The Future is Interactive, The Future is Mobile

Mobile and Interactive content to shape future marketing spend

Forrester, the respected forward-thinking business and technology research company has revealed in a recent survey that social and mobile will have the biggest compound annual growth rates (CAGR) - 34% and 27% repectively through 2014.

Social media has grown phenomenally over the past few years (as we all know). Social networking in particular has seen a massive growth in numbers of users in the past year. Brian Solis has estimated that for August 2009, Facebook recorded 370m unique visitors globally. Similarly, Twitter registered 66m unique visitors worldwide.

This has created the special opportunity to marketers for engaging customers through social media channels to build trust and brand loyalty. Activity otherwise known as 'Social CRM' (Customer Relationship Management).

Marketing is gaining more power in corporations because of its connection to consumers. Forrester says 40% of marketers said that marketing is the strategic leader of their organisation.
60% of respondents said they are boosting their interactive budget by shifting money from othe media - print will really suffer. Direct mail, newspaper media and magazines are expected to get the axe to feed interactive.

Mobile in particular is expected to really become massive in the not so distant future. New innovative technology is the reason for this. Last year we saw the rise of the iPhone app with great new devices bought out every second it seemed like! My favorite is the Barclaycard Waterslide app as shown below.


Augmented reality is really expected to take off hugely in 2010. Check out this video to see some of the latest augmented reality work!


Location sharing has also been highlighted as a future trend to rise in 2010. GPS-aware mobile devices became user friendly in 2009 and social networks Facebook and Twitter have taken interest (link).

Foursquare in particular has been highlighted as an exciting prospect for a location based social network. As a member of Foursquare you are encouraged to document places you visit in order to receive points. Also by documenting your location friends (who are also on Foursquare) can give you a 'shout out' to let you know they are nearby if you wanted to meet up. There are rumours that Facebook is looking to use Foursquare (or a similar location sharing tool) - see below - to encourage users to be more open.

(Image via Mashable)

Ultimately the rise of real-time communication seems to be the biggest thing to come out of social media from 2009. In any case, with more marketing budgets shifting towards digital and mobile the future looks very bright with much more exciting online and mobile content being created for us all to enjoy!

Lets hope we can all be as happy as this guy!

The 2009 Engagement Awards!

Starbucks social media team (of only 6) take the Gold.

Starbucks is the number 1 brand at engaging with consumers across social meda. This is according to research carried out by Wetpaint and The Altimeter Group who have gone beyond surface case studies to measure the true financial value of social media. The research was small scale - but was based on the world’s 100 most valuable brands – these are brands that are widely acknowledged for setting the standards in marketing as measured by BusinessWeek / Interbrand "Best Global Brands 2008" rankings.

The Wetpaint/Altimeter Group:

"evaluated how well they are engaging their consumers using social media and, even more importantly, how that engagement correlates with their most important financial metrics: revenue and profit".


The Top Ten

From the official report showcasing the full 100 brands - here - you can see a common trend showing how the top placed brands have much larger integrated campaigns across a number of social media channels with Starbucks, Dell and Google all having a presence on 11 different channels.

Personally I am a big fan of Nike and have been very impressed with their use of digital. They have a great Facebook fan page that is updated regularly to 438,285 fans. Their virals have been particularly impressive over the years - you may remember the Kobe Bryant jump over a speeding Aston Martin (3.3m YouTube views).

They also have Nike+, a genius idea where amateur runners can track how far they have run. They can then race against friends or just monitor progress by uploading their data collected through their Nike+ sensor and wrist band. However I still believe there is more to come from Nike, hopefully through competitions aswell as campaigns that encourage higher levels of consumer participation with the brand.

Most Contagious Report 2009

Here is a great round up to the most talked-about trends and technologies that influenced global marketing in 2009.

Most Contagious Report 2009

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The review by Contagious includes fantastic examples from successful campaigns from IKEA to Compare The Market to BestBuy and so on. A fascinating read!

Myspace launches new interactive music videos

New interactive campaign allows consumers to feature in 10 interactive music videos.

Myspace Music has launched a campaign that gives consumers the chance to appear in ten interactive videos starring musicians such as Florence and the Machine, 50 Cent and Alicia Keys.

The campaign was masterminded by creative advertising agency BBH (where I have worked :)). Myspace users upload their images from Facebook Connect or Myspace ID, and then sit back and watch as they appear in the films.

The example given by Campaign Magazine is the ad starring Florence and the Machine (see image) where a photo is pinned to a wall that will show the user's face.
Following this, anyone who personalises an ad will be entered into a competition to have their pick of the artists, who also include Kasabian, Nelly Furtado and N-Dubz, write a song about them.

The original films will be aired on TV and are also accessible via teaser banners on websites.

