digital

(H)i-Level, Low-Level, its been a good debate, over too soon IMO

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Marco Bertozzi 05:05:10
We all know things change, look back at all the agencies that have come and gone over the last 15 years. Some died, some morphed, some have held steady but in some shape or form change has been the one constant in this fluid advertising world. That said it somehow seems too early for the demise of i-Level. They reached an amazing high, perhaps too high and too difficult to sustain. I wish all the employees the best of luck in the future, I hope it pans out for them, I am sure there will be no shortage of takers.

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Back to the agency, they were the success story, the guys who fought off all the networks to win pretty much every major single digital account going. The likes of Ed Ling, Chris and Faith were key to their success, anyone out there who has worked in digital media in a big agency has pitched against them a million times, they were not a thorn in your side, rather a stake in your side. i-Level were good, but anyone who dealt with them found them to believe in their own hype a little too much. Some characters in particular driving that sentiment and that saw a fair few good people pass through the gates and out the other side when they found the boys club a little hard to deal with.

The real issues came when the digital specialist was no longer dish of the day. i-Level constantly niggled at network agencies for their approach, moaned about their lack of specialism, PR’d every time they made a cup of tea, they isolated themselves when I feel they should have been more inclusive. They became more and more digital when the rest of the world was becoming integrated, including their clients. Perhaps on some issues they were right but one thing the mainstream agencies are good at is adapting albeit slowly sometimes. The big four groups were slow off the mark in digital but soon steam rollered their way into major and experienced players but I think then realised the importance of being more integrated quicker than i-Level.

Mainstream agencies went on the counter, making clients realise that having digital spend isolated from an overall marketing strategy was madness. i-Level on the other hand did not see any benefit in taking on some off line skills thus forcing the hand of many clients. An interesting comparison can be drawn with agencies like Glue, Dare and others in the creative fields who at the same time started to pitch for the full creative accounts rather than be isolated into just digital. Perhaps with a more broad approach i-Level may have held onto some of those key accounts.

Overall it is never pleasant when companies hit hard times, there is always a human cost, I am sure a selection of people have done very well out of i-Level but many will be out of a job. I think there should have been room for an i-Level in our marketplace but perhaps a slightly differently focused management team would have achieved different results. I wish all those left good luck and you never know perhaps the name will live on. I think it has been one of the best debates of the last few years, the endless i-Level PR machine vs the main agencies, I think those who have been around from the start will miss it.

ebay robbed me..new charges they dont make clear

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Marco Bertozzi:05:05:10

I have just received an email in my inbox proclaiming free listing this weekend on ebay!! What a deal, that will save you about £1. What they dont tell you is that they will charge you up to 10% of the final value of your sale, no wonder they want to give you free listings.

I would very much like to see the inner workings of ebay, the day the board sat around and said ‘ I know, lets change terms and conditions, noone will read them, and charge a percentage of final value. How much do you think? umm what about 10%? Sounds good to me. Done’ This is crazy business and I am sure has made them millions but it leaves a sour taste when you have been a regular user of the site, it also makes me feel that it again lets down the web in the eyes of the consumer. Its all too easy to just hide things in sections on a site or send a random email noone reads and anyone who knows ebay knows its a nightmare to find anything to do with customer service. The web needs to clean up in this regard, if you walked into a shop and got lumped with new charges you would just walk out, with ebay, the first you know about it is when you get your end of month bill. In my case that was £33 for one sale.

In the old days you paid lets say £3 for a listing and thats with all the bells and whistles. Now you pay for the listing, lets say £3, again a little extravagant. You then get a bill for about another £30 on a £300 quid item! On top of that you pay by Paypal and they take their cut, before you know it you just lost about 12-14% of your sale. It is a joke. For that reason, I shall never sell on ebay again, its all going to charity.

Nexus One UK release – don’t bother and wait for the 4G iPhone

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Marco Bertozzi 26.04.10
This Friday the Nexus One is available to the wider UK marketplace. I am not sure how big a deal this is to the wider market, feels like the world has moved on in some ways, the iPhone 4G has come along and I think it looks better and acts better from the very little I have seen and read.

I have had the Nexus One for a couple of months and I have to say, other than the fact its quick compared to a 3G (maybe not a 3Gs) it fails on so many other levels! If you are thinking of buying, consider these:

1. Everyone talked about the fact the casing of the phone was tougher and better than the iPhone – i have dropped mine and it has gouged out a corner of the metal casing, in many ways its more obvious than normal scratches and bangs

2. The keyboard is shit. No other way to put it. It’s less intuitive, it does not feel as tactile as the iPhone and it creates gibberish! As an example I could be walking across Sainsbury car park at 2am, worse for wear, pitch dark and I could be writing an email or text that I would probably regret the next day and the spelling would be perfect on the iPhone. It’s like the phone guessed what I wanted to say based on all the other rubbish I had typed before..Nexus One does not even have a guess at it – it will write nit over not for instance. The law of averages says not is a more likely word to go for over nit?!

