Google

Priority inbox from Gmail. Saves me up to 2 minutes a day

/ Author / Leave a comment

I like it, I do! I like Gmail, I have used it for years, an early adopter, its the home of all of my phone contacts with my iphone and BB synched to it so I never lose another contact. It is so much better than hotmail in keeping out the nasty little virus people. I have a great email address as I got in early.

Priority inbox is also a likeable invention but I am not sure I entirely get it. They list the emails that are important at the top, the less important ones underneath. If you are a serial checker of your email whether it’s work or play then what that usually means is I have 1 email as priority and 2 less so, the end result being I can see all three in one view and its easy to filter out the good from the bad. I also still have to delete / archive / report as spam the less important so again, I have to go grubbing about in those less important emails anyway. I just dont think it saves time or makes life easier?

I think this is designed for someone who has no more than 1 minute available between meetings, has 1000 emails landing between the check ins and has loads of important emails. If that is the case then I think this product is perfect. For me I waste as much time accidently clicking on normal inbox and going back to priority as it saves me in the reading of them! Its a small gripe, otherwise I like it, dont strike me off beta!!

Hard work being a technology company at the moment

/ Author / Leave a comment

I would not want to be in this space at the moment. It is fiercely competitive and every man and his dog has a new angle on targeting, tracking, bidding and the like. Digital has always been like that, a constant stream of questions from clients, planners and other agencies along the line of – ‘you heard of x company, apparently amazing, can you have a look at it for me?’ Being on the inside of a technology company must feel like that at the moment, especially big ones like Google and Microsoft.

The energy at the moment is focused on biddable media whether that be ad exchanges, search of Facebook API and therefore companies have come along like Marin and Kenshoo to challenge the elite. They are new and shiny and fast and they produce product roadmaps about 6 months ahead of the slightly larger more sluggish rivals.

Teams in Doubleclick now are constantly being asked about what can be integrated into their systems like DART search, it’s a fair question because the market is moving so quickly the agencies are having to adapt rapidly and therefore they need their suppliers to do the same. Deep integrations that are hard to move is not a good enough reason to stay with a supplier. It’s not however as simple as doing the usual Google bashing or Atlas bashing, I have some sympathy for them. When they change one thing it has to deliver against all their other systems and make sure that nothing falls over. With great volumes and large customer bases comes a big responsibility to not mess up. Some start up with 5 clients can afford to mess about a bit and change things as it pleases with little or no impact, Google can’t do that.

I would like to see what happened if an agency said to one of these new companies – OK I will move all our spend to you, we want 24.7 customer service, technical support, migration in weeks, nothing to go wrong, we want to check all your contracts and privacy set ups and all the rest. Simply, they would not cope. So on that basis I think we have to understand that there are many pretenders to the crown but they could not all make it and its easy to bash the big boys.

Nevertheless it must be hard work right now and I don’t envy them. Sometimes things just do not work, today we saw the end of Google Wave. Of course we did, it was a nightmare. A small part of me does think though that those resources could be redirected into services that meet the real needs of customers rather than so many experiments. How is Buzz doing?

Outside of that particular field there are so many companies selling data, targeting and tracking. They all want a piece of our client’s websites, they all want a test, it is a minefield out there and sorting the wheat from the chaf for agency digital planners is extremely hard and often hard for the companies to differentiate themselves. I have not seen so many new companies selling their wares since 2000, they wont all make it and as agencies we need to somehow back the right horses..

Cannes Lions Festival – You dream it, we deliver it

/ Author / Leave a comment

Monday to Thursday was the plan, but then work got in the way! So instead we went for a Tuesday afternoon flight, one that I of course missed by one minute, one minute that cost me 8 hours! I eventually arrived via Amsterdam and immediately got out into the thick of the event, it’s an impressive set up, there are not many places where you can meet up with all of your work colleagues from across the industry in one single city which is buzzing with both work and play conversations.

Down at the Gala event it was heaving with people from across the business, the business being very varied. Media groups, advertising groups, content companies, digital, film, music you name it, all here. A lot of drunken idiots as well to be fair, in fact some people were such imbeciles I was amazed they had been let in the country!

It was a fantastic evening, I met with Christian and Kate from AOL at their own party on a roof top, very civilized and a great ease into the evening, obviously as a reciprocal arrangement from zeitgeist, who should I see there but Damian Burns, Global Head of Agency Relations and Ben Faes from Google. Later in the evening there was Tom George from MEC, Stephen Haines from Facebook and a few other golden oldies. Although of course most of the talk is social, there is some interesting conversations about what has been seen and heard during the day. Apparently the Ben Stiller/Yahoo event was a little weird and did not entirely work, that said by then we outside the cleverly Yahoo sponsored ‘gutter bar’ which was the end destination most evenings and stayed open until way beyond you should have been in bed, luckily it was next to the Martinez where I was staying, so that worked!

