advertising, broadcasting, social media-ising, television, viewing

Message for Chrysler: the 1980s called and they want their marketing model back

NBC's SuperBowl broadcast cash cow; could the last marketer out please turn off the lights (pic sourced)

news this week that Chrysler has caused quite a stir by 'snapping up' one of the last remaining ad spots in the Superbowl. 'Chrysler' you say, 'the Chrysler that got bailed out by the American taxpayer to the tune of $13.5 BILLION last year?' … yes, the same.

I am, in a word, stunned. stunned that an advertiser that had just been bailed out by the American taxpayer could decide that blowing something in the region of $100,000 per second on a 60" TV ad is in any way shape or form the right thing to do. when oh when are people going to get that broadcast advertising is neither efficient nor effective at selling things. McKinsey, if you remember, did a really cracking bit of research that went a long way to proving that consideration isn't a funnel and doesn't work like that.

I'm not suggesting that advertising (ie one-to-many 'adverts') isn't good at doing things. it really is. it's very good at (1) communicating new news, (2) getting people talking about your brand and (3) it's very good at validating purchase decisions. but none of these are relevant for Chrysler; who in this move have only succeeded in getting people talking for all the wrong reasons…

Ad Age quote one commenter as saying that the move is a "slap in the face to every American taxpayer … This is Chrysler's way of saying 'Thanks for saving us, but now screw you, America. We're gonna use the money to pay for some Super Bowl ads".

a spokesperson for Chrysler- quoted in the same article – comments that "The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched TV programs of the year, not only for the football game but for the creative advertising … It provides an efficient platform to make a statement, set the new brand-positioning and reach the maximum number of viewers in comparison to traditional advertising … It would be more costly to achieve the same number of viewers in traditional media placement and ensure the high viewership attention span that the Super Bowl delivers."

I'm sorry but the 1980's called and they want their marketing model back.

its a statement from a company marching backwards: "efficient platform to make a statement", "set a new brand positioning", "in comparison to traditional advertising", "high viewership attention span" … I really am at a loss for words.

Advertising Age's headline was that "you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't" – their reporting suggesting "Don't advertise, you don't move product. Advertise, you get hammered for wasting money" … I'm sorry but in this case Chrysler are just damned. damned because they have. they have wasted money, they have taken a lazy way out, and they have ignored the new paradigm of marking and communications that has evolved around them over the last decade.

Pepsi decided that they wouldn't be damned if they didn't. the company that spent $142m on SuperBowl advertising between 1999-2009 (source) have decided that they'd rather invest the money on something a little more meaningful than lining the pockets of Madison Avenue's Bad Men. Pepsi are marketing by investing in the people and projects that people think are worthy of investment. Pepsi get that ad money isn't there to 'sell' stuff. it's there to get people talking about your brand, because what you're doing is worthy and meaningful and acting as though you give a damn about the people that you want to buy your products. and full credit to them.

in the slow painful death of the broadcast sales model, it's the existence of events like the SuperBowl that will allow its last standing defendants to cry "it works … we can shout at people and claim 'our brand believes in freedom, or choice, or in the human spirit, or technology or whatever we think will most differentiates us from a competitive set that we create in order to validate our investments and people will believe us and they will buy and it will be awesome".

but if the reaction to Chrysler's move tells us anything its that the long held contract between advertisers and people who buy stuff may be starting to show more than a few cracks. people are realising that thereare other ways to be marketed at than to be shouted at by a company who can spend $100,000 a second on an advert. sure the model and it's contract will hold, probably for a good while to come, and Chrysler seem happy to throw their dollars at it. but I'd rather be one of the first ones to get out and taste the fresh air than be the last one to turn out the lights. what you do, I guess is your call.

brand extending, creating, realtiming, social media-ising

It’s a crazy world, but I wouldn’t have it any other way: me and a pair of limited edition adidas’ that I was never destined to own

its a beautiful Friday evening in Sydney, but before I head out for a few drinks for Zaac's birthday, I'd like to tell you a story. its a story about a great brand, and about how the world of communications works now; but more than that its a story about me and a pair of trainers that I will never now own. and why thats OK.

it begins last Saturday, when Size sent an email to their mailing list. on that list was my friend @fraser201 who, upon seeing that contained in that email were some of the most amazing trainers he'd seen an a good long while, forwarded the email on to me. he knew I'd like it, you see two of my favourite things in all the world are trainers and Star Wars. and there on the Size email were those two things. together. in one place. Star Wars limited edition trainers. and they were glorious.

so I turned to Google and got a few results from Star Wars and various trainer sites, but notably saw a result from @adi_originals. so I promptly hit TweetDeck and fired off a Tweet to adidas, and heard back almost immediately…

@adi_originals re StarWars collection, awesome stuff!! when are the orange Xwing hightops hitting Sydney? and where can I get them?

