Category Archives: Influence

[Trend of the Week] – 5 reasons to get excited about Crowdfunding

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May 14, 2012

Welcome again to the second instalment of Trend of the Week. This week we’ll be looking at one of the hottest topics in creative circles – crowdfunding.

At its simplest, crowdfunding is about small businesses/projects replacing large VC investment with a larger number of small donations made online by strangers. Interest in the business model has been growing steadily for a while now and the word ‘crowdfunding’ was nominated for inclusion in the American edition of the English Oxford Diction in the summer last year.

Crowdfunding

There are already a huge number of crowdfunding sites out there. Kickstarter.com is the biggest site, but tens of specialist sites have started popping up for every creative area – CrowdRise, and Feed the Muse for music, 8-Bit Funding for games and www.authr.com for books, to name but a few.

Indeed, scarcely a week seems to go by without another crowdfunding platform launching.  This week was no exception with the news that crowdfunding site Flattr has partnered with Dailymotion to push crowdfunding for video projects.

Flattr is an interesting crowdfunding site in that it lets users sign up and set a personal monthly donation amount. Every time you click that little green button, the click gets logged. At the end of the month, your donation gets split between all the sites you clicked on. They might receive a few pence or a pound from you, depending on your number of clicks.

If things go well for Flattr, expect a buy out from Facebook and a “Really Like” button to be cropping up across the web in the near future…

 

5 Reasons why we should be excited about Crowdfunding:

1)      Crowdfunding means more innovative content and products for everyone – Sites such as Kickstarter have meant that projects that would never get off the ground are becoming realities. The Pebble Watch Kickstarter project was looking for $100,000 of funding, but has thus far accumulated a staggering $8,211,694!

 

2)      Fans can vote with their wallets – TV shows fail to get renewed, bands get dropped by their labels and sequels get cancelled… instead of just bitching about it on forums, crowdfunding gives fans the opportunity to do something about it. Imagine a world where Firefly gets dropped by Fox and its 4 million fans all respond by pre-ordering the box set for the next season. That’s a production no brainer.

 

3)      A Crowdfunded TV station? – The announcement that Channel 4 will be launching ‘4seven’ a catch-up station where the programming is decided based on social buzz around existing Channel 4 shows. The jury remains out on Zeebox’s impact on viewing figures, however Sky are certainly backing their newest social acquisition with a large marketing push. Is it so unlikely that we could see this social popularity contest taken one step further sometime in the near future?

 

4)      Crowdfunding doesn’t mean an end for old funding models - The rise of crowdfunding certainly doesn’t mean an end for the role of the programming commissioners or A&R men at record labels. There’s a reason that people “get lucky” consistently and social buzz isn’t always the best indicator of imminent quality content. How many times have fans been sourly disappointed with much-anticipated films – Super 8 anyone?!? The most exciting thing about crowdfunding is that it represents entirely new money into the creative world. This means more content for everyone which can only be a good thing.

 

5)      Crowdfunding isn’t going away - The economic climate means that crowdfunding or micro-investment offers a great option for both funders and people with great ideas. Declining government investment in art means that competition for public budgets will only increase in coming years. A poor economic outlook and low interest rates also mean people are looking for other ways to invest their money. Indeed, earlier this month Obama signed the “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act” into law designed to allow and encourage businesses to raise up to $1m from small investments through crowdfunding. If the president of the biggest economy in the world’s stamp of approval isn’t a sign of a bright future, I don’t know what is!

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Pretty in Print: Press Update

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May 11, 2012

Media experts have for the last 10 years speculated on print’s demise.  Print advertising spend is predicted to continue on its downward trend and circulations have  dropped by an average of 7.4 % in the last year alone.  It’s fair to say that such decline, plus the reality of a double dip recession, has not left the press market in a healthy place.

What is the future for print?

That said, there has been a glimmer of hope of late, with new titles and rumours of launches doing the rounds of the media landscape..

 

We saw the official launch of aMuse and the demi-launch of Scout, both free distributed weekly titles trying to capitalise on the success seen by Shortlist and Stylist, and to a lesser degree Sport Magazine and City AM (who are increasing their circulation by 30% in May to 130,000 copies).  The free model is certainly proving to be an attractive way of launching titles.

