2013-05-19T13:25:43-04:00 Greg Grimmer http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=greg-grimmer Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Greg Grimmer Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2477998 2013-01-15T07:12:48-05:00 2013-03-17T05:12:01-04:00

Greg Grimmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-grimmer/
We are all back to our work stations happily refreshed to take on the year. The trials and tribulations of 2012 are long forgotten...and what's that? We now all have shiny new tablet devices protruding from our trendy satchel bags.

And for once this isn't just a 'media twat' phenomenon. The last time I wrote about the tablet craze was a full eighteen months ago. Then I admitted to getting the iPhad demand curve wrong and was being quietly impressed by the likes of Wired and GQ creating user-friendly bespoke apps.

Fast-forward to Christmas 2012 and it seems the early adopter vanguard has been swiftly followed by the late majority wave.

Using omnipresent and powerful press and television advertising campaigns in the run up to Christmas, the purveyors of these wonderful, portable devices peddled their wares expertly to the ever expectant UK audience.

Whether it was the ability to play Angry Birds on a nine inch screen, tweet from the comfort of your own sofa whilst Tom Daley splashes down or the chance to use your TV catch-up app whilst waiting for the bus - the UK listened and bought in their droves.

The beautiful iPad, the nifty Nexus, the slinky Samsung and the 'mazing Microsoft Surface all flew from the shelves. According to the very reliable Daily Mail, twenty one and half million devices were sold in 2012 making the tablet uptake quicker than any device that preceded it.
What does it mean for advertising agencies and publishers? Is it just another screen that needs existing image or video-based advertising repurposed for a larger screen? That certainly seems to be the case so far with the majority of commercial activity that I have come across.

Perhaps it is because the usage research that I have seen thus far is extremely inconclusive in regard to the prevailing trends in how we choose to use our new electronic friends, but if I was to make a prediction - as is oh so popular to do at this time of the year - the in-app commercial community seems to be the one most likely to prevail, at least in the short to medium term.

There are a few examples of independents thriving on this sector - and Essence and Fetch are the two names that I hear most often on the agency side. They seem to be companies who are making nimble progress exploiting this new growth.

However, unlike search, and to a lesser degree social (both of which caught the big media factories unaware), the big groups seem ready and able to deal with the addition of tablets to target audience media consumption patterns and therefore to client media plans.

However, back to the issue of what this activity should look like, obviously repurposed existing ads can be used very easily on all the tablets via the open web and by in-app advertising; but I feel the real opportunity is wider than that and especially for the media owner community.
I have used this column previously to talk about the power of bespoke commercial content created by publishers. The rise of the tablet is another reason why all forward thinking media owners will be resourcing both their tablet development team and their creative solution department.

Of course critical mass will be crucial in order to show success for bespoke applications or content but this needn't be mass market. I can see this being as applicable for a strong niche upmarket publisher - let's say with the Luxury sector, or indeed with a B2B brand if they again can offer an engaging and popular solution to a relevant brand.

Whilst the written word and audio visual content are (and due to human biology are likely to remain) the most prevalent message type, the combination of touch screen, big data, interactive and click through real-time world of the tablet should bring big benefits to all brave enough to invest in this sector...before the next Big Thing comes along.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2230594 2012-12-03T07:37:16-05:00 2013-02-02T05:12:01-05:00

Greg Grimmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-grimmer/
Compared to Facebook or Twitter or even their now virtually defunct predecessors Bebo, Myspace et al., LinkedIn has never been granted the same level of hubris nor celebrated as the 'Next Big Thing'.

But suddenly it is the darling of the sector and revels in a share price 140% ahead of its May 2011 flotation price. It recently announced profits and revenues ahead of analyst's expectations and is on course to exceed a billion dollars in revenue in this fiscal year.

I remember very clearly the day I joined LinkedIn. I received an invitation from a senior marketer who liked to think that he was digital savvy. Being a consummate client service man, I of course accepted his request, despite the fact that it meant I had to go through the arduous process of creating an online CV at a time when I had no interest in leaving my current position.

I thought nothing more about it for weeks, if not months. Then suddenly I started to receive a trickle of invitations to connect to people - mainly digitally focused - who I once had a business meeting with. Again, I thought not a lot about this and concentrated instead on the important stuff like Second Life.

Of course the problem for LinkedIn - perception wise - is that it is a B2B brand. We advertising folk don't like B2B. We are consumer people. B2C is glamour; B2B is the nasty dirty stuff that we used to have to do when we were graduate trainees or is done by agencies based in Stevenage, not Soho.

I was once attending a business study course run by the late great Professor Peter Doyle who asked the assembled crowd of ad people (what is the collective noun for Admen? A cackle? A shallow? A herd? - answers on a post card please).

"Do you work in B2B or B2C marketing?"

90% of this particular herd answered with the confidence of Jack Whitehall's character JP, in C4's excellent Fresh Meat.

"B2C of course professor." We produce excellent advertising work viewed by the Great British consumer.

"No you numpties" was the earnest professors reply. "Who is your customer? Where does your revenue come from? You all work in B2B. Never forget this."

And so, back to that great B2B website LinkedIn, terrible brand name that it is. LinkedIn has gone from that grey, dull website to the most vibrant new business and recruiting tool on the planet, complete with the prerequisite cutting edge mobile app.

The trickle of invitations to connect has turned into a torrent and it seems everyone who I have ever worked with - client, agency side or media owner is now using the site daily as a valuable business tool. My connections on LinkedIn now outnumber my Facebook friends and Twitter followers combined.

Now, of course, it is virtually impossible to find anyone on LinkedIn who isn't a specialist in digital marketing, social media and online optimisation. I am also still massively exasperated by the constant trend of 'sharing' articles from Mashable/TechCrunch/VentureBeat in the perfidious belief that it makes the sharer look like a well-read member of the Silicon Valley developer community.