@cwstephenson The Skywalkers will be available at our Sydney Originals store. Give them a call: http://ow.ly/URy3

following their link, I got to their Town Hall Originals Store website and placed a call. the wonderful Chrissie picked up. she explained that there were strictly limited numbers and that they'd go on sale on a first come first served basis on Friday. in the diary Friday morning went and I did the polite thing and sent a Tweet back to adidas:

@adi_originals nice one, thanks – looking forward to picking up some Skywalkers on Friday http://bit.ly/7yNUGw

and so the week passed. and when I wasn't working or going out or up to no good, I was thinking about a limited edition pair of adidas Star Wars Stormtroopers, and tweeting about them to @fraser201 and @willsh. Friday morning, this morning, couldn't come soon enough.

I however, could have come considerably sooner. too late, I was. I simply got there too late. by the time I got to the store there was already a queue and as, one by one, people entered and left the store, the limited editions, one by one, left the store with them. very soon there weren't any left for me.

I'm not angry or pissed off. I guess I'm just a little blue. somewhere in and around Sydney there are limited edition adidas Stormtroopers being worn, or admired, or stored in a safe, but none are being worn or admired or stored in a safe by me.

please don't feel too sorry for me. there's more where they came from. the first transport may have gotten away but battle will recommence in a month's time… the prize? these little puppies…

but thats not the end of the story, because towards the end of this morning the following popped into my Twitterfeed:

@cwstephenson What did you pick up? May The Force Be With You: http://ow.ly/WDgu

adidas remembered. not just that I was interested in their products but that I was planning on getting some this morning. four days after our Tweet exchange – an eternity in a world that's converging into RealTime – they remembered and sent me a message. perhaps its just me, perhaps I was feeling needy, but I find that pretty remarkable.

play my story back again… here's how it went down: a retailer sent a mailer out which was forwarded to me via someone in my network so I searched then tweeted, then tweeted some more, then went to a store and missed out but then received a tweet which contained a link to the below rather amazing ad which I clicked on and watched.

the ad came last.

after all the product development, partnership building, new news generating, social networking and direct communicating, I watched an ad. and ad designed not to make me go and by something. quite the opposite. an ad as an affirmation. a validation of the journey that I'd just been on. "thats why I love this brand" is the response it so deservedly earns.

because in all of that story, in all that maelstrom of communications and connections, at no point was any media bought. at every step along the way it was earned; earned by a brand creating something that in the end I wasn't even able to buy.

its a crazy world, and I wouldn't have it any other way. good weekends all…

brand extending, charging, creating, selling

Demanding Supply: What the Sydney Festival can learn from adidas and Star Wars

the Becks Festival Bar @ The Barracks [source]

so last night I spend a brilliant evening jumping around to Big Black Voodoo Daddy & Black Joe lewis and the Honeybears at the Becks Festival bar (above). its all part of the Sydney Festival, which opened on Saturday with Al Green performing to about 200,000 people in the Domain.

but here's the thing – I had to buy my and Jonathan's (hi Jonathan @jonnyp) way into Big Black Voodoo Daddy et al, because all the tickets had been and gone months ago when they were first released. it seems to me that there for a city the size of Sydney the festival just doesn't seem BIG enough… there needs to be more stuff, more to do, because the demand is currently far outstripping supply. …and thats the thing about supply and demand – the more there is of something, the more we want of it:

Induced demand: When supply shifts from S1 to S2, the price drops from P1 to P2, and quantity consumed increases from Q1 to Q2 [source: Wikipedianess]

I love the counter-intuitiveness of this. the more you create of something the more people want it. the problem however is that at the same time the value of the commodity goes down – but only if the commodity in question is homogeneous.

this is the great opportunity for something like the Sydney Festival – you don't make it bigger by making more of the same; in order to protect value you need to produce more of the different. more venues, more spaces and places, more 'differentiated scale'. in this the festival can learn much – and a big thanks to a heads up from @Fraser201 on this – from adidas and Star Wars… yeah, I know…

in December of last year adidas announced the creation of an originals range inspired by the Star Wars universe, its been trending up ever since:

there's three very smart things about this, the second two of which relate to really brilliant understanding of induced supply. the first thing to say is that in no way shape or form will adidas ever have to spend a penny in broadcast advertising of this range: its existence will be all the marketing collateral they need. but thats not whats really interesting about what adidas are doing.