 

Also rumoured is the pending launch of a new Sunday tabloid chasing the 800,000 lost copy sales from lapsed Sunday tabloid readers who are still in limbo after the Sun on Sunday failed to regain their loyalty. Sue Douglas, the former Sunday Express editor, has joined forces in this venture with ex-ITV executive Rupert Howell as they try to raise funding to back the launch.

 

Another new title that is about to launch is the bizarrely titled Wonderpedia, a men’s magazine from Bauer which will try to capitalise on the success of Conde Nast’s (re)launched Wired Magazine.  The magazine will attempt to tap into the mindset that “curiosity is hardbaked into all of us”. This, coupled with the launch of LandScape in April, is another example of publishers who were previously better known for closing titles cautiously dipping their toes back into the water with new launches.

 

This proves that despite all the gloom, there is a sense of confidence returning in the print market.  We would even go one step further and say that unlike outdoor, newspapers and magazines can play to their strengths and print less pages whilst keeping the ad yield up.  As long as the readers don’t feel short changed by this everyone is a winner.

 

Strong brands with well managed pagination models along combined with a robust advertising yield policy can result in profitable print business.  A good thing for us all.

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London Likes? Dislikes? Follows? – Elects

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May 11, 2012

In a year of intense political and corporate scandal, both in the UK and abroad (DSK, the Euro, the London riots!), the London Mayor elections were surely expected to be the most actively participated to date.

The London Elections

Londoners had seen their streets burn and witnessed scenes which they believed were only possible in the politically unstable conflict zones of the Middle East.

 

Yes, election apathy has been a rising statistic ever since the high days of 1950 where 84% of us used our right to vote, reaching an all-time low of 59% in 2001, but there has been a post millennium rise, which has seen more voters take to the ballots (65% at last count), both nationally and for the London Mayor elections (although the record for the mayor elections is just 45%).

 

Now one could speculate that the rise in participation is a direct correlation with the new communications world, which gives more candidates the freedom to express their policies and opinions across more mediums, reaching even more people, how they want to be reached.  This is something that seemed to work for Obama, so surely what works in the US, can work anywhere?

 

Looking at the efforts from the main players shows that they recognised the benefits of the new mediums of communication. Along with leaflets which didn’t have the candidates’ names on them (Ken), and booklets received through the post late on the day of the elections, the internet and mobile were also used to varying degrees, though perhaps the biggest difference between the candidates could be found on Facebook, Twitter & YouTube.

 

While we know who ultimately won, how did their social campaigns fair, and did it matter?

 

First up Boris. He came into polling day with a buzzing community of 142k Facebook likes, 13k people ‘talking’ on Facebook, an army of 286k followers on Twitter, though only 52,232 views of his channel and manifesto video on YouTube, which balanced out more positive than negative with 176 likes to 131 dislikes. His tweets were always personal, and connected to relevant events such as St. Patrick’s Day and Vaisakhi. He also kept his tweets varied though limited in number, such that they stayed focussed and didn’t become spam. Facebook was similarly thorough, although his YouTube channel was fairly thin. Overall What’s Hot gives this campaign 8/10.

 

Ken’s stats were a comparably punitive 6,711 likes on Facebook, with 1.6k people talking there, only 24k Twitter followers, but a leading 91,322 channel views on YouTube. His Facebook page looked very lonely indeed, and exposed a man who clearly wasn’t at home on the social network, showing a low level of activity since becoming a member in 2009, and a sudden ramping of efforts in the run up to the elections. His twitter was run by a campaign team, so was not at all personal, and had far too many tweets (14 on 29th April) to engage with or to provide a focus on message. YouTube was where he won, although the numbers all-round showed a serious disinterest here. Ken sill loses marks for disabling comments and likes/dislikes, and for also producing a manifesto video that shared a near identical and hackneyed creative execution with Brian Paddick’s. Score 3/10.

