The Hype: Apple iPad

I don’t claim to be an avid Apple fan, although I have owned numerous iPods and currently use an iPhone which i’ve been very impressed by. However, like many people, my curiosity and liking of gadgetry tech drew me towards the events that were to be announced yesterday night by Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs.

In case you haven’t already heard (most have!), Apple have announced the release of a new product, the ‘iPad’. It’s expected that it will be released in the UK June or July time. There’s still lots of people wondering what exactly it is/does, hence me writing this post.

What is it?

Apple say…

“Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price”

On first impressions you could mistake the iPad for an oversized iPhone. Apple are aiming to gain market share from the likes of netbooks (those underpowered mini laptops) and Ebook readers already on the market such as Amazon’s Kindle.

I wrote this post for our company blog. You can read the rest here.

I AM THE CLIENT!

If you work in advertising/marketing this blog is a must read, its had me in stitches many a time!

So, seeing as how if you want something doing right you have to do it yourself (that’s what I tell the agency boys when I’m fixing one of their ads for them) I thought I’d be the client who does it.

Check it!

Snowboarding: How to do a backside 360

These are some of the best snowboard (from snowboardaddiction.com) ‘how to’ videos that i’ve seen. I learnt these with the help of this video on my season, although this winter i’ll be nailing some bigger ones!

Global Social Web Involvement

Got sent this the other day….

An infograph showing social media involvement across varying markets in the world. Really interesting to see the differences in social web culture. For instance in China and South Korea a far larger proportion of the market have their own blogs as opposed to using and updating a 3rd party social networking profile.  You can also see that micro blogging is far more popular among the Chinese populaton compared to the UK where its still in its infancy. Uploading of videos in Russia is proportionally much higher than elsewhere in the world.

The infograph and research was carried out by Trendstream

IDM #2 – The Impact of Digital Marketing on Business

I’m currently revising for my IDM exams and thought a good way to learn was by creating posts on my blog, I hope you find them useful. Disclaimer: most of the ideas and opinion to follow comes from the IDM course literature & tutors themselves.

The impacts of the internet and digital media differs dependant on the products or markets. For instance the low cost travel market (easy jet, Ryan Air) realise almost 90% of their revenue online.

I quote Antony Mayfield in saying “The internet is like an expanding sphere disrupting and absorbing everything it touches” at the moment it’s touching our lives and relationships, which we call social media.

It has barely touched other areas, but no doubt will. For instance consumer products such as groceries – most supermarkets achieve less than 5% of their turnover online each year. Tesco the UKs largest supermarket only receives 4% of its revenue online.

Browsing Vs Buying – This is market and product dependent.  Higher value items tend to be browsed online and purchased offline. There are exceptions though, take the sale of art on EBay for instance.

In comparison low value and standardised items tend to be purchased online much more.

5 Benefits of the Internet on Business; To Sell (Grow Sales, Serve (add value), Speak (get closer to customers , Save (Costs) and Sizzle (Extend the brand online).

Source: 5 S’s (Smith and Chaffey 2005)

Digital aims to achieve direct response and is directly measurable and strategic, although even digital has some distinct measurement challenges (Attrbution etc).

Digital gives greater opportunity to achieve brand awareness and favourability, inform the buying decision, measure how recipients interact more precisely with your communications and test and optimise creative, offers and targeting.

Issues
Although digital has lots of benefits there are some draw backs that need to be considered;

• Service quality
• Channel conflicts
• Implementation
• Organisational digital strategy

Chaffey et al. (2003) identify eight key changes in communications characteristics as marketers move from exploiting traditional to new media:

1. From push to pull
2. From monologue to dialogue
3. From one-to-many to one-to-some and one-to-one
4. From one-to-many to many-to-many communications
5. From ‘lean-back’ to ‘lean-forward’
6. Form of tools changes
7. Increase in communications intermediaries
8. Integration becomes more challenging

Image Credit
Expanding Sphere: Flickr user  TopTechWriter.US
Audience: Flickr user Stig Nygaard

Resources
Dave Chaffey.com
The IDM

Tuneage – November 2009

Starting to create a monthly playlists for two reasons; Firstly because I can never think of what to listen to at work, and secondly so I can remember recommendations from mates. Here’s the first one of the ‘Tuneage’ playlists…