I had a quick conversation with the lovely Chrissie at the Sydney Originals store this morning, who informed me that the range isn't all being released at once, rather its being phased over three months. thats the first smart way of increasing supply without compromising price; phased supply over time.

secondly, not all lines will be equally available – some of the lines will be general release and fairly easily obtained, but others will be strictly limited, some down to two pairs of sneaks per store. thats the second smart way of increasing supply without compromising price; variable availability. the entry levels for demand are different – individuals with heavy demand will invest more time and energy than those with lower levels of demand but the value equation for both will be similar.

both the Sydney Festival and adidas' Star Wars range can teach communications a thing or two too: imagine that the theory of induced demand applies to bought media… an increase in the volume of advertising impacts has resulted firstly in a fall in the value (real or perceived) of brand communications and secondly, an increase in the demand for brand communications… advertising has gone from the Immortal to the Immediate:

from the Immortal to the Immediate; Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling (top) took four years to paint, current economics wouldn’t favour its commissioning today. Banksy’s Tesco Flag (bottom) took a little more than four minutes

it couldn't be less about doing a few things well; fewer bigger better needs to be thrown out with the noughties. rather its about doing lots of things well enough. on which I'll let you enjoy the awesomeness of the below… they're on phased release from now till March, form orderly queues please…

internet, predicting, realtiming, social media-ising, targeting

Staring into the Infinity of Now: the challenge of living in RealTime

the Untempered Schism [source] …the Doctor ran away, The Master went mad, I just keep staring at the Tweets and clicking on the links as they hurtle towards me

I have seen my future – it is TweetDeck on a SmartPhone – and it terrifies me. I fear that my life will not be the same again.

it all started when earlier in the week I got round to downloading TweetDeck to my laptop, and lost the following two hours, and several hours since, jumping to links as they were delivered into my live feed. it got me thinking about how much the way I consume stuff has accelerated over time…

I used to communicate pretty much exclusively asynchronously; if someone called me and I wasn't around they called back later or just didn't call at all. but then things started speeding up, first with email and mobile phones, and then with RSS (which I never really got used to) and now Twitter. at the end of this acceleration phase I now find myself plugged directly into stuff as it happens; I'm living in RealTime, my communications are predominantly synchronous. I'm not alone. in a brilliant post, Jim Stogdill describes a similar experience…

"Email was the first electronic medium to raise my clock speed, and also my first digital distraction problem. After some "ding, you have mail," I turned off the blackberry notification buzz, added rationing to my kit bag of coping strategies, and kept on concentrating. Then RSS came along and it was like memetic crystal meth. The pursuit of novelty in super-concentrated form delivered like the office coffee service … It was a RUSH to know all this stuff, and know it soonest; but it came like a flood. That un-read counter was HARD to keep to zero and there was always one more blog to add … From my vantage point today, RSS seems quaint. The good old days. I gave it up for good last year when I finally bought an iPhone and tapped Twitter straight into the vein. Yeah, I went real time."

the problem with staring into the infinity of RealTime is that your attention levels drop through the floor. there's only so much attention to give, and as the density of the communications coming at me has increased my ability to stay focused on any one thing has declined.

Richard of Sydney-based Now and Next calls is Constant Partial Stupidity. in a great post on his trend spotting site, he describes some of the symptoms of CPS…

"…how about your inability to remember multiple passwords, with the result that getting money out of an ATM at weekends has been turned into something resembling the national lottery? Or what about phone numbers? What is your home telephone number? Many people no longer have a clue and it’s not simply because they use a mobile telephone. This is the brave new world of too much information and not enough functioning memory"

my attention is increasingly focused on staring into the infinity of now, with the result that increasing amounts of my attention are being diverted to now, and away from my past and futures.

the history of my life since 19th February 2006 is contained with 5,150 gmails, all search-able in seconds. I don't have to remember anything, so I don't.

