What’s happened this week:

• Netflix announced a modest profit and growth to 29m US and 6m international streaming subscribers, illustrating that OTT video is beginning to scale.
• Twitter launched Vine, the 6 second video equivalent of a tweet.
• Facebook announced that conversion tracking via an optimized CPM will be available for all advertisers. This is a quiet but significant move to a post cookie world.

What we have learned:

• 1.6bn mobile devices were shipped in 2012 (including 700m smartphones). We are expecting over 1bn smartphones this year.
• *Mobile accounts for 31% of site traffic in the UK, and tablets account for 18% of paid clicks for retailers, one of 50 mobile commerce facts…

..possibly why retailers worldwide will spend USD 28bn on mobile marketing this year virtually doubling to USD 55bn by 2015.

• New academic research states that online content with a social context is easier to recall than printed information…

..but it can make us highly envious.

Cool Stuff:

• The best tagged TV ads from Shazam.
• Radio station 97x is crowdsourcing its programming via a mobile app.

Where to find more:

• ‘The role of brand in the digital age’ and the necessity of alignment across many more touch points.
• How the next wave of industrial innovation will drive the economic growth opportunity in the 2010s.

 - Sam (thanks to JP and the Futures Group)

 
 What’s happened this week:

• Facebook announced Graph Search, a new feature to search within the users’ Social Graph. Another development in the rise of the Interest Graph technologies that advertisers need to understand.
• A little less coverage went to another disruptive Facebook move to deliver free calls to US iPhone users.

 What we have learned:

• There will be 200m 4G mobile subscribers in 2013 according the new Deloitte Global Technology Media Telecoms 2013 report.
• 60% of the UK’s 10m Twitter users watch TV as they tweet, from the Twitter TV book, an in depth study in to this new form of media multitasking.
• 20% of Digital auto sales leads are coming from mobile devices.

Cool Stuff:

• *Wearable Technology is shaping up to become a significant trend in 2013. We can expect to see all sorts of new gadgets measuring what we do, consume and even think.
  • Brands such as Nike are going beyond the hardware and opening up API access to their data to drive the next level of innovation.
  • The proliferation of these sensors may even affect the ways in which we control our lives.
  • ‘Responsive design’ is now expected by consumers. Brands are beginning to understand its benefits in driving cross platform commerce.
  •  McDonalds are to add QR codes to the packaging of all products worldwide.

Where to find more:

• "Search will be included in people's brains" Google founder Larry Page’s vision for the future of search as we begin to get plugged in to the knowledge graph.
• How ‘Big Data’ is set to have a huge impact on global healthcare;
  • The Human Face of Big Data illustrates how the use of Data is changing lives in all sorts of ways. 
  • How UK Businesses are increasingly using Big Data to make empirically based decisions.

- Sam (thanks to JP and the Futures team)

Happy New Year and welcome to 2013. Our friends across the group and globe have been pulling together a summary of predicted trends for the year ahead.  January always brings a rush of these, but we wanted to share them as there are some good points to kee[p in mind...

For starters one can hardly miss the signs of media convergence today. Mob scenes erupt with each new iPhone launch, sales of tablet devices have skyrocketed, and Twitter hashtags have cropped up with increased frequency on both TV commercials and programming. Second screens became a dominant force in 2012, and will continue to reign in the coming year.

In turn, the culture quake driven by the Millennials, presents a challenge for marketers. These modern marketers must adapt and merge the ads they buy, the content they own and the media coverage they earn into a converged strategy that’s fast and fluid enough to keep up with the multiplatform now.

Here are 10 of the major trends in media and marketing for 2013:

