No, I wasn’t banned by Facebook, rather I banned myself from Facebook & TV for the past 48 hours – and wow what a difference! Here’s a dump of my thoughts…
By the way, sorry for not blogging much lately… Life is busy and I guess I dump quite a bit in Twitter these days!
Reason for the Ban:
Simply put, I felt Facebook & Television where taking up too much time – Yes, they essentially become addictions of everyday life! Even at my ”young” age many people are permanently logged in… Spare time is being spent in Facebook instead of something useful & we all know the ”Girlfriend & Boyfriend scenario: Honey, what are you watching… Be quiet babe, I’m watching TV… What is it your watching?… Oh for fuck sakes, I don’t know babe – just be quiet”
The effects of these two combined are detremental if you ask me! I am as such a victim who easily finds himself in front of the TV at night time with laptop permanently on Facebook, while offcourse I scroll and study other sites also…
I decided it was simply high time to see what happens without either & in the long-term my ambition is to find the happy medium – somewhere between the latest technology and old fashioned ”face-to-face” communications. Simply put, its about finding a balance & the right tools that benefit your life, without sacrificing life offline!
So I put together a few positive / negative thoughts on FB & following that I’ll give a brief of what can happen in 48 hours
Positive effects on work life:
Is there a positive effect? Yes we can network but this isn’t work life… this is essentially personal life. As an entrepreneur their are ways to network and FB is not one of them…
Yes as a digital marketer I need to know whats happening in Facebook for the sakes of my clients and their positioning to the consumer within social media, but this once again is not worklife – its is a requirement of my profession to ensure clients maximize their position online/offline etc…
Negative effects on work life:
- Less hours a day spent on actual work
- Less thinking time (I am a solid believer that FB fills in the gaps between work but shouldn’t thinking do this?)
- On-going distraction – “whats happening in FB – I’ll just check”
- Friends wanting to chat in FB chat (which hardly works anyway). Yes, friends overseas are a positive effect but your local friends? Really guys, pick up a bloody phone or go meet them…
Positive effects on personal life:
- Keeping in touch with friends everywhere made easy. Especially friends from abroad who are difficult to keep in touch with otherwise.
- Self learning through groups/clubs…
- Dating (various dating tools which actually work kinda….)
- Games (if your into that)
Negative effects on personal life:
- Less hours a day spent on actually doing something
- Reduced motivation to see your friends face-to-face
- I think a mix of old & new communications works. Many are using Facebook for everything – in some cases its even taken over the horrible SMS which we all know we use too much.
- Relationships are being managed from FB. People are loosing touch with the need to see each other or at least speak over the phone. People are dumping each other in FB & having relationships that never make it outside of the cyber world – is this honestly healthy?
- Why see my friends? Lets hang in FB & have a beer…
- Less motivation to work out…
- Combined with TV the overall effect is just laziness
- Future generations will be pail white, fat & munch of unlimited amounts of sugar and junkfood while they couch potatoe themselves with a laptop on their laps with FB
The last 48 hours
Just briefly instead of sitting on my sofa starring into the TV & speaking to 20 people in Facebook while I update my status every five minutes I’ve read 200 pages of a book which by the way, I rarely allocate time to myself for reading, I’ve done a lot of thinking (which otherwise I would have been telling people in FB that I’ve done alot of thinking instead of doing alot of thinking), opened up my eyes to various music groups via Spotify (now that is a good online source), had coffee with two friends in the evenings, been to gym, been shopping & essentially just spent more time doing what we used to do… Active ”offline” stuff!. Oh yes, offcourse I have been working as one always does anyway…
Please note…
I am not at all saying Facebook is no good but I think what I am saying is that we need to be self indepedant from things like Facebook & TV. I will use Facebook everyday in the future, just to communicate with friends abroad & yes, I am sure I will speak a little to my local friends but I will ensure I keep my distance & only spend a short time in there everyday. I don’t need to say anything about the combination of this & TV – I think that one is obvious!!!!
SPAMBOOK – Is Facebook becoming the next SPAM medium?
Facebook… the new giant that has a generation almost attached to it. Generation F some call it! The 70’s were “free love”, the 80’s were “rock”, the 90’s were “grunge”, and now… “Social networks – FACEBOOK”.