3. The cardinal sin – the Apps are of a very low quality, they crash regularly, they are not as good and the range is very small, for me a complete fail.

4. This is just me, but having had an iPhone for so long, I have accessories all over the place and not to mention all the music and apps I have built up, none of it can be replicated, not peculiar to the Nexus but still irritates!

There are others but these are pretty fundamental. I just don’t think it is good enough, I have tried but I am back to 4G. Even the Microsoft series 7 phone looks better, so ebay here I come – anyone want mine?

Hearst to buy iCrossing. Good for Hearst, bad for icrossing (apart from managers)

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Marco Bertozzi 20.04.10
I understand why they would. What a great short cut to getting loads of digital knowledge into a business that has been slow to embrace digital, like all media companies they resisted moving from their traditional and core ad models until they could wait no longer. Magazines have been particularly bad at this in the main and have always been playing catch up to some extent.

Read the PR coverage here

Now as the agency world starts to move into Ad exchanges, putting the decision as to what is valuable inventory or not back in their hands and social media and search becomes more and more complicated Hearst has decided that they should buy a big digital independent agency, nice work. It’s a good move for them and it’s an even better move for those who have substantial shares in iCrossing but for the rest of the people there I am not sure what it means for them.

The history of media companies buying agencies is not great and rarely ends well for the people in the agencies, you become second class citizens to the brands you serve. How independent are you exactly? Will iCrossing start to be a digital department of the media group with regular schedule lines being Hearst properties? What about if you just become an internal department of the company, like an IT help desk to answer questions, solve ongoing problems the brands have in digitising. I am sure they will do a great SEO job on Hearst and perhaps provide a search strategy, Hearst still needs to create decent sites with decent content.

I am not sure I like the sound of it, I am possibly not seeing all the facts but if Hearst spends 375m on the agency, they are not going to let it live happily, bumbling along on its own, there will be some significant impact on the staff there.

The new Apple iPhone 4G video – a mistake or clever teaser?

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Have to say this is a sexy looking phone, I have just bought a Nexus One so cant justify it, yes I can, no I cant and on and on..I may well find a way – perhaps a 2 for 1 with an iPad? Anyway check out the video below and see what you think..has to get you thinking as to whether this guy really did leave it in a bar, seems implausible..maybe its a decoy, maybe it’s a teaser? Now thats what I call seeding..

Valencia Festival of Media – will the presenters re-write the rule book?

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5 Days away from the start of the Valencia Media Festival. It’s a big affair, I have not been for a couple of years, last time was the Venice Media Festival so I am interested to see the presentations. I blogged previously about how Twitter and social communications have changed the feel of presentations at these events and this should be the best example as the whole theme is around changing the rules.

Here is the challenge to the presenters:

a) Prepare something for the conference, not something you made earlier!
b) Make it interesting which means being brave on content and comment, stick your neck out
c) Tell us something new, please
d) Aim the content at knowledgeable people, not the lowest common denominator

If all that happens it will be a great conference as the line up and agenda looks fantastic, see it here www.festivalofmedia.com/agenda I am going to Twitter for the first time at a conference both the content and some of the goings on around the presentations and some of the evening events..although not in too much detail!

Follow me @bertie1972

This is the most exciting time in digital media since search

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Marco Bertozzi 13.04.2010

Today I had three meetings on the trot and each of them came from different fields – Media owner (portal), Media network / technology company and Search. Each of them had a different angle but the one thing they and indeed we had in common was that we all felt the world was changing and noone had the complete answer.

It’s exciting and anyone you talk to seems to be thinking the same, the display market does not know which way to turn, media network, DSP, Ad exchange, media agency, search company? It’s all up for grabs, so much so I think that specialist companies in the ad exchange market may have become too specific as they could invent themselves over and over and may need to.

All of this leads to an enormous amount of bullshit. Unbelievable amount of hot air, duplication of technical services, who does data best, its a minefield and unless you really get around a bit and ask a lot of questions you could be caught out by some dodgy companies and people. Spend time looking into those who approach you claiming to be experienced, specialists etc there is still more hot air than delivery in the market.

It is a great place to be right now but beware, while there is limited regulation and everyone proposing new and exciting business models you could get caught out..a lot of sensible advise and analysis can be found at www.exchangewire.com and www.adexchanger.com

How has Tweeting changed the face of conferences?