 

So while What’s Hot’s social campaign scoring doesn’t completely reflect the closeness of the end result, what is clear is that social media is a powerful constructer of personality and image which are key attributes for an emotional bond.  So with 54% of Boris supporters giving “personality” as the reason (they like Boris or dislike Ken), and just 27% giving a “party” reason (they generally vote Tory or dislike Labour), social – while difficult to measure – is simply essential.

 

Another victory for emotional communications.

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ABC makes changes that allow newspapers to split Saturday and Weekday figures

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April 13, 2012

ABC Newspaper

After years of intrigue and speculation around newspaper circulations, it has finally been announced by the ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) that from April, Saturday figures will be separated from their Monday-Friday counterparts, which will continue to be reported on a grouped average. Whilst the positives of such a move have been mooted for many moons by both media owners and agencies alike, who will be the real winners?

It poses an interesting challenge and certainly media owners must be speculating on gains to be made. They will be fully aware that most retail clients want to be active in press towards the end of the week – with high street sales tending to increase day of or the day before events, such as Mother’s Day or Christmas. This is backed up by the recession trend for discounting early and the last minute affect is has on sales. The expectation is that when these figures are first released in May, Saturday figures will far exceed the weekday averages.

Looking at AdDynamix, it appears that the sectors most dependent upon Saturdays, and therefore potentially the biggest losers, are Travel & Transport, DIY & Household Goods, Mail Order, Entertainments and Telecomms, who currently have their highest spend by day situated on Saturday. These sectors use pops, mids, and qualities, so we expect the affect to be the same across all. However, advertisers like the big four supermarkets, who favour hitting the higher number circulating pops and mids may be more affected.

Of course, as with general audit figures, the frees are having a stormer. They will be unaffected as people will continue to commute Monday to Friday and they don’t publish at the weekend. We may see a trend towards press schedules flighted Monday-Friday in frees and Saturday’s in the paid for titles.

With the expectation that newspapers will push to increase Saturday rates off the back of this move, it seems they’ll have their cake and eat it. After all, papers have charged a premium to consumers for their Saturday editions for years now, this is an opportunity to doubly monetise on their Saturday offering from both consumers and advertisers alike.

Papers are already seeking to capitalise on this by beefing up their Saturday offerings, with the Independent announcing this week that from this Friday, the Arts and Books will cease to exist, the content instead being rolled into a Saturday supplement alongside their listings.

At What’s Hot, we do at least welcome the competition this should provide to the Guardian’s Saturday Guide which has until now had a relative monopoly on arts, culture and music in the Saturday supplement market. For some clients, when relevancy is more important than reach, midweek buys in specialist editorial may be what sustains the market.

What’s the future? Whilst the Sunday’s remain an option to escape expected Saturday price hikes, they cannot be the solution for advertisers wanting to hit the weekend. Clever agencies have always negotiated with a Thurs/ Fri/ Sat flex which allows more flexibility in pricing and stronger position. Typically, you would expect a high propensity of Saturdays using this method, which suggests that they have traditionally remained deflated in terms of advertising volume. This method should continue to perform for those retailers seeking to hit this audience, and for those prioritising Thurs/ Fri there should be some new found flexibility of pricing following expected drops in weekday averages.

We welcome this new degree of transparency and are looking forward to the challenges it brings.  As we move towards a daily circulation reporting strategy we only ask why the ABC didn’t go the whole hog and split Monday – Friday circulations. What’s left to hide?

 

 

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The Apple of My i

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March 16, 2012

Apple’s latest plan for world domination is the creation of iTV. This stands for interactive television – not to be confused with the UK’s ITV (Independent Television). iTV would exist on physical TV and through Apple TV, and would become the largest video distribution network in the world. This means that in Apple’s ideal future scenario, all pay-per-view content will be available to stream or download straight from an iTunes account.

However, in order to make this vision a reality, Apple needs the co-operation and compliance of TV broadcasters, who are nervous about Apple doing to the film industry what it did to the music industry ten years ago. Apple has particularly high margins, which riled publishers and record labels in the past, though of course, they eventually surrendered and agreed to sell their music on iTunes. iTunes is an unrivalled vehicle to 350million potential customers, without which, their artists would struggle to make a dent in the charts.

