2008 May

More MediaCamp BUCKS 08

May 23, 2008 By 1 Comment

A week later and still stuff is coming out of the MediaCamp BUCKS 08 sessions……

We had been asked to by a couple of clients to keep them at the “leading edge”. Having seen how the Bucks New Uni are using a wiki instead of an intranet has given us the idea of setting up an IMRE Lab using a wiki. Great idea – more will be said on that later.

Back to various emails that have been generated from the unconference.

From Jo Jordan:
http://flowingmotion.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-social-media-as-a-mirror/http://flowingmotion.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/dam-it-the-potential-of-social-media/

From Eran Ben Sabat:
????????http://www.universalmccann.com/Assets/wave_3_20080403093750.pdf

From Chris Hambly:
http://www.chrishambly.com/content/social-influence-measurement

Filed Under: Social, Strategy, Web / Tech

MediaCamp BUCKS 08, Social Media Mafia + Bucks New Uni Event

May 17, 2008 By 5 Comments

Moo card?
Twittering on twitter?
Pod-casting?
A fashion show on Second Life?
Social Media Process Measurement?

An “unconference” held at the Bucks New Uni was well attended with people travelling some distance to get to High Wycombe. (Toby Moores of SleepyDog travelled down from Leicestershire!)

The event, if you chose, was 6 hours of non-stop presentations and around the table discussions. Great stuff. More events are planned and who knows, maybe IMRE will be brave enough to present next time!

Great event, and what good PR for the Bucks New Uni.

With this post I thought I would put up a diagram that neatly shows what could be measured in Social Media. Elements of the picture came about from the ideas expressed by various people from around the table.

Social media elements that could be measured.

Sketch explained:

  1. Think of social media as water or electricity. For the moment water seems to fit best.
  2. Pick a good spot, and build a dam. This is your investment. Water from streams, rivers and run-off will fill the dam.
  3. The water behind the damn is the network of people taking part in the community.
  4. The pump is the marketing spend required to bring more water / people. Again this is cost or investment. This can be from the “long tail”, canals and pipelines from other geographies.
  5. As you build up the reserve behind the dam wall you are effectively building the “tribal interest” and sooner or later the I.Q. begins to show. This is the value-add.
  6. The IQ can stimulate and take action. This is the potential.
  7. The impact has amplitude. (Example given during the meeting was the Chinese arms shipment to Zimbabwe)
  8. The negative and positive can also be seen as the charge.

Admittedly this is a rough model, but it does encompass the discussions and gives you an idea as to what could be measured.

  1. Tribal IQ
  2. Dam capacity (therefore the investment required to build it)
  3. Marketing spend
  4. ????????????Potential (flow, volume, power/energy generated)

    5. ??????

  5. Impact (amplitude)

Who benefits? Who wins? Who “controls” the tribal IQ? What are the rules for business? Hits, pageviews and conversions have less meaning as the supra-intelligence is outside of the machine……. (wikipedia has shown the self healing animal)

More info on the event:

Filed Under: Web / Tech

Internet World 2008

May 17, 2008 By Leave a Comment

We were lucky to visit INTERNET WORLD 2008 in London.
It gave us some fresh ideas and directions as to where the INTERNET is heading.

So Where?
Content is King.
After the web 2.0 chaos, where key to success was to create channels of communication, now comes the age of content. And the content is not only text and images, but…

Virtual 3D Web
There is one trend which we can call Virtual 3D Reality. Now we can find it in Second Life, but the point is that the changes might go even further. At the moment we have two dimensions to navigate the internet. We saw the same situation in the gaming industry 20 years ago. There were 2D games only, but now… So maybe in the next year or so we will use IE 3D and browse 3D Models in a 3dgoogle?

Video Web
If we observe the success of YouTube, we can discover that internet video can be a powerful marketing tool. But video content can be much more interactive and much more connected with the text content of a website.

On the www.inteliwise.com website, there is an example of internet video customer service. In fact the content of websites can be presented in mixed video and text format. Not only for customer service, but also for product presentations to demonstrate usage.
There is an example of the Thomson.co.uk website, where we can find over 2000 product videos. The Effect? Thomson is number one in the e-travel industry.

What is the conclusion?
The Website is on the way to be the most powerful marketing tool. If we have all the media inside (text, video, music, images, 3D), do we need anything else? Maybe this idea is strange. But if we look at the research, we will discover that UK teenagers browse the internet more than they watch TV. There is also Wimax( Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) which means that the internet can be accessed everywhere.

What is the conclusion for Web Design Companies?
We have to be open for new features, such as video and 3D, to be able to deliver to clients the best possible marketings tools.

Filed Under: Marketing, Strategy, Web / Tech, Web 2.0

How to make a website in a year.

May 17, 2008 By 1 Comment

A marketing person would say, do not write this post as you will turn clients away. In a sense they would be right. However we decided that from day one we would be clear with everyone and tell people how we do things via this blog.

The Urban Strides website took well over a year to create. In-fact initial discussions started about two years ago. The client was obviously very successful and was achieving amazing results. But they were looking for that little extra thing. The “It” factor, and the problem with that is simple, you will not know what an “It” is until you find it. And that was the story of IMRE and Urban Strides. Many ideas, many blind alleys, many logos, a few hard words, inspirational moments, deadlines almost missed……..

The important thing is this. The client stuck with us and we were certainly not about to give up. We got there. Or should I say Adam got there, because I can not take any credit for this site. Well done Adam. Now take a look at the site below. See the background, amazing, and oh yes Andy had to pay me a £5 bet as he did not believe the background could be used for marketing advantage.

Filed Under: Client Sites