debating, listing, reporting

Homogeneous, Old School and Plutomanic: what Adnews’ Power 50 says about the state of Australian media

Adnews_power_50
last week Adnews arrived on my desk.  it featured a pull-out of it's 'Power 50' – a list of the top 50 "power brokers in Australian Advertising, Media and Marketing".  it makes for interesting reading.  it pretty much lists fifty white, male chief executives and directors, many of which have familial or other connections within the industry.

Adnews compiled the list "by taking into account a set of criteria
including budgets and staff under control; breadth of responsibilities;
levels of independence and authourity; connections; company performance;
community standing; and industry respect".  and claim themselves to be
"confident the 50 who have made the cut represent the most powerful and
influential people in the industry".

but if this list represents the power and influence within our industry, exactly what does it say out our industry?

one.  that they're a homogeneous bunch.  predominantly white and male; only four and a half entries in the fifty (9%) are women (the half is, at #4, Harvey Norman Holdings' Managing Director Katie Page, who is married to the Executive Chairman of the same company Gerry Harvey).

two.  that our industry is so old school it makes MadMen look like reality TV.  John Hartigan at #2 "has led the defence of the Australian newspaper industry, forcefully arguing why mastheads here are more robust than in North America and Britain" … David Thoday (#5), Chief Exec of Telstra was wrong-footed by the decline in the use of telephone landlines, commenting that "the decline has been more severe than we realised" … Kate McKensie (at #8) is therefore the person at Telstra responsible for holding back the tide, I mean "halt the decline of Telstra's fixed-line business" … and at #31 we have Joe Talcott, who only this year was quoted as claiming that "no one sits down to 'watch the internet'".

Richard Freudenstein, CEO of The Australian and NDM at #14 commented at at recent event the that "rise of aggressive technological companies" may prove "potentially quite disruptive to professional media companies" … at the time I left readers to consider in their own time the choice of the words 'potentially' and 'quite'.

and what of those aggressive technological companies … even those on the list who it could be argued represent a more contemporary and evolving view of 21st Century media – Google GM Karim Temsamani at #12, or Facebook's regional manager of sales Paul Borrudat #21 – are there less because of their insight into a changing media ecology and rather because they're in charge.

three.  a browse of the entries makes it more than apparent what, according to Adnews, power is based on…  in fact it's hard to find an entry that doesn't refer to either spending, buying or selling power.  money, and channeling and making as much of it as possible is, it would seem, pretty much the only name of the game that is the Australian Advertising, Media and Marketing industry right now.  Adnews would have us all cast as plutomaniacs.

now not for a second I am suggesting that we're not an industry of commercial organisations, the continued existence of which is dependent on profit generation and growth.  my point is that this fact is so patently obvious that it shouldn't need saying.  yet Adnews says it.  fifty times.

the upshot of all this is that whilst I don't have issues with any of the individuals on the list, I do have a lot of issues with the list.  the advertising, media and marketing industry has never seen the pace of change we are currently witnessing.  the opportunity of creating a list of this type is not the reinforce the past but point the direction to the future.

the opportunity was to invest in a supplement that gave all of us who work in this industry an indication on where the thinking, innovation and evolution of the communications industry in Australia is happening.  in doing so, the opportunity was for a trade title to help set and shape the agenda for our industry.  it is an opportunity very much missed.

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advertising, cinema, content creating, engaging, marketing, praising, social media-ising

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Expendables vs. Eat Pray Love vs. The World: lessons from Hollywood on content, sociability and adding value

it has been many moons since Mediation bemoaned Michael Bay's tirade against Paramount's marketing for the dire Transformers 2.  you can relive the magic of those crazy days here, but the point of the post was that advertising can't turn a bad product into a good one…

we all have instant access to what the world knows.  we can research, reveal and review products and services in a second.  no one takes a punt on anything anymore – why would you when everything has been reviewed and rated by the crowd…  we don't rely on the promise of a glitzed up poster any more.

