Thursday, November 30, 2006

Is 2007 the year of the mobile? Hedge your bets!

So did 2007 turn out to be the year of the mobile?  Um, no.  But this piece (first published Dec'06) points to three drivers of mobile growth, devices, content, and audiences.  It omits connectivity, one of the key factors; it turned out that all-you-can eat tariffs were pretty important too (as they were with the web).

Friday, November 24, 2006

The perfect website

The search for the perfect website goes on.  But much of the research into effectiveness continues to be inwardly-focused.  This piece from 2006 showed how factors like competition, consumer expectation, pricing, communication needed to be taken into account too.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Web retail needs to be fun!

I was with a client last week, talking about online instore merchandising - a topic which hadn't crossed their minds, despite the fact that they're one of the best at merchandising in physical stores.  This is a discipline which is hardly given a second thought right now, but those who get good at it will find themselves ahead of the pack.  Even in 2006 when this piece was originally published, it was clear that this was an area ripe for exploitation - in 2010, no-one's yet picked up the challenge...

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Brand advertising on the web, or just direct response?

First published in Marketing in 2006, this piece argued for a planning currency - in later articles I pooh-poohed the idea.  Contradiction?  Not really.  The web needed a planning currency to remove any lingering doubts amongst the laggards, giving them familiar tools.  The danger is in the bar being lowered, with poor, old media metrics being seen as the governor for the new.  We weren't happy with TV's currency, so why are we so enthusiatically applying it to the web?

Thursday, November 2, 2006

Google's plan to destroy transparency

In 2006, Google introduced (with virtually no notice) a scheme designed to boost the income of traditional media companies, who had been slow to develop their search propositions.  In doing so, they allowed thousands of advertisers to be ripped off by their agencies, and embedded a system that built in a disadvantage for the small specialist agencies who had helped Google to its success.  The scheme was quietly abandoned two years later.  If nothing else it demonstrates that even the smartest people get it wrong sometimes.  (First published November 2006)