Google is a mirror on society..very scary search suggestions

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Marco Bertozzi:12.05.2010


Have you had a good look at the search suggestions on Google? Well I thought I would do 5 searches to see what comes up and see what the populus is searching for day to day, holy shit its worrying! Here was what I typed in..

Where do I…
How do I…
Who do I..
When do I..
What do I..

Only when I had done this did I realise that if the suggestions reflect what people are searching for then we are in trouble! So what did I learn? Well first of all we worry about a few key things in life..our Blackberrys and iPhones, sex, tax, life in general and Facebook.

There are a myriad of people out there with some fundamental life decisions to be made. Now I am all for starting with a broad search but I particularly like these two; ‘Where do I begin’ and ‘What do I want to do with my life’ fantastic questions! These people have focus issues and or are high as kites and probably sitting in student digs somewhere looking for a short cut. You might think they are in trouble but there is a group of people who have some of the worst issues imaginable.. ‘Where do I find Chuck Norris’ now thats not your average question but seemingly one many are getting their heads around. Politics in the last few weeks has been a hot topic so I would not be surprised if Nick Clegg was one of many searchers against ‘who do I vote for?’ or perhaps Gordon was a number of those asking ‘who do I inform when I move house?’

Life, sex and babies comes up a lot as you might imagine. The second or third suggestion down when you search ‘What do I’ is repeatable for this blog, take a look yourself, it’s not your average question!

There are whole life stages covered in there too. Some of the top suggestions in response to those questions above included:

1. What do I get my girlfriend for Valentine
2. When do I ovulate
3. How do I know if I am pregnant
4. When do I have my first scan
5. When do I stop paying child maintenance
6. When do I retire

People are clearly turning to the web for the big questions, I imagine they start big and work their way through to the important detail questions such as the oft searched ‘where do the Inuits live!’ Christ it goes on and on, weird and wonderful questions that Google is shining back at us…

The state of Facebook is now very much revealed by these searches with most of the ‘How do I‘ search suggestions being around FB. Mainly ‘how do I close my account’ Much has been made of the FB situation, interesting to see how that goes but I think Google is reflecting a little of the sentiment of the population at the moment.

Finally and probably the best reflection of society is the ‘Who do I’ section. A true reflection of our obsession with celebrity with ‘who do I look like’ how is Google going to tell you that? Where does it start? Such a weird question and I think expecting more of Google than one should do, probably easier to answer the question ‘where do I begin!’ Which celebrity do I look like? Who do I share my birthday with? It seems a constant need to associate with celebrity, it’s a sign of the times I am afraid.

So what do I conclude? I conclude that the world’s population has gone mad! What else can I take out of it? Probably best not to dig too deep!

Politics needs a brand makeover

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Marco Bertozzi: 10.05.2010

Outdoor advertising during the elections has always been a little flippant. Although amusing at times, I feel more and more like my dad is trying to come up with jokes to be down with the kids or worse me making up jokes to be down with the kids. These Ads also give me the feeling that they think we don’t understand anything complicated. I can hear them now back at M&C ‘keep it simple lads, those white van men wont understand anything more than a picture and a one liner.’

They might be right but I feel like the Parties desperately need a brand beyond a logo and a strapline. With all the Parties doing tit for tat Ads and even using each others art work I had no idea who was behind which Ad. I think they need to stand for something but I also think there needs to be some visual triggers, some brand guidelines, do some targeting! The rest of the advertising community aim different Ads at different demographics, they target by media and channel, they make DR Ads different to their brand Ads but all in all they try to retain some key brand identities. It’s this I think has been missing.

Who can remember an Ad – if you were asked to describe one now, what would you say, you may remember Life on Mars but which party? That’s the challenge, I think the Party that could be remembered in the mind of the voter through their advertising may have the advantage – brand recall anyone, recency studies? These could all teach the parties something, it feels like it all gets thrown out during the campaign.

As well as differentiation between Parties being confused there is also the consistency within one party. A myriad of different leaflets, posters in different styles, no guidelines, it comes across disorganised, scrappy and in most cases pretty bland. I believe that more consistency in the advertising styles would make a Party stand out and be more memorable. Its fine for O2 with bubbles or Orange with orange but they have invested tens of millions over many years, they can afford to stray a little and try new things but these political parties have a short while and they need their advertising to stack up, right from the first leaflet to the largest 96+ sheet.

Lets face it their advertising does not work as we have ended up with a hung Parliament..next time act like a brand and see where you get to.

(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.

Click here for latest

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

Tiger Woods Ad is impressive..on the part of Nike

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Marco Bertozzi:8.04.10

I have to say I am mightily impressed with the Nike Tiger Woods Ad. It probably says so much more about Nike than Tiger, and they probably know that, but never the less its impressive.

How do these things normally play out? Celebrity messes up, brands drop said celebrity, world moves on for a bit, debate about whether brands should use celebrity endorsement, sponsors come back and re sponsor when the dust has settled and off we go again.

A refreshing change from Nike, who have lived the whole episode, taken the flak, ridden the highs and lows and even been willing to jointly work through the relationship to what I can guarantee will be one hell of a come back.

This Ad is both rare and somehow quite addictive, draws you in, cuts out the hype and makes you think..shit this guy is having to really put himself out there and in this case so is Nike.