I made the point that some of the best marketing stories emerge when communications are a natural extension of product.  and that no one knows this better than movies…  Transmedia storytelling via the The Matrix, Cloverfield's Mystery Box marketing, The Dark Knight's Vote Harvey Dent ARG to name a few.

the last few weeks have continued the theme of the best of marketing initiatives emerging from Hollywood.  the above is for Universal's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, an adaptation of the comic book series.  the whole marketing effort is pretty much text book.  there's an incredibly immersive iTrailer (you can put an i in front of anything these days) above, leading to an awesome website which – via its socialrama – is social to the extreme and which actively encourages remixing of the marketing material to propagate content and word of mouth.

Scott_pilgrim_1 the Scott Pilgrim movie website, or is it a comic book?  or a mash-up of both?

Scott_pilgrim_2 the socialness of Scott… a plethora of ways to share and engage across you nearest available social network

other recent marketing efforts have continued the innovative theme…  this glorious 'Call To Arms' trailer for The Expendables directly takes on the competition that is Julia Roberts' Eat, Pray, Love …

the trailer observes that the likes of Twilight, Sex and the City and now Eat, Pray, Love, are taking over the cinema, and that this is men's last collective chance to take cinema back.  it makes the delightfully honest observation that the place to see The Expendables isn't "off your torrents but in a f***ing theatre (where violence belongs) …if this loses to Eat, Pray, Love you don't deserve to be a man" – in the spirit of the movie, no punches pulled then.

The Expendables also brings us a genius innovative use of YouTube, following in the giant footsteps of Wario's Shake It and Cadbury's Round YouTube videos.

Hollywood seem to be learning fast.  illegal file sharing and the rise of better-than-cinema home entertainment (where you can enjoy movies sans other people talking and on a sofa) continue to threaten box-office revenues.  Hollywood need to innovate to keep people in cinemas.

but there's a further interesting angle on all of the above examples of Hollywood entertainment… in that they all start to slash the required marketing budget.  they all take advantage of the studios' owned and – predominantly via activation in social networks – earned media.

it's not unusual for a $150m movie to have a marketing budget of $100m+ … anything that the studios take off their marketing budget goes straight back to the bottom line.  movies also have the double advantage of being content rich and very topical, there's a new and shininess which adds to their social appeal.

movie marketing is increasingly getting that marketing isn't about ensuring that as many of the target audience as possible are aware of a movie, rather its about creating value for enough of the right people and encouraging them to propagate your message.  the implicit promise… that the product you buy will live up to the marketing, is made explicit by marketing that adds value to a movie's audience before they've ever entered the cinema.

slash your marketing budget via content and sociability that adds value to potential customers.  sounds so easy that anyone could do it right?  so why aren't you?

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converging, debating, printing, selling

More bullish than a bull doing an impersonation of a Bull bullying a Bull: Mediation listens on as The Australian gets, well, bullish

The_australian_breakfast gathering at The Four Seasons for The Australian's inaugural breakfast series

dispatches for the Sydney media world … this week saw The Australian on, yes, bullish form at it's inaugural Media breakfast series.  many of Sydney's media agency kids gathered at The Four Seasons to hear Geoff Elliott chair a panel of Nick Leeder (Deputy CEO, The Australian), Malcolm Turnbull (Federal Member for Wentworth and former Leader of the Opposition), Andrew Murrell (GM Channel Market, Commonwealth bank of Australia) and Richard Eary (Head of Media and Telecommunications Research, UBS Equities) discuss convergence, iPads and a lot in between.

but it was Richard Freudenstein, CEO of The Australian and NDM who kicked things off.  describing the context of the "rise of aggressive technological companies" that may prove "potentially quite disruptive to professional media companies".  I'll let you digest the 'potentially', 'quite' and 'professional' bits of that quote on your own time…

