Irish Daily Mail acting scummy.

I'm going off-brief for a little. Sort of.

Melanie Schregardus is an air traffic controller in Shannon. She's also a blogger. Last weekend her life went into a tailspin on the back of an article by The Irish Daily Mail. A journalist by the name of Luke Byrne took one of her blogposts (you can access the background here) and proceeded, in clichéd bad journalist fashion, to spin it into something very different from what Melanie had intended.

Two upcoming events

Blue corner:

Thursday 4th of Feb in Trinity College sees The Dublin Web Summit kick off with some real heavyweights. Matt Mullenweg, the eleven year old founder of Wordpress (jealous much, Nick?) and Craig Newmark, the first guy to ever make a list and make millions out of putting his name to it, will join ex Iona chief Chris Horn and Wired's Ben Hammersley. Doesn't much matter what they're talking about. It'll be worth listening.

Red corner:

The Brainfood Store meanwhile goes from strength to strength. On Wed 24th of Feb Justin Cullen an Fred King's baby hosts The Digital Festival at the Berkeley Court Hotel in Ballsbridge. They've got Brent Hoberman, lastminute.com's founder, Peter Kim from the Dachis Group, Shel Israel and a few more top-drawer professionals, all converging on the workability of digital marketing.

The ante is getting upped for events like these, which to me suggests that the demand is there for quality. Might be a future for this internet thing after all.

My many charity works

I'm not gonna let the do-gooders have all the bandwidth over this Haiti thing. Yes it's a mess, and yes there are some amazing people being unnervingly generous with their time, money, talents and so on to help a country that needed plenty of help before this shocking event, so spurred on by their inspirational Action Jackson exploits I'm jumping on the goodness gravy train too. I mean, I'm relatively young, I have my health, I can do stuff too.

What I'm going to do is take part in a table quiz on Wed 27th of Jan. I'll have to- excuse me? What?
Don't you judge me! Don't you DARE judge me! I'll have to sit through Jason Byrne as he sweats his way through the questions. I'll need to get across the city to Dublin 2. I'll be exposed to all sorts of young people out 'wearing' what they claim with no modesty whatsoever to be 'clothes'. They'll probably use other words too, like 'fashion' and 'Grandad' and 'mace'. And after that I'll be surounded by marketing/advertising/radio types who know absolutely everything already.
DON'T TELL ME I WON'T BE SUFFERING FOR HAITI!

You might help by at least offering to come along. It's being organised by Independent Radio Sales for The Haven Partnership (who have already committed to building 5,000 homes in Haiti).

Julia Farrelly works with IRS:

In order to do this we are trying to sell as many tables as possible (invites to follow!) and also gather together fantastic prizes that we will raffle on the night and I’m hoping that you/your clients might consider donating prizes to help us make this event as successful as possible.  We will have a big screen on the night which will feature credits to anyone providing prizes, and obviously Jason Byrne will be crediting all prize donations too throughout the event.

You can reach Julia at julia@radio-sales.com

 

Another way you can help is by bidding on the hat of Ireland's newest sex god Paul Cunningham. It's on ebay here. It's not really suitable for you if you don't have a head.

And still another is by clicking on the Tweet this! button beneath this post, or blogging/tweeting/standing on tall shoes and just shouting about it. If we work together, I can look really good here.

Your privacy on everybody's internet

Pic courtesy Webwombat

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person. I have a theory that I love them more, in fact. No more fertile compost heap than the privacy-on-the-net canard. (Oh my what a horrible set of metaphor bookends. I'll let them stand, as a warning to aspiring writers.)

Anyway. Privacy. I'll give you the science in three words: there is none.

A very good overview of many of the issues involved in social media here from Damien Mulley.

And here ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick takes Facebook's volte face on privacy to task and essentially tears them a second arse. A small snippet:

First the company kept user data siloed inside its site alone, saying that a high degree of user privacy would make users comfortable enough to share more information with a smaller number of trusted people.
Now that it has 350 million people signed up and connected to their friends and family in a way they never have been before - now Facebook decides that the initial, privacy-centric, contract with users is out of date. That users actually want to share openly, with the world at large, and incidentally (as Facebook's Director of Public Policy Barry Schnitt told us in December) that it's time for increased pageviews and advertising revenue, too.