So is this new so-called generation soon going to get angry? Why? SPAM…. While many successful brands are moving forward & embracing social platforms and new avenues of reaching their consumers, many are misusing these channels & quite frankly just ruining them for other brands. I’ve noticed an influx of brands in particular one or two in the Nordics simply attacking Facebook & using it as a personal source of SPAM. At this stage I am really narrowing down my friends in Facebook and what I see on the homepage. I really don’t want to see 20 updates on my homepage about one brand – SPAM SPAM SPAM. Too some extent its becoming a little like MySpace but at least we as the user, do have somewhat control but seems rude to delete all your fan pages and friends.
In the past 6 months a massive explosion of brand pages have been created. Facebook has become like the web during the dotcom boom – brands then said “we need a website – just create us a website” & now they are saying “we need a Facebook page – just create us a Facebook page” – So what’s the long-term strategy, what’s the point of difference, how will Facebook align with all your other marketing channels, how will you engage your consumer more so than other brands, without spamming them? Yes, another SPAM giant was email – no segmentation, no behavioral targeting, no strategic approach at all – just spam those consumers and hope for the best – What ever happened to first impressions last? Well it seems to me like Facebook is slowly moving towards this & if brands don’t follow a marketing strategy to align all their mediums and have “original concepts” to apply to Facebook then well… soon We’ll be seeking the next “anti-spam” platform.
One thing is clear that we need to build up our brands across all channels – and yes, we have to start somewhere, but not SPAM. Somewhere means having an in-depth long-term strategy as to how you will use these new channels of media to promote your business. Being marketing professionals we are obviously much more critical of the way brands place themselves to the consumer, but the consumer remembers – they are not dumb! Assume the consumer is smart, savvy, and intelligent – tell them what they want to hear, give them what they want to see… Target them & be their friend – But guys… Stop and think & ask yourselves one question – What are you trying to do in the long-term and are you going to achieve it with your current approach? I for one object to being spammed in anyway – email, facebook, telesales, forums… – Leave me alone 
Love to hear anybodies thoughts on this on a regional level. Examples would be great but I am personally trying to stop myself from attacking individual brands.
So once again, this boy has been a little quiet but was exploring markets in the Ukraine this time… Not just for women twice my height in high heels and short skirts 
Developing markets are becoming somewhat of an interest to me now. I plan to continue my work in East Africa, maybe sooner than later as its now boom boom boom! In all honesty though, its not such a nice market to work in because politicians in Africa are a different breed all together! Quite simply put, they are corrupt and would prefer their continent to stay poor rather than for an equal distribution of wealth…
But moving on from East Africa, I recently spent a short time in Ukraine which was also super interesting. A country that is incredibly cheap, if not cheaper than Africa & has a huge pool of resources. The number one problem here is most speak Russian only – but if you can work around that, there is a very good market here, people are willing to work hard & many have a decent education. They at the very least have access to fast internet which in development terms is education for most – like me
The quality of work or should I say sites is pretty low but its getting better. I personally met with several freelancers and entrepreneurs and also intend to tap into this market in some manner or another so if your interested in Eastern markets then get in touch with me as I am currently working on ideas to utilize this market in Ukraine…
First of all my apologies for being away for so long but to see what I was upto while I was away in East Africa, you can check out www.michaeltrenerry.com.
After spending 2 months mostly in Kenya, I thought I would write a little piece on my observations of digital in Kenya & how this effects the population over all. As I had a few discussions with different experts, I found that due to the extreme difference in wealth there are very different opinions on where some would like to see the internet go. Some underlying ”social” factors that will effect the growth include:
Wealth is the underlying factor in these developing countries. Kenya is a crazy country that is incredibly corrupt. Like in most cases the Rich get richer and the poor continue to struggle but here, they don’t struggle for the things you’d think, rather they struggle primarily to put clean water on the table followed by basic, and I mean very basic food. Following this education is important but there are many hurdles for some to get their kids to school – distance of travel, purchasing uniforms, disease and malnutrition, no family support, food for education and so on. The most horrible thing that I found were many key powerful people, don’t even want to see the internet as a tool for all – for them, if the poor have access to the internet, the % of rich vs poor may shift a little, simply due to accessible information for the poor, self education, entrepreurism and so on.