Freudenstein kicked off the bullish tone in fine form…  declaring that the organisation is "aiming for an increase in print circulation" and that it is "our intention to be the pre-eminent source of news at all times across all platforms" … "NewsCorp fully intends to be across all [emerging] platforms … it's cheap, current and constantly up to date"

but it was the Admiral himself who continued NewsCorp's bullish tone.  Rupert Murdoch addressed the room via a recorded video, and in comments reported this week in The Guardian, heaped praise on Steve Jobs and his iPad, of which Murdoch is so fond…  but the Admiral's battle charge began with comments aimed at recent adversary Google.  he noted that he had "ruffled some feathers" but that "the debate needed to be had" … and, in a delightfully provocative comment that "The argument that information wants to be free is only said by those who want it for free" … lovely stuff

Murdoch described how "we are witnessing the start of a new business model for the internet" … "people are willing to pay for high quality content, as long as we deliver it how and where they want it" (Murdoch missed out the last bit of that sentence: …and as long as that content is not available for free elsewhere)

and then to the panel debate, where NewsCorp's bullish tone continued unopposed by the rest of the panel.  it started OK, when Elliott asked Eary if newspapers were dead?  Eary replied that "its a good question" … cue nervous laughter from the NewsCorp crowd.  but it didn't last long – Eary went on to say that "there is some degree of optimism" and that "even if paywalls are put up there's a big audience to monetise" … "if you look at digital CPMs vs Press CPMs there's a big divide" – his point… that better targeting (behind paywalls) generate higher CPMs.  all very on message.

and how the message continued…  "You don't want to bet against yourself – we're not seeing circulation decline" … "we need to grow in both directions" … "be careful you don't import [from the US and UK] the narrative" … "the beauty of an app is that the technology goes away [the iPad is introducing] serendipity back into the browsing experience"

you were hard-pressed to find anything off what was clearly a very well constructed message to Sydney's media community.  that NewsCorp and The Australian are growing and on top of emerging platforms and technologies.  the only descension came from what I had considered to be the most unlikely of places…  Malcolm Turnbull seemed to be the only challenge on the platform, the only voice of question.

Turnbull pointed out the "devastating loss of value" that the internet had brought about in media organisations, and raised valid and critical questions about the rise of video and the effect of new technologies on news organsations.  his questions and concerns were simply brushed away, with Nick Leeder, deputy CEO of The Australian commenting that "people have to sift through the nonsense they see on Twitter" and that "YouTube is great for dogs with skate boards.

which all-in-all was a shame.  being bullish is good for business, it's good for shareholders and its good for negotiations and for bravado.  but it's not good for the important debate that needs to be had about the future of media and communications.  it's restrictive, limiting and adds nothing to the knowledge bank of media planners and clients picking their way through an evolving communications landscape.

NewsCorp can talk all they like about Twitter's "nonsense" and YouTube's "dogs with skateboards", the revolution is coming, whether they like it or not.  being Bullish will only get you so far.

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adserving, advertising, broadcasting, targeting

Sex addicted, debt-ridden, body-obsessed, astigmatic, game-playing gadget-phile: but enough about me, what does advertising say about you?

What_ads_say_about_me some recent ads that define me.  or do they?

what does advertising say about me?  that's the question I'm increasingly asking myself as the broadcast model wanes and targeted advertising becomes the norm.  I'm imagining a future where my Glee is interrupted by messages from fat-burning miracle powders, or where my 30 mins with Modern Family is interspersed with messages for help with sex-addiction or an encouragement to buy some oil shares.

you see the ad-serving paradigm – with which anyone who has worked in online advertising will be more than familiar – will in the future spread beyond the computer screen.  to hand-held devices and then, as IPTV gains traction, to TV screens.

it's one thing to see niche targeted ads on my computer screen; it will be quite another to see them on my TV…  but as the ability to target on TV becomes widespread, niche advertisers will increasingly be able to ad-serve specific messages to targeted audiences at a fraction of the cost of even a small TV campaign today.

