Don’t say I didn’t warn you… banking on your mobile phone, not for me
June
25
Security Researchers Uncover The Tools Governments Use To Spy On Our Phones
posted by Mike O'Brien
March
14
Optimise every moment – shedding light on the customer journey
posted by Mike O'Brien
It’s getting more difficult to defend yourself form the competition As we move deeper into the age of the constantly connected customer, mapping the customer journey against the tried and tested buyer behaviour model has become increasingly desirable and difficult in equal measure. As the number of touchpoints expands, so too does the degree of […]
March
09
Shift attacks Salesforce, Adobe with ‘open marketing cloud,’ an app store for digital marketing tools
posted by Mike O'Brien
If this works, it is going to be huge
March
08
Tsar Wars – big agency v plucky client
posted by Mike O'Brien
The battle for control between agencies and clients draws near In a galaxy not far, far away: Brand Activation, Content Marketing, Automation, Accountability and Client Training are about to do battle on an epic scale for control of the marketing and communication industry. The shape of the relationship between clients and agencies is about to undergo […]
February
10
A viral campaign that really pushes my button
posted by Mike O'Brien
You are walking down the street when you spot a big red button sitting in the middle of the square where nothing ever happens. You walk over and in a fit of idle curiosity you push the button. What follows is nothing short of mind-blowing… What this viral ad proves is that the TV station […]
February
10
Angry Birds meets Mad Men – in a polymathic nutshell of useful agile responsivness
posted by Mike O'Brien
Angry Birds meets Mad Men – it’s the new me but a lot more useful than I used to be. After 34 years in brand, direct and digital marketing I am unashamedly addicted to all things digital, demonstrably media-neutral, obsessively customer-centric, passionate about lecturing and ready with a collection of brand agency stories that would […]
February
07
Remote Controlled Robots To Roam Tate Britain Gallery After Hours So Web Users Can Peek At The Art
posted by Mike O'Brien
Can they do it in the National Portrait Gallery – seeing the faces in a new light will be amazing
February
07
Why did Google dig deep into its pockets to buy DeepMind?
posted by Mike O'Brien
Will DeepMind terminate poor display advertising? The merger of digital and physical worlds appears to have drawn a little closer when Google bought into the the UK start-up DeepMind, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence company founded by 37-year-old neuroscientist Demis Hassabis and fellow scientists, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman. DeepMind was founded to combine the best techniques from machine […]
February
06
Hands up all those who think the age of crowdsourcing is at hand?
posted by Mike O'Brien
Tapping up the endless funding resource E pluribus Unum (from the many, one) is the motto of the United States of America. How appropriate then that a couple of American editors for Wired Magazine, Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson, should be the first to conjure up the now familiar phrase ‘crowdsourcing’ way back in 2005. […]
February
03
Rightware delivers benchmark tool to identify the fastest smartphones and tablets
posted by Mike O'Brien
Like all good ideas – Basemark X is focused on being useful to customers
January
29
It’s time to take sides in the fight against wasted digital spend.
posted by Mike O'Brien
It’s hard to be confident when you are not sure what you are doing A recent survey by Adobe highlighted the fact that only 48% of the professionals working in marketing had any confidence in their ability to: A. Reach the right audience – too many options? B. Reach the audience efficiently – too much […]
January
22
Hi my name is Mike and I am an insight infoholic.
posted by Mike O'Brien
How well do you know your customers? Developing deep, actionable insight into the world of customers is fraught with difficulty for small businesses. Those huge databases chock full of accurate, well classified and richly segmented collations of relevant data sets will forever be in our hearts but not within reach of our budgets. So do […]
January
17
Great creative meets customer service meets content meets shock and awesome
posted by Mike O'Brien
It’s a minor miracle. Mind blowing creativity that took the whole business and a plane load of customers to deliver the big idea. Right up there with Avis We try Harder in my books. I read a covering article in which the marketing pundit asked, “It’s all very well, but will it sell seats?” You […]
January
13
Looking for the constantly lost and found consumer
posted by Mike O'Brien
They’re out there somewhere. Whatever the consumer journey, there are only two points of easily understood significance: the moment they first register on our radar and the moment they actually take action to close the deal. The interval between can be measured in Nano-seconds or take years. (I have a client that works on prospects […]
January
11
Latest insights from the leading global information services company
posted by Mike O'Brien
Latest insights from the leading global information services company Yet more free information. Their consumer database holds information on 45 million UK customers. They hold marketing lifestyle data on 49.7 million individuals in the UK, including 33 million email address and 20 million mobiles. They already know what you would love to know about your customers.