Corruption plays a massive part in the future of Kenya’s business economy. I heard many talk about Kenya being similar to a country like India one day. A country that while extreme poverty exists in well over 90% of the countries population, the country in the future will have access to fast internet, laced with a good education for those who come from a wealthy background – like in India, most have no chance to or can not afford universtity or higher education.
But, for this to happen, I believe that corruption will need to reduce. How can a country & its people not be corrupt, if the most part of the police force, militar & government are corrupt – everybody wants a little something on the side in Kenya and it is in your face! You’ll see bribes taking place as you leave the airport, with all the police pulling folk over to ”check their cars”…
Any company doing business in kenya must be prepared to bribe the right people. This can make business easy to some extent but difficult to another – one example is a big shopping centre created in Westlands – Nakumattt Ukay. This centre should have never been built as it is sitting above wasteland and a river. Money bought the rights to build about 9 years ago through an instable government and politicians… Now, it is being ripped down! Different government, different demands & now the business is loosing everything.
I personally look for stability in an economy to invest, what will international companies do in Kenya? I may start exploring the East African Digital Market more so stay tuned.
Accessibility follows the path of Corruption and wealth in some terms. Simply put, unlike Finland, where pretty much 99% of homes have internet access, it is closer to 1% in Kenya. As it was kindly put to me by a local business man, why will slum dwellers in Kibera, Africas second largest slum with around 1.5 million residents pay for the internet when they can’t afford water & food.
Well, I didn’t like this guy one bit & would like to see this proven wrong. Accessibility is the key & to have a market, they need to reach a far greater audience. There are many ways to achieve this and we have seen it done in many western cultures – wireless hotspots, education funded development programs, free courses to promote business online and so on. I would definitely like to mentor this market in some way but that means living down there – lets see what happens eh?
Speed ultimately plays a big role in the use of the internet. And the speed in Kenya sucks. Mind you, its the fastest in East Africa, but still while I was there, in many cases I was not able to see sites E.g. when trying to buy a ticket from Blue1… the site simply didn’t work on a slow connection! Remember folk, the average connection there is more like 28k in & out, and in many cases one line for ten people. The guy I stayed with for the most part of the trip essentially had the fastest line in Kenya 512/256 but in many cases it felt like a quarter of that…
But, the fibre optic line is opening ”evidentally” in June, so this should solve the problem of speed BUT, it is not clear how expensive this will be. Yes, it will benefit big business but will it simply be too expensive for most the population? I will get back to this, as it will play a very important role in the growth of entrepreunerism & business from Kenya to the outside world – like India and many other developing countries have seen.
Education no matter what, is needed – and it needs to be government funded or privately from companies interested in the growth of Kenya. Yes, those going to university can access the internet but smaller courses need to be created on all levels of the internet. There are an abundance of ”private” courses advertised but one wonders who effective these are, and who is actually training in the courses – more on this later.
I feel that education also influences social attitude – While the rich of Kenya will be online, the poor need to be educated in the benefits of educating their kids online! For if a child of today does not know their way around the internet, then they have no chance in competing with the rest of the world.
This is where some amazing educational based social methodologies and platforms need to be built specifically for Africa. Yes, it will take time for these to be developed, but they will be one of the key growth foundations for the poor in Africa.
Mobility is an interesting concept in Kenya. Before I went to Kenya I read bits and pieces in journals, magazines and portals about Kenya being a pioneer in Digital in this part of the world – pioneer? I also read, that many people had access to mobile internet. Well, first of all, its expensive, second of all, they need newer generation phones to effectively access the internet and thirdly, its expensive. Mobile credits is pretty steep in Kenya, more so than in Finland by a long shot. So do the maths.
However the invention of M-Pesa is a great example of mobility without the internet. A ping of a text message has never sounded so nice. In what is being touted as a world first, Kenya’s biggest mobile operator, Safaricom is allowing subscribers to send cash to other phone users by SMS . Vodaphone invented the functionality and owns 35% of Safaricom.
Apart from transferring cash – a service much in demand among urban Kenyans supporting relatives in rural areas – customers of the Safaricom network will be able to keep up to 50,000 shillings (£370) in a “virtual account” on their handsets.