on one hand the future is potentially very bright…  we engage more with brands that we like and therefore, theoretically, as ads become more targeted and better tailored to our interests and passions, advertising will be more engaging and, theoretically, more engaged with.

at least that's the theory.

but there's a potential downside…  the lowering in the cost of entry will allow hundreds of advertisers who previously couldn't, to advertise on TV.  the result is inevitable, a lowering in the average quality of the ads that get produced.  this is inevitable.

to escape the race to the bottom, we're going to need choice…  the only solution to such a wave of ads will be to have choice over which ones we receive.  there's a double benefit – for advertisers there will be increased engagement (we do engage more with ads that we've chosen to watch), and for audiences there will be the algorithm…

because unlike broadcast, where we all have to endure the same ads as everyone else, an ad-served model offers the possibility of a world where only content that get engaged with (clicked on, liked etc) gets further propagated.  if Google served TV ads (beyond their current very limited scope) they'd use a quality score (based on relevance and preformance of the ads) to propagate ads that are reaching the right people and being engaged with, and suppress ones that aren't.  and that can only be a good thing?  can't it?

out of interest, what does advertising say about you?

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content creating, engaging, innovating, planning

Ideas not Impacts: what JibJab and MadMen can teach us about a world where multiple smaller ideas are better

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

so a little while back, Lauren sent me the attached clip showing us both and the rest of the Twitterpod here at PHD Australia as we'd be cast in MadMen.  it's pretty funny and pretty cool and anything that puts me in the same frame as Don Draper is to be welcomed.

but it got me thinking about how much this little video can tell us about the emerging media paradigm that's challenging brands, agencies and the media industry…  I think it can tell us a lot about idea-driven planning and the importance of doing multiple smaller things not fewer bigger things.  let me explain.

if you've worked in media as long as I you were probably taught that the role of media planners is to link three things together.  link the brand to the right media in order to reach enough of the right people, enough of whom will then do or think what the brand requires of them to make the media investment worthwhile.  a bit like this.

Media_old_skool how I was taught: the right brand in the right media reaching enough of the right people

it's a model driven by impacts – the more impacts the better, which is all well and good.  but the above video JibJab video doesn't work like that at all.  the brand (MadMen) is there, but media is replaced with a platform – in this case the JibJab video utility / site – and the audience is replaced with the few individuals who get exposed to the video via the link that the originator sends…  so the model looks more like this.

Media_new_skool how it think it is now: brands using platforms to plug ideas into networks of individuals

this is a model driven by ideas not impacts…  rather than having an audience who receive a message, we instead have a few individuals who engage with it.  and whilst on the face of it the overall impact is a lot less, this isn't necessarily the case – a few quick numbers…

in the first model let's say you deliver one million impacts.  at a click thru rate of 0.1% a you'll get about 1,000 people to click thru to the place or space a brand wants them to go (I appreciate that this misses the brand effect of the other 999,000 people who see the banner ad but run with it) … the JibJab MadMen requires only 250 to make a video and send it to the three other friends who are in it reach the same number of people.

the emerging model also offers significant benefits.  the first is in targeting.  from a brand perspective, this model is a lot more likely to reach people who are into the product (in this case MadMen).  the second is the level of engagement with the content – and in this instance people are part of the content, which I'd suggest makes it pretty engaging.  the third is that it's inherently viral, the products of the model are things that people will want to share and propagate throughout their networks of friends and peers.

the challenge is that you simply don't reach enough people, but you can always amplify…  there's no reason why you couldn't use the one-to-many model to showcase certain videos, perhaps even as a promotion or competition mechanic.

there's a big implication too.  there's no way that this model replaces the scale and reach of the broadcast model, but that can't be ours to mourn…  if scale is what you're after then there's only two ways to get it.  either you have the best ideas (in the long tail of an ideas ecology the impact of the few biggest ideas will greatly exceed the individual impact of any of the majority of others), or you create more ideas.