From schoolkids on Facebook to idiot college kids on dormporn sites to celebs on Twitter and on and on and on, the message is the same. There is NO privacy on the web. If you put stuff up there anywhere (and often if you don't) it is findable and will be disseminated. 99% of the time this will be as harmful as dropping your DNA in the bin on a Big Mac box, and if you're ok with that I'm ok with it too. But privacy has undergone seismic redefinition. Most people are unaware of how exposed they are. Internet giants will do what they can to protect the interests of consumers. Right after they've done what's right for them first.


Thanks to Niall Austin for highlighting the RWW article.

Google China, DIT goes digital and Cybercom want a meeja head

Big news this morning is that Google looks to be squaring up to the Chinese government's meddlesome ways when it comes to censoring search. Their full release is here. It seems that they're already losing market share in China, down from 19% to 17% in Q4 2009. Baidu, the state controlled search behemoth, hogs over 75% of the market. Still, 17% of the Chinese market is not something to leave lightly. I don't believe Google are being 100% transparent here with their release, and something big is obviously coming down the tracks for their business model in that part of the world, but it's still a little chilling to read between the lines as they attempt to protect their China-based employees in the last para here, from David Drummond, one of their senior Corporate Development and legal beaks.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

*********

More on this one later, but for now an overview. Dublin Institute of Technology and the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland have teamed up at last to recognise that digital upskilling in adland is most definitely needed on the curriculum. This neglected area will hopefully begin to benefit from a brand spanking new course, the Postgraduate Diploma in Advertising and Digital Communications. It's a part-time evening course run from Aungier Street and is heavily skewed towards digital communications but still incorporates much of the trad side of how things are done. It is practically geared, being run by professionals at work full-time in marketing communications (myself included).
If you're interested in doing it or signing up some of your staff there may still be places. It's due to start in the next couple of weeks. Talk to IAPI's Aisling Conlon at advertisingpostgrad@gmail.com.

*********

Down by the river in Ringsend Cybercom continue to build their comprehensive digital offering. Rob Reid wants a Media Account Director to head up their Media Department. They'll have five people under them. Impressive for a digital ad agency, not great for stage diving. Full details here or email rob.reid@cybercom.ie.

Happy Wednesday all.

Outdoor is set to go online. Huh?

Forget Second Life (apologies if you were born post 2007, precious reader). The new unreality will be much more practical. Google has just been granted a new patent to post 48 sheets in Street View. Imagine tooling around the Street View version of city centre Dublin on a wet and windy Tuesday morning, as you build your personal map of Aldi locations for the rest of the year's shopping excursions. You cruise down Parnell Street and why, there's a great big dirty poster for none other than the Dunnes Stores outlet around the corner on Henry Street. And then it revolves! Just like the oh-so-futuristic prismatics of the eighties! And behold, it's another supermarket poster, except this time for Tesco in the Jervis Centre!

Far fetched? Don't be silly. No reason thus far why your competitors can't own virtual ad space over an online image of your company's real outlet. Google applied for the patent over a year and a half ago and now they have it. As RWW says

The patent describes a two-step process for identifying potential advertising real estate in these images. Google's software first identifies interest points in the image (e.g. the edges or corners of an object) and then generates features around these interest points. Google can then augment this region of the image with a link or replace a part of the current Street View image with a new image.

This thrills me in ways that I can barely describe, but I will try.
It's like Bruce Boxleitner in Tron hitting a 90° turn at 200 mph and smashing into a giant sheet of cyberglass being carefully walked across the information superhighway (aah, remember that place?) by The Lawnmower Man and Max Headroom. When it shatters into a billion fragments, each one is a beautifully perfect hologram, spinning in luscious slo-mo, and you can buy full rights (for a limited period only, natch) to any number of these holograms and have full HDR of your logo, company strapline and a looped piece of high def footage (10 seconds) from one of your Antiques Roadshow-era 'tellyvision' ads, for that added company heritage brand pillars wheel pyramid thingummy feel.


Fuck. I have to stop with the mushrooms. Next I'll be seein- YEEARGHHHHHHHH!

Spotted via @ciaranoreilly. Image courtesy zdnet.com

Why should you know David Armano?

