furtherandfaster

call me stupid? - O2's rubbish service

I've been breaking in my new mobile a Noka N95 - clever little thing with GPS, Wifi, bluetooth - exchange server links so I get updates of my emails and contacts every 10 minutes via my wifi network. Only it can't make a full working day on a single charge. A little strange considering the standby time is reported on O2's site up to 240 hours and 4 hours of solid talking. So I call the O2 branded dealer where I bought it - nothing to do with us they say - talk to Nokia. But you're the retailer - then talk to O2 they said. O2 on the phone were adamant that it was down to the dealer in the store. Go down to the store and call us and we'll tell them they have to deal with you.  I used the magic phrase 'trading standards' to no effect . Time for a round robin to try and get some action - where else can I go but trading standards and a letter to the MD. Bizarre that both the dealer and the O2's service person told me that the phone is rubbish and no one can get a full day of charge on it. But still nothing to do with them. This is going to cost O2 money. Foisting off customers by explaining that the product doesn't perform as advertised for any of their customers doesn't make the problem go away.

Is the Content Economy going into depression?

As I walked out of HMV yesterday I had a bit of a jolt - complete works of Yes Minister on sale for £15. Which I didn't snap up because my hands were already full of DVDs. Its not yet Christmas but the stores are panicking and marking down stock to get us to buy. There's talk of an economic recession. But what gave me pause for thought was that we now have a content economy. Back home I have weeks of DVDs to watch - back content on video. And the chance to download or rent online. PPV movies on over a dozen channels on my TV. And last night I watched 2 BBC programmes which I had missed earlier with Iplayer. What happens when I simply lose my appetite for any more? Cost isn't the issue. Most of this content costs virtually nothing to produce and distribute - its all back catalogue. We need to factor in the content economy which is heading for a slump. Will we want ringtones, CDs, books at the same rate constantly - will we respond to brand and promotional push and WOM pull? Not at a constant rate. We've had a credit boom - we're coming to the end of a content boom. And mostly we don't have to pay for it. There's enough content in my friends houses to keep me happy. If I'm worried about money I can always stop - and I won't be going without.

Data culture 2.0

My son took me on his Halo web page today. He plays it on the Xbox 360 but all of his stats are accessible via the bungie.net website.  On there among other things is a database of every online game of Halo3 he has ever played. Plus a map which shows how many of his buddies are online so he can decide whether to go online and challenge them. He can store movies of his best games as souvenirs for sharing and screenshots for wallpapers for PC or phone. Most interesting to me were the heatmaps - these are charts which show how he has played the game - they can be viewed by weapon so you can see how much he uses each weapon, how effectively he uses it and critically which locations he tends to use which weapon. Now this information is available to his opponents also. A huge security hole - the diagnostics aren't primarily for your benefit but for those who can research how most easily to wipe you out!

This it seems to me is really interesting because it shows how ambivalent our use of data is.  While an older generation worry about privacy what is much more interesting is what people do with the data they can get access to. We're not nearly as worried about who has the data as we think we are.  I must have had at least 15 fraudulent emails today trying to cheat me out of money - I ignore them.  In the last couple of days I have been asked to join the Spock verification network - so I did because I trusted the source - and forwarded it to a lot of people. Only one asked me what it was and whether it was a scam. Most have joined without objection presumably because they trust me.  Why are we doing it? Because we're interested to see what will happen. This is data as improvisation - my son is working on the basis that this information sharing makes the game more interesting. If he is beaten all the time then he will no longer play the game. Sharing more informatino increases the interest of the game.  This is network thinking with a vengeance.

When the pachinko parlours in Japan put the details of every single machine on the internet with the frequency of pay out, the amount of the payout and the date of the last pay out the amount gambled increased dramatically - even if there was really no evidence that more information made it easier to win - it just made it more fun to play. Data is content - if it is handled well enough - and a lot cheaper than storytelling - the users can supply the narrative themselves.

