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...
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.
on April 20 an explosion on the BP operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed eleven crew members, sparking not only a significant environmental incident, but - increasingly - a new case study on how interested parties can bring pressure to bear on governments and organisations.
like The Guardian vs. Trafigura last year, the ongoing BP Deepwater Horizon situation is fueling emergent possibilities and rules of engagement on how different groups and organisations engage and influence each other, of which the above is a great example...
it's a GoogleMap of Sydney and the surrounding area, with the current extent of the Deepwater Oil spill super-imposed on top. it makes real the extent of the spill, which - if it was here in Sydney - would stretch from Newcastle in the north to Wollongong in the south, and from far out to sea in the east to far beyond the blue mountains to the west. it's all courtesy of ifitwasmyhome.com the original page of which shows the extent of the spill in it's actual location.
it's interesting for three reasons. one, it's built and powered by (pretty much) RealTime data. we can see the situation as it is now, rather than retrospectively or projected. the site explains how the data is collected...
"The data used to create the spill image comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA releases a daily report detailing where the spill is going to be within the next 24 hours. They do this by collecting data from a number of sources, including satellite imagery and reports by trained observers who have made helicopter flights back and forth across the potentially affected areas. This data is entered into several leading computer models by NOAA oceanographers along with information about currents and winds in the gulf." source
the second point of interest is how the site is intrinsically social. of course all of the web is social now, but everything about the site is designed to make it adoptable and sharable, with functionality that encourages just that.
finally, it's such an elegant idea. too often we fail to grasp the reality of a situation because it's too remote, too incomprehensible, is too short on credibility, or because its difficult to relate to. this simple and elegant idea takes all of that square on, making the spill as relatable as it can be, in as credible a way as can be imagined. whilst all the time fueling personalised ugc to propel the issue into conversations from which it may have otherwise been absent.
the casebook on how governments, BP, the media and the public interacted and influenced each other throughout the Deepwater incident is yet to be written, but I suspect that when it is, ifitwasmyhome.com will have had a part to play.
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.
picked this up via a TrendCentral article describing how brands are leveraging the power of AR in the mobile space. there's nothing massively groundbreaking about the above application; we've been talking about this kind of technology for a good while now. but there are however three important things to observe...
it is done very well. its comprehensive, simple to download and seemingly easy to use. its one thing to develop the strategy of having a bar-finder app... its quite another to make one happen. and to make one happen that has clearly been developed with user-centricity (rather than brand-centricity) at its heart is to be applauded.
it was developed outside of an established silo of expertise. specialist iPhone app building agency arossair (not an existing ad, media, or digital agency) built the application for Stella. this is an agency build on the basis of being a specialist not a generalist; of being totally focused on doing one thing well and being famous for it. I can't help but think that all of us in more generalist agencies will have to decide just how generalist we want to be in the future...
...the obvious model that emerges is that the generalists will evolve into central hubs of thinking and coordination, pulling in the capabilities of specialists on behalf of brands and projects as they go. but an evolution to this role brings with it lower margins and potential revenues - especially and specifically in the area of production and execution.
finally, they did it. enough of the talk and the thinking and the chart writing and justification and exploration and debating; and more of the doing. as the early 21st Century witnesses an exponential increase in the things that brands could do, there is a pleasure in seeing a brand actually doing something. 'build it [well] and they will come' could well become a mantra for our times.
enjoy the ride
from scarcity to abundance; more stuff in more places; and rapidly evolving media business and consumption patterns. how much fun is this?
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