The future is in the moving image: Video traffic projections 2009-2014

I tripped over this very neat Cisco tool which enabled me to play around with some variables looking at projections of internet traffic / data projections over the 2009-14 period. Well worth a twiddle. The only things I'd critique it for is the inability to show the chart and the legend at the same time, and or twiddle the colours of the lines on the chart to make it easier to read. With more patience than I have today I am sure I could fix the line colour in Photoshop but, I don't so here it is "nature" as the French would say.

Take a look at this graph I rustled up looking at the rampant growth of video... (scale is exabytes (i.e more data that you can possibly comprehend!).  So with figures like that I question why is there such a lack of data availability on spend or even spend forecasts on video digital display formats?  Advertisers, me thinks we should be taking this more seriously!

Tablets and more tablets ahead

Thanks to Chris S for sharing the link to this nice round-up of some of the many new tablets that will hit the market in 2011. Worth a read before you write to Father Christmas for a gen 1 iPad or an over-priced Samsung Galaxy tab!  VAT increase in January or not, expect prices to come down as competition heats up.

Albeit as a huge advocate of Virgin Atlantic I'm quite looking forward to exploring the new Virgin iPad app when I get a mo, and the clients stop making change requests!!

PROJECT magazine demo - issue 1 from PROJECT on Vimeo.

Kicking off the end of year / decade round ups...

Yup, it's started, it's not even December yet the best ofs have started.

So to kick start the season here's the One Club's Best of the decade and a further shout out for that inspired piece of genius that was Burger King's Subservient chicken:

Which of the 10 winners was your favourite?

UK's most popular places to (Facebook Places) check in

An events venue, a theme park and a department store top the list today. Probably pretty realistic indication of how the population overall likes to spend their free time. However, all great if you have somewhere for your consumers to check in, but what if you don't?

Pepsi recently announced a smart trial which links a US grocery store's loyalty programme with their FourSquare account.

Makes utter sense to me. I already have Tesco and Waitrose apps on my phones, the former includes my clubcard number, the latter is a place I frequently check-in.  Merge that functionality with a brand layer and you start building some interesting data on behaviour that you can use to target promotions.  Smart.

Ralph Lauren show off in style

This Ralph Lauren / 10 years in digital site has been on my "get around to looking at" tabs for a few weeks now, so I can't remember how I found it, but well worth a few moments poking around.

There's some nice examples of interesting approaches, and I particularly like the RL gang (scroll to the bottom).

Not that it can come anywhere close to the Live Penguin Cam from Edinburgh Zoo that I found this morning. So cute I had to put it on my Posterous

Masses go mad for Meerkat author....

A month ago, in yet another spot-on-the-money execution in this now long running campaign, Compare the Meerkat's Aleksandr Orlov launched his new book. Ad character turns DJ (podcasts), turns movie star (3 long form pseudo-movie releases), turns author, what will the meerkat entrepreneur do next?

(Be-warned long post, but my blog is also my car park for useful stuff remember!).

As one has come to expect from this aristocratic meerkat, this was not just another book launch:

First came the Facebook updates talking about a forthcoming book (16th Sept),  and linking to Amazon:

 Then emails from Amazon (as well as CTM)  inviting pre-order in what was clearly a smart piece of targeting.

In the run up to the launch Facebook posts enticed and teased, and pushed to YouTube:

Then a series of Facebook posts / tweets went on to moot a publishing launch in what proved to be a very much a la mode for 2 days only Pop-up shop on London's Regent Street.

Followed by an event (again showing how smartly the team behind this campaign are at mirroring general Facebook users behaviour with Aleksandr's), which no doubt helped them gauge the number of copies they needed to stock.

As ever with this incredibly smart campaign, the shop itself was executed beautifully, as was the surrounding communication which covered Facebook, Twitter, emails and of course the comparethemeerkat.com website.

The shop, on the edge of an arcade was beautifully on-theme & full when I dashed in after work one evening:

Downstairs was a "life and times" of Aleksandr and his family taking a museum theme,

...whilst upstairs was decked out mini-cinema style, showing his longer form mini-movies and of course selling his "signed" books.

The PR machine was as ever well oiled too, and I spotted pieces in the Evening Standard on the day of the shop launch:

And with the book topping the Amazon topsellers too, this article in the literary section of The Independent:

Three days after the launch (29th October), Aleksandr's book was at no 2 in the Amazon Topsellers list:

A week later (4th Nov), Aleksandr told his 769.5k Facebook fans, & 42k Twitter followers of the audiobook launch on iTunes: (It's also available on Audible.co.uk, so multi-platforms covered off).

3 weeks later still and how do things stand?

Well today (26th November), less than a month before Christmas,  a quick dig around some of the e-stores revealed this picture:

Aleksandr Orlov: A Simples Life stands at:

#3 in the Amazon most wished for book charts
#2 in the Amazon most gifted book charts
#3 in the Amazon best sellers (now with 66 days in the top 100 (incl. prelaunch))

Nor is it just an Amazon/iTunes distribution deal...
#2 in the Play.com bestsellers & today featured as editor's choice on the books homepage

#4 in the W H Smith books best sellers list

#16 in the Waterstones best sellers list, #36 in Tesco.com and #30 in iTunes audiobook chart.

Not bad for a meerkat of Russian shopkeeping origins!

And there was I about to hit "post" when the following tweet burbled onto my screen inviting Aleksandr's fans to vote via Facebook for which TV execution they should run at Christmas.

Spot on again, engage, invite participation, listen to what the people say.

And yes obviously I bought a signed copy of the book ;-)

Coca Cola Light encourage participation in Spain

Lovely example a friend just shared with me of Coke creating a framework for celebration of brand loyalty, participation and advocacy.  Yet another brand that shows that it understands that the cumulative effect of lots of small gestures can create a lot of noise.  Propagation planning nicely done.  I think too many brands get hung up on terms like participation and advocacy and think about them as if they were these giant beasts that have to be executed in CAPITALS, momentous things like creating a super swanky cinema ad, but the reality is that it is far from true.

The only way is UP(loading)

The march of multi-media is unstoppable.  We are all consuming more and more video content, when it suits us, (on demand), across more and more devices.  We're also creating more and more of it too, and being long gone  the days of films languishing in drawers undeveloped, what are we doing with all this video content? Sharing it. Uploading it to Facebook, to Dailymotion, to Flickr, to YouTube as the dominant hub of all things video.

YouTube announced today that they've now reached a mind-boggling 35 hours of content being uploaded per minute. Apparently that works out at " 2,100 hours uploaded every 60 minutes, or 50,400 hours uploaded to YouTube every day".

I've doctored the chart they published with some of the other stats they've published over the last year or so, to make the rampant growth of video over short time frames clearer:

Cartoon Musical Fun

I'm bonkers busy at the moment. The list of posts I intend to write gets longer, but time is short, so look out for my coming soon musings on the launch of the Alexander Orlov book, complete with Pop Up Shop, my first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy Tablet which launched last week, and increasing irritations with some mobile apps. In the meantime here's a piece I wrote recently on Microsoft Kinect and how we need to design more physical forms of interaction into our brand experiences, and there's some fun bits and pieces I've posted recently over on my Posterous.

Meanwhile, here's a musical cartoon medley I found on YouTube. Maybe it's my background working in animation, but listen carefully to the lyrics. How many cartoons can you spot that you recognise?  I love the fact that there are people out there that have the time and the talent to do this stuff. Fun, original, and made my smile. It's a great recipe for sharing.

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