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Marco Bertozzi:29.03.10

I read today a post by Mel Carson that he tweeted out there about someone at a conference commenting on the clothing ‘suits’ and words they used at the conference ‘actionable’. He seemed quite upset that he had been described as a suit, you can see his defence at here and the fact a member of the audience had questioned certain words used.

That got me thinking about how the conference has changed, the old days you turned up perhaps a little hungover and under prepared, or absolutely word perfect, either way you did not really know how you were performing. The advent of tweeting at conferences and the fact presenters are actually reading them has meant you need to think very carefully about whether or not you want to tweet what’s on the tip of your tongue. The person Mel talks about has obviously caught the wrath of the conference speaker/attendee but will that always be the case? What are the rules?

It is easy to be bothered by peoples comments but at the same time you have put yourself in that situation and therefore should you not be prepared to take some criticism? I think yes, as a rule, thats not to say it is right that people hide behind electronic communication to make their points but equally if everytime someone is tackled up for their comments you will kill what has been the most interesting part of most conferences so I suggest caution. Although this was not the source of this post it did also get me thinking about the quality of ones presentations at conferences. Basically if you don’t want to get negative comments then prepare well and make the content interesting. It amazes me the amount of presentations that are re drafts, they are cut, chopped and diced to fit the subject of the day and often presented with no prep. In this age of live digital critiquing I think we all need to be prepared to take some grief if we have not put enough effort in.

In reality you will never please everyone, one man’s ‘suit’ is another man’s ‘professional’, who cares if you wear a suit? I think that the rule is if you don’t like what you read or hear, dont get up on stage.

There just is not enough Buzz around Google Buzz

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Marco Bertozzi:26.03.10

Anyone Buzzing? Google? Google Buzz? no? Seriously is anyone out there? I know there are many people, in fact I am sure my friend from Google who will read this will tell me there are ten billion people buzzing day in day out and I must be mad to suggest otherwise.

Thing is I dont feel it. I am no super blogger or have more friends / links / tweet friends than some major celebrity but nevertheless I think I would start to get more exposure to it and literally noone has tried to connect or contact or Buzz me. What does that mean? Does it mean that Buzz is failing – cue friend from Google – or is it just me? It might be, but could it be that the population just did not need another form of contact? It keeps you busy tweeting, updating status messages, making sure the right one goes on the right platform. You then have to reply to those that have retweeted, or sent you a direct message or perhaps commented on your status and so it goes. Now we have to Buzz? Just cant be bothered, I have waited a little while to see how it grows and I will of course get involved if I need to, I am keen to understand how all these things work but unless my friends at Google tell me why I should then I am out.

I look forward to discussing it tonight over dinner with said friend from Google. (We are meeting at The Village Cafe, Bellevue road.) Buzz me..

When will instant be too slow?

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Marco Bertozzi:23.03.10

Inspired by a meeting today with Harriet Dennys from Mediaweek I started to think about the speed of communication that surrounds us.

Along came email, no more letters or faxes needed. Everything sped up that little bit more, having said that we still held on much longer than we needed to before giving in to sending everything via email. There were concerns at the time that it was too informal and hard copy was more professional.

At around this time we received our news via the hard copy trade titles, it was a sign of position if you were able to receive a copy of Campaign and people waited with baited breath to see what would be said about them or their clients or their competitors. Now we receive our news via Twitter feeds, Linkedin, Facebook, we sign up to far more feeds than we would ever have contemplated reading, we cherry pick. News on demand.

Today I was asked if I thought email Bulletins were too slow? Amazing thought, to imagine that we are even considering that a daily email bulletin is too slow. Harriet was right though, in some respects a daily bulletin is too slow, news is everywhere, it’s on demand, its in feeds. People everywhere are aggregating all of these feeds into one location and getting it fed to them night and day, minute by minute and that is creating another effect..promiscuity!

Like search, do you care where you get your information from as long as its correct or first? Look at the myriad of Twitter feeds, most of them are just swirling the same content around so do you wait for your favourite feed to appear with the news that interests you or just click on the first? I click on the first and I bet many others do as well. It’s all changing, its faster, its more and more digital and it is all making even a Bulletin feel slow..someone stick the brakes on!

It does not stop at news, it’s the same with email. Many media companies are also communicating via messenger both internally and externally – why? It’s quicker than email..how much quicker can it get? It’s not just the mechanic but also the expectation – are we not all on email via BB or iPhone, why would it take that long to reply? How long do we all now wait before expecting a response? Ok its 10pm but he could just fire me back a quick response couldn’t he? Email is not slow, it’s now the users that are judged for their speed of response!

I am out of breath just writing this and during the time it has taken i have received about 100 feed updates, 5 emails at 11.30pm (damn the US) and 1 text. Where will it end? Thanks HD for the inspiration!

As a follow up – check Craig Robinsons response to this blog @ http://www.swissss.com