Any room at the Travel Inn

Travel Inn are offering free accommodation to any couple called Joseph and Mary. Apparently they don't have to be married. So far so good and a good PR story for the festive season. But set a challenge like this and you just know that a journo is going to try to pick holes in it. And holes there are. Apparently the happy couple can't get the accomodation unless they are resident in the OK and have an email address. Clearly the Holy Family are going to struggle to fit these criteria. But the last caveat was the best.... subject to availability - that old excuse - looks like they'll be headed for the stable then!

This is good example of a PR story which will work even if there are holes in it because it is interesting and although I had to think a little harder about which brand was behind it I knew the word Inn was a good reference point.

003

I was reading Stephen King's tome on the way into London this morning and read Stan Pollitt's paper on how he started account planning first at Pritchard and Wood. When he explains how he hired a planning manager and a couple of graduates. One of them was a familiar name - David Cowan who I had spoken to at the last marketing conference. I have a memory for names this far back. But if I hadn't recognised the name the description of what he did is a classic giveaway of someone with a planning mentality.  A number of people have written about the planner as a detective most recetly John Shaw and Rory Sutherland about the first 48 hours of an investigation and how critical it is to do the forensic work as soon as possible.  But the role of planner as the private detective or solo operative is a good one - often working alone - using hunches and making connections which an entire police force couldn't sanction and would lose because too many people were involved. As I got off the train I realised that I had met 003 - licensed to plan one of the very first!

Web 2.0 conference MRS

Honestly - you pay to attend a conference then have only enough time to spend 90 minutes there - collect the book of presentations and go - but it was worth it. This is the 4th event I have attended this year on Internet Research - I have a course on online reasearch to write for early next year so I neeed to know my stuff and I need to know what casestudy material is available. Catriona Campbell was very good on usability and how to optimse websites with a range of usability techniques.  I caught up briefly with Mario Menti from GMI and talked about the use of 3rd party plug ins on Facebook as a research technique. Then it was time to run for the train. I had groups to do in the evening in St Albans.

What happened next

I had a meeting at Intercontinental hotels with Nick Barton who I hadn't seen since I had debriefed a European project on the future of Holiday Inns nearly 2 years ago. It was a hectic 6 week chase around Europe to do a 3 country study. And I met the Director of Marketing  and the new Director of Research and insight. It was a mutual catch up - I told them what I had been up to. And they told me what they had done with the research we had done for them.  This almost never happens and it is such a pleasure to find that a piece of work that has taken a chunk of one's life has been used well and repeatedly within an organisation. The new concept had even been put into a piece of print so I have a souvenir! Thoroughly satisfying. Full marks to them and can I urge every client reading this to do the same. It really gives the researchers the motivation to work even harder next time if they can be confident that their work will really make a difference.

Spring/Mesh Christmas Party

This evening was the closest to an office party I get this Christmas courtesy of Spring/Mesh Steve Fiona and Doug who have invited their clients and also a few mates along too. Most generous and I appreciate it!  It also gave us a chance to talk briefly about the plans for a research fringe at the MRS conference next March in London.

I caught up with Mat Coombes of WARC who told me they are just about to appoint their first editor - a classic instance of a brand which is all about information deciding to become opinionated. I think within a decade most brands will appoint a similar editor whatever business they happen to be in. For brands to be only interested in their category and themselves is very very dull. Opinion costs very little and if there is no mass audience to offend it isn't half as risky as most marketers fear.  You don't have to agree with a brand to buy it - but having an opinion makes you more interesting. There's a piece of bad news thought. You can't hire an agency supplier to choose your opinions for you. You have to do it yourself and stick to your opinions.  It is a lot cheaper than advertising and gets you a lot more attention.

Mark Earls turned up also - he only lives about 10 minutes walk away.  We haven't had a chance to shoot the breeze for a good six months - during which time his ideas about herd thinking have moved on - so I got an upgrade - we plan to put another interview on the site but since it took me the best part of 6 months to get the first one up and running don't rush at once - I'll let you know when I have it.