However, I am guilty of this as well. As I have watched LinkedIn develop from an ugly duckling into a powerful swan like operation, I have felt the need to make cosmetic improvements to my own presence on the site.

I now link my updates to my ever so professional Twitter account, I have tidied up my skill sets and spent time brushing up our own corporate site. Any updates tend to be linked to the tech world, my Wired client got the benefit of this most recently after I attended their WIRED 2012 event and I benefitted from 5 'Likes' on the back of it.

Troubled by my conforming to type I let my pertinaciousness side get the better of me. So, as I type this article I have just shared a five year old article from The Guardian on why wireless is the media for the 21st century? I shall update you if I get drummed out of the 'digerati' for this or if anyone dares to 'Like' such a heretic piece.

But back to why LinkedIn is a success and some further evidence as to the reason why. The CEO of venture capitalist Sequoia, Jim Goetz, was recently quoted at one of the many Bay Area tech conferences that he was flabbergasted how few entrepreneurs are focusing on building products for businesses, given how much more likely they are to be successful.

"It's shocking we don't see more engineers and entrepreneurs interested in enterprise (B2B). At Sequoia, upwards of a hundred entrepreneurs a week present and if we're lucky, maybe a dozen of them are focusing on the enterprise. In the last 10 years, there have been 56 IPOs in the enterprise space that have gotten north of a billion [dollars in market capitalisation] and just 23 in consumer."

After all this chat of tech talk, VC's and the Silicon Valley, I will conclude with a Victorian English thought, applicable to such a matter. Where there is muck, there is brass.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2190610 2012-11-26T06:45:13-05:00 2013-01-26T05:12:01-05:00

Greg Grimmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-grimmer/
As we approach the end of another dismal year in the world of the agency Madman, I look back on a couple of events that are currently shaping my thinking.

Despite watching Cannes this year from the comfort of a Twitter screen and failing to attend the Monaco Media forum last week as I had a pressing engagement in Shoreditch.

I am returning to one of my favorite themes, that is the shifting sands of Creative Power.

Cannes once again this year was dominated by the global digital brands, using La Croisette to ply their online and increasingly mobile technologies. Google, Facebook, MSN and Yahoo were joined this year by Twitter - (Jack Dorsey it's founder replaced Zuck as the Media Person of the Year.) -and the likes of Spotify, anxious to ride on the coattails of their bigger binary brethren.

Meanwhile is the slightly less sticky surroundings of RBS towers in Bishopsgate I joined the next generation of wannabe digerati millionaires plying their wares and showing they stuff at Mediatel's Media Playground.

The common link between both events is the disappearance of the traditional Creative (sic) Agency from the forefront of creativity. Sure they are still out in force in Cannes but the real money is at the Google Sandpit. International Googlers lushing CMO's of Fortune 500 client companies, together with the CEO's of their media agencies, who just happened to have their quarterly EX-CO meeting at Eden Roc.

Back at Media playground with the new school of UK technological media companies, the likes of Rovi and Tapjoy are doing the same thing, albeit with a different expense account strata. Again media agencies aplenty, this time represented their Head of Video Technology, Head of Mobile, Head of Emerging Platforms. Head of Screen they are all here - (there is a joke here I'm sure, but will avoid to keep the lawyers happy.)

Unlike at Cannes I wouldn't necessarily expect to see Ogilvy, Mother and BBH represented, but as in previous years I was struck by the amount of conversation from the speakers panelists and audience about creativity (or at least creative formats.) It is this last point that both worries me and also got me thinking.

The creative fragmentation that different technologies have bought about means that quite often whilst the media planner, media owner and client are aligned in the usage of a particuler channel the thought of how to creatively use that channel is often left to the last minute.

Anyone who has ever worked within creativity or with creative people will know this is almost always destined for failure, despondencey and disappointment. That is not to say that media owners cannot be powerful and effective creators of commerical content .

For years good media owners like Bauer were at the forefront of this. The Bauer commercial creativity department now led by the ex agency Staffer 'The Lucy Banks', remains a creative force due to their ability to leverage their powerful editorial brands in harmony with the needs of advertisers. Check out their http://www.gothinkbig.co.uk/ work with o2 , so 'big it got big Dave Cameron tweeting about it .

Likewise their radio rivals over at Global who (neatly circling my twin themes) picked up a radio Lion at Cannes courtesy of in house creative talent. But somehow these Old World examples (even though they now happily include the latest technology channels) still don't address the problem of the real creative format problem delivered by the technology led media owners who control little or no editorial content.
Google are building an impressive array of in house creative talent (and are also collecting a fine set of creative awards for their "brand films") but we are yet to see the result of their output for their clients in their no editorial environment.

Meanwhile, Twitter proudly announced the first ever TV campaign at Cannes which to be fair does practice what the digerati preach in terms of bespoke online video, but one of the elephants in the room at Playground (there was a whole herd at one stage) remains that no one can tell you their favorite banner ad.

One of the great hopes for digital media and their ad funded Freemium economy business model is of course "viral" video. The new phrase for this is "Social Video Advertising" which seems like an intelligent re marketing of a much abused moniker, but the overall reach of campaigns is still painfully low, But for those interested, skateboarding ducks in Raybans is still the comedy gold required for a Social Video Advertising hit.

Creative excellence is always going to be necessary to create impact (and therefore effect.) Luckily long gone are the days when a creative director lamented to me that a team said they had cracked the digital brief " by uploading the TV ad onto You Tube".

Ensuring creative and media are linked is an absolute necessity whatever the format, and message delivery system.

One working without the other is a sure fire short cut to failure.]]>