I plan in the now too… if I wanted a Playstation game (its XBox these days) I used to do my research in magazines and online – my attention was on the future. now if I'm passing a shop I can check the reviews there and then, make the decision not in the past but in the now.

my world is collapsing into RealTime, and as a consequence my attention is being pulled away from my past and possible futures. the implication for brand communications planning is obvious: the past and the future become irrelevant. unless a brand is active in the moment, in RealTime, then they may as well not exist at all.

predicting, trending

Mapping & Mining the Future: How an Innovative & Imaginative Approach from What’s Next is making future-reading more accessible for us all

the above screengrab is from a really rather glorious TRENDS & TECHNOLOGY TIMELINE 2010+ conceived, created and – courtesy of creative commons – shared with the world by Richard Watson at Nowandnext.com. you can view the whole thing here. its worth it. do it now.

its a complicated thing for a complicated subject… how do you aggregate let alone predict the various and multiplicitous future offerings that a speeding-up tech-driven lived-in-real-time world will bring? well, you imagine a London tube map where stations are trends, lines are broad themes or topics and the further away from zone 1 you get the further into the future you travel, and it turns out you're in pretty good shape.

as Watson observes, "Predicting the future is a dangerous game — the future is never a straight, linear extrapolation from the present. Unexpected innovations and events will conspire to trip up the best-laid plans — but it’s still better than not thinking about the future at all" …well worth printing in A3 and sticking near your desk.

not surprisingly, given the whole dawning of a new decade thing, recent weeks have seen a deluge of predictions and future trend observations emerge; and in another philanthropic move, Syamant of futurechat has aggregated a whole load of them into one place for us. dive in a go future-exploring.

all this is important. its important because as media and message blur, the recommendations we make to brands can't just be what to say and where to say it. an application – for example – is neither media or message, its a blur of both. our recommendations instead have to be developed and built around identification of the topics and themes that exist for a brand or organisation to potentially say something about, and indeed why its relevant for a given brand to be involved in a particular area.

predicting the trends of tomorrow doesn't just provide an academic sojourn into what may come to pass… rather it gives anyone involved in communications planning starters for ten on the topics and themes that will impact and change our lives. and understanding and explaining to which of those a brand should connect is some of the most valuable advice we can give. let the future commence.

charging, internet, IPA|ED:final - existing customers, printing

Free No More: Why The Times’ efforts to Value and add Value to their Existing Customers could herald a better future for us all

it was whilst catching up on recent media events that I ended up lying in the Sydney summer sun listening – courtesy of MediaGuardian's Podcast – to London Times Editor James Harding on how he and the newspaper intend to un-write the economics of free on the internet. in short, the title intends to start charging for the valuable content they create but have hereto been giving away for free online. some snippets, as reported in the Guardian:

"We created a culture of free, and we absolutely were party to that … In the last few years, we have talked with great pride – we believed advertising would sustain us – about unique users … These people were window shopping down Oxford Street – they were not coming into our shops …

"From spring of next year we will start charging for the digital edition of the Times. We're working on the exact pricing model, but we'd charge for a day's paper, for a 24-hour sign-up to the Times. We'll also establish a subscription price as well … You have to be very careful with article-only economics … you will find yourself writing a lot more about Britney Spears and a lot less about Tamils in northern Sri Lanka."

"We keep investing in journalism, we believe that's what our readers want. We're not dumbing down, we're dumbing up … We are going to rewrite the economics of the newspaper, newsgathering and delivery business … We have to do that, we are in the fight of our lives."

what's of particular interest is the call to move away from micro-charging – the economics that sustain Amazon, iTunes and the like, and instead focus on the smaller customer base but higher-per-customer return of a subscription model… of particular interest to Mediation is Harding's comments re home delivery services and the Times+ membership and reward scheme, about which he nodded towards loyalty…

"Historically, newspapers have treated their best customers worst and their worst customers best … We give the paper away to people who could not care less and we pay little or no attention to people who love it and read it every day."

