The drinks are on me...

Bladdered. Rat-arsed. Sozzled. Wasted. Smashed. We have an extraordinary number of synonyms for getting pissed in this country, which already says a lot about the current attitude to alcohol.

Little wonder then that the government is so keen to discourage youngsters from hitting the bottle with it’s current high-profile media assault across television, radio, and the web.



Whether or not JospehBailey93 understood it or not, the campaign strategy is clear: make the audience consider their behaviour on a night out. But people like Joseph illustrate the difficulty this campaign faces.

Behavioural change starts with the admission that there is a problem. Seeing drunken behaviour in the cold light of day certainly confronts the problem, but whilst the TV spots spark a conversation, it seems some of the viewers see it only as a benchmark for a good night out.

Sticker Prophecy

Lost in information

When researching a new project or reading up on something for fun, I can't help but get consumed in related links, pictures, videos, opinions (the works) and before you know it I'm on wikipedia checking out Guatamalan poetry (not really, but you get the idea).

Anyway, I guess the point is that there is just too much information out there.

It's all consuming, in a great way, but are we not just becoming a little too distracted? The internet is no longer used for finding out what we want to know, but instead leads us to enjoy all the tangents that come out of that question. A great organic library of random facts, trivia and observations, basically a never ending episode of QI.

Quote from Mitchell Kapor

How to survive the d-word....

Are brands too perfect?

Everyone can benefit from a slice of humble pie now and again, brands included. Clay Shirky makes a great point in his short interview about the focus of agencies on producing everything to the highest quality. The single-minded focus on production excellence ends up being alienating to consumers because it doesn't invite dialog.

This is not to say that a misjudged piece of creative will have the consumer come up to you in their hundreds or thousands and thank you for inspiring them with the latest 'I'm a celebrity, come and brand me'.

 
But the finished piece of high production work is a statement that isn't looking for answers or questions, it's simply a command. Clay's point here is about how agencies and brands can become more human by looking a little less perfect. This is something 2.0 companies know only too well. The idea of being in a perm-beta state is inviting in itself.

Time is clicking

According to the BBC, web usability guru Jakob Nielsen's latest report finds web users less tolerant and patient when it comes to web sites. Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so..

"People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience...I do not think sites appreciate that yet, they still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them."

It's a big challenge for brands to get their emotions, richness and feelings across, when all a user wants to do is find out the price of a product. Increasingly I think businesses investing in the web need to create time rather than buy time. I guess this is all about options and navigation, allowing the user to get to a place fast if they need to, but according to Dr Nielsen, most want brands to get on with it.

Wake up world

I was reading Russell Davies' post about William Gibson's line about the future and it got me thinking...

Digital is here, it's just not evenly distributed.

There is no doubt that Media Consumption has changed dramatically over the past 10 years, with the Web now a close second behind TV in terms of daily media consumption.

Yet overall, marketers invest only 7.5% of their advertising / marketing budget to online initiatives. If consumers spend 30% of their media time online, why has allocation of media budget not caught up?

McKinsey recently published a study of 410 marketing executives in retail, telecomm, technology, business services and energy. McKinsey reported that the primary barriers to online investment were:

52% insufficient metrics to measure impact,
41% Insufficient in-house capabilities,
33% Difficulty of convincing upper management,
24% Limited reach of digital tools, and
18% insufficient capabilities at agency

The leading deterrent to investing online is not a surprise as online marketing is still a relatively new, somewhat complex, and rapidly changing entity. But wake up people, Digital will continue to take share from traditional media, and marketers must adapt to the changing times. Savvy marketers will take advantage of the opportunities in online and mobile marketing; those who drag their feet are in for an uphill struggle.

The picture was taken from the excellent http://thepostitproject.blogspot.com/