Clockwise: a Shirky, a Scoble, a Godin and a Vaynerchuk


If you are involved in digital marketing you'll be aware of the rapid turnover of hardware and the even faster speed of evolving software at the points where company and consumers meet. It's dizzying. You'll then have to contend with a seemingly endless flashmob of certified social media and digital branding experts, here in Ireland and from everywhere else.

A glance is usually enough to dismiss most of them as journeymen, but some names get bandied about too much to dismiss so quickly. They're all American. Clay Shirky (a kind of Mahatma Gandhi on a mild steroid course), Seth Godin (Gandhi on a diet), Robert Scoble (Gandhi played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Gary Vaynerchuck (a kind of Gandhi, if he were built by Ant and Dec) are names you can't help but trip over in online marketing terms, and there are heaps more that I'm already too stressed to mention. They've all got something, but in a universe of infinite content you just can't devote your life to following the twelve disciples.

When content is pushed my way from David Armano however, I usually make time to read it. Not just because what he says makes sense, but because I genuinely like the vibe off him. It's a business thing, he offers full disclosure, he's very serious about results and he's not afraid to fall on his arse (in a personal sense) trying something. He seems very human.
Quite a while ago Alexia Golez made a comment that stayed with me. She mentioned the internet being a place that revealed personalities rather than masked them. It made instant sense. You can fake it for a while, but ultimately the real you will out, unless deception is your key game. And Armano feels real to me. Not saying the others aren't: they patently have more presence reality than marketing gurus from any other era. It's just that the cut of Armano's gib works for me, and as opposed to talking about tech specifically, or the hippy vibe of soc media, he actually does all his work at the point where brands and people intersect.

While managers debate who will control social media inside their organizations — marketing, PR, corporate, IT — I say stop and ask the bigger question: Do any of the people who make up your company, agencies, partners and so on actually live social? Do they demonstrate that they work and play in a connected fashion? Once we begin to resolve that (and don't underestimate the power of baby steps), then we can worry about which discipline, department or agency/consultancy is best equipped to help lead the way.

From a recent piece written for the Harvard Business Review. None of it is new at all. He's repeating the same simple message he's been doing for a long time. But it is worth hearing, especially for the smaller Irish companies who maybe don't have the issues of 'Who controls it?' so much as 'where do I start?' or 'How do I find the time?'

Armano is now a Vice President (Americans are big on them) with Edelmann Digital, and he's graduated from the school of been there and done it, via digital creative/strategy work at Critical Mass, Digitas and Agency.com.

There are lots of bright people out there who can teach you many things. I like this guy, and whenever I can I tune in. Which is not nearly enough. Ironically, here's Armano giving loads of kudos to the guys I effectively glossed over a few paragraphs back. Hadn't seen it before I wrote. Typical.

End of the decayed

Pic Dennis Villegas

My new resolution is to eliminate self delusion. I hope to make some quiet and effective changes in how I work, so that I am not chained to the mac while the kids are taken by mum to the shoe shop for the next size up. If I'm not still being self delusional that will require taking things to another level in terms of business structure. A scary thought, but I've had many adrenaline rush moments since 2008. It's just another one.

And anyway, my job description is changing every month, even while the core of what I do remains the same. When I started as a copywriter with Wilson Hartnell, as Ogilvy & Mather were known in Dublin then, the task was simple and difficult. I worked with an art director and we dreamed up 2D campaigns that would hopefully work for our clients. The campaigns would not require much in the way of measurement. A bunch of senior ad guys would rely on that good old gut instinct for a grabby headline or a strong visual. They'd pick what they liked, get us to mock it up with fairly finished illustrations, put together a working script if it was TV or radio, and then they'd take it to the next level.

Client meeting.
They'd always try to have the meeting in the agency, because it was a chance for the client to enjoy some sexy, away from the grime of the west Dublin industrial estate. Plush seating in reception, avant garde artwork strewn oh so carefully around, coffee fetched by an eager runner and only the efficient swish of the receptionists' glam rags as they switched shifts. All so very civilised.
Not a jot of accountability, of course. Tscha. That was for (sneer here) direct marketing. We didn't need that because we were Brand Ambassadors! Loftier things awaited us don't you know.

