Run on Toast

Projections

If anyone was walking past Waterloo station last night, they would have seen this (forgive the amateur photography):


A rather spectactular example of Projection Advertising's new AdTrace technology. A digital 3-D map means that the projections can animate over the actual features of the building, rather than just project a static image a la Gail Porter/Houses of Parliament. Waterloo station is going to be a commercially available site from November 5th. It will be interesting to see which other sites get the AdTrace treatment, and how brands make use of it.

HIT or SxxT

So yesterday saw the reincarnation of the agency's infamous HIT or SxxT night, where select pieces of (other people's) creative get judged. We held our first debate for some years last night. It was really good to debate what makes good and bad work as an agency.

For a Wednesday night after work, there was quite a good turnout and below you can see our esteemed panel. From left to right we have Marius, business director on Lloyds; creative Angus; planner Melanie and Mike from studio; chaired by our *charismatic* head of planning Alex.

Was a brilliant night, I think we're all looking forward to the next one.

Service and craft

I had a rather lovely Saturday over at Lift @ living room, an informal satellite of the Lift conferences. For some bizarre reason I didn't take any photos, but here is Amanda Gore's picture of Charlie Gower giving his talk, so you can get an idea of what it was like:

As always, a couple of bits that I found interesting:

One of the themes of Charlie's talk was about how we can incorporate the charm of patina/analogue into digital services. It is starting to happen (Flickr's hello in different language, the awesome Handbrake piña colada visual, phone software which responds to the time of day), but much of service design is currently so focused on the functional that there is no room for stories.

He also talked about the shift to an intelligent networked city, which bought up some interesting ideas about privacy from the group. Namely:

• The generation behind us don't have the same privacy worries that we do
• If everyone has a certain type of information about them in the public domain, you become conspicuous because of an absence of this information
• Without privacy, will behaviour change to become more socially acceptable?

Stephen Molloy spoke about craftsmanship and how it is losing out to mass production. It's a shame that craft is a luxury proposition because of a dearth of craftsmen. Someone evoked a future scenario where outsourced production ceases to be cost-efficient meaning that furniture production, etc, would have to bought back home. The demand would result in a boom in the number of craftsmen to address the need. There were some questions raised about immediacy, and whether demanding consumers would be prepared to wait, but I think that as consumers we're very understanding of the fact that bespoke takes longer. We can see examples of people waiting to have something bespoke to them already, from Bodymetrics jeans to Tossed salads to Nike iD.

Thanks to Charlie for inviting me and to Felix for organising. Was an awesome day.

Things I wish I'd come up with #195

Just came across this great promotional idea via Michael Lebowitz:

Basically, it is a service that gives women the opportunity to have a free makeover with Estee Lauder products and then have a set of photos taken, ostensibly to use on social media - but what girl doesn't want a good photograph of herself? Simple in its genius, as good ideas often are.

At Rapier we're starting to think about creating 'marketing people want', it's our 'disruption' if you like. It's basically about creating stuff that is genuininely useful, informative and entertaining. I think this idea ticks all the right boxes by addressing a genuine need. As long as the photos aren't soft-focus 'Cover-me studios' type prints, Estee Lauder could be onto a winner.

NatMag playing cupid

Just heard that Cosmopolitan and Men’s Health magazines are teaming up to create an online dating space for their readers (read the full NMA article here). Such a great way to exploit their readership demographics!!! Their websites both have around 250,000 unique users (with the dating and relationship sections on the sites being most popular)and are encouraging them to sign up in order to be matched to a potential partner. It's such an obvious way to diversify into other areas and give the users another reason to engage in their brands, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. I wonder how long it will be before we read about a wedding story?

Social is as social does

The IPA Social discussion last night was a massive improvement on January's report launch, in which I seem to remember resorting to drawing funny faces in Jamie's Moleskine. Well done to Jamie, Katy, Mark, Neil and all the rest of the gang for starting the right kind of discussion about social media. If I came away with one thing yesterday it is that it is still uncharted territories and everyone is finding their feet, working out what works and learning from each other. Most importantly I have lots of ideas, questions and *cards* from interesting people. What follows is a collection of thoughts, in no particular order, in the spirit of being part of the conversation:

Measurement
There was a lot of talk about justifying the value of social media, defining it's ROI in order to keep clients happy and prove it's effectiveness. Amelia Torode spoke about some work they are doing to assess the importance of social activity on the Meerkat work, and I'm sure everyone is looking forward to seeing that if Amelia makes it public. On the subject of the Meerkat, Debbie and I were talking this morning about whether there is a way of measuring the impact of social media on the longevity of the campaign. You can't discount the role of TV in driving the massive numbers that they have delivered for CompareTheMarket, but if it had been only TV would it have had so much mileage?

Not getting involved
I rather foolishly nominated myself to host a conversation rather late in the day despite wanting to get involved in the conversation that  was hosting. Bless Katy for joining me and a girl from the IPA (sorry, forgotten your name) in a discussion about whether there were brands that shouldn't get involved in social media. A couple of points:

• Some brands, e.g. Apple, don't use social media to no detriment (I know they are a very peculiar case study, but I'm just saying...)
• A lot of brands want to use social media for the sake of it, jumping on the bandwagon, what Katy called the 'e.g. Facebook' brief
• If there isn't a role for social media, there's no point doing it
• You might be better off spending that money on improving customer service (lots of successful case studies of brands using social in this space)

Responsibility
We swiftly joined Nick's conversation - I think the title was about which discipline was best placed to manage social - but an interesting point was raised about whether responsibility for social should sit with the client or the agency. And actually, is the marketing department (a dept concerned with selling) the best placed to manage that relationship. Maybe customer service is a better bet?

Dirty words
Someone asked a question towards the end about whether 'campaign was such a bad thing?' (sorry I don't know who you are!). She made the point that they are involving, participatory and rewarding, and actually sometimes you don't want an ongoing conversation with a brand.

Anyway, lots to think about. Disappointed that there wasn't more participation in the mexican wave, but looking forward to the forthcoming conversation and the next meeting. There was quite a few of the Rapier gang down there, hopefully they'll add their thoughts in the coming days.

Simple ideas

Sorry I've been so quiet for a while. We've been massively busy, which is a great way to be in the current climate. We've still been keeping track of the latest stuff and will start downloading over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, we've just come across the London for London campaign.

 

It's a simple premise. Clubs in London ask for a £1 donation on the door this Saturday which will go to charity. I love how simple this idea is. Small donations when a large volume of people are going out, and therefore in a spending frame of mind - and generally likely to be upbeat. The money will be split between Kids Company, Volunteer Police Cadets and 95.8 Capital FM's Help A London Child camapign. I don't know how this will be put into practice, but am looking forward to finding out this weekend. Mental note: remember to carry change.