1. Mobile Focus: With the increasing penetration of smartphones in both developed and emerging markets, new users are more likely to first come online via mobile today. Effective marketers will shift their focus from advertising and sponsorships to developing new and interesting tools embedded in the phone (think geo-location and gyroscope) to attract and engage mobile users. Increasingly, brands and agencies will depend on mobile technology experts for multiplatform success.
2. Social TV: The blossoming of the second screen/social TV space will continue to evolve as users discover and interact with their favorite shows and commercials by responding to on-air polls, coupon and contest offers via their handheld devices. Brand marketers will turn to technologies such as Shazam and the newly-launched iSpot.tv to mine second-screen engagement through big screen content.
3. Commercial-tainment: A recent Edelman study found that 80% of Millennials want to be entertained by advertising. Brands like Macy’s, Juicy Couture and ASOS began to merge commercials and entertainment last year with short, engaging shopping videos. This year, expect brands to expand that model to capture even more second-screeners by incorporating contests, sweepstakes, coupons and exclusive content.
4. Viral Strategies: The speed with which information travels via social media presents a high-risk, huge-reward opportunity for brands aiming to become this year’s marketing equivalent of PSY’s “Gangnam Style” or Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign.
5. Visual Interest: One picture is worth a dozen tweets to social media users who went picture crazy in 2012, thanks to visual sharing sites Instagram and Pinterest. Expect major brands to jump heavily onto the visual bandwagon with apps, photo sharing and Pinterest-like mosaic interfaces.
6.  Ad Versioning: Gone are the days when TV advertising involved merely matching the right ads with the right media. In 2013, advertisers will increasingly rely on technology that tweaks both the creative and the copy in real time to “version” it automatically. Expect these “smart” algorithms to also execute version testing and adapt each ad to its environment.
7. TV 2.0: Despite predictions of TV’s imminent demise, the growth of second-screen users has actually bolstered its popularity while at the same time diverting millions of eyes from the big screen. How will advertisers respond? Expect some to experiment this year with the creative use of sound to get their message across in much the same way as radio.
8. Data Planning: Advertisers who were overwhelmed by consumer data last year will reap its benefit this year, now that they’ve identified the sophisticated systems necessary to make sense of the information. Expect more effective multiplatform marketing plans as a result.
9. YouTube: YouTube, with its eclectic mix of DIY and commercial video content, will continue to grow in popularity, especially among Millennials. Advertisers will watch closely for opportunities as YouTube settles into its new Los Angeles production studio this year and forms partnerships to expand its content to movie theaters, home entertainment systems and digital storefronts.
10. Voice Recognition: Granted, Siri and Google Now didn’t catch fire the way some had expected, but the fault lay more in the execution of voice recognition than in the concept. That’s likely to change in 2013 as SRI, the maker of Siri, courts vendors to build on the Siri framework. Expect VR to make your voice heard on the websites in the coming year.

A big thank you to Jen Razor for pulling this together.

- Sam

Vox pops, night vision, people jumping out of seats: these are now the new norms of horror marketing. If you show them being scared enough then the film must be scary, right?  But no film has have ever actually measured the fear factor. Until now…

For the launch of the new film Sinister from the makers of Paranormal Activity and Insidious, M2M and Drum teamed up with Professor Brendan Walker of The Thrill Laboratory to measure and record the authentic, sheer fear generated by the film. 

To establish Sinister’s ‘Fear Factor’, subjects were placed in a cinema theatre with 400 members of the public and hooked up to instruments measuring their heart rate, skin temperature, and perspiration.

The results of the experiment concluded that the subjects were in a genuine state of fear for an incredible 41% of the film. The peak heart rate was 237 beats per minute, a frightening 177 bpm above normal, matching the top heart rate people reach on some of the world’s most intense rollercoasters.

In the content released as a 6o” spot on Saturday 29^th September (longer online only version is running as an exclusive today on Orange) Professor Brendan Walker from the Thrill Laboratory relays back to one subject: “You were having a very extreme experience. You actually broke our heart rate monitor”.  Even the bravest contestant amongst them was in a state of fear for 34% of the film.

The experiment sits alongside a partnership with Bauer to showcase content from the experiment on their TV channels, along with advertorials and spots that track the journey from subject recruitment through to results in Zoo and Kerang, Kiss and Kerrang radio.  All are set to drive people to www.sinisterfilm.co.uk.

Building on this M2M are currently ramping up the fear across TV, radio, outdoor and press as the 5^th October release date approaches, all posing one simple question:

Can You #SurviveSinister

- Sam (thanks to all the Momentum team)

What happened last week:

• Facebook announced a mobile ad network that is a potential precursor to a cross platform ad product powered by social data.
• The world’s first 3d printing store opened in New York, an early move in what could be a major new consumer sector.
• iOS6 launched with advertisers most interested in the possibilities of passbook.