in that context, screw fewer bigger better … the best performing brands will be those that can scale the output of the quantity of their ideas.  a marketing effort spread across multiple smaller ideas will be better, and a great deal less risky, than the same effort invested in fewer bigger ideas.  not sure what Don would have to say about that…

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measuring, reaching

The tyranny of reach; and how Australian Advertisers are in terrible danger of walking straight into its trap

Apples_and_pears apples and pears.  anyone with a suggestion on how to directly compare every form of media that exists is invited to contact the AANA.  suggestions on Middle-East Peace are also welcome.

news – via B&T – at the end of last week that the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) is forming a sub-committee to "bring media to account".  according to the article, the Media Reference Group will be tasked with "creating a tool that can compare all media with an 'apples versus apples' method."

good luck with that.

you can only sympathise with advertisers' frustration…  how do you compare different and diverging media offerings?  the caveats and conditions that you have to put on any calculation make it – to all intents and purposes – impossible; and more – and more rapidly changing – media options only makes this harder over time.

but there's two very related things that are very worrying about the announcement.  the first is the statement – by ANNA boss Scott McClellan – that advertisers are "frustrated with claims from all media that the level of consumption is stable … there are only a limited number of eyeballs.  how can numbers be stable if the number of media is growing?"  hmmm.

second, the example that McClellan uses when he observes that "in terms of TV advertising it used to take six weeks to reach the target audience now that is pushing out to 10 weeks.  for premium inventory there is limited access so we are having to do so over a longer period of time, so rates are going up.  all this is starting to grate."

there.  he said it.  look closely.  "it used to take six weeks to reach the target audience".

ah, reach.  and the tyranny of it.

it links both the key issues that are wrong with last week's statement because (1) the frustration is that it's getting more expensive to reach more of the people more of the time is absolutely true, but there's no counting your way out of it (fragmentation is, unfortunately, a bitch like that) and (2) because reach is no doubt what the group is mistakingly trying to measure.  and that's why the statement fails to understand the apparent contradiction of more media but stable consumption of media.

reach isn't – in the main – falling.  in fact in many ways it's going up.  because we're consuming more media more of the time; whether its watching TV with a laptop in our, well, laps … or glancing at posters with a mobile app in hand.  we're also creating unprecedented levels of media ourselves, but that's off piste right now.  the point is that it is these behaviours that are keeping media reach – in many instances – stable.  reach isn't what's falling, attention is.

and this is what's most worrying about the statement.  the group claims that what AANA "are hoping to achieve is some agreed principles for indicating the criteria on which advertisers will buy going forward."  I hope for their sake that they choose not to base that criteria on reach.  because there's a lot more of it around and therefore a lot more to buy – and be under no illusion, premium access to reach will maintain it's price-tag.

this is the tyranny of reach.  it is, as Admiral Ackbar would say, a trap.  as long as it remains our default method of measurement, our modus enumeri if you like, we will eternally be lamenting our collective inability to stretch fewer resources over more places in more ways.

the problem for advertisers, and indeed for all of us, is that we need to focus our attention on things we can measure that count.  things like engagement, or influence, or sales.  but if we think that comparing and evaluating reach across media is hard let's not even start on any of these.  and no at the back – econometrics doesn't count because it doesn't universally measure all media opportunities; too many a good media has been taken off of a schedule because that particular computer model said no.

the bottom line is that you simply can't compete on reach.

well that's not true… you can.

you just won't win.

