News of the month

Heineken’s Club of The Future: Brand Environment Taken Seriously

20 years ago, ‘shopping’ meant visiting one of several bricks-and-mortar stores for the purpose of acquiring a number of goods. Almost two decades after the rise of the Internet and a decade after the dotcom boom, global ecommerce sales are expected to reach $963 billion by 2012, growing at an annual rate of 19.4%. People buy groceries via smartphone apps and furniture in the comfort of their living rooms – with so many retail channels, the role of physical stores shifted from stock selling to providing a brand experience. Successful brands try to use the space to charm prospective customers – sales per square meter in a particular branch are less important as long as people buy the products somehow. NikeFuel station at Boxpark is a great example of an environment created for brand exploration rather than mere retail.

The second largest beer brewer in the world by sales, Heineken, went a step further than creating a theme bar. With the Open Design Explorations project the company crowd-sourced the design of a unique nightclub unveiled at Milan’s Salone Del Mobile design festival earlier this month. Promotional as it is, the venue is about much more than disposing of an extra thousand cases of beer. It portrays Heineken as a company of inventors, a company ‘on the edge’, a company that understands its customers, contemporary fashion, music, technology, and a thing or two about having a good time. Not a dull promotion, yet another festival sponsorship or a semi-clever YouTube viral, it’s all about thinking outside the box, new ideas and bringing the future.

Conceptual differences aside, the project has a lot in common with Adgistics’ Brand Centres. What Nike and Heineken have built out of steel, wood and plastic, we create in digital space – unique brand environments that thrill senses and allow deep brand immersion. It is not just about the product or the brand or its promotion. Brand Centres are a new terrain, as functional and efficient as they are flexible, inventive and inviting. They will do whatever you need them to do and be whatever you want them to be.

http://goo.gl/ekMA0

Marketing

The Good: The Return of Gap

Gap Inc. has had a rocky patch. Cool and trendy in 1990s, at some point it got comfortable, conservative, decided to play safe and lost the edge. Plenty of companies sell generic casual clothes; the niche of a hip affordable retailer was quickly taken over by a number of global players. At the beginning of 21 century Gap found itself truly lost. Hiring Sarah Jessica Parker, then star of Sex and the City series and role model for fashion-conscious young women around the world, was a weak attempt at claiming relevance; replacing her with a 17-year-old singer just demonstrated that the company is a ship without a course. Widely characterised as a disaster, the 2010 rebranding was the pinnacle of image misery that allegedly has cost Gap’s Head of Brand her job. For years we mostly heard of Gap Inc. in the context of even more store closures. Well, it seems the troubled company has found an individual to pull it out of the abyss. Following same-store sales rise in February and March (4% and 8% respectively, as opposed to 3% and 10% decrease a year ago), the company’s shares reached a 10-year closing high at the end of March. It seems, for now, Gap Inc. has found a common language with the human race. The person behind the miraculous turn, the former worldwide MD of Ogilvy & Mather and a year-long CMO of Gap, Seth Farbman articulated the formula for success in his speech at the Ad Age’s Digital Conference.

http://goo.gl/ktoaO

The Bad: New Campaign for Urban King

At the beginning of April, Burger King launched a new advertising campaign built around celebrity endorsement. A number of A-listers from David Beckham to Salma Hayek starred in a multi-platform offensive with substantial viral potential. The videos were not particularly creative and the jokes – mostly based on the awe little people have for popular media figures, but bearing in mind the awe is real, the clips were expected to attract the attention of the target audience. Unfortunately, the Florida based chain with 60 years of experience didn’t take a minute to run the campaign past a fresh pair of eyes. As a result, the oh-so-tasty chicken snack wraps were advertised by the popular African American singer Mary J Blige. The reaction to that terrible collection of clichés, both tasteless and vaguely racist was perfectly summed up by Madame Noire. Although Burger King showed formidable swiftness in pulling the ad over the alleged licencing issues, the urban jingle left a strong aftertaste.

http://goo.gl/XVl2A

The Ugly: Rebirth or Doom for Sony

Sony Corporation, one of the symbols of Japan’s technological revolution of late 1980s and early 1990s, is in serious trouble. Besieged by a multitude of competitors and dragged down by strong national currency, the company finds it increasingly hard not just to remain one of the industry’s leaders but to remain at all. The acquisition of Ericsson was expected to improve operational management: the decision-making will certainly become swifter and easier. Kazuo Hirai, the new CEO who took charge on 1 April, is optimistic, believing there is still time for change. Wishing Mr Hirai the best of luck, I would like to point out the “Made of Imagination” ad crafted shortly before his ascent.

