Digigen & The TinMan

Thanks for the Usage

I was recently reading an article by Chip and Dan Heath within Fast Company. This is a normal occurence as an avid monthly reader of the magazine. I don’t always agree with everything they say, quite often I feel they don’t go far enough. However, a recent post from them about “Switch” got me thinking about how brands can really use communities by brandsourcing into the community. » Read the rest of this entry «

Two pieces of information have crossed my desk over the last few days. The first one was a chart taken from the guys over at The Relationship Economy, which is below. There is a good write up of what this means over at the relationship-economy blog. (link here) My take on it is that the boom of the internet which has been powered by free services (Google, YouTube), has been even more amplified by its underpolicing and the ability for any user to take any domain name. I am in fact guity of this with about 10 domain names unused to my name. The relative cheap costs of setting up, hosting, and running a domain have spawned new entreprise from both legal and illegal entrepreneurs – genuine businesses and domain squatters. This has led to the boom in hostnames highlighted below and the ever growing difference between hostnames and Active names.

The second piece of information that has crossed my desk is in relation to the removal of latin only URLs. The basics are that all URLs use latin alphabet e.g a to z. The changes from ICANN will mean that any alphabet can be used to create domain names suffixes. (Surely in part due to the boom in China of internet usage over the past 2-3 years and the need for a better way of using the internet).

“The change, which will come into effect in November, relates to the portion of an internet address that follows the final or penultimate full stop. At present, users in countries such as Russia, Japan and China are free to type in the main body of an internet address in their own languages, but must then revert to Roman script to add suffixes such as “.ru”, “.co.jp” or “.cn”.

From November, suffixes written in a user’s native language will for the first time be translated into simple (ascii) characters that can be read by a computer.

“This change will have a great impact in opening up the internet to a wider audience,” Phil Kingsland of Nominet, the national registry for .uk domain names. “It will reduce existing complications and barriers to direct online access.””

ICANN believe this will broaden internet usage from 1.5bn to 5bn once the changes are implemented. However, for more frequent internet users its probably been awhile since you actually typed in a full domain name and worried about the suffix e.g. is it .co.uk or .com? Therefore, the changes aren’t probably particularly big.

Also, the changes only affect particular countries and as they don’t affect the whole domain URL, just the suffix, are they actually that big a deal. This is especially the case when users have to switch from one alphabet to the other just simply to fill in .xx or .yy.
It will be interesting to see how this develops, but I can’t see it causing massive issues and certainly I don’t think it is going to be a driver for an additional 3.5bn internet users. The only thing that will do this is cheaper computers and better developing world access to faster broadband, something that even ICANN can do nothing about. Finally, it certainly won’t reduce the number of squatters which I believe ICANN have more of a role in than anything else.

Although this is applied to brands, I figure the same could be applied personally. The internet is rightly orientated to openess and transparency. More and more brands know this, more and more are acting on this. Yet there are some stragglers who simply don’t step up to this paradigm shift in consumer behaviour and ownership. Nevertheless its important for brands to follow some simple steps….

1) Don’t try to do too much. Focus on the key areas which will help your brand, support its key attributes, and not alienate the audience you have worked all your career to grow. What I mean by this, if its not clear, is start by focusing on the areas you know your consumers will be in and great open avenues direct to your brand from here.

2) Create great content experiences. Content is a really powerful way of creating a stronger brand interaction with your consumers. I believe its alot more valuable than advertising. Deliver great content relevant to your brand, you may be suprised how much content you actually have that people want.

3) Constantly monitor social media. Don’t just dip in and out of social media. Can’t afford a decent monitoring tool? Well, there are plenty out there who are free or will give you a free test so you can see the value yourself. Want some recommendations? contact me.

4) Respond in the right and agreed way. Agree a tone of voice and point of view for your company. Zappos are brilliant at this. Whole Foods are decent at this. Having different people from different parts of the company talking in different ways about the same thing is just going to make your company look slightly dumb. Your point of view and tone of voice should be based on what you have heard from point 3 and what your company stands for.

5) Open yourself up to reviews. Let consumers review everything you do. From first point of contact to delivery. Get them to review your brand logo, your brand identity, your company report, your products, your staff. The more involved you get the consumer, the more you can learn, the more you can improve your reputation.

All in all, it isn’t that difficult to manage your reputation. However, it does take time and you need to make sure you are “always on”. I hope it works out for you.

The Conservatives are a shameless bunch. Having changed their logo to showcase their greener side, which seems to amount to David Cameron cycling to work, they have now launched their new community platform. Woohoo.

Clearly, copied/borrowed/stolen from the mybarackobama.com, the Conservatives have decided to call it…. myconservatives.com. However, MyBarackObama was reguarly shortened to myBO.com, which I presume means myconservatives.com will be shortenend to mycons.com. A rather appropriate shortenting I think.

I like the fact that the Conservatives are adopting a very digital approach, but it would be nice to have at least some of their own thinking. Look out for:

- David’s Tweet Ups
- “I’m Supporting the Cons” badges
- Remixes of The Blue Flag

Can’t wait.

A new series from me, kicked-off with a really exciting new product design/manufacturing/distribution company, Zazzle. Billed in Fast Company as the potential new “Amazon of custom goods” Zazzle is a really exciting company to have a look at. One of the problems I feel sometimes with projects I work on is that we often ask companies to customise a product, create a new product etc. However, clearly for clients this does cause issues, they can’t just flip the switch on a machine and get it to create something slightly different. My gut feeling is that Zazzle could provide this service to these companies at a fraction of the cost.

Although it seems pretty basic on the face of it, zazzle.co.uk, there is plenty of potential depth to the site and opportunities. Keds is the first obvious example, although Disney were actually the first brand to use the company. Keds allows shoppers to customise all elements of their shoe to give every single customer their own unique shoe. “Zazzle integrated both software and hardware into their factory in China”. There is clearly a massive commitment from Zazzle to make this work, something that all potential retailers/manufacturers could think about.

I see a number of different ways brands could use this, here are some of them:

1) Creating customisable prizes to competitions. Imagine Little Big Planet allowing customers to design a new character and then the one which is most voted is turned into a vinyl toy. Little Big Planet could then go on to sell this in stores like Magma and Forbidden Planet.

2) Creating customsied, campaigning t-shirts. Giving consumers who participate in a campaign the opportunity to print their own tshirts based on numerous designs. This could have been perfect for something like T-Mobile Trafalger Square where all users could have customised t-shirts to say “I was there”

3) Customised products. We talk alot about co-creation, but often brands treat it as a nice to do and don’t follow through. The Zazzle platform would allow brands to truly co-create and customise with consumers. I see it being pretty efficient as well.

p.s. you can order that t-shirt here on Zazzle

http://www.zazzle.co.uk/digigen_youve_read_the_blog_now_get_the_shirt-235530760484313059