M-Pesa’s is simple. There is no need for a new handset or SIM card. To send money you hand over the cash to a registered agent – typically a retailer – who credits your virtual account.
Summarising the above isn’t easy. I may very well explore East African developing markets over the coming months – so interesting to follow a market that has near to no maturity in it at all. I even noticed small things like Niveas giant outdoor billboards not being contextually right! I mean, what does having one fo the biggest billboards in Nairobi do for you if the women in the poster is a white super model? Ummmm, hello – 99% of Kenya is Black, apart from the damn colonists who settled with the English… There are lots of small things I’d like to talk about focusing on smaller issues but maybe later…
Anybody interested in East African Markets please get in touch as I would like to further my research in this region & also any persons interested in investing or setting up business in this region, I would like to hear from – its gonna be an interesting but possibly lucrative market to get on board with – especially if we can fill the gap for poor people and make internet accessible for a much greater % of the population…
I wrote a little comment in my other blog about bad sales & mass marketing.
Simply put, I’d say it wasn’t even 24 hours from the point I registered ikonic here in Finland before I started receiving phone calls & now I get mail – lots of it… both snail mail, email, and phone calls and I am just waiting for my first MMS or SMS.
The point of this post – My finnish isn’t the greatest, I have registered this business as a consultant, already have my gear, already have mobile account etc… – but these idiots sales people are just pitching everything and anything. Sonera called me this morning & they actually spoke English to me which I respected that they had done their research… But when I said “I’m not interested” the guy said “but you don’t even know what I am selling”… I think he needs to revisit his pitch don’t you?
The point here is that you as a client can approach your marketing activities from several perspectives but in this context there are really two ways – mass marketing, otherwise known as SPAM, which will entail you sending old school direct mail, emails or even phone calls to every address you can get your hands on OR smarter marketing, meaning less contacts, leads but more targeted approaches… You’d be amazed if you focus on 10 hot leads & get to understand them better what could happen. My money would go to 10 over 1000, if you do the right research.
So to round up a short log before I jump on a plane to Africa, “know your customers” people and now your “prospective customers” – mass marketing is so yesterday!
As stated earlier you are going to see far less in this blog for a little while as I am going to be focusing on photographic & multimedia projects now in East Africa & how I can link them to more creative avenues of marketing for you in the future. You can follow more info on that at my other blog.
But as a sign for all of us to perhaps reduce our Outgoings, it seems the infamous Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards will lack the serious party seen it has always been known for. I mean really, why do so many people to there – Do you honestly think its worth the money or that you build your network there. That’s what the internet is for… Admittedly I would go if someone paid for it as I have heard its an absolute riot but this year perhaps a little try says AdAge… DDB pulling out of their big bash, who else will follow?
Who from Finland will be there… And can you really validate sending your guys there? For those going, l am sure you’ll make great parties anyway… afterall the French Riviera, beautiful women & sunshine can do a lot on its own right?
I think this is simply a good sign that sensible companies really shouldn’t be spending any excess money right now… At least not on parties
We’ve talked about Twitter and using it with your brand a little bit so far. So today I thought we’d take a little look at a case study to see how it can be done. Positive buzz was moving around yesterday about the Skittles website taking on the social media genre quite nicely.
Not even a day later they move the homepage to the static Facebook group page due to negative chatter about skittles on Twitter. So the big question we have to ask ourselves is:
a) were they smart enough to predict some negativity & change it to Facebook with the aim of getting more press. Yes thats right, negative press can be great press sometimes! At least its better than no press on the basis you planned it all along.
b) were they simply not competent enough to predict that there will always be some bad with the good when tackling the social media genre…
A lesson to be seen here already! Is that you need various contingency plans when exploring the social media genre. YES, the audience will hopefully write lots of cool stuff about you but there will be the bad – so we have to plan how to address it. The end of the day, with or without social media people are using the oldest form of marketing known to man “viral marketing” to talk about your brand. Yes, Viral Marketing is not a digital idea – Many talk about it like it is digital but it is just one person whispering to another or talking about something.
So it will be interesting to see how Skittles counter acts the negativity & comments on this… Either way they got bucket loads of press out of it as they are the 3rd top word used in Tweetstats two days in a row!
Yep, beating politics, world news and so on… Good job guys – I only hope it was planned and not pure luck!