Advertising the Xperia line, the range many consider to be Sony’s last chance in mobile communications, through an art project based around children’s fantasies is beyond careless. Children and puppies are cute; using them in advertising is a terrible banality that works for low value consumer goods like toilet paper and mineral water. Using babies to position a high-tech product that competes with the highly popular iPhone and the technologically advanced Samsung Galaxy is just hopeless. Asking kids who have no idea what they are talking about ‘what makes Sony smartphones special’ sounds awfully close to ‘we needed a memorable campaign, had no ideas and Evian Babies got a lot of publicity’ – it does not fill prospective customers with tonnes of confidence. Oh, and by the way, referring to Wes Anderson, the man famous for indie melodramas like The Darjeeling Limited and The Royal Tenenbaums as the director of ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ makes the ad look like something created by six-year-olds for six-year-olds.

http://goo.gl/s7s0A

Technology

New beginnings for Facebook and Instagram

The largest and most popular social media platform chose the stock exchange to start a new life as a publically traded company. After considerable deliberation, Facebook will entrust the Nasdaq to manage a set of shares that is expected to bring the company $5-10 billion. Home to over 800 million users, Facebook’s valuation reaches as high as $100 billion, 27 times its annual revenue. On one hand, the ratio would be impossible in any other industry- even for Apple, the company valued largely based on expectations, the index stands at 5.5 (a valuation of $590 billion against revenue of $109 billion), on the other hand, Facebook did increase its revenues 88% in 2011: an incredible, albeit slowing, growth.

In the context of the initial public offering, the acquisition of Instagram for over $1 billion ($300 million in cash, the rest in shares) doesn’t sound as surreal: demonstrating hunger for development will make investors value Facebook shares higher, making up for the steep price. Ten years ago (and, possibly, ten years from now) the situation would look like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – a social network, whose revenue is tied to its popularity in the industry where popularity never lasts, is perceived to be more valuable than Citigroup, spends a billion US dollars on a photo sharing app, trying to make its spirit of an elitist ‘small community of early adopters’ work for the mob of 800 million members. The question as to whether the hipsters will leave Instagram is rhetorical, once the service is no longer cool, brands will reconsider paying serious money for their accounts, once brands go, the service will need alternative means of support – advertising, paid accounts, paid services? It will take a magician to make Instagram stay and grow within Facebook.

New Life for Dead Performers

The Tupac Shakur gig at the Coachella festival was not just a happening for music fans; it may be the beginning of a new entertainment industry. A moving image that looked like a very realistic hologram of the late rapper, developed by San Diego-based AV concepts, is an amazing retake of the 400-year-old illusionist trick. The idea of using life-size holograms for entertainment isn’t new – Richard Branson did it seven years ago, Al Gore used the technology to impress Tokyo in 2007. The difference is not just in the astonishing quality of the Tupac projection, although it does look and move and sound a lot like the original. In the past, holograms were used to impress – to make a brand look modern, capable, technically superior (Virgin) or act as a less offensive substitute to a sign that reads: ‘I couldn’t be bothered to come in person, so here is my tape, play it’ (Gore). By the way, the irony of using a hardly carbon neutral toy to promote environmental responsibility clearly eluded the former Vice President. The digital Tupac is not a projected recoding; it is a simulation, capable of doing and saying whatever its creators want. Although holograms aren’t real, don’t ooze charisma, improvise or spontaneously flirt with the audience, supported by an able team, the sky is the limit – they can walk through fire, hold a note for as long the battery lasts and give 24-hour concerts in hundreds of cities at the same time. The new technology doesn’t resurrect the deceased, comes with a faint aroma of necrophilia and will be subjected to a little ridicule. But, essentially, it provides an illusion that in the 21st century we have finally managed to cheat death – in a few years, Elvis may go on tour to promote his new album. Why not?

