Amma let ya conference...

Not an actual pic from #dws

Put on my Marketing.ie columnist hat on October 30th for the Dublin Web Summit at Bewley's Hotel in Ballsbridge. I got approximately half of the day's events, not counting any of the workshops. In an increasingly crowded calendar of summits, conferences, meetups, tweetups and all sorts of networking events, this was one of the best I've attended this year. Well done to organiser Paddy Cosgrave and the Digital Marketing Institute.

Absolutely top drawer selection of speakers, superb presentations on the day, great interaction between attendees and speakers. The spread of attendees ranged from startup entrepreneurs to NGOs and bodies like Enterprise Ireland, as well as already-established web-based companies.
Mark Little, as a trad media journalist and enthusiastic recent adopter of social media, was a good choice of anchor. His genuine interest in the subject matter came through and he'd obviously done his homework. I'm not going to even namecheck all of the speakers. Far too lazy many of them. It seems that the content, as with most of these events, will be made available online. Worth keeping an eye out for.

The hashtag of the day's events, #dws, relays the keenness of the audience for the subject matter. The fact that so many people were live tweeting in itself marks some kind of watershed for companies. The technology of communications is actively being embraced. I wondered why they didn't live stream it for the non-tweeters in the audience to see, but perhaps its busyness might have been a distraction from the stream of excellent realtime content.

Not quite all positive and light though. Some grumbling, centering around the ticket price bounce that happened in the run-up to the event, can be detected if you go back through the #dws comments (and more elsewhere). As its popularity grew, so too did the ticket price, it seems. From €50 to €245 is a fair hike. That doesn't play well, particularly with an online-savvy audience.

The bar's getting set higher all the time. Later tonight (4pm at the National College of Ireland) it's the turn of Understanding Digital. They promise us 'a few hours inside some of the brightest creative minds in the online media industry.' Online smartypantses from We are Social, Agenda 21 Digital, Folk Creative and Ogilvy London will all be in a 10 dance.

Inner cranial update coming soon. Hell, I might even #udcreative it cos I am at sooo one with The Twitter.

Take your Powerpoint presentation and shove it?

You know that lame old 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people' codswollop? The exact same inbuilt idiocy occurs in the phrase 'I haaate Powerpoint sooo much.' The more vowels, the more idiotic the speaker.
Why? Because it's a shortcut and it's untrue. Guns don't kill people. Bullets do. Powerpoint is a fan-fucking-tastic tool, and when it's not put in the hands of numpties who want to squeeze the entire contents of the company's ten year analysis into The Increase in Granulation of sub-Saharan Sand Encroachment: A Comprehensive Review (With Speaker Notes) then it can actually be quite entertaining.
I have sat in too many presentations where we killed the potential client. They took so many bullets to the vital areas that they were never going to be able to walk out of the boardroom, let alone want to come back for more on a regular basis. And I said nothing. Well in fairness I was asleep, but that's not going to save me in Nuremburg, is it? I will promise never to do it again, however.
Anyway, there's no finer birthday card for a 25 year old than this Powerpoint presentation by Rowan Manahan. Mark it, download it, memorise it, and if ever you're presenting to me please, please use it.

PowerPoint @ 25

View more presentations from Rowan Manahan.

Social Media for non-profits: an overview

There's still little understanding of the power of social media for organisations that are not profit driven. I find this all the more remarkable when you consider their relative weakness in marketing budget terms.
I can't see that lasting however, as the number of organisations getting their toes wet has been growing. Whether or not they'll benefit from increased soc media activity is down purely to the understanding and amount of resources they are willing to devote to working the mojo. It certainly isn't about levels of € spend.
This presentation was delivered to Special Olympics Ireland last week, and briefly overviews the strengths of Facebook, blogging and Twitter for organisations with widespread memberships. Nothing new or radical for anyone heavily or even moderately involved with the online marketing scene, but quite an eye opener for novices.

Soc Media For Special Olympics Ireland

Air New Zealand enlist some marketing help from tweeters

What's the strapline on the new Air New Zealand campaign?

Personality allowed.

Thanks to Brand Republic. More here.

When Smartphones attack

Oh such iFun we had!
First there was this.



And then came this.

Asda ask customers

Relevant more to the UK market naturally, but Asda as a major competitor can possibly teach Tesco a thing or two about the customer here in Ireland too. Little things like how to keep them satisfied. At local and national level here they seem to have lost their way in pursuit of gobbling market share for their own products. Asda on the other hand seem to be embracing the customer, even (perhaps especially) when things have gone terribly wrong.