A quick story about the two sided nature of non-accountability.
At one point, in the early 90s, we wanted the snack brand we were working on to 'own' the Irish comedy scene by using a coterie of excellent stand-ups from the burgeoning circuit. There was no Bulmers Comedy Festival or Murphy's Laughter Lounge or Carlsberg Comedy Festival. Even the Cat Laughs hadn't yet arrived, much less Father Ted. We got as far as making a test ad using a great Irish comic, and were given the greenlight. Why? Because the client's kids liked the ad. That was enough for us. Spurious as all fuck, but we were getting to make our ads, so we didn't care. We shot a dozen in a day, cheap and dirty, on video. We were made! The first burst went on TV and we told all our friends, family, even our pets. They were silly ads but they made people laugh. Unless, of course, you were the sales dept of the client who was selling the utterly disposable snack food. No, they did not like silly. Our ads were pulled. Most of them never saw the light of a cathode ray tube, despite the fact that production had cost buttons. The Sales team at Snackky Ltd (name made up to protect the idiocent) didn't like the ads, so within fourteen days we were canned. Shortly after, Irish comedy went stratospheric (at least in the English speaking world) but Snackky Ltd had already missed the chuckle boat.

What have we learned, children?
As William Goldman says of Hollywood in Adventures in the Screen Trade, nobody knows anything. We didn't then. We don't now. I was humiliated on that occasion by other people's idiocy, and I vowed never to let it happen again. How? It's easy really. You just don't put your heart into it. Go ahead and put your intelligence into it, sure. I mean, nobody's going to pay you just to sit there, are they? But if you become emotionally invested in something that's not yours, you're open to a severe kicking.

Sounds callous, I'll admit. But a fundamental truth was revealed to me with that experience, and while I'm the dumbest arse on the planet in many respects, I was smart enough to see something then. If it isn't actually yours, don't ever become its. That sentence looks terrible, but you get me, right? In the meantime, I work for myself and I freelance as a copywriter and content writer and I do a variety of other related activities. I am the product now in some respects, so I have to care. And I like it much better that way. The old model of copywriter/art director dreaming up campaigns is still out there in the agencies, but it's no longer for me. It's pretty much defunct in digital creativity, because you need to understand the medium to a far greater degree. The passivity of tv/radio/press is not tenable online, which is why there's growth right now in digital agencies, unlike tradvertising. But you need to understand people's habits, have a grasp of the technology and be able to assemble the team that can make it happen.

The other kicker is that results matter. The faux parade of glitzy peer-to-peer awards means nothing in new media, because efficacy is all, and efficacy is decided pretty quickly. Kind of makes it exciting too, and separates the can do people from the quacks fairly sharpish. Still plenty of quacks though, particularly in the area of providing digital marketing to green-behind-the-ears clients. I predict that a lot of people will fall into this trap in 2010, but that won't last too long. Resources for quackery just ain't there they way they were in the last decade.

So roll on the tens, with new opportunities and new adventures, and if I get to own a part of it I will give it my heart. I fully plan to.

And this comes via the ever wise Paul Dervan. Dave Trott on making pow without kerching.

A prosperous 2010 to all.

The last days of Bebo?

Image by stefania murru

Not too long ago Bebo was the bright and shining star in the Irish social media firmament. They trilled loudly about having a million plus accounts, back when Facebook had considerably less than half that. But the worm hasn't just turned. It's fallen into a vat of toxic chemicals, emerged with super Bebo-munching hunger pangs and has just devoured the kids' favourite. Meanwhile school buses packed with migrating teens have been pulling up outside Facebook High in an endless stream. The glitzy shimmer of your own designer skin is suddenly old-skool, and the nu-skool uniform of anaemic fb blue seems to be all that the kids want. Jesus, is this a Heathers moment or what?

I don't think that the kids have just graduated because of the colour scheme somehow. You'd have to give some credit to Zuckerberg's minions for getting the functionality of Facebook to a level where the yoot would want to go there, despite the fact that it looks like corporate fascist design of the most boring kind. Whatever the motivation, be it functionality, peer pressure or both (or perhaps just a superior product), the roll call has been taken and not too many are still hanging around the Bebo gym. (Ok, I've been waiting for someone to call me out on the piss-thin schoolyard metaphor for two long paragraphs and nobody has, so I'm just going to have to shoot my own damn self. Why oh why did nobody shout Stop?)