http://goo.gl/fB7q5

Zeitgeist

A Man of Practical Appliances

On the 16 April NASA approved the first private spaceship to visit the International Space Station (ISS); the launch is scheduled for 19 May 2012. Writing a note on Elon Musk without drowning in superlatives is hard. Having read a few dozen articles about his endeavours, I can’t shake off the feeling he is a collective pseudonym of a group of men who take Atlas Shrugged a touch too seriously. As a young man, Musk wanted to get into the ‘important problems’ – Internet, clean energy and space’. By forty, he had co-founded PayPal (1999), sold it to eBay (2002) and used the money to found Space Exploration Technologies (2002) and Tesla Motors (2003). Not just an investor but an engineer, an electric car architect and spacecraft designer, Musk seems have beaten NASA with its $18 billion annual budget in a space race. Intellect, creativity and knowledge aside, it is a testimonial to extraordinary managerial skills. In spite of the monumental role of SpaceX, its corporate page doesn’t ooze the expected pathos, instead it talks money. In interviews, Musk is calm, collected, quiet and supremely confident all at the same time. A round-trip ticket to Mars for half a million dollars in 10-15 years? Can be done. Coming from the head of NASA (or any head of state for that manner), the statement would sound like an inspirational hypothesis at best; Musk makes it sound like a business plan. The unsolvable challenges and technological failures of the past are irrelevant; the generations of engineers that fell short didn’t have Elon Musk.

http://goo.gl/rSb4w

New Ways of Making Things Happen

At first, crowd-funding was surrounded by a little scepticism – when one donates to a charity, one doesn’t expect proof of efficient financial management – we donate to feel better about ourselves: once the money is given, the goal is achieved. How does it work with commercial projects – how do we know the money is spent right, what do we get in return? Kickstarter is ‘a funding platform for creative people’. Whether an artist missing funds for a movie or a designer with a really good idea, one publishes a project description, sets a goal and a deadline and waits. Since its launch three years ago, the site has sourced $200 million to fund 20,000 projects – the concept clearly works.

Pebble is the project of the month: with $100,000 required, the e-paper watch has already received backing of over $7.6 million. The highly customizable smart-watch uses Bluetooth to connect to iPhone and Android handsets and, essentially, runs apps on its high resolution scratch resistant e-paper display. It can pass messages, identify callers, display calendar and weather alerts. It is a speedometer, a bike computer and a remote control for music apps. For those with skills and a little time on their hands, a software development kit is up for grabs as well; finally, Pebble looks nice. You can pre-order the basic version for $115 to show off geek bling in September.

http://goo.gl/Du8uP

Story of the Month

Wolfgang von Enckevort on marketing technology, Big Data and dancing

As promised, here is an expansive interview covering a wide range of subjects from industry trends to insider tips. Wolfgang is a pleasant interlocutor. Proficient and confident, he is also easy to talk to and dead-honest. In the last few weeks I have never seen him stay in one place for more than an hour. Very busy, rushing between meetings and briefings he is always on the go but never seems absent minded. The breadth of his experience is remarkable – 15 years at the top of the game is a very long time when the game is technology. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Herr von Enckevort for the time he has taken to answer my questions and look forward to more interviews to come.

http://goo.gl/QUiYT

Marketing

The Good: Super Bowl 2012

If you are not a sports fan or American, you may not even know what the Super Bowl is. But in the United States, the championship game of the National Football League is the game of the year. Due to the sheer size of the country, the event cannot be compared to, say, Britain’s Premiership finals; it is more like a UEFA Euro final that takes place annually. The Super Bowl has traditional favourites, outsiders, rivals and legends. It is by far the most watched broadcast event in the world: 111.3 million viewers tuned in this year, almost three times as many as the last Academy Awards.

The number of tweets poster per second during the game has tripled since 2011 to reach an all-time record of 12,233 this year. According to Trendrr, the social insight company, the overall number of tweets aired throughout the game has risen five times in a year, a testimonial to the ever growing popularity of social media tools. Considering the hype, the price tag of $3.5m for a 30-second ad slot (up from roughly $3m in 2011) is expensive but understandable. Those who don’t care about American football but like advertising know that these ads are usually worth watching.

http://goo.gl/3sXs9

The Bad: CBS Outdoor and London Underground

London is one of the four fashion capitals of the world. Together with Milan, New York and Paris, it is known for gifted newcomers as well as established players. London Fashion Week is a biannual event that attracts buyers from top retailers, international media and tourists. While the first two shouldn’t have much trouble getting behind the well-guarded gates, most of the guests of the capital can only take pictures of the glamorous ticket holders from behind the fence. The good people at CBS Outdoor clearly have a big heart: they arranged a live feed from the fashion shows to be broadcast across 60 cross-track screens on the London Underground. Sounds good? Sure. Good idea? No. Health and safety aside (it’s not a brilliant idea to distract people surrounded by high voltage rails and running trains) the effective work of London Underground depends on quick passenger flow; efficiency beats entertainment by a mile here. May be next time CBS could just organise an open air theatre?

http://goo.gl/X53mN

The Ugly: Office 365 v Gmail

The silver lining in the cloud surrounding this month’s Microsoft news is the operating system’s new logotype. It is simple, neat and geometric. The trademark symbols seem to double in size with each iteration since XP but maybe Microsoft has reason to doubt peoples’ knowledge of its logo’s protection.