I've written quite a lot about loyalty on these pages including a essay on the subject and won't reiterate now, but in short, I believe we've come to accept as fact the supposition that the primary role for marketing communications is growth through customer acquisition. and that in doing so we ignore both the existence of current customers and the pivotal role they play in the growth of brands…

I believe that focusing on customer retention is an acquisition strategy. I believe that it is those brands that choose to invest in marketing communications that talk with their existing customers, that are building the most robust marketing structures for the future.

there is much to criticise about hardings plans; people simply will not pay, that the charging structures won't allow let alone facilitate browsing, that the content arguably is overvalued … but there's the possibility that in the near future we'll talk about The Times as a case study in reinventing markets around customers not consumers. there's the possibility that The Times' efforts become a landmark in enabling us to divest ourselves of the ill-suited model of ad funding for online-distributed content and invest instead in brand-funded collateral: on things that make the world a better, more interesting, more exciting, more educational or more spontaneous place.

its strange to thing that Rupert Murdoch, of all people, could help take us to that place. but much stranger things have happened.

applicationing, broadcasting, content creating, converging, innovating, social media-ising, television, viewing

Fulfilling its Social Potential: Why TV could very well be the comeback kid as media emerges from the recession

the established institutions of 'old' media were always going to take the hardest hits as the combined effects of a global advertising slowdown and a digitising media economy came to bear. such seems to have been the case. according to Warc's latest Consensus Forecast, 2009 TV revenues in the States will fall 10.9% yoy versus total global ad spend yoy decline of 10.5%. more substantial 2009 decreases in TV are anticipated in the UK, France, Germany and Japan.

looking forward to 2010, TV could very well be the area of media that not only emerges most strongly from the recession, but charges out guns blazing leading the brigade of other media behind it. the same Warc report suggests that marketers in two-thirds of the sample are intending to devote more revenues into TV next year, with Brazil, China and India up by more than 11%, the US by 1.8%, and France by 1.3%.

in fact whilst advertising revenues have declined throughout the recession, there seems to have been limited disruption on the quality of networks' output. new offerings, such as the US's FlashForward or Australia's Celebrity Masterchef have emerged and more than held their own. and whilst it could be argued that reality TV has more than shaped current TV output globally, it hasn't stopped the likes of Glee and Modern Family making their mark.

but despite strong content and a return of ad revenues in 2010, viewing will surely switch online right? well no necessarily so. this week also saw a report from the UK's Enders Analysis arguing that the scale of the VOD market has been overplayed, and that by 2020 the overall national UK average of VoD viewing will be 5%;

"and at these levels, and after taking into account the lower tolerance of interruptive advertising in on-demand programming, non-linear VOD services are unlikely to have a significant impact on commercial spot advertising revenues during the next 10 years … the traditional linear broadcast TV model continues to work well in terms of reliability, simplicity, ease of choice and ability to deliver popular programming with mass appeal"

but all this is without taking into account the phase shift that could and should happen with TV in the year ahead. 2010 could be the year that TV genuinely goes social… as the Guardian observed in a cracking data-fueled article on Jedward's storming of the Twittersphere;

"Every Saturday and Sunday night, Twitter is exploding with real-time boos, back-pats and reactions to the show's performances. It's a re-imagining of the old-media watercooler ("Did you see The X Factor last night?") in live, online space ("Omg jedward are through!") – and it could point the way to the future of TV…"

as Gary Hayes, a former development producer for the BBC who now lives in Sydney and blogs rather awesomely here, points out:

"we now know when our attention is required, especially those inciting moments when emotion or serendipity may be possible. So with these two things happening there are a growing number of services trying to glue the two – either bringing the TV to the back-channel or layering the back-channel ‘over’ the TV" (source)

hayes has aggregated a whole host of services, either existing or in development, that are bring TV to the social space and vice-versa. here are three of my favourites (all sourced from Hayes' original post):

