Digigen & The TinMan

In the campaigns and social media programmes I have run for clients there have been alot of barriers that have been raised to engaging or testing these areas. The majority of clients know they need to be there and want to be there but raise barriers to entry. However, I believe these barriers can be classified into two areas:

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Thanks to Superboy on the Edge on Flickr

Let’s cut to the chase. I want a Nexus One. I’m even prepared to pay for it, which I have never done with a phone before. I even sold my old phone to pay for it. Desperation clearly to have this phone in my palm. However, having just tried to figure out how to order one for the UK market I “stumbled” upon the following forum feed. Link Here.

Unsuprisingly the ordering of the Nexus One is throwing up loads of problems, especially for UK consumers. The information on the site isn’t clear if you are coming from the UK, especially as to whether it will work with certain providers. The ordering is another matter altogether with huge problems for most people trying to order the phone.

Most complaints seem to be about “credit card declined”, which actually appears to be a Google Checkout problem. Quite a few people have waited 18 hours+ for a response from Google with little help in between.

Digigen Comment:

You would have thought Google would have thought of these problems ahead of time and put proper risk structures in place to advert immediate negative ill feeling. I don’t remember this happening to Apple before, but perhaps that is because Apple is such a good retailer anyway that these channels had been open for awhile.

At 7.13am this morning, the Health Ministers Select Committee decided to wage war on alocohol advertising. (link here) The call for a pre-9pm ban on alcohol advertising seems to make sense to me although you could argue that many news stories and newspapers carry more messages about alcohol advertising throughout the day. Nevertheless, the ban is designed to inflict an effect on the “quantity” of advertising not the actual message. This isn’t suprising given I covered Budwesier’s recent “aspirational” £1m campaign which was everywhere including the IMAX Cinema at Waterloo, which has daily school’s showings of films.

It isn’t limited to traditional routes to market however, as ministers have turned on social networking sites in a bid to completely remove alcohol advertising from these channels. » Read the rest of this entry «

Wow. So the world is going crazy for the Nexus One or the Google Phone or the Google Nexus One. Whatever. The phone looks fantastic and without a contract can be purchased for $529 from here. The site itself is a fantastically rendered image of what the phone could look like in 3D…. very smooth, very cool.

Anyway, I thought I would look at search trends over the last 30 days for these two phones. The chart is below.

The chart itself is pretty interesting on two fronts:

1) When the peak for Nexus One overtakes the Google Phone. From the majority of the period pre-announcement that Google are going to produce a phone as highlighted in PC World and other areas is taken up by Google Phone. Nexus One takes over end of December as interest rises in the phone and the name is confirmed, discussed and questionned in forums. My feeling is that most users would be referring to it as the “Google Phone” but Google’s own trends suggest that people are really searching for “Nexus One”.

2) It highlights the need to kick off seeding early. In alot of cases of new product launches, the release is seen to be the key event. Meaning that all effort goes into this launch. However, this chart shows that if you start early you can almost double the level of interest in the product by seeding out content and engaging in conversations.

Digigen Comment:

Start seeding early for all product launches… tv shows, movie releases, product launches. Don’t wait for people to pick up on conversations happening in forums, engage in these areas way in advance and you will reap the rewards further down the line.

“Its about how companies can use social media to revitalise and revolutionise the creation, dissemination and exploration of knowledge within their teams/across their teams”

In 1995, the Harvard Business Review published a book written by Ikujiro Nonata/Hirotaka Takeuchi called “The Knowledge Creating Company”. This was based on a white paper which highlighted the differences in the way that Western and Japanese companies approach innovation. I recently stumbled upon this whilst browsing in Foyle’s Book store as HBR have started publishing smaller abridged versions of these books.

The thinking within the book is something that I found engaging and also massively relevant to a modern digital audience, so I will share now. » Read the rest of this entry «