The same day Microsoft was celebrating a facelift, Google got into serious trouble over ignoring the privacy settings of the Safari users. Basking in schadenfreude,  Microsoft has quickly put together a  Googlighting video thrashing the rude, shameless and incompetent Gmail in a manner similar to that of the Gmail Man clip aired at the end of January. The fact that Internet giants ignore user privacy is a serious problem that should without a doubt find its way to courts. Broadly speaking, the complaint applies to Google the same extent it does to Facebook, Amazon, and probably a number of other companies dependent on contextual advertising. Considering the role the trespassers have grown to play in our lives, even President Obama felt obliged to step in. In short, internet snooping is deplorable and Google’s promises to get better will not repair the reputation of the company that once promised not to be evil. However, ill taste aside, Microsoft’s attack was a poor move for several reasons. First of all, the company is not exactly without sin in the matter. Secondly, as pointed out by Forbes, the latest video is a parody of a TV show that originally ran from 1985 to 1989, it comes across as a private joke between the dull servile men at Microsoft and mature corporate America, instantly alienating young individual users. Lastly, Microsoft, an established patriarch that has been an IT follower for decades, has arranged a public mud-fight with Google, a new wave challenger, an epitome of the American dream that has become a blue chip in a decade. The crude videos may have cost Microsoft more clients than the privacy scandal has cost Google.

http://goo.gl/AaHDb

Technology

Apple sold more iOS devices in 2011 than Macs in 28 years

The headline says it all- the popularity of the iPhone supported by sales of the iPad and iPod Touch have transformed a computer company into a home technology giant that has, yet again, become  the world’s most expensive company in equity valuation, breaching the £500bn barrier at the end of the month. The growth was backed by rumours that Apple, the company whose value has grown 46 times in the last decade and almost a third since the beginning of the year, may pay dividends for the first time in its history.

http://goo.gl/Eh9A0

Google ready to acquire Motorola

All the cash and market support Apple enjoys at the moment couldn’t come at a better time: in mid-February the European Commission and the US Department of Justice gave the green light to Google’s $12.5bn acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Considering the bitter, and partially successful, fight over smartphone patents that Motorola has led against Apple for years, with Google’s backing, the rivalry is likely to reach a whole new level. Bearing in mind that the relative novice in mobile technology, Google, doesn’t hide the fact that the primary goal in acquiring the company that manufactured the first mobile phones is the portfolio of 17,000 current and 7,500 pending patents, the courts around the world are likely to get very busy as soon as the deal is sealed.

http://goo.gl/1B04E

Sony Ericsson is no more

Ten years and several cult models later, on 16 February 2012, Sony Corp. has announced the full acquisition of Sony Ericsson. One of the pioneers of the industry, Ericsson will no longer produce mobile phones, whilst Sony will try to gain some of the market back with the rather promising Xperia line. Back in the day, Sony Ericsson caught on to the trends of the noughties – colour displays and mobile photography, its T610 model, half-cast in aluminium, became enjoyed cult following amongst a generation of loyal fans. The company took advantage of Sony’s other brands, offering Walkman and Cyber-shot mobiles that were a step closer to multimedia gadgets than many of their rivals. For obvious reasons, the overwhelming success of the iPhone has delivered a serious blow. To make things worse, Sony Ericsson settled on the wrong operating system. Leaving Symbian for Windows Mobile in 2008 was a decision that determined the company’s future. If Sony Ericsson had waited a year and become one of the first to support Android, I would probably have had to research another topic for this digest. Looking forward, Sony will try to follow Apple in creating a technologic ecosystem, uniting its smartphones, laptops, tablets and TV sets. Considering its gift for sleek design and the fact that Sony Mobile has inherited Ericsson’s patent portfolio, the company may indeed have a future.