Proximity

Dropped in on Mark Hancock and the planning posse at Proximity - we wound up in the pub around the corner. It was the start of an evening's drinking so my memory is suitbly hazy but I know that waggledancing was discussed - a theme I shall return to in the new year when I rework the site. Bees are coming to the fore. There's even a B movie coming out all about bees so I'm sure to be accused of pagiarism. Well I'm not it has to be a zeitgeist thing!

OK computer

2007 has been an awful year in my household for computers. We have reformatted 3. And spent countless hours sorting out software and getting the different bits of the network to talk to each other.  I've gone onto an exchange server which means that there is always a copy of my contacts, emails and calendar sitting somewhere in the midwest of the USA in case something happens to the computer at home. This had to be updated to Outlook 2007 and this required an entire upload myself. The only consolation is that now it is done it shouldn't need repeating for a couple of years and my (new) mobile phone collects all the same data of wifi everytime I switch it on. So I have a single dataset.  I SOO hope that we get to 2008 on an even keel with no more IT gremlins viruses and all the paraphernalia. One reason I love the film Dark Star is that it was made at the same time as the first Star Wars film and addresses the realities of nothing working properly on a spaceship. Luke Skywalker never had to contend with spam and viruses.

Price ledging

I went to the optician today and was told I had to start wearing glasses. Oh dear - I wore glasses for driving about 15 years ago then found I didn't need them any more. Now I need them for distance and for close up so the opticians were rubbing their hands with glee - trifocals no less.  Of course its a multiple choice decision and every extra costs you extra money. In theory glasses are free on the National Health Service but really they're not.

I watched as they moved me up to flashy designer frames then offered to half the thickness of the lenses. Then insure them. Then I had 3 types of lenses silver gold and platinum. Plus a special antiglare coating. And a spare pair thrown in for nothing unless I wanted to have a trifocal lense in those as well.  If you're trying to get people to spend money you need to keep the rate of climb even. Those with far too much money will go straight to the top of the range so the more even the climb at the higher levels the more easily they will climb. Those without enough money will give up quite quickly - these are just glasses after all. You could sit on them by mistake tomorrow.  The really interesting part was in the upper middle range. I wasn't going to pay top dollar on principle. But then I found that if  I went for the gold lenses plus the coating then for an extra fiver they would throw the thinner lenses in for free. I had beaten the system - so I settled happily for the offer.  Of course what they had done was to put in a pricing ledge where there appeared to be extra benefits. That way I had the psychological benefit of having got a deal. I was still spending a pile of money I hadn't expected to spend.

Pricing ledges are important if the customer is trying to find a place halfway up and doesn't want to get to the top. I might start to waste time going through more options. I might even go away and think about it. I was convinced that the price ledge I had discovered was one where a lot of other people purchased and we were meant to end up there. 

Advent day 1 calendars to die for

I was on the Ship of Fools website - which is devoted to religious satire. And found this gem just in time for those of you thinking of advent calendars or ordering calendars for 2008. A calendar with a difference targeted at lusty Italian morticians.  The trouble with fiction (and satire) is that reality is usually a lot funnier.  My favourites are February and April - but remember its not about the girls. Which casket titillates you most? Unbelievable. Rush your orders in.

Obsession

I was driving past a nondescript farm on the A10 north of Royston and  saw a sign offering dolls furniture. What I found inside stunned me. Room after room of houses, furniture, kits and dolls. The internet is the main refuge for obsessives these days  but it was a treat and a half to see this in the real world with a detail that can't be matched on the web. My photos didn't come out particular well but I hope you can spot the FMCH packaging which was about the size of a thumb nail plus the advertising posters.  Quite extraordinary and each selling for  a few euros. I didn't take a picture of the satellite dishes but you can see the photocopier and the vending machine. I think there's a cashtill if you look hard enough.  I really don't have a thing about dolls houses but I'll readily give half an hour of my life to enjoy somebody else's obsession.