Still pumped when the freelance phone rings

The cutest thing I've seen in a while. Comes from Space Avalanche, and thanks Dave Concannon for pointing it out.

Online advertising will grow even more if it works with TV

Image cred

Thought this was interesting, from Danielle Long in New Media Age. She notes that

it comes as no surprise that online has overtaken TV. Google’s ad revenues are now bigger than ITV’s and the broadcast sector has suffered greatly in the recession. While the predicted resurgence in TV could still happen early next year, the two sectors are bound to be wrangling for the top spot for some time yet.

More in NMA here:

Online advertising will grow even more if it works with TV | Opinion | New Media Age

Christopher Angus, guesting at Digitology, commits even further, saying that 'internet advertising provides a far higher return than traditional media.' I'm not entirely convinced of that yet, but I am convinced that I will be convinced some day soon. I know for certain that TV, undergoing a painful metamorphosis akin to the gloriously non-digital lupine changeover in The Howling all those many moons ago, can still be a force to be reckoned with. What makes You Tube the second biggest search engine in the world? Bits of telly mostly.

Shared via AddThis

Update: Net Imperative had an interesting article about social media agency Yomego in their news roundup, in which Yomego say that

“Falling ad revenues because of the recession are merely a symptom, not the underlying cause of TV’s current challenges. The experience is that TV has the content people want but it must change its business model to incorporate the new platforms, before these new platforms replace TV altogether.”

Yomego has created online communities for clients including Irish telecom giant eircom, MTV and MNet and is at Mipcom to launch its social media reputation audit to help brands understand and proactively manage their presence within social networks.

“The work we have done with eircom and www.soccerrepublic.ire is a case in point. eircom has built a receptive and positive community around its sponsorship of the Irish national football team, attracting the team’s supporters using engaging and exclusive content and creating a dedicated interactive platform that puts the fans firmly in the driving seat.”

For a social media agency, I'd expect a better link to their work. Although maybe .ire is appropriate with the Irish team.

Aspiring creatives: could you make a commercial in one day?

Image thanks What What

The fantastically hip people at HYP tv (I know it was too easy. Shut up. It's Monday morning.) are running the kind of competition that I as a pup twenty or thirty or forty years ago would've given my canines for. I'm too hackneyed now to even write this post myself, but instead will cut and paste (such a utilitarian little modren phrase) from their own site.

HYPtv has teamed up with M&C Saatchi, Johnnie Oddball and the ICA to host the 24 Hour Ad Challenge.

Young teams of film-makers will join together with advertising student creative teams to create a 30" commercial - all in just 24 hours! There will be up to 20 teams competing in the challenge.

On the day, at the Challenge briefing, teams of film makers will be put together with advertising creative teams. Each amalgamated team will have an M&C Saatchi creative mentor who is there to offer advice and review ideas, not create them. The teams will then be given the brief - which will be the same for all teams. Each team has just 24 hours to create, shoot, edit and deliver their commercial. Later that day, the commercials will be screened to all and the verdicts delivered. The judges will also discuss the entries.

You'll have to get your arse to that London for November 7. You will be required to look blasé and studiously ignore all the other blasé entrants for the briefing at M&C Saatchi 36 Golden Square at 10 am. Which means you'll be getting up earlier than on any other day this year.

To enter you can use this handy Uniform Resource Locator link that I have also copied and pasted (works in past tense too, see?) for your convenience. Spread the word to those interested. It might be the only chance they get to work on a tv job for the next five years.

Asda on firefighting

True accountability from big companies is always laudable. This from a local English outpost of the very large Asda is a response to the idiocy of a former employee. We've seen idiot staff doing things (Domino's springs to mind) and posting, without necessarily realising that there's a watching world beyond their immediate circle of idiots.

Viral, as has been stated ad nauseam, can't be prefabricated but must come from an area of honesty. Usually it's people sending each other entertainment, but very often it's newsworthiness that makes content viral. In the case of this idiot, it sure as little apples wasn't entertainment.

I'm especially heartened to see that Asda's local staff ran with a counter video. To my mind, it does immensely more to regain trust than a polished press release or statement from the most senior company bods could do (although that too can be highly effective).



I've only watched the first half of this guy's antics. Feel free to watch it all. He strikes me as someone who has problems and who possibly needs help. Anyway. What do I know?


Found at Brand Republic