EpiX has high-profile backing from the likes of Viacom, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Lionsgate. it's a platform for viewing content online, but specifically you can invite your mates to private screening rooms and interact with them… ITV if you're listening, X-Factor was made for this…

another favourite (and another example of the increasing warmth between and cooperation by the Gates and Murdoch organisations) in the shape of X-Box and Sky who have teamed up to make the latter's content available on the former's entertainment console. but the basics of the streaming aside, the really interesting bits are when the TV screen pans back and your in a room with your and your mates' avatars. representations that you can support, deride, encourage, laugh at or ask questions of. real social interactivity in real time with real people…

there's a full video of a presentation that Xbox product manager Jerry Johnson gave to paidContent:UK here – jump to 5 mins 40 secs to get the social bit:

finally, on the mobile front there's tvChatter, a iPhone application that allows you to connect TV content to the Twitterstream relating to that show in real time. you can follow Tweets from everyone or just from people you follow. and if you're not sure what to watch, you can see which shows are generating the most interest and check them out:

this is exciting stuff. and I'm not pretending for a second that its anything new: we've been talking about, SMSing and debating TV for years. but never have we been so connected to so many people we know in real time to do so. never have the conversations about the TV we love been so prevalent and so accessible. I hope then that 2010 isn't just the year that TV sees a resurgence in revenues, but also the year that TV finally gets social… we will never look at our screens in the same way again.

advertising, cinema, pioneering

Marketing and Movies: why Avatar, for all its three-dimensionality, felt distinctly two-dimensional

so I'm lucky enough to have just seen an opening screening of Avatar. the movie has been a long time coming and if buzz is anything to go by its set to do rather well. actually buzz is something to go by… research by Aegis' ævolve shows a clear correlation between the amount of buzz a movie has in advance of release and the size of its opening weekend. Google Insights for search, as you'd expect, shows the same thing, very significant increases over the last month or so:

its a big movie for both audiences and those involved but also for Hollywood. with revenues increasingly moving to DVD and online, maximising revenues in cinema theatres is top priority for executives of studios that are feeling the pinch of a digitised economy more than most.

3D is key to this, and despite criticisms from, well, critics that far from adding to the cinema experience, 3D distracts from the quality of viewing, its a key strategy for maximising revenues in cinemas. of course it also makes, for the moment, the cinema experience unique. its normal if not preferable to watch a movie in the comfort of your home with the quality that we've come to expect from a cinema. plus no one talks behind you and you don't have to cock your head to one side to see 90% of the screen. 3D is currently a unique offering in cinemas, an offering that can be uniquely monetised in cinemas.

in many ways, the technology is the draw of this movie; yet for all its future-facing there's been no sign of the ambitious and 21st century marketing initiatives some of us have come to expect post Cloverfield, Batman Begins and the like. in fact for all its 21st Century technology Avatar feels distinctly 20th Century in its marketing… all the opportunities to engage a potential audience up front thru transparency were dismissed, in favour of a publish-and-be-damned approach to make a movie and sell it.

and selling it is what this movie has been all about… marketing efforts, for all their visibility, demand that you watch this movie rather than genuinely be part of the world from which it derives. for all its 21st century capabilities there's nothing of the Wachowski in here: no world beyond the world to discover and explore. and this seems distinctly ironic. for a movie that cost $500m dollars to create, we surely deserve more than 150 minutes of cinema. this movie begged for the trans-media but got nothing of the like: in a declined economy, $500m could be easily mistaken as a metaphor for what Cameron calls 'the Unobtanium'.

advertising, branding, broadcasting, converging, printing

Things we never thought we’d see # 15: Why Google’s use of press proves that media probably never was and certainly won’t ever be simple ever again

great brands don't need to advertise. right? great brands generate their own publicity. great brands grow through word of mouth. great brands invest in innovation which gets itself talked about. great brands activate their networks, excite their advocates and set the Twittersphere ablaze.

great brands pity lesser brands that need to resort to broadcast advertising to get their products and services in front of the masses because they haven't mastered the new media economy. great brands don't advertise, right? …wrong:

Emily FK kindly sent me the attached today (yesterday…) from London… Google. advertising. with a cover wrap. on the Metro. things we really, really, never thought we'd see.

on viewing it I recalled an ancient Chinese curse that goes along the lines of "may you live in interesting times". they didn't value change did the ancient Chinese. boy are we collectively cursed – interesting times indeed. one of two things is happening here, you can take your pick…

option one: the Google (money) train is faltering. their core business of search continues, of course, to be a juggernaut that is in very good health. but could the non-core products and services that are fueled by the juggernaut be feeling a little more heat?