Mimo – Running Out (Fenech-Soler Remix)
Miike Snow – In Search Of
James Yuill – This Sweet Love – Prins Thomas Sneaky Edit
Bloc Party – One More Chance – Original version
The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition – Original Version
Friendly Fires – Kiss Of Life
Simian Mobile Disco – Cruel Intentions
La Roux – I’m Not Your Toy
Fat Freddy’s Drop – Boondigga
Delphic – This Momentary
Midnight Juggernauts – Into The Galaxy (Chateau Marmont Remix)
We Have Band – Hear It In the Cans (DIY Version)
Lykke Li – Dance, Dance, Dance
Delphic – Counterpoint – Remixed by The Chain
Friendly Fires – Paris (Aeroplane Remix)
Fischerspooner – Door Train Home
Alex Metric – Head Straight
Battles – Leyendecker
The Fashion – Like Knives
Golden Silvers – Arrows Of Eros
Clark – Ted
Animal Collective – My Girls

Check it out on Spotify here, any suggestions add in comments

Image Credit: Flickr user by jmtimages [off]

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The Free Marketing Ecosystem

This is a really nice infographic (found via Fast Company blog) mapping the social networking, free marketing ecosystem. Designed by Chris Watson at Visualization Magazine it shows 30 different web 2.0 services offering free sites, feeds or embeds.

It plays nicely into the networked architecture approach, the idea that your brand lives in many more places than simply the domain that you own. There’s now a whole wealth of free content management systems, social networks, bookmarking tools that you can use to promote a brand, product or service. This is something that i’m lookling at re-producing for the company I work for and something I believe all companies should map as part of their distributed content strategy.

The shows places that you can create content, along with icons as to how you can publish (RSS, Print) and the connecting lines show where you could potentially re-published that content again.

Thanks for reading this far! I wrote this post for my company’s blog, you can find the rest of it here.

Image Credit: Flickr User visual think map

Graze.com

Loving this site, Graze.com is ‘healthy eating by post’.

A really nice concept of having healthy snacks delivered directly to your desk. I signed up last week, you can choose from an range of different packages, ‘pre workout’, balanced diet etc

Well worth checking it out, it works out at about £3 a box. When I look at the amount I spend on food each week that really isn’t all that much! + this has the added benefits of being healthy!

To top it off the site design and usability is lovely.

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IDM #1 – Digital Marketing Measurement

Ok, you may find this incredibly boring but it’s one of the main ways that I learn stuff at the moment. I find if I want to learn about something usually the best way of doing so is to rummage around on the internet and write a blog post on the subject.

I’m currently in the process of revising for my IDM Digital Diploma exams so thought that for each module i’d try to write a quick summary on here, helping me to learn more effectively at the same time putting some semi intelligent content on my blog.

The first module that i’m going to cover is on ‘Digital Marketing Measurement’.

There are 8 key areas of digital marketing measurement and I’ve come up with a ridiculous acronym to help me remember them. Some of these areas have a wealth of free and paid for  tools  to measure them, for instance the ’site centric’ component has great free tools such as Google Analytics which is free. However others such as ‘Attitudinal’ require more effort by arranging focus groups and approaching the user directly to gain feedback. All provide their own unique slant on how your digital marketing strategy may be performing. I bet there’s few people that can honestly say they have implemented all of them, but in an ideal world we probably would.

I USE A OAT

I’ve also added in some memorable and very literal  pictures which will stick in my mind come exam day.

So here’s the 7 different areas of measurement…

1. Inbound Enquiries
- Site search behaviour
- Inbound emails

CC Flickr user Eric Kilby

2. User Profiling
- Data capture from form completions on site
- User click response
- User purchase response

CC Flickr User striatic

3. Site Centric
- Website log files
- Page Tagging (Browser based)

CC Flickr User vrypan

4. E-Comms Centric
- Email
- Search
- Online Ads
- Affiliates
- PR
(+ Offline campaign tracking)

5. Attitudinal
- Surveys
- Focus Groups
- Mystery Shoppers

CC Flickr User; Ignacio Guerra

6. Outcome Based
- Registrations
- Leads
- Sales

CC Flickr User; the justified sinner

7. Audience Based
- ISP Aggregators (Hitwise)
- Panel Based (Netrankings, Comscore, Alexa)

CC Flickr User; gussifer | thecolorawesome.com

8. Technical Performance
- Page download time (particulary with the recent news that Google may be using it as a ranking factor)
- Process Responsiveness
- Availability

CC Flickr User; .schill

Remember;

I USE A OAT

Useful bookmarks for digital marketing measurement

R2D2 Turning to the Darkside

He’s only gone and got himself a camio appearance in the new Star Trek film…Pfff!

Posted via email from Chris’s posterous