I think this is a really nice idea that offers a real incentive for consumers to become involved with Myspace, a social network whos popularity in the UK has deminished recently following the rise of Facebook. The competition is very exciting. It would be an amazing one-off experience for anyone. Having your favorite artist sing a song made specifically for you is something I'm sure millions of fans have dreamt about. This is one of the great things about social media - innovative campaigns that offer high rewards to 'Joe Public' in return for brand participation. This type of offer wasn't being made before the rise of digital media and companies are re-thinking how they can offer something of great value to consumers that often results in positive word of mouth and eventually sales.

YouTube launches its first advertising campaign

The video-sharing site has set out its stall with its first ad push

YouTube is launching its first advertising campaign in 2010, looking to steal a march in the race to bring online content to TV.

The campaign carries the strapline 'YouTube's got TV' and will run on the sides of buses, Tube panels and as full-page print ads. It will precede the introduction in 2010 of next generation internet-enabled TV sets by several manufacturers, including additions to the Sony Bravia range, which will carry expanded web technology.

The YouTube ad campaign follows their recent deal with Channel 4, where popular C4 shows have been made available to stream on the site. Shows like Peep Show, Hollyoaks, The F-Word, The Inbetweeners and Jamie At Home have featured so far.

'78% of people watch online TV to catch up with missed broadcast TV, according to Work Research/Thinkbox'

In 2008, more than 1.6bn views of TV shows took place online. According to Screen Digest, this figure is forecast to rise to 5bn a year by 2013. TV subscription services like Virgin Media and the Playstation 3 games console enable viewers to watch BBC's iPlayer through their television, furthering the transition towards online TV viewing.

'3.6m Virgin Media subscribers can access the BBC's iPlayer via their TV sets'

Advertisers and broadcasters are wising up to this change in behaviour. The BBC have recently announced an Eastenders online spin-off show that will be exclusively available online. Also drinks company InBev have launched a 15-minute show exclusively on YouTube for their beer brand, Stella Artois.

I think that online TV broadcasting will really take off over the next few years. I think that websites like 4od and BBC iPlayer, that allow people to watch their favorite shows at their own convienience have obviously played a major part in online TV's rising popularity. I do believe however that people do (and will) still value certain family nights in. Family shows like The XFactor, I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here and Britains Got Talent will remain popular at traditional TV broadcasting times. More niche programmes and videos that you might watch on YouTube will prove popular, with 'middle of the road' shows perhaps dying out as people will have so much choice available to watch they watch.

Rhys McLachlan, head of broadcast implementation futures at MediaCom, says that although online TV is the future of broadcasting, the transition will take time.

"Most people watch the same six channels on TV and will flick if there is nothing on those channels... putting TV content online won't stop this regular viewing, but it could collapse the long tail. People will not flick, but instead turn to on demand services".

Major brands signing up to CoTweet

Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Microsoft are amongst a host of major brands signing up to 'CoTweet', a new company offering services to manage brands on Twitter.

(image via revolutionmagazine.com)

CoTweet has announced mega brands like Ford, Whole Foods and others has signed up to its CoTweet Enterprise Innovators Programme.

Customers pay $1,500 a month for the programme's service which includes providing analytics of how far Twitter messages are reaching, click-through rates on links and can report on different message types, such as direct messages, replies and mentions, as well as the most active users.

Companies get access to a number of tools as well as an account manager to provide feedback and analysis, product support and training. CoTweet has a partnership with bit.ly, the URL shortening site, to provide analytics to the brands.

Jesse Engle, chief executive of CoTweet, said:

"Companies must monitor their brands, provide customer service and measure the impact of outbound marketing".

CoTweet earlier in the year managed to raise $1.1 million in funding from a number of key investors.

Mobile social networking comes of age

Touchscreen mobile devices like the Apple iPhone will replace PC's as the main way consumers engage with social media, according to new research.

A study by Forrester claims that the latest generation of smartphones will transform the mobile internet experience, giving users access to a range of new social media devices.

The research shows mobile social media consumption is being driven by the youth consumers with up to 40% of UK 16-24 year olds accessing social networks via their mobile phones, compared to 7% of the same age group across the rest of Europe.
The same research also suggests that these consumers are doing much more than just visiting their social networks - they are also reading and updating their own blogs, contributing to forums and joining in with discussing groups.

Mobile social media consumption is still in its infancy. But with handset manufacturers and mobile networks investing so much in developing heavily in product services it is only a matter of time before mobile social networking becomes common place, eventually taking over from PC's.

Forrester senior analyst Thomas Husson says,

"The always-on mobile connected handset frees the social web from the chains of the PC and thrusts it into the real world... Online players, handset makers and mobile operators are jumping on the bandwagon"