The next morning after 2.5hrs of sleep Vivaki and Microsoft had their ‘steering committee’ meeting which lasted for some hours and covered the state of the nation between our two companies, an interesting meeting with some grand ambition which I am looking forward to working on in the coming months. After a lovely lunch a couple of meetings around ad exchanges (my topic of choice at the moment) and then on to the football. Microsoft hosted a great event with all of the UK people seemingly choosing their beach club to watch, great atmosphere not least as the US were playing and the Americans were getting very excited about their game too, we exchanged cheers through the afternoon, although i suspect they were less sure what they were cheering for!

Later at the awards I took my seat, waiting to see what award winning work looked like, there was some great stuff, I loved the recruitment work from one agency that distributed a calendar with a resignation letter for each day, waiting for the day you had had enough. The Aides campaign from TBWA France was also the rudest thing I have seen on the web, a willy chasing a vagina round a homepage and eventually having sex once safely inside a condom was pretty risqué, but brilliantly done.

All the winners can be seen here

An evening spent with Google was very entertaining and good to be on the inside when they win a big lawsuit with CBS! It also appears that I was sat down to one of the men who has contributed most to the uk digital scene, our own Bruce Daisley, winner the next night at the NMA awards for the accolade. I am very pleased, if disbelieving for the lad, he is a great practitioner and a great guy, he is just no good at hosting jollies as he reminded me of our jaunt to Germany for the football.

The next morning I got the chance to see the Microsoft Experience centre, packed full of their three screens, windows 7 phone, Xbox and Kinect. All of them looked amazing and full of potential for an advertiser. As I went round though It just reminded me of how little of this stuff the average planner or advertiser has seen or experienced. There is a gap between the possibility and the reality, I don’t think advertisers see how a touch sensitive table could drive their crm or sales. The Xbox is a home entertainment system with connectivity, content and games, do advertisers see this? I don’t think so and even worse I don’t think the agency folk are much better. If you get a chance go experience it!

As my trip came to an end and I got a chance to catch up with some other agency friends on the way home I thought to myself what a fantastic event, yes there is a lot of fun and drink and socializing but it’s a chance to bring a lot of very interesting people together and the opportunity to see some great work and technology.

A 4 hour delay on the way back, rounded the whole trip off. Thanks to Microsoft, sorry I did not make it on your video blog, I must have been as dull as my blog. When I got home I had an iPhone 4 waiting for me, that’s my next post..

Au Revoir

Thanks to Google Zeitgeist

/ Author / Leave a comment

I just wanted to post an official Thanks to Google for their world beating Google Zeitgeist conference. The level of delivery, the speakers, venues and thinking really put almost all other events to shame.

Just take a look at the schedule for the two days click here

The quality of content was fabulous and the discussions expectantly lively at times, I particularly liked the ‘Zappos’ vs Alcatel debate, it was ready to kick off I thought, good fun though! That said after all of those illustrious people, who came out on top? Boris Johnson, amazing orator, funny, informative and I know that everyone to a man thought he stole the show, even the Google founders could not deliver that level of interaction with the audience. See all the vidoes here:

These events are fascinating, there are some very aggressive networkers. People talk about ad exchange technology delivering Ads in a second, at these events, people can look at your badge and decide if they want to talk to you even quicker! I am no good at it, too obvious, I think I need glasses although Google were kind enough to make the names pretty big! A lot of cards were exchanged, polite coffees and drinks consumed and many different languages spoken, that’s the beauty of these events. Normally Google do not showcase any of their own wares but due to popular demand they walked us through Google Squared, Search, Youtube Disco, Mobile, Maps and Gmail and I think everyone was taken back by how much stuff they have up their sleeve but don’t talk about excessively. After what I saw yesterday I think they should strut their stuff a little more, because its good…take a look at Youtube Disco here just add an artist.

I think this sort of event is one others can only aspire to, but I hope they catch on, especially the handing out Nexus Ones at the end! My over-riding image though was leaving at the end and walking to the exit to see what can only be described as an army of men in black suits next to fleets of Mercedes and BMWs, clearly not many people like to drive themselves anymore!

Anyway thanks to Damian and the team, much appreciated!

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

/ Author / 2 Comments

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!

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

/ Author / 2 Comments

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?

There just is not enough Buzz around Google Buzz

/ Author / Leave a comment

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..

The Superbowl still captivates a nation, a UK perspective..and the TV ads

/ Author / Leave a comment

Marco Bertozzi:14.02.2010
Having been in the US for the first time whilst Superbowl was on, I was struck by what an immense event it is. On the night there were 100 million viewers in the US! Those numbers are mind boggling and even more impressive that they were the highest viewing figures for the game ever.

Who says TV is dead? So how does the Superbowl weekend play out? I always had a simplistic view of the advertising around the event. I imagined a few great Ads in the centre break and then some discussion over how much each Ad cost and whether or not was it any good. I was completely wrong, on all the channels in the run up to the game there was almost as much discussion about the Ads as the game itself. In fact studies showed that watching the Ads was the best bit for many viewers. As an example the web was white hot with rumours about the Google Ad, with many even tweeting that hell must has frozen over for them to take a break in Superbowl.

