Listening to the radio this morning, I heard U2’s “It’s a beautiful day” and it kind of summed up my week. Unlike last week’s earworm the Rolling Stones “I can’t get no satisfaction” which was far more relevant (and for once I don’t mean Mrs M). It got me thinking in a far too Wogan-esque vein, that we should have soundtracks for our days, and more specifically we should have soundtracks for our job roles. Read more »
Yesterday evening I was walking down a lane near my house and a man was coming towards me staring down into his mobile phone. I thought, “He will see me, he will see me.” Then I thought, “He won’t see me, he won’t see me.” I stopped and he didn’t. A quick “sorry” and he walked off resuming his downward gazing. Smart phones don’t make smart people it seems.
This got me thinking, which is always a worry. Around two in five adults in this country have a smartphone (Ipsos Technology Tracker) and the figure continues to grow; last year the devices started to outsell PCs (IDC). Three in five teenagers admit they are “highly addicted” to using smartphones, compared with 37% for adults (Ofcom). We cannot ignore the mobile generation, even if they do ignore other people on the pavement.
Internet access through mobile phones will eventually be the default setting for everyone. Mobile will be the one-stop shop for social interactions, finding, buying, selling, playing, watching and reading, and who knows even the odd phone call. Smart devices are not just about communication, they are our identity. They will even select music for you based on your pulse rate or location (not sure I want ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’ when I’m in the bath).
We, as human beings and consumers, are changing with this technology. We don’t store information, we access it. We used to know a lot about a little, but now we know a little about a lot. That doesn’t necessarily make us smart though.
I’m a sucker for a good quotation. The best can make a point far more eloquently and concisely than I ever could, which is why I use them in my presentations all the time. Sometimes it may be historical figures – for example Henry Ford’s “a man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time” or Samuel Johnson’s famous quote about advertising overload (written in 1759).
I’ve just returned from Dusseldorf, where I presented the keynote speech at the German broadcasters’ ‘TV Effectiveness Day’ at the hugely impressive Tonhalle. It was my third time presenting at this event, and this was the best of the lot. Everything passed by with a ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ efficiency, the entertainment was first class and the catering alone cost more than most conferences cost to stage in total.
What impressed me most was the attendance. Well over 1,300 attendees, of which almost 1,000 were from media agencies or advertisers. In fact, the number of advertisers alone – around three hundred in total – is more than I’ve seen at a year’s worth of media events in the UK. Read more »
Apple has mastered the art of getting massive global coverage for its new products even when it has little to announce.
Targeting the tech-savvy
In 1962 Everett Rogers’s ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ defined individuals’ adoption of a new technology or idea as putting them in one of five groups: innovator, early adopter, early majority, late majority and laggard. When people want to gauge how quickly technological developments make it from launch to commercial success they often look at the speed through which they pass into the ‘majority’ phase – critical mass, where they get a life of their own. Read more »
(not a mall)
So, as I usually do, I’m typing this into my blackberry on my commute to work – Read more »
I’ve been thinking about the importance of points of transition, or ‘Gateways’, for advertisers, and the way they capture a consumer as they move from one activity and mental state to the next. These transition points we pass through every day could include getting off the overground train and jumping on the bus; driving home and switching on the TV; or reading a paper on the way to work then coming into the office and going online. Read more »
A little while ago I went to a screening of ‘Page One: Inside the New York Times’, organised by the paper’s international newspaper the International Herald Tribune. The documentary follows The New York Times’ media desk during a turbulent time in media and raises lots of important questions. Read more »
Why, Cooking With Gas? Well the ambition for my posts here is to champion great media thinking and bring you interesting ideas, innovations, some borrowed wisdom from the past and anecdotes from the world of media, marketing advertising and…cooking. Well when I say cooking I mainly mean restaurants.
I’m not the first to say it, but there are big similarities between the cooking and the comms trade. It’s not just the competitiveness, but the heat, expensive kit and mix of sociable people working unsociable hours. Both can also sometimes (when they get right) perform a kind of alchemy, taking base ingredients and turning them into something magical and transformative. Read more »
Haymarket © 1957 – 2012