http://goo.gl/O1XLQ

Zeitgeist

A masterclass in deception

Breathtaking as it may be, magic is not a science. Many years ago I was assisting a semi-respectable magician during one of his shows. I have to admit, contrary to the popular belief, even after learning the pith of the deception, the swiftness of gestures and the boldness of trickery were astonishingly impressive. To get a professional magician to talk about his trade is understandably hard, to corrupt someone as prominent as Teller – nigh on impossible. Fortunately for us, after seemingly being taken aback by the attention of the scientific community, the great magician volunteered.

http://goo.gl/lUjla

No place for serendipity

How big are the cities we live in? How big are they for us? A social experiment conducted in the early 1950s suggested that our habits limit our urban horizon to a few well-beaten paths. The efficiency of our lives, supported by a plethora of tools – optimal route finders, information finders, people finders allows us to get what we want as quickly as possible. Technology makes it so easy to find exactly what we want, we have no time to appreciate the things we didn’t really want. Amazon doesn’t allow us to stumble upon a brilliant book we would have never picked up; Google maps doesn’t leave us wandering the streets to find a new cafe or a tiny theatre or an adventure. Optimisation doesn’t leave space for the random, for chance, for serendipity.

http://goo.gl/d5uln

Following the momentum created by a highly successful streak that saw the company expand into new markets, open operational branches overseas and more than double its client portfolio, Adgistics has started 2012 buzzing with energy. Our first announcement of the year is the appointment of Wolfgang von Enckevort, a business process management expert with over 20 years of experience, as acting Chief Technical Officer. In his new role, Wolfgang will oversee Adgistics’ research and development, ensuring our offering supports an ever more ambitious business strategy. In conversation he is cordial, excessively polite, highly competent and contagiously enthusiastic. His laughter goes well with a name any self-respecting James Bond villain would kill for; he doesn’t have a cat. Wolfgang’s prior achievements speak for themselves but do not shed much light on his opinions. How does one find glory in the age of uncertainty? Does the future lie in turnkey software or bespoke solutions? Should we develop what we believe to be the best product imaginable or the optimal version required? A man who has been at the helm of the industry since before the world saw hybrid cars, the Kyoto Protocol and James Cameron’s Titanic, Wolfgang von Enckevort is an interesting man to talk to.

 
Emil: You have an impressive breadth of experience in marketing technology, how has the industry changed since the time you started?

Wolfgang: The advent of cloud-based marketing management solutions has been the major driver of change in the way marketing, advertising and media production professionals collaborate. Those solutions have quickly become virtual operating systems supporting an entire business process throughout its lifecycle, the virtual ecosystems that allow a great number of users from different countries and companies collaborate on tasks, projects and digital assets across all media channels. Without this development marketers would never have gained control over their own brand assets (and the processes that create them) and ‘Decoupling’ – the ability to select multiple suppliers – would not have the relevance it has today.

What about the Digital asset management (DAM), what are the trends that are going to define the next decade?

DAM is becoming an enterprise-level application in the way the EDM (electronic document management) systems have always been. As such, the success of DAM systems vastly depends on their ability to seamlessly integrate into other enterprise applications like ERP (enterprise resource planning) and PIM (product information system). In the future we will see DAM, CMS (content management systems) and document management solutions merging into a single software category that will not only cover all marketing operations but also service adjacent departments like sales, trading and product management.

What are the three most important prerequisites for a medium-sized independent tech company that wants to be number one in its niche?

1. Know your niche better than anyone else
2. Have a comprehensive plan to internationalise your business
3. Actively manage your product

Obey these three and you will be recognised as a serious contender.

Does the future lie in highly bespoke or standardised MRM (marketing resource management) solutions?

There is no simple answer to this question as it greatly depends on how seriously the organisation considering one or the other is willing to accept change management as a fundamental part of the solution implementation process. MRM is a resource and lifecycle management discipline and as such needs to be embraced (or at least accepted) by various process participants across a number of departments as well as their partner organisations. Once the change management team has scoped, scrutinised and re-engineered the workflow process (under consideration of the agreed business requirements) it is time to invite the vendors of both solution ‘flavours’ to demonstrate their tools’ abilities to form the backbone of the agreed workflow scenario.

Should a company looking for a cloud management solution choose one vendor, like SAP, or a number of suppliers, experts in specific fields?