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cinema, public relating

Stepping up to the plate: the opportunity for brands to save a valuable part of Sydney’s media infastructure

Academy_twin running out of time, Paddington's Academy Twin theatre is under threat of closure, image courtesy Sydney Film School

the rise of the multiplex may have brought convenience to the cinema experience but it has done so at quite a cost; both in terms of the price to attend a cinema, but more importantly in the ability to see non-mainstream releases.  small independent cinema allows you to explore the long tail of movie making, to take a break from the populist output of mainstream studios and enjoy movies that challenge, provoke and stimulate.

and so its hard to see as anything but tragic the news today that the Academy Twin Cinema in
Paddington is to close after very nearly one hundred years.  there's full and comprehensive commentary of the announcement by Palace Cinemas courtesy of a post on Scott Henderson's Dark Habits blog.  the Sydney Morning Herald article can be viewed here.

but I can't help but think, and suggest, that there's a significant opportunity here.  brand after brand invests in cinema to reach and engage with audiences.  they do so because they view that audience as valuable – be it attitudinally, behaviourally or (though I don't like saying it) demographically – to their brand and marketing efforts.

take for example alcohol brands.  in 2009 – according to Nielsen – the alcohol category spent over $10m on cinema advertising in Australia, over 10% of total media spend in the category.  individual brands have made significant commitments to the channel; Chivas Regal invested $654k in cinema in 2009, Russian Standard vodka invested $344k and Smirnoff $250k.  in all cases the investment represented over 30% of each brands' total media spend – a significant commitment.

whilst the media landscape is evolving sometimes beyond recognition, the fundamental trilogy of components in many ways remains unchanged – the brand, the audience and the media space.  the tools and tactics may change but these pillars don't.  our trade and our skill is in advising brands where and how to invest to reach an audience.

and herein lies the opportunity.  is there a brand out there that wants to invest in a media space not just to reach an audience, but to save that very media space from extinction?  is there a brand in Australia with a commitment to cinema that goes as far as bringing a loved and cherished venue back from the brink.

the (not comprehensive) argument against.  (1) it represents a huge investment in a relatively small audience (2) it's a long-term commitment to a space that a marketing manager may want to move away from as marketing strategies change (3) its geographically limiting

the (not comprehensive) argument for. (1) it demonstrates an overcommitment to a valuable audience (2) it brings consistency to a marketing schedule (3) the potential PR value is huge

besides there's precedent…  O2 in the UK has made an unequivocal commitment to music by redeveloping the Millennium Dome into the O2, and similarly rebranding the music Academies.  the economic case for investing in a media space for the medium to long term must be able to be made.

so here's the call…  who wants to save a bit of media?  could any marketing managers or planners or strategists who think that a brand on which they work could help, please come forward…  your time has come…  and its running out.

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outdoor

Daring to be different: the disappearing art of large format poster painting

UP THERE from The Ritual Project on Vimeo.

interesting video from The Ritual Project about the disappearing art of large format poster painting.  in a world of two to four week posting cycles, where campaign after campaign comes then goes, there's much to be said about investing in this kind of permanence.  a presence that doesn't vanish as quickly as it appears; a commitment to a space, rather than a transient placement in it.

there's a whole load of reasons why this wouldn't be right when planning a campaign…  the time and effort to get planning permission, the fact that there'd only be one site, the production investment in man hours, the fact it couldn't quickly and easily be taken down if necessary, lack of MOVE / PostAR data…  to name just a few.

for all those reasons and more most brands wouldn't do it.

most brands.

I'd call that an opportunity if ever there was one…

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branding

Telling the difference between White and Wrong: why Google’s customisable homepage is a personalisation too far

Google_homepage_purples

it's strange how accustomed we become to the world…  here I am, comfortably confident in my ability – despite being old enough to remember Return of the Jedi at the Cinema first time round – to live and breathe as a digital native.  I'm down with the kids.  I'm adaptable.  I'm a fluid kind of guy.

only it turns out that I'm not.

above is what my Google search page now looks like.  it's like that because you can now customise it to have any picture you want as a background.  as Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience explains on a post, Google has always "enjoyed making your search experience more relevant, useful and fun through personalization" … this new feature … "brings a whole new level of personalization to Google by letting you add a favorite photo or image to the background of the Google homepage".