Daily unique visitors to Bebo Ireland (source Google)


And to Facebook Ireland (source Google)

Google's impassive adplanner analytics paint the sobering story. Barely 30,000 hits shows a plummet of over 200% since January '09. Last month saw the departure of Philip McCartney, Bebo's head of sales in Ireland. It highlights the fickle nature of the younger target market, and the dangerous dustbowl that social media spaces can quickly become. Not that Facebook will be caring too much right now.

Bearing in mind that Ireland was the Golden Child for the platform, it wouldn't fill me with confidence today to be an AOL shareholder. The American mammoth bought Bebo last year for $850 million and despite a hefty redesign early this year it's been tanking steadily since.

Advertisers take note: when you're hot you're hot. Bebo no longer is.

Why SMEs use Social Media Marketing

Chanced upon this in, of all things, an actual printed quarterly bulletin. It's from Amas, and the research was done by David Scanlon at Enterprise Ireland, who kindly allows me to republish it here.

A total of 48 SMEs involved, using Linkedin, Fb and Twitter. 86% use it to promote their company, unsurprisingly. For 36% it's a way to cut costs without killing the marketing goose. Almost half (48%) use it to enhance/protect brand reputations. We need more information like this.

Digital suppliers In Ireland: E to J

eBay Ireland Dublin 15 (Online marketplace)

Ebow Dublin (Web development & design)

Ecom Ireland Dublin (Web & software devel, SEO, online marketing)

eGain Communications Dublin (Software and services)

Eighty:Twenty Dublin (Digital Advertising)

Eirborne Dublin (Mobile entertainment)

Eircom Net Dublin (Broadband, web hosting and ISP services)

Electric Media Sales Dublin (Online advertising sales)

Elucidate Dublin (Online communications and marketing)

eMedia Galway (Electronic media)

Engine Solutions Dublin (Software development)

Enhance Dublin (Web Design)

Entropy Dublin (Digital security solutions)

Escape Web Designs Limerick (Web development and design)

Esus Web Consultancy Services Cork (Web development)

E-Type Dublin (Online Advertising)

EU Internet Dublin (Domain name management and services)

Evolution Internet Dublin (Web design & internet marketing)

Fireball Media Cork (Web development and design)

FireIMC Ltd Belfast (Advertising Agency)

First Advertising Dublin (Advertising Agency)

Fluent Design Dublin (Web design)

Fluid Rock Dublin (Interactive media agency)

Future Image Co Down (Advertising Agency)

Generator Dublin (Interactive marketing agency)

Gerry McGovern Dublin (Web content management solutions)

Google Ireland Dublin (Online advertising and search)

Graphedia Wexford (Web design)

Green Island Interactive Dublin (Web Development & design)

Green Room Media Dublin (Web design, online video)

GT Interactive Dublin (Digital Agency)

GuiltyFish.com Dublin (Web Design)

Herbert Street Technologies Dublin (Private web-based secure communications systems)

Hosting365 Dublin (Provider of hosting, colocation and managed services)

i-believe Dublin (Online Advertising)

ICAN Dublin (Online advertising and marketing services)

Icarus E-Com Dublin (Database backed e-commerce applications)

IE Domain Registry Dublin (Allocation and management of Irish domain names)

i-merge Dublin (Integrated digital marketing communications)

Impact Media Galway (Advertising Agency)

Impact Media Limerick (Advertising Agency)

Independent Digital Works Dublin

INEX Dublin (Internet Exchange Point)

Initiative Media Dublin Dublin (Media Independents)

Inspiration Dublin (Online marketing consultants)

InterFusion Networks Dublin (Provider of managed network and e-security services)


io - Interactive Ocean Dublin (Advertising Agency)

iPLANIT Dublin (Web & Internet services)

iQ Content Dublin (Custom content solutions)

Irish Broadband Dublin (Provision of broadband services)

Irish Domains Dublin (Hosting, domain name registration and ecommerce services)

Irish International BBDO Dublin (Advertising Agency)

iTouch Ireland Dublin (Mobile solutions)

iWord Wicklow (Mobile Marketing)

Javelin Group Dublin (Advertising Agency)

Juritsu Limerick (Web & Graphic design)

With thanks again to the industrious folks at Mount Media.