The key lesson here is to question did they plan this or not? Because when we take you to this social genre we need to look at every route in & out of your brand. We can’t plan everything but we can certainly have a plan of attack ready for different scenarios – like in any business!
I will try to follow this & come back to see their success in a later blog so stay tuned.
Over my time I have sat in many idea generation or brainstorming sessions both within media and advertising agencies, hotshops and on the client side or with the client. These sessions can be to generate ideas for an individual campaign, a long-term strategy, a product launch or they might very well be for your next new business pitch.
Amongst these sessions though, only very few have been in my opinion highly successful. The reason is quite simple. There has been a lacking brief, lack of structure, no leadership and no real collaboration.
The Brief
Mentioned in my earlier blog, the brief is vital. What exactly are we aiming to achieve from the session. What are our objectives & what do we already know. Sessions take time and that means money for you, so lets be sure that we have a good brief that outlays exactly what we intend to achieve during the session.
Structure and Process
I don’t want to take the fun out of these sessions because that is what they are all about but you do need some structure to tackle the brief. The structure does a few things. It ensures we maximise the time we spend in these sessions constructively. It ensures everybody gets to put ideas in. It ensures we cover all the points we need to and most of all it ensures that when we leave & finish the meeting, we leave with an action list of clear indicators & the key persons involved in ensuring those tasks are met.
A good session while structured doesn’t really feel structured. Like the term brainstorm, we start by dumping down lots of ideas. From these ideas we decide which are the most innovative and interesting and which best meet the objectives of the brief. When we have a few good ideas we can move forward – expand them, dig deeper, pull out insights, and create example case studies and so on until we feel we have our winning idea. The winning idea will often come in a second or third session after we have analyzed our key ideas in more detail.
Make sure in all cases before a meeting is over that everybody who has attended agrees with the idea & that everybody is cleary aware of what they are required to do to get to the next stage.
Session leader
In all cases, there should be a person in the session that is the session leader – the person who structures the workshop, understands the brief in minute detail, a person that listens to others, mediates and writes ideas down. This person should be skilled in running ideas/brainstorming sessions and a creative mind. The person should help the group move along in a clearly structured manner.
Without this person, we essentially normally end up having lots of ideas but no central focus – people walk away from the session with a smile but when they sit down, they don’t really know what next…
Collaboration
I have been involved with many new business pitches. The great ones show real collaboration, they show that the team worked brilliantly together and they all believe in the idea and their ability to deliver it. The successful sessions are fun, a birth of great ideas from everybody and in the end a united approach that shows very clear collaboration. The unsuccessful ones seem to have people working in modules – one digital guy creating digital ideas, one print person creating print ideas and one television person creating television ideas – no integration between the overall idea. The idea should show that all parties have worked together seemlessly on all aspects of the project.
I could continue to write more about good and bad sessions but to wrap it up, just remember what these sessions are for! Its business, we all have limited time and resources so plan & think strategically at all times BUT also remember to be super creative – don’t let the structure and process ruin the creativity required to build great ideas…
In the few earlier posts I have talked quite a bit about Twitter, Blogging and have touched on the importance of your presence within Social Media. Twitter and blogging are not the only social media tools out there but off-course these are some of the most commonly used and hence, ones that we should consider for you.
This post is to touch on a question that I come across in many conversations – how much is enough? How much social media is enough? Its so easy to sign-up to every new application that hits the market but I can promise you if you did that, it would be a full-time task for you & you’d find yourself with an abundance of tools that simply don’t benefit you & then the even worse scenario – a blog that hasn’t been updated for one month.
When it comes to social media I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer but there are a few key questions that we can ask to ensure that we have the right motives for what you are doing?
- Where is your customer?
Based on general knowledge, research & insights, online tools & media analysis, figure out where your customer is hanging out & what tools they are using. Create a list of all the core places they are hanging out in & then generate some possible ideas for each tool. Don’t be too picky at this stage but try to stay on track a little with your objectives and so on.
- How can you add value to your customer in each solution?