I don't like it.  I don't like it one bit.  to risk over-using a pun, it's just not white.

the white Google page is (was) important.  there was a clarity, a sharpness to the site that was an intrinsic part of Google's brand DNA; part of its engram – that collection of associations we all carry around in our heads that captures for each of us what a brand is, means, and does.  Google's white helped define that, but more than that, Google's white was iconic.

but this importance of Google's white seems to have been ignored by the organisation.  this it may come to regret.  personalisation and customisation are great, brilliant things.  but not always.

in an article in Intelligent Life a while back, Jonathan Meades' discussed the pervasiveness of the word 'iconic' from Jesus to Obama (via Marmite and Beckham).  a great article that I blogged about at the time.

Meades outlined four conditions necessary for something to be (or be perceived as) iconic.  condition four is immediacy of recognition.  common in objects – the Coca-Cola bottle, the Eiffel tower, Big Ben – but because of the demand of immutability less so in humans, unless they're dead of course.  Meades asks for "the visual equivalent of an unmistakable catchphrase, such as … David Owen's "When I was Foreign Secretary" or Andie McDowell's "Because I'm worth it" … if a catchphrase is a repetitive soundbite, then an icon is a strenuously rehearsed sightbite".

a strenuously rehearsed sightbite, that helps maketh the icon.  and Google just threw it out.

Meades goes on to describe how "in an age of ever-multiplying media outlets, with images disseminated ever more easily, there are ever more potential low-key idols … virtual villages will increasingly make icons of figures that are peculiar to them, just as real villages did in the distant past when the people in the next valley paid obeisance to an alien gamut of gods and totems.  the more the media grow, the less appropriate the prefix "mass".  the globalisation of localism and, beyond that, of atomisation will very likely mean that such niche characterisations as "a living legend among the vertical matrixing community" [or] "an iconic figure in Gremlin Pastures" can be made without leaden irony."

at the time I noted that its a fascinating observation: a long tail of idolism.  the fewer, globally recognised icons sitting alongside the famous-to-a-few icons of our immediate communities and social groups.  I asked if the always-on proximity and ubiquity of the stuff we connect ourselves to is making icons of the people and places around us?  whether the immediacy of a host of personal – and in this case personalised – icons, devalues the idea of an icon, or adds meaning and value to it?

Google may find out.  the hard way.

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applicationing, creating, developing, evidencing

Walking the World Cup Talk: How Marca.com is holding it’s own in the Age of Evidence by adding value to it’s World Cup-following readers

World_cup_infographic_map
brilliant World Cup interactive infographic courtesy of Littlewood (or more specifically Littlewood's mate) hosted here…  I'm not going to pretend that I'm massively into the World Cup (I'll get excited when we play).  I am however going to pretend that I'm massively into infographics and how they can add value to how we absorb and engage with the world…

you can track the entire competition…

World_cup_infographic_fixtures

or just focus on the upcoming fixtures for your country…  etc etc etc…

the point, is that the site – www.marca.com – really takes it's football seriously…  and the investment in this little number is a great example of walking the talk, or as I like to put it, evidence-based marketing…

because whilst the application is a great way of navigating your way through the World Cup, its also a brilliant way of marketing…  marketing by the best, oldest, and arguably most effective method of communication…  yup, word of mouth (or in it's modern guise) word of mouse.

those of you paying attention will also notice that it's very social-friendly too…  the Like and Tweet buttons in the top right of the application currently show it having 32k and 5,414 advocacies (couldn't think of another word to go there) across Facebook and Twitter…

and that's a lot of connections and click throughs sparked, not by an ad saying 'Marca likes / does / loves football' but rather through the provision of a bit of evidence that proves it, whilst at the same time making the World Cup just that little bit better for its fans.  not a bad day's work for a media brand living in the age of evidence – and not a Rooney ad in sight.

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