Now, it’s the turn of video content to be placed firmly in the spotlight as the public demand for more freedom and choice of pay-per-view viewing grows rapidly. If TV broadcasters had their way, they would keep total control of distribution for themselves and drive their viewers only to their own dedicated sites. However, luckily for the public, the internet doesn’t work that way. Users want easily accessible viewing content, with one ‘go to’ destination, and uncomplicated payment, much like – erm – iTunes.

With the success of Netflix on board Apple TV, it’s rumoured that Apple is now approaching various broadcasters to have their content at the finger tips of the iTunes customer – but broadcasters are currently resisting, due to Apple’s low offers for content. 

So, is there anyone who can offer up some competition to Apple in this space? Probably its biggest rival at the moment is Ultra Violet, a digital library of movies and TV shows which enables users to stream, download, and play discs across majority of devices.  The big difference is that Apple already has a user base, and Ultraviolet is starting from scratch.  Content providers are the key factor in deciding who will succeed, but of course, it makes more business sense to give the content to the provider with the largest user base, which can provide immediate revenue. 

An artist impression of Apple iTV

So, it would appear Apple has the upper hand. Looking back at Apple’s last ten years, it has done a rather amazing job of disrupting quite a few industries. Apple owns the Siri technology which will give the ability to iTunes users to command viewing by voice, and it has released EasyPay, technology which enables users to pay for in-store goods via their iTunes account from an internet enabled electronic device. Currently EasyPay is only available in US Apple stores – but one can imagine that it won’t be long before they attempt to roll this out. 

In terms of future-proofing the TV world, Apple is looking like the best candidate for partnership. The next challenge? Content providers will need to be savvy about how they make money out of these new channels and distribution points.

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This House Proposes…

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March 16, 2012

One of the more entertaining recent developments from Google YouTube is the ‘Versus’ series, a forum where celebrities debate various global issues. The series of debates is streamed live on YouTube, then discussed and debated in the Google+ page comment section. 

The first debate, titled “It’s time to end the war on drugs: Agree or Disagree” was clearly something that resonated with many celebs. The two sides of the debate – in simple terms – consisted of one side arguing that the war on drugs has failed, and needs to be scrapped to save the billions in wasted cash, and the counter that the war on drugs is working and just needs to be improved or modified.

The former group consisted of some impressive names, including businessman Sir Richard Branson, comedian and presenter Russell Brand and controversial journalist Johan Hari, as well as a large gang of hard hitting and high profile names. Arguing against them was a smaller group of similarly impressive brains, such as former MET commissioner Lord Blair and US lawyer and political commentator Eliot Spitzer.

Google collaborated with Intelligence2 to provide people with multiple avenues to participate and watch the event, giving Google the opportunity to showcase its ‘Hangout’ feature on its social network. This is the feature which has also been used recently during public interviews with President Obama and David Beckham, and gives the public the opportunity to engage and ask questions. Adding to the excitement, YouTube’s Live feature was also used so people could watch the debate and follow its progress.

Finally, we ‘ordinary people’ were asked to vote on which side of the argument they were persuaded by after the live show, through the YouTube channel. After voting, people were directed to the Google+ page to continue the debate and spark discussions.

Google’s official line is that forum is a way “for Web users anywhere to have a share of voice, and for that voice to be heard by the world.” What’s Hot thinks that the use of multiple social media to channel users through a content funnel from YouTube to Google+ is an effective way of making content more engaging and efficient. The results from the war on drugs debate have proven that the system is pretty successful, with lots of discussions sparked and votes made on the day.

Anything that gets people talking and debating can only be a good thing – it’s rare that the public actually gets a share of the voice when it comes to big issues today. Of course, this is essentially a commercial move by Google to get people signed up to its new services, but it could actually help make changes for the better.

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To Kony or Not to Kony?

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March 16, 2012

It exploded with over 100m video views in just six days, lighting up every corner of the world with the story of Kony the evil warlord, and the campaign to make him famous. Measured on the rate of views, this is now the most successful viral video ever, surpassing the likes of Susan Boyle, Lady Gaga and even the Bieber.