Digital suppliers in Ireland: The List from A to D

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be posting an A-Z of digital suppliers in Ireland north and south. It's pretty comprehensive and comes via the hard work of Mount Media (publishers of IMJ and Adworld among others). A big thank you to them.

If you're not on the list or if you're incorrectly detailed just let me know and additions/amends will be made statim. I'll probably put the full list in a category somewhere handy when it's complete. Meantime here's the first four letters of the alphabet in digital Ireland.

1 World Media Marketing Belfast (Advertising Agency)

2BeScene Dublin (Online marketing services)

Ad2One Dublin (Online Sales & Marketing)

Adnet Dublin (Web design)

Adtech London (AOL Advertising)

Afilias Dublin (Domain Registry for .info)

agency.com Dublin (Interactive agency)

All Media Matters Dublin (Media)

AMAS Dublin (eBusiness consultancy)

An Webbery Donegal (Web design and Internet services)

Ardmore Co Down (Advertising & Marketing)

Ardvaark Digital Media Cork (Web design)

Arekibo Dublin (Web development, design & consultancy)

Aró Gaillimh (eBusiness solutions)

Artweb Design Dublin (Internet consultancy)

Athena Media Dublin (Media Independents)

Atomic Dublin (Advertising Agency)

Aura Internet Services Monaghan (Web development and consultancy)

AV Browne Dublin (Advertising Agency)

Banahan McManus Advertising Dublin (Advertising Agency)

BDM Innovate Dublin (Digital Media solutions)

Bitbuzz Dublin (Wi-Fi networks)

Blacknight Internet Solutions Carlow (Web hosting)

bloom Dublin (Advertising Agency)

Bluecube Interactive Dublin (Digital Marketing Agency)

Bluemetrix Cork (Web analytics)

Bluestar Tipperary (Web design, applications, online marketing)

Bonfire Dublin (Advertising Agency)

Bookassist Dublin (Internet consultancy & enterprise level databases)

Brando Dublin (Digital Advertising)

Brendan Moran & Co Wicklow (Computer consultancy)

Brightspark Consulting Dublin (Internet communications)

Broadtalk Communications Dublin (Broadband & VoIP)

BT Ireland Dublin (Telephone and broadband services)

Carat Ireland Dublin (Media Independents)

Carival Advertising & Design Cork (Advertising Agency)

Chemistry Dublin (Advertising Agency)

Chorus NTL Dublin (Digital TV, internet and telephony)

Clearscape Dublin (Website Design & Development)

Clientwell Dublin (Online marketing agency)

Comado Dublin (Digital publishing)

Combined Media Dublin (Website design & development)

Community Publishing Wicklow (Software for mobile and internet communities)

Completecents Dublin (Online Marketing Strategies)

Concept Cork (Advertising Agency)

Continuum Dublin (e-business consulting and design)

Corevalue Dublin (Business-to-Business; Business-to-Govt Services)


Cork Webdesign Cork (Web design)

Creative Inc Dublin (Web and graphic design)

Customer Minds Dublin (Mobile Marketing)

Cybercom Dublin (Full Service Digital Marketing Agency)

Dara Creative Dublin (Web & graphic design)

Data Conversion Dublin (Mobile & Direct Marketing)

Data Electronics Dublin (Co-location and managed web hosting)

Dataway Dublin (Network Security)

dbase Technologies Dublin (Web design, IT solutions)

DDFH&B Advertising Dublin (Advertising Agency)

Deise Design Waterford (Web design and implementation)

Denobi Dublin (Website design and online marketing)

Dialogue Dublin (Direct Response Advertising Agency)

Diffiniti Dublin (Digital Media Specialist)

Digicast Dublin (Digital audio and podcasting)

Digino Tipperary (Online marketing consultancy)

DigiServe Software Dublin (Develop & management of portal sites)

Digital Crew Cork (Web developers)

Digital Enterprise Solutions Dublin (Enterprise solutions)

Digital Hub Dublin (Digital development agency)

Digital Lounge Media Dublin (Digital Agency)

Digital Works Dublin (Media Independents)

Digitize Dublin (Online advertising sales)