 What we learned:

• 3.3m UK consumers scanned a QR code in Q2 2012 according to the latest comscore data. They are most popular in Germany and Spain.
• UK e-book sales have risen 90% in the past 6 months to account for around 13% of all book sales.
• It is now possible to buy a 7” tablet in China for USD 45, this opens up all sorts of new distribution models for the technology.

 Cool stuff

• Burberry’s new flagship store is a real world manifestation of their digital experience.
• * Decide is a potentially disruptive app for shoppers that predicts future pricing of goods to best time a purchase around the lowest price.
• Qualcomm is attempting to crowd-source a portable medical diagnostic device based on the Tricorder from Star Trek (really).

Where to find more:

• ‘The future of Real Time Buying’ according to Microsoft, is characterized by accelerated growth blended with the challenges of scale, working with current buying systems and planning models.
• IfThisThenThat is one of the web’s most interesting startups and they tell us a lot about where ever more connected technology is taking us (lots of automated services connected together to make everyday life a little easier).
• How technology is changing the restaurant industry. An interesting analysis that illustrates how technology impacts every part of the value chain.

- Sam (thanks to JP and Futures Group)

Whether you are a golf fan or not this weekend was nothing short of awesome to watch.  Just exactly how did Europe not just win, but escape what looked like a thorough beating? 

Well, while Paddy Power can't claim full credit, we do however hope that the audacious and brave activity we worked on with Paddy Power helped. 

Here's a little context...

Ahead of the Ryder Cup American Captain Davis Love III stoked the flames for a fiery confrontation, stirring up U.S fans to deliver the loudest frenzy ever seen at the tournament. With the tournament to be played at Medinah in Chicago, the European's knew they were going to be up against it.

With this in mind, Paddy Power, in conjunction with the team here at M2M and Crispin Porter + Bogusky embarked on an audacious plan to redress the balance for Team Europe. As the second day's play began, a fleet or acrobatic planes were utilised to create the worlds highest and largest tweets printed in the sky above the course. Visible from over 20 miles the tweets were designed to rival any ground-level heckles.

On Saturday Paddy Power’s twitter feed (@paddypower) called on European supporters to submit messages with the hashtag ‘#GoEurope'. Working across the weekend the team at M2M used a promoted trend and tweets to extend the reach of the idea. Ryder Cup editorial in national press ads asked viewers to “Help a Yank to Shank” and to submit their messages via the #Go Europe hashtag. TV advertising began in the Ryder Cup coverage with a similar message.

During the process the Paddy Power twitter page was overrun with tweets and over 55 messages were ‘sky-written’ by stunt pilots flying at 10,000ft above Medinah in the world's first Twitter campaign of its kind. These included “Spirit of Seve”, “Mrs Duffner is hot” and “Rory’s Gonna Getcha” which saw Rory himself taking photos and exclaiming “I love that!”.  A video of him watching the Skytweets has even just been put on his Youtube channel here. 

Live on air the European team Captain Jose Maria Olazabel was clearly excited about the tweets and said the team were trying to find out who was behind them. One of the sky tweets '#GoEurope' was adopted wholesale by fans (including Gary Lineker and Austin Healey) and additional TV advertising was placed in the Sunday coverage of The Ryder Cup as the tension mounted to get people involvbed and fired up all the more.

To help push Team Europe to a stunning victory the campaign finished with the world's biggest ever sky-written message. The message was made up from all of the twelve European players’ names - listing Seve as the 13th man to make it a record-breaker delivered to tie in with the start of the team’s dramatic and nail-biting comeback. The full text took up approximately 70million sq ft of sky. With each letter bigger that Shard in London, it was designed to break the current record by at least 10million sq ft.

This incredible campaign was the latest iteration of the ‘We Hear You’ campaign in which Paddy Power have been listening to what punters are saying and responding to them in over the top fashion. To get a full 360 degree panormaic view of some of the tweets in action have a look at the link below:

 Paddy Power Ryder Cup sky tweets

While we are in the process of reviewing the whole campaign, from an initital media results perspective the promoted trend on Twitter delivered 18 million impressions (2.5 x the Twitter norm) over the Saturday and Sunday (a 21% engagement rate). The promoted tweets on Twitter delivered 171k impressions and combined nearly 30k clicks (8.9%) and #GoEurope received 65.5k mentions, including the ones from Gary Lineker and Austin Healy.