its the only realistic explanation… despite coming from the fine-tuned stable of Goggle new media marketing, Chrome has failed to get traction in the marketplace. the very handy market share reports that Chrome's current share is hovering at 3%, compared to Firefox's 23% plus and the collective Explorers' best part of 60%…

three percent. that's a figure that Google executives haven't seen for a while and no doubt has them spooked. they need more than 3% and they're going to throw money at getting it, because the information about what we browse, what we do and who we are is invaluable; and in Google's hands its game-changing.

the reasons as to why traction hasn't been hit could be numerous and are almost certainly a combination of apathy, familiarity with existing browser, anti-Googleness ("they've got enough information already" kind of thing), and perhaps even awareness. one would hope that the latter has some part to play, for I fear for the ability of a press cover wrap to make a major dent in any of the other potential barriers.

there is of course option two… that in the evolution of media and communication, there's a need for both sides of the equation. or indeed every side of the cube if you get what I mean. that its not enough for a brand to be a 'broadcast' brand or a 'networked' brand. all this could mean that there's a time and a place for one to many, as well as a time and a place for many to many.

option two could mean that there's there's no such thing as old and new media. there is only media. media thats owned and rented out at a negotiated CPT by big business. media that's made by individuals with a passion and an opinion or two. media created by brands that they can subsequently own and leverage to tell the world why they exist. media that we respect, share, love to hate, assume credibility, trash, believe, pass on, or – indeed – read on our way to work before logging on and checking out a new browser.

Google advertising on Metro. proof, like we needed it, that media probably never was and certainly won't ever be simple ever again.

X_Factor-tipping

Go Joe; Why X Factor, and TV like it, holds a unique place in the affections of British culture

so I've a beer in hand, Empire of the Sun is playing in the background, and I'm sat on a balcony watching the sun descend into the haze surrounding the city of Sydney. it's a beautiful evening and I'm about to head to Owen's birthday party where I'm sure an awesome time will had by all… so of course, my instinct is to sit and write a blog post on X Factor.

those of you who have been following my progress in Dale's X Factor Tipping Competition will both know that I haven't fared too well at all this year. I'm blaming a move to Australia, the fact that I can only watch the performances (and none of the extra – vote influencing – bits) on YouTube because iTVplayer blocks non-UK viewing, and the distractions of fancying then not fancying Danyl, hating then loving Jedward and the occasional celebrity come-back / breakdown on national television… anyway my 120 points put me in joint 22nd place (I know!) and a billion miles away from the amazingness of Chris G's whopping 175 points. kudos to him, he's set to be a worthy winner.

of course being in and amongst the debate really helps with the old tipping, and that – I think – it what has so held me back since my move to the antipodes. the fact is that Australians just don't talk about TV in the way that people in the UK do. I appreciate the irony that the organiser of the tipping competition is Australian but he's living in London so its a moot point.

I only now realise the extent to which TV – and it characters, events and plots – is woven into the fabric of British Culture. I was at an awards ceremony on Thursday and was explaining that I would be surprised, if not stunned, if there was an office, backroom or group of mates who didn't in some way this week discuss the varying merits of Joe, Stacy and Olly. its a staple of conversation and debate in the way that soaps and quality drama used to be.

I'm not entirely sure why. I think that the weather has a lot to do with it – Britons ares simple in sheltering for the elements a lot more. that and the fact that as nation – as Kate Fox observed in Watching the English – we are predisposed to gossip… to talking, debating and discussing the news of others. geography has a bit to play in this, as does our class system. you can't help but be mindful of Britain's class heritage when you hear the explicit "Stacy that was amazing" and the implicit "…considering"

but the final reason as to why TV is so embedded in UK culture is that it has been so consistently good for so long. its a key part of the UK's culture because it has for so long been there, entertaining, informing and inspiring us. we owe both the BBC and commercial channels who never saw themselves – because they were advertiser funded – in lesser terms, a great deal. they have earned Britain's trust, and we reward them by holding them at the heart of our culture in a way that other countries, and certainly Australians, just don't.

as for tonight, I'm going to hit that party… but in the morning my alarm will be set and I'll be up and at 'em to watch the YouTube clips posted so that I can see for myself what the final performances were like. and for the record, Joe to win. a fellow South Shields kid whose consistenly delivered and upped his game at every stage. he'd be a worthy winner, deserving of a place amongst the individuals who have, over time, entertained us and in return – for a time – won the affection of a nation. go Joe…

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