Digiweb Louth (Internet hosting, domain registrations, broadband provision)

Dimex Belfast (Advertising Agency)

DirectBrand Dublin (Direct and digital marketing)

Discover Mobile Dublin (Mobile content management)

DMA Dublin (Advertising and Direct Marketing Agency)

Documation Dublin (Print services)

Doopdesign Dublin (Design company)

DotMobi Dublin (Mobile Marketing)

DV4 Dublin (Web Design and Online Video)

Agencies who span trad and new media - properly

There are some who do, believe it or not. You'll find a dizzying array of new operators in the digital marketing space, from lone guns (some genuine, some new-age bullshit gurus to be avoided), to small and even medium-sized companies (some genuine, some new-age bullshit gurus to be avoided). That there are so many is testament to the amount of people who suddenly find themselves on the job market, sure, but also because new media are emerging quite quickly and traditional marketing companies are not upskilling with enough speed to understand and thereby dismiss or integrate them as appropriate.

I picked this Slideshare presentation up from a tweet or on one of the many digital avenues used by Mark Congiusta who heads up IIBBDO and Proximity's digital sections. (Ignore the irony of their websites not being, er, there yet.) He has a bunch of copped-on presentations over on Linkedin covering a variety of relevant areas: mobile advertising, taking your marketing online during recession and such and such. Each one plays a straight hand, and if you're in the marketing side of things but not yet happily in a digital groove you will find some local knowledgeable advice.

Traditional agencies: is transition possible?

It's the fag end of November 09. The country has finally realised the extent of the financial crap we're in, the most savage budget ever witnessed is apparently about to be unleashed snarling on the public and just to make sure a sucker never gets a break, God left the bath tap on while doing a ten day Vegas residency. The country is officially riding bell broke and knickers wringing.

But enough of the good news. The latest issue of IMJ magazine has an interview with the highly pragmatic Ray Sheerin, boss of one of Ireland's most lauded creative ad houses, Chemistry. He expresses clear concern for indigenous agencies.

"If you look at the industry at the moment, it is probably about half the size it was this time last year in terms of revenue yet it is only slightly smaller in terms of the number of people servicing it. That to me is not sustainable and I think the industry is facing into a very serious period of realignment over the next three to six months.

This time next year, there will be fewer agencies in Ireland than there are now. I think some were probably holding off making critical decisions in the hope of some sort of an upturn in the last quarter of the year. At the moment, I don't see this happening and it's certainly not going to happen in the first quarter of 2010. So I think reality for some agencies will really only bite early next year and I don't think it's going to be pleasant."

Reality's bite has already been felt at Chemistry itself. Never a profligate bunch even at the height of boomtown, they ran a tight ship. Nevertheless the jobs axe has already swung for several of their agency personnel in the latter half of '09. I'm not sure if this stark interview is their way of starting the process of 'realignment', but it wouldn't surprise me, and it wouldn't be a bad start.

I see Chemistry as a microcosm of the issue facing ad agencies in general. The cold facts of the recession are not lost on them, and the work that they do for clients, in ever more difficult circumstances, remains of an excellent standard. But there is no fat on the figures any more. Lose one account and you can end up closing an entire department of your hard-working agency. It's hard to keep going in the teeth of that disappointment, knowing that you're still doing good work on shrinking resources. And I have alluded before to the streak of cruelty I've observed in (some) bigger clients throughout this recession. They are actively demanding more but willing to pay for less. They are fragmenting business among agencies, leading to a bull pit where agencies are ripping into each other's cost bases for unjust rewards at the end of the campaign, and loyalty meanwhile has taken the boat to elsewhere.


The way forward?
At the risk of sounding like Garret Fitzgerald, I've said this before. The game was changing anyway. Recession has collided with an explosion of new media and all the bingo bullshit in the world doesn't hide the fact that agencies need to find a digital way forward or Ray Sheerin's prediction will include them.
But is this actually possible? I believe it is. Not without a hell of a lot of recessionary pruning, and most likely that includes Sheerin's mooted mergers, but secondly (and here's the Darwinian nucleus) a whole new mindset when it comes to how agencies view control of the medium, the project and the client's budget.