In short, it was one awesome and emotional weekend that nearly even bought Colin Montgomerie to tears. The American's fielded an incredible team that for two days looked like they were going to take the Europeans down comfortably.  While effectiveness is rarely measured in Ryder Cup vistory terms and Paddy Power could certainly not claim the full motivational credit, we certainly hope the sky tweets played a small part in creating what has to go down as the greatest Ryder Cup comeback victory of all time - one we hope Seve would have been proud of. 

- Sam (with big thanks to all the Paddy Power team) 

Listened to this last night on Radio 4 as I'm a massive fan of James Bridle's work. Only 15 minutes so worth a quick listen here

"Publisher and technologist James Bridle asks how computer networks will affect cultural memories. 

How will storing our memories and experiences on 'the network' change how we relate to them? They are no longer spread through time and geography, and instead much more visible to us, but what does that mean? When we have read a book, the book remains as a souvenir of the experience, but we do not yet have a similar way of accounting for the time we spend online."

And if you're interested in reading more about 'network realism' James has written previously on this here.

- Simon

This is from Gaping Void (which if you don't subscribe to - you should do!): 

"This is a piece that we originally did for Andy Sernovitz over at socialmedia.org, and we still love it because it's such a simple thought, and useful to every business, large and small. As Russell Davies, the UK ad executive says, "A brand's first job is to be interesting."

Once you are interesting, every contact with every customer, supplier, and stakeholder becomes easier. When you look at how commodity products and services are differentiated from their competition, it always comes back to the successful ones being more interesting - usually in an unexpected way.

Yes, quality matters. Yes, price matters. Yes, all the stuff you learned in "B" school matters. But what matters most to your customers is that you are smarter, quirkier, cooler, and more determined than the next guy. Once you are able to project these human traits to the world, customers and prospects are drawn to you.

This is for the guys who still think that the only way to market is through explaining product benefits and price advantages. Because being more human and showing that you are different, with personality and purpose, is even more important."

You can buy the image as a print and sign up to daily FREE art emails here: http://www.gapingvoidart.com/

- Simon

I'm a sucker for beautifully crafted objects. 

The time, effort and pure love that went into the creation of the new Little White Lies Lawless special reaffirms my belief that there'll always be a place for lovingly crafted physical objects (admittedly its not for everyone - like vinyl - but there'll always be a committed hardcore to this stuff).

Props to Little White Lies and The Church Of London.   

- Simon

What’s happened this week:

• Twitter has boosted its search functionality in an attempt to compete with Google and Facebook in real-time search.
• Digg, one of the symbols of web2.0 has been broken up and sold as mobile begins to dominate news distribution.
• Qualcomm launched Gimbal; a context awareness platform for mobile.
  • Some believe that this is the next frontier for mobile.
  • Facebook’s mobile ad strategy seems to be pointed in this direction.

 What we have learned:

• 55% of Britons shared news on Facebook last week vs. 33% using email and 22% on Twitter ~Reuters Digital News Report.
• Streaming accounts for 89% of Digital Music sales in Sweden and over half of all music revenue.
• Connected TV owners spend 12 hours a week watching online video on the big screen.
  • Social TV interactions are up at least 171% so far this year.

 Cool stuff

• YSL has created a line of products exclusive to its Facebook fans, expect to see many more exclusive product initiatives for online communities.
• This amazing video of Ken Block racing around San Francisco highlights the concept of multiple advertiser supported content enabled by the network.
• Broadcasters are promising up to 24 simultaneous streams of content to 4 different digital platforms for the Olympic Games.

Where to find more:

• ‘Measuring marketing’s worth’, McKinsey’s view of the 5 questions we should be able to answer.
• Why DMPs are emerging as the keystone of Data driven marketing. If the acronym isn’t familiar to you, read this.
• With so much data at our disposal price is becoming an ever more elastic concept, for example mac users pay 30% extra for hotels on Orbitz.com.

 - Sam (thanks to JP and the Futures team)