Once in the game my idea of a ‘centre break’ was naive there were about five plus centre breaks each crammed with ads, some of which were good others less so. What struck me was the lack of an epic. There was no Honda Cog full length or a Tango Classic, just attempts at funny ads. I was sat in a bar when the favorite Dorito Ad came on (the one with the electrocuting dog collar) and the place erupted with laughter, success for Dorito on that one!

Here is a selection of the best:

Post game and on into the next days everyone talked about the ads, amazing coverage, they polled them, they critiqued them, ranked them, it was prime time news. The Internet viral effect was and still is massive, the more people talk about them, the more people go and search online, this is TV and online working together brilliantly. You can see why advertisers go for this, the exposure is enormous, there is simply nothing like this in the UK.

On balance I think it is slightly over the top but you do get dragged into the occasion, it’s also the biggest test of the theory that there is no such thing as bad publicity, woe betide anyone who made a dog of an Ad because that fact was repeated over and over again, would be great to see the sales of an advertiser who produced a bad Ad for Superbowl.

After 2 years of iPhone, should you buy a Google Nexus One?

/ Author / Leave a comment

Marco Bertozzi:04.02.2010

I have read a lot about the Nexus One, more than I should have I suspect! Much of it is technical, detailed analysis. One reviewer was commenting on the weight distribution of the phone! That’s all well and good but not what most people are interested in, the question is ‘If I have had an iPhone for years should I buy a Nexus One?’ Just answer that..so thats what I will do.

I really wanted to like the Nexus One, after spending all that money it was vital I actually liked it! My first impressions that absolutely stand out compared to the iPhone:

Just so quick. This is your day to day usage, this is the diving in and out of apps, looking at the web, all of that stuff that you might not think about, but when you see it all speeded up you realise the benefits. Any iPhone user is unlikely to complain about the speed of their phone but that’s because they have nothing to compare it to, once you use the Nexus One you will find the iPhone slow, especially in the opening of the apps, no more waiting.

It does feel very shiny and new! The screen is amazing, you really notice it. Anyone who likes new gadgets will love the feel of it, everything comes alive in your hand. I am personally not keen on the colour, and I don’t think the layout of how the apps and buttons work is as intuitive as the iPhone although you quickly get used to it. The four home buttons at the base of the screen are used a lot to access functions within apps as opposed to being built into the app like on an iPhone, again I prefer the simple iPhone layout. The track ball could be useful in text mode but I think it ruins the look and is really not needed.

The App store and the Apps themselves are lacking on the phone, they feel less finished, a lot less of them and it is an area where the iPhone dominates, lets see how long that lasts. Anyone who has had an iPhone and moves to the Nexus will be frustrated by the fact nothing crosses over, sounds obvious but it feels wasteful having all those apps that I have invested in just sitting on my iPhone, yes you can still use them over WiFi but it would be good if the developers allowed you to transfer to the Nexus One if you bought them on the iPhone, or at least at a discounted rate.

Overall it is a great phone, the keyboard is not as good as the iPhone, more fiddly but again you will get used to that, the touch screen is designed for the phone to be held at an angle which means if you aim straight down you often miss your target, frustrating but again you get used to it. The speech to text functionality is very hit and miss in my opinion, its fine if you talk very clearly and slowly, it will be useful in some circumstances but not everyday usage I would say.

Overall I am pleased with it, most things people moan about are simple functionalities that people are not used to, does not mean they are bad. As with all things, give it some time and it will be second nature. It feels very special and even an avid iPhone user will have to admit it feels like a different league. That said it has some way to go in a couple of areas, annoying you can’t sync your Outlook Calendar, but I reckon they will be continually sending upgrades as time goes by. The biggest thing of all for me..I am glad to be back in the early adopter bracket, everyone has an iPhone now, it bores me.

As a footnote if you have a iPhone bluetooth handset, it will sync with the Nexus One, so at least thats one thing you will not be wasting on your swap to N1.

How can Google Nexus One not support Microsoft Exchange?

/ Author / 1 Comment

Marco Bertozzi:30:01:2010
In this day and age I find it infuriating when major players in software and or hardware dont work together. Surely now they are waking up to the fact that we live in an open source world and putting up barriers may make themselves feel better but it annoys the people spending the money. Especially around mainstream ways of communicating like email systems.

How is it possible that Google’s Nexus One does not synch with Outlook Exchange Calendars etc, its madness, is Google not a serious business operation? Do they think the world will change to Gmail? Of course not, so instead they are just pissing off all those people who would love to have a Nexus One but connect to Exchange.

Likewise the news that the iPad does not support Flash, I mean come on, it’s a joke, the world runs on Flash how can they not support it when we are talking about a device designed to enjoy the consumption of all the best the web has to offer! These companies need to start thinking of the end consumers rather than their own protectionism, its madness, I hope very much that Google will reconsider this stance in the coming weeks.