enterprise.
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The first ad got pretty widely slated for not slaying the I'm a Mac campaign in a single stroke (which was never going to happen). Here's ad number two.
Still no product connection but some definite clues about where it might be heading.
Bill is no comic actor. But perhaps his clunkiness works as the straight man in this Odd Couple style pairing with Seinfeld.
I have watched a fair few Microsoft ad campaigns over the years, this one has achieved something at least: I'm interested enough to see how it unfolds.
Tags: Microsoft, Seindfeld, Gates, advertising
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If it was April 1st I'd know not to comment on SpinSpotter - but it seems to be a genuine story I found via ReadWriteWeb.
Apparently, we are suffering from a 'spin epidemic' and SpinSpotter, together with the efforts of the Truth Mongers and Spin Destroyers out there, will save us.
Not sure if SpinSpotter is directed against bad journalists, evil PRs, or their paymasters in politics and business, but I have a few doubts.
SpinSpotter is a downloadable plug-in for Firefox - with IE coming (interesting decision on prioritization: are Firefox users more likely to be active SpinSpotters?). Put simply, the plug-in, called Spinoculars (eeow), allows you to flag and annotate for the benefit of other Spinocular users where you detect or suspect spin to have infiltrated an internet article.
I'm all for using the tools of the internet to expose error or wrongdoing, but isn't SpinSpotter going to be a tool for those who invest too much of their lives adding trollish comments to stories? Surely SpinSpotter just offers another channel for their vitriol, conspiracy theories, bias and prejudices?
To mitigate this risk SpinSpotter applies a taxonomy for the type of spin detected. For example, Over Reliance on Press Releases is one of seven types of spin offences. All of which gives the activity a, teacher marking your homework, feel to it.
I have my doubts. Personally I think the principle of caveat emptor is a more scalable tool to fix this problem.
Tags: SpinSpotter, journalism, PR, Spin
PS - thinking on a bit, if the mission of SpinSpotter could be subverted to simply highlight bad writing style on the web, that'd be a killer application. I am just off to register ProlixSpotter.com...
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 Time was, advertising stole many of its best creative ideas from the film industry. Now there is the Internet and user generated content.
3M is feeling the negative backlash of picking up on an office prank that went viral (some time ago) and replicating the idea in its own advertising campaign.
The original prank pics are here, the 3M story explained here and a BL Ochman slap administered here.
The silly thing is, why didn't 3M just make an offer for the rights?
If they had offered the equivalent of a day's professional photoshoot and the agency time taken to replicate the shots, then I'd guess the average citizen creative would have taken that as good money for some time spent two years ago messing about with a colleague's car at work. And if they hadn't, at least 3M would have a defence.
Tags: 3M, Jaguar Post-It Notes, , BL Ochman
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A new Microsoft ad campaign aired in the US yesterday. This is the one from Crispin Porter + Bogusky I mentioned back in June.
The first ad is oblique in the extreme and seems to have left commentators from the tech / blog universe cold - here's some typical comments from ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch. Interesting to see whether feedback from other audience segments shares the same viewpoint.
Apparently (according to an internal mail picked up by TechCrunch) the purpose of the first advert is to excite discussion - mission accomplished on that goal certainly, as always with any mention of Microsoft, no-one is holding back in their comments - but the punchlines are expected to come in later ads within the campaign series.
Tags: Seinfeld, Gates, Microsoft, advertising
Disclosure: Microsoft is a client
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Fascinating guest post from one of the founders of Shiny Media on TechCrunch UK. The post and the ensuing comments give a useful tour of many of the participants of the UK blogging scene (or should that be 'industry', ah, there's the rub), their issues and grievances against the world.
I'm conflicted about the influence of the BBC. As a consumer I love it. But I can agree it distorts the market, although I'd guess the impact is greatest on big media, rather than plucky startups. Maybe the EU should take a look?
In the comments on the post PR gets it in the neck again - inevitably - but it's probably unjustified in this instance. It's a bit lame to blame PR people for not taking a blog seriously enough to hand out scoops. Aren't bloggers/journalists supposed to unearth their own exclusives?
btw - I wonder if the speed and volume of comments are probably down to the @mbites Twitter distribution effect?
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Seeing any Government representative being blunt about their motivation is refreshing.
Apparently, the Chinese stuck a photogenic nine year old girl in front of the huge TV audience for the Olympics opening ceremony, lip syncing to the voice of a different seven year old girl, who had a perfect voice but didn't look as 'flawless'.
How did the organizing official justify such an act?
"After several tests, we decided to put Lin Miaoke on the live picture, while using Yang Peiyi's voice," he told the radio station.
"The reason for this is that we must put our country's interest first," he added.
No spin there then.
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If you are taking a holiday in one of the 27 EU states, then the European Environment Agency's Eye on Earth initiative enables you to checkout the water quality of the beaches or inland waterways near to your destination through its Water Watch site.
The site uses Microsoft Virtual Earth to display official water quality data and also gather user feedback on individual beaches and waterways.
Disclosure: Microsoft is a client
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My colleague John was underwhelmed by the science underpinning my Euro 2008 prediction: Germany (least TVs per household in Europe) to win, following no UK teams even qualifying (UK has most TVs per household in Europe). But it's August...
Obviously at Euro 2008 Germany fell at the final hurdle, but that still doesn't undermine confidence in my couch potato theory of UK sport.
With the Olympics fast approaching my next trivial prediction is... the majority of the UK's medals will come in couch potato sports - ie those that are done either sitting down (rowing, cycling, sailing, equestrianism), standing very, very still (archery) or even, best of all, lying down (some types of shooting).
Actually, I think I could be onto something here.
With the nation's youth addicted to Nintendo Wii, Lord Coe and his cronies should start lobbying hard to help increase the medal haul in 2012. If BMX can become an Olympic sport, the Wii should have no trouble.
Tags: Nintendo Wii, Olympics, Lord Coe
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 Metia is twenty years old tomorrow - Friday 25th July - as you'd imagine, everyone at the various Metia offices around the world will be celebrating with a glass of champagne or two.
If you too want to wallow in nostalgia for 1988, I can recommend:
- Wikipedia's listing for 1988 - there's a nice timeline - Wimbledon won the FA Cup, so it was an auspicious year for plucky outsiders
- the I Love 1988 site from the BBC (it features the Ninja Turtles, Bros and the launch of Richard & Judy's Good Morning breakfast TV show, just to remind you what a cultural highspot 1988 was).
- or choose a track from the BBC's 1988 Jukebox (Yazz and The Only Way is Up probably best fits how Clare and I were feeling at the time)
Short and sweet is always best, so a brief word of thanks to all of the 200 or so, talented people whose endeavours make the business what it is today, and thanks also to all those who helped us along the way, whether as a customer, an employee, or just a friend of the business, of whom there have been many. Thanks all.
Well, I know exactly where I was this day twenty years ago - plotting world domination in a Cafe off Carnaby Street, just Clare, myself, a mobile phone and a lot of optimism - but where were you?
Tags: Metia, Write Image
PS - I have no idea who the people in that photo are ;-)
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