January
10
Semi-sentient avatars and my optimised digital marketing fantasy.
posted by Mike O'Brien
Life will never be the same. I miss the visionary novels of the one and only Ian M Banks. His mind-blowing Culture novels make me feel pessimistic and optimistic in equal measure. While artificial intelligence seems to have peaked at robot soccer tournaments; data, search, social and mobile stand on the verge of morphing into […]
January
09
comScore Digital Whitepaper archive
posted by Mike O'Brien
comScore Digital Whitepaper archive Free information at your fingertips. comScore measures what people do as they navigate the digital world – and turns that information into insights and actions for their clients to maximize the value of their digital investments. Trust me, the insights they churn out are incredible. comScore captures over 1.5 Trillion interactions every […]
January
08
Even the longest journey starts with a single leap into the unknown
posted by Mike O'Brien
Falling for brand advertising. I started out over 30 years ago in brand advertising creating TV, press, poster and radio campaigns in the age of mass marketing, when the madmen of Madison Avenue arrived in London. (The concept was everything and the needs, wants and desires of the target audience were of little consequence.) Relating […]
January
07
Cutting the Big Data house of cards down to size
posted by Mike O'Brien
The Big Data equals big capital expenditure lobby has had marketing journalists reaching for ever more hyperbolic factoids about data. A couple of my favourite examples are: “90% of the data in the world was produced in the last two years” (OMG!) and, “More than 2 billion videos were watched online in the last 24 […]
January
06
Strongbow has the bottle to use an RFID chip
posted by Mike O'Brien
In think Strongbow’s Earn it Campaign is great – I wish I had the bottle for the Stand Up Challenge – but this idea to use the bottle cap to trigger events in their new “Starter’ campaign that is rolling out across Europe is a great example of the way the physical and digital worlds […]
December
30
It’s time for Digital to become the marketing thought leader
posted by Mike O'Brien
Digital is beginning to take centre stage in the advertising and marketing process. Where brand advertising creates awareness, digital shapes preference and conversion. Where direct marketing builds customer relationships, digital expedites the process in real time. Resistance from the vested interests of channel-focused silos will soon be swept away by customer preference for the sheer utility […]
December
22
From one way traffic to interpersonal traffic with VW
posted by Mike O'Brien
I love this linear commercial for VW. It’s called 30 years in the making and it shows the changing life of the manufacturers working on the car’s design and production over the lifespan of the car. It’s a perfect example of linear communication. The brand speaks. Tells us a brand-centric story about it’s own narrative […]
December
18
It’s the experience not the budget or the channel that counts
posted by Mike O'Brien
Thinking outside the silo As the age of blow it all on TV marketing driven by the silo-centric interests of mega agency networks sputters in and out of temporal existence, I notice a worrying trend: rumour has it that mobile advertising is set to reap the budgetary fallout. Didn’t we go through this a few years back when TV […]
December
18
It’s briefing Jim but not as we know it
posted by Mike O'Brien
In search of a little mojo I was recently tasked with the job of helping a major mobile phone company rediscover their briefing mojo. The core of this kind of mission is not to underestimate, berate or patronise the group you are working with. Most clients and agencies still work on the basis of … “If […]
December
05
Digital Marketing redefined
posted by Mike O'Brien
In search of a definition I have been working on a Module for an online course which had me scrabbling around for a succinct one-liner describing digital marketing. First time of note is that finding anything outside of Wiki’s version is nigh on impossible. The next issue is the fact that those who bother to […]
December
04
Google+ adds up by helping reduce your social footprint
posted by Mike O'Brien
Can less really be more? Reduce your social footprint? How counter-intuitive is that to the current zeitgeist? Well to borrow from creative guru John Hegarty and his Levis campaigns of 1982: “When the world zigs, zag.” Perhaps we need to reconsider our obsession with numbers and consider meaningful relationships. This notion is at the heart […]
November
29
Too young to write briefs for an ageing population
posted by Mike O'Brien
A new twist on an old problem. When I see client and agency teams struggling to get a brief together or push work out the door that is actually irrelevant to the target audience, I am reminded that I too was once young. While a lack of audience segmentation is often at the root of poor […]
November
26
Why market when you can UnMarket?
posted by Mike O'Brien
Calling time on the old rule book. Scott Stratten is President of UnMarketing and is, demonstrably, an expert in social engagement. What constitutes the title “Expert in the field?” His client’s viral marketing videos have been viewed over 60 million times. More importantly, his book, Unmarketing – Stop Marketing. Start Engaging (Revised and updated edition), […]
November
23
The future is faster than one click
posted by Mike O'Brien
I am deep in the thought-provoking book, One~Click – Jeff Bezos and the rise of amazon.com. by Richard L. Brandt. It is an engaging read that goes behind the scenes on how a business like Amazon comes into being. This is not a story of a single brainstorming moment of conception. At its heart, the narrative surrounds an entrepreneur with the […]
November
15
Out of the comfort zone and into the event horizon
posted by Mike O'Brien
Feel the fear and read it anyway There are many points of fear and enlightenment on the road to gaining an academic qualification in digital marketing. As a lead tutor on the IDM’s world class Diploma in Digital course, I watch professionals with considerable experience leafing through Dave Chaffey and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick’s brilliant reference work, […]
November
15
The 3.0 world belongs to creative thinkers
posted by Mike O'Brien
Make the world a better place – with marketing – seriously? In 2010, the marketing legend Philip Kotler, together with Herman Kartajaya and Iwan Sitiawan collaborated on the publication of Marketing 3.0. This thought-provoking book explores the transition of marketing from product-based (1.0) through the current consumer-based focus (2.0) and into an age of collaborative […]