Will you add value to your customer in each solution E.g. Facebook? There are many brands out there that have created groups in Facebook, Myspace and other similar social communities, just like there were many startups in the 1990’s – many crashed and burned and a few survived. The ones that survived had great strategies & thought about everything they did & looked to the future. The poor ones just put something online quickly because it was a fad. They did it with little knowledge of little research behind their ideas. Those that succeed in social media will have a solid strategy, solid ideas, a timeline of what is going to be offered and essentially clear added value for their prospective customers. If you can’t get the stickiness or aren’t really adding value, then don’t do it. Don’t go somewhere just because it is a fad, go there because you will conquer it & really benefit your customer base by being there. In many cases, it just takes some good analysis and thinking to come up with great ideas.
- Add stickiness to get your customer coming back
It is easy to get people somewhere – we can use bought media, banners, search engine marketing etc… for that. First of all this will only get your customers there the first time and second of all its expensive to buy media. The hard part is to get them back again at their own free will. What can you offer your customer? Are you teaching them something, what hooks are you planting to get them back? Perhaps you are delivering news, functionalities or something that they truly want. If not, then reconsider. Remember, while you have passion for your brand, be a little realistic in your thinking – It is easy for a company like Nike to do something cool because they are cool, they have great products or equally new online tools like Spotify or Lastfm are cool – they give their customers free music. But do you have anything like that to offer – Just remind yourself that most products aren’t as exciting as as these.
- Can we manage expectations and resources easily?
The major reason many advertisers do not like Social Media is because it truly challenges traditional avenues of advertising – It’s no longer about telling & dictating to your customers how great you are. It’s now about your customer telling other customers how great you are. This is not achieved through Television in most cases but through the viral/community effect.
We can not control the internet or what people say about your brand but we can track it. So if we have the time and resource to tracking your brand online then we can effectively manage it to some extent. Imagine someone saying something negative about your brand in Twitter or their Blog. If you were able to find out what they were writing, then you could respond in an honest and open manner – that is true customer service and that makes even your bad customers good & possible future advocates.
We can track the above and we can manage expectations but it takes time & resource and a good management strategy in place. But the point is we can do it. You just need to make sure your ready & fully equipped with the right people and tools to lead you into the social space.
So how much is enough? It all comes down to planning & understanding the tools available and what it will take to manage your social media presence. Select the right tools for your audience, create an efficient streamlined process an strategy & then implement it long-term. Remember, once things are online, they stay online! You can’t just delete them so make sure you understand everything you are doing 100%.
Broadcast Television = Traditional Advertising: is the future grim?
Is the future of major network Television grim? Seems so says the trusty New York Times.
“The future for the networks, it seems, is more low-cost reality shows, more news and talk, and a greater effort to find new revenue streams, whether they be from receiving subscriber fees as cable channels do, or becoming cable networks themselves, an idea that has gained currency.”
You can look at this as another decline in Ad spend within traditional avenues of advertising. It’s obvious, especially right now in today’s ridiculous economy to spend major dollars on those old school ads. And in all honesty, I can’t find a brand or global company that can really back themselves up if they are! Please don’t say the automotive industry – more in debt than any other industry in the world pretty much.
So what does this mean for you the client? The reduction of dollars to spend means a shift in thinking. It doesn’t mean, we’ll produce a lower quality TVC – well it might for some of you, but what it should mean is you are re-aligning your communications and marketing strategies to fit the future. Now this still means that Television has its place but perhaps start thinking about collaborations with associated brands, reality shows and what not.
But in the real sense, we all know that a giant shift to digital is happening. And not sure what your thoughts are but I know for sure, that there aren’t that many of us out there with 10 years or more experience. Seems lots of traditional advertising agencies are claiming that they are digitally competent or digitally led but what does that mean? Do they have the digital talent & lots of in in-house or are they outsourcing it? If they are outsourcing it are they charging you?
Sorry to come down on traditional ad houses and please, there are many who are doing a great job in taking on the new shift, but I still think it is fair game to say that clients, should be looking very deeply into their agencies – their staff, there financials and so on. Also another reason to ensure that you have the right in-house digital talent within your business.
I am interested to see how old school advertising evolves on the Television though! I mean, digital really is moving that way also but can we as individuals all come together and merge our knowledge? Rather than battling each other with this old school thinking? I hope so…
So point to this story for the client. Analyze your existing agencies, analyze your in-house knowledge and ensure you are getting everything you need from all mediums & ensure that you are re-aligning your marketing strategy to take into account digital marketing.
