This was a point made by Brent Hoberman (co founder of lastminute.com) at a conference last week.
Some of the cynics amongst us would say he could afford to have this opinion, but he may have a point when you consider would Google have ever been developed if the principle of ROI had been the primary consideration? Probably not !! Damn innovation !!
Sometimes you just need to find a topic/idea you are passionate about and develop a particular need amongst the masses and then surely the money will flow in !! Sounds simple………
The other school of thought would support the idea that ROI presents challenges which create innovation in such sectors as retail but whichever side of the fence you sit this will always be a heated point of discussion and blows may even be exchanged.
According to new research from Jupiter Research, half of all branded social networking pages in Europe have less than 1,000 friends.
I came across this on another blog under the title. “Brands Not Winning Friends On Social Nets: Report”
The report goes on to say “Many advertisers build branded social networking pages that broadcast content rather than inviting users to interact.”
And they wonder why they’re short of social buddies!
This points to a pretty fundamental misunderstanding by brands as to what’s motivating users online. As brands adapt to a new customer and communication landscape there are some lessons to be learnt along the way and this is one of the big ones.
It’s by no way a new idea in branding but still brands are getting it wrong.
Give your customers a reward, excite them, get them to enjoy spending time with you and they will. Customers don’t flock to the loudest shouter anymore, they move towards the one who’s giving the most. So don’t expect a heap of ‘friends’ if your just trailing your new TV ad on Facebook. That’s hardly even 1.1 let alone 2.0.
Over at Cultured Code they’re undertaking some serious protoyping for their iPhone app. Quite an inspirational post by them showing their process and the tools they use to create paper prototypes.
Paper prototypes do tend to struggle to sit comfortably between rapid development and representation and here’s an example of high detail versus speed.
I’m particularly taken by the use of wooden templates for drawing common components. They’ve clearly spent time on their photographs, but nice to see the Rotring pencil and markers.
When TimesOnline approached us to create a series of highly playable online games to promote Sony’s Nintendo DS Lite brain training games to an adult demographic, we jumped at the chance. The result is a campaign on Times Online that sees a new game added every month.
Says Dave McDougall, Creative Director at I-D Media, “the design and development challenge for us is to create highly playable games that draw on the principles of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training™ series for the DS platform and that are deliverable in a browser”.
Both challenging and fun, the games provide a quick hit for puzzle enthusiasts and with prizes to win, and leader boards to raise the stakes, who can blame them?
Try them at www.timesonline.co.uk/surpriseyourself
Get more details about the project here
Uwe, a good friend of mine’s been answering this particular question. I’d reccommend you take a look at his ideas because if you don’t someone else will.
It’s all top secret at the moment though. We’re in the middle of scoping and IA for what’s going to be a really interesting editorial launch later this year.
The Guardian reports today that online spend reached £3bn in 2007 accounting for 16% or total spend in 2007. Now these are interesting figures and to see but what would really interest me is how this online ad spend splits. As digital service providers we know that ‘online’ covers a massivly broad remit ranging from, one must assume, PPC Campaigns to the huge budgets behind digital campaigns such as Nike Plus. So what’s getting the most financial attention and how is this chaning over time? Do these figures even take into account SEO and SEM given that large amounts of this kind of activity fall within internal technical teams? I’d imagine not.
http://wherewedowhatwedo.com/
Nice concept site – get nosey and see where our fellow creative people around the world work 
Will be revealed on the 18th of June. We’re sending Patrick to find out what’s in store.
UVA continue to do some great stuff. Currently showing the interactive towers at the Southbank. Having had a chat to one of the guys installing, it seems that the software’s triangulating peoples positions using cameras rather than each tower being directly interactive. The installation then responds to location of people moving through the space.