 

On the face of it, this was a wonderful story for humankind. Finally, a real issue seemed to create a greater emotional connection than laughing babies or falling cats. Haters, doubters, cynics, Republicans and Bieber fans alike uniting to fight an epic battle against KONY.  However, its success followed controversy.

 

Whether you are of the belief the video was Good, Bad or Ugly, what’s certainly clear is that we can all learn something from this emotionally draining campaign.

•A simple story told with great execution goes a very long way. The story told here wasn’t that great – or entirely true – but through its exceptional execution and delivery, people believed it, became part of it, and shared it.
•Think about the consequences of your campaigns. The campaign had a fundamental lack of good insight. Asking people to make someone evil famous could have catastrophic consequences, particularly if the person is assumed to be dead or in hiding, and support for them waned a long time ago.
•Transparency is the new (much welcomed) reality. Whether you like it or not, with fame comes transparency – on both sides. Invisible Children spends less than 31% of its income on actually helping people in Uganda, and spends far much more on simple things like computer equipment ($751,000) and furniture and fixtures ($45,361). Probably not figures they expected – or wanted – to see broadcast.
•If in doubt, doubt everything. No one wants to be spammed or hoodwinked by anyone, let alone a friend or brand they trust. Be a filter of quality, not just the kid in the playground spreading all the gossip. Do a degree of research before socially backing such big issues.
•Slacktivism is not just an issue for campaigners. Ironically, much of the anger here is directed to those who have supported this and sent it on without questioning it, or going even further, beyond the click. In the new social world, people can mistakenly believe that sharing a link is doing enough, no matter what the issue is.  Similarly brands can falsely believe that more ‘likes’ mean more sales. Don’t be fooled in by Brand Slacktivism.
•Nothing is more powerful than an idea. Apart from a better idea. The opening statement in the video pays tribute to ideas, but ignores the elements that set ideas apart. Spending less on computers and staff and giving more to education and food programmes, or making a documentary and showing both sides, are all strategic choices and options, and some are harder decisions to make than others. Yet some are simple. Making KONY famous is an idea. Making KONY infamous would have been an even better idea.
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Shop Around

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December 2, 2011


The rise of the internet has triggered a battle between the bricks and mortar retailers versus those with purely online offerings. Many High Street brands have invested heavily in ecommerce to compete with the internet behemoths such as Amazon and iTunes, and help bolster sales.

But the traffic isn’t all one way. Previously pure player internet retailers are launching multi-channel initiatives. This week Ebay opened its first physical space in the UK, designed to represent a cosy home, with items QR coded for smartphone users to scan and buy.

Now more than ever, retailers are seeking to blur the distinction by merging online and offline, with Paypal predicting that any remaining boundaries will shortly disappear.

Another company at the forefront of change is John Lewis, which is running a trial at its Brighton Waitrose store. The company has turned store window into a display which allows shoppers to use QR codes and their smartphones to link to order from the retailer’s ‘Top 30 Favourite Things for Christmas’ list and collect at the Waitrose branch the next day. This merging of the two worlds is well executed, offering shoppers the key USPs of online and offline retailing whilst ultimately driving traffic in store as point of collection.

Both QR and even straight barcodes on voucher promotions are now common, as retailers seek to replicate the speed and ease of online shopping in a physical environment.

Another innovation is cashless payment. Paypal reckons mobile handsets will become a preferred method of payment over the next five years as smartphone penetration grows. This follows the launch of the Pizza Express iPhone app that allows UK customers to pay using their smartphone, and Starbucks’ High Street first, an iPhone mobile app payment system. Debenhams is apparently considering trialling a similar system next year to attract younger customers, and House of Fraser also says mobile cashless payment will be introduced in the future.

While gaining consumer trust and being able to make the system foolproof are big hurdles to overcome, the consensus is that cashless payment is a question of “when” as opposed to “if”. And as the economy wallows, wise retailers will be considering this, and every other way to make it easier for customers to buy.

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