My personal, and some might argue simplistic, belief is that core agency thinking, particularly of the traditional kind, is a hindrance to effective online marketing. The G5 of TV/Radio/Press/Outdoor/Cinema have long since ceased to be the dominant global force they once were. There's nothing new in that. Some recent research from RedC notes that for 16 -30 year olds in Ireland almost half of their viewing time, about two hours, is spent online. Two fifths of the TV viewing is not specific and is on in the background. We're not even factoring in how many people are recording the shows they actually want to watch on the Sky box and then simply ignoring that jewel in the crown of latter C20 advertising, the prized TV spot.

If you want to see the full results from that RedC research
from Richard Colwell, you can access it on video here.

But the machinery that drove agencies, and continues to drive them, is structured in a way that's counter-intuitive to producing rapid-turnaround online creative work. I sat through how many presentations to prospective clients without actually clocking what was wrong with that slide where we outlined the agency structure. It had two triangles, side by side. The head of client service was the sharp end of one, the creative director the tip of the other. Above them, vaguely connected to both, was top management, while below were the various layers of drones (as a senior writer I include myself in one of those layers).
Two triangles that never overlapped. And that was the 'team' that was going to work on Client X's much-sought business. You can see where problems might have gestated, no? Makes me think of that scene with John Hurt in Alien. Ultimately that's how it played out too. And this is even before we start to talk about integrating digital, which in itself is a loathsomely patronising term.

The model where creatives and execs essentially see each other as hindrances to getting the job done properly needs to be dismantled anyway in order not to just include digital marketing media but to be entirely built ab initio around it. The vacuum that's created by the inability of trad agencies to do this has been filled with literally hundreds of small online marketing companies, offering a plethora of varied services, and each month more join the field. It's dizzying, and very often the trad agency, digitally inarticulate behemoth that it is, is overlooking the fact that what these small companies offer, whether it's professional podcasting, mobile app development, SEO expertise or any of a hundred different relevancies, is most likely necessary for the agency's clients in today's marketplace. It may be overwhelming to look at how much needs to be absorbed for an old schooler, but I'd still rather have sleepless nights AND a roof overhead.

No ring to bind them all
I spoke to Orlaith Blaney recently, MD of McCann Erickson in Dublin. Big agency, on the face of it doing a creditable job of working through the recession and still making plenty of traditional advertising. But what about all of the online activity her clients now needed? Was McCann in a position to give Coke and Tayto and Heineken and Nestlé real online expertise? She reckoned that the switch-up to full digital offering (and really, nobody can define 'full' in the ever-expanding world of online media) would be far too costly for an Irish agency to do from scratch. From McCann's perspective, the core issue would still be about positioning themselves at the centre of the client's brand needs, and making sure that those needs were met either through the agency's work directly or through collaboration. But the idea of being 'the one' wasn't sustainable.

I think she's right. Knowing how to market crisps doesn't mean that you need to have someone on the payroll who knows how to make an iPhone app that markets crisps. Just be aware that it can be done, and be clued in as to whether it's right for your client to use it. Same mantra as always: know your shit. Creativity will still be creativity. Just in a different space. I think agencies can take a huge amount of positive juice from seeing it put into practice.
No better example in the past week than Chemistry themselves, who capitalised virally on Thierry Henry's handling of the ball to take France to the World Cup and send Ireland home. The guys in Leeson Park fabricated a diplomatic storm in a virtual teacup with elegant minimalism but huge impact. Google the words Sarkozy, box and letters and see how well they did it, just to prove that they could. People are getting this web thing.

Online media and NGOs

Damien Mulley is organising a conference for charities on December 8 at the Euro Commission office in Molesworth Street, Dublin 2. Excellent opportunity to learn how the freely available tools that are out there can work to the benefit of organisations.

The course is free, with a max of two attendees per NGO. You can sign up here if you're interested. I don't like to talk about the many amazing things I constantly do for charity, so I am unable to say if I will be involved, or what if I may be involved I would be talking about if I was involved. Or not.

Use white space and your readers will be 20% smarter

This is from a presentation by Paddy Cosgrave, organiser of the Dublin Web Summit (see previous post). He rattled through it quite quickly on the day, although nowhere near as quickly as his YouTube upload does. It's too damn quick frankly, so hover over the pause button. Some sharp insights.

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