I think in the future we will see more and more expert solutions, connected via an enterprise bus architecture into the corporate ERP and finance account management solutions. However, there will be a number of formerly rather disparate software disciplines merging into new solution propositions: DAM/CMS/EDM on one side and MRM/CRM (customer relationship management)/campaign automation/e-commerce) on the other. We also see that the “Big Data” – the market leaders in the enterprise application and business analytics space like SAP, SAS, Teradata and others, today do not really deliver seamless end-to-end solutions to fulfill all of the marketing and sales needs. Gartner and others have repeatedly underlined the fact that across-the-board integration is largely an illusion.

Should product development be client-driven or vendor-driven – should the vendors develop the perfect solution and make their clients and prospects understand why the solution is perfect or should the vendors listen to their customers and develop something based on expectations?

Product development needs to be vendor-driven. Product selection, configuration and customisation can, and should, be driven by the client side. In the past years we saw an increased willingness by the client-side marketeers to review and, if required, even re-engineer their processes in preparation for a solution implementation. In cases where this is an option, it is extremely valuable if a vendor can offer ‘best practice’ advice in the form of a well thought-out product, forged to suit real life workflow requirements. On the other hand, it is considerably more economical for vendors, and eventually for their clients, to rely on a standard software solution. Also, it is only a software product that has proved to work across a number of different clients that can be deemed robust yet flexible enough to easily cope with changing business requirements within each of these organisations.

How important is marketing? We are talking of business-to-business solutions, provided the product is great, there is really no need for extensive marketing, the customers should come to you, right?

Many solutions out there look great and are in the market certainly with the right intentions. This is why recommendation marketing is key. Word-of-mouth probably is the best, if not the only way to convey a business solution proposition composed of well-designed and fit-for-purpose software products backed by a skilled team of pre-sales, sales, implementation and support experts who bring the solution to life and guarantee on-going service reliability.

You are familiar with Adgistics’ product and service propositions, what do you believe are our unique selling points, how do we differ from other players?

Adgistics distinguishes itself through its rigorous focus on user experience and brand value improvement. Smart software solutions should be taken as a given, but the art of developing a deep understanding of a client’s needs and processes is often overlooked by other players in the field. I see Adgistics at the forefront of a new generation of enterprise software solutions that truly aim to make the lives of marketeers and other creative professionals both easier and more productive.

You are quite known in the industry as an MRM consultant. Would you like to see Adgistics’ consultancy offering expanding over time or would you prefer it to concentrate on developing more advanced products?   

Consulting is an integral part of any enterprise solution. Once a supplier is chosen, there needs to be close collaboration between the vendor and the client stakeholders. Naturally, vendor-provided consulting work is focused on solution design and training approach whilst the client’s team masters KPI definition and change management aspects of the implementation task.

What would you do differently in your professional life if you knew 10 years ago what you know today?

So far I have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and in the right role. I have witnessed the drastic changes the media and advertising industries went through over the past 20 years and have been lucky enough to always be at the forefront of change. From the advent of desktop publishing, digital scanning and image setting systems, followed by the Internet revolution and, eventually, the transformation of ‘software’ into ‘business process solutions’. It has been a very exciting journey so far; not sure my initial career aspirations would have been anywhere near as eclectic – I wanted to become a dancing instructor.

Story of the Month

Adgistics has a new Chief Technical Officer

As of late January, all the watches at Adgistics are perfectly in sync and the Hefeweizen in the fridge is chilled to the recommended 6°C. Wolfgang von Enckevort brings an extraordinary breadth of experience: the founder and director of numerous international companies, he spent the last 11 years at the top of the marketing software sector shuttling between international marketing hotspots. At Adgistics, Wolfgang will be taking a close look at research and development, making an already successful technology company über-successful. Taking advantage of his good mood and generally cheerful disposition, I spent over an hour quizzing Wolfgang on a number of topics, from the more general industry trends to the role of customer expectations in the R&D planning process. The interview will be posted later this month.

Marketing

Let there be light

London is not known for its marvellous weather. As a matter of fact, the combined miseries of high humidity, low temperatures and grey skies have contributed to the capital’s rather gloomy global image . That’s why the idea Greyworld had for Tropicana is nothing short of ingenious.  An artificial sun, 200 square meters large, 60,000 light bulbs strong gave Londoners, and probably the even more excited visitors of the city, an additional 3 hours of daylight. I do not know what will make people swop a builders‘ cuppa for a glass of orange juice but if a 2.5 tonne installation so powerful that it can be seen from space doesn’t do the trick, the gifted people at Tropicana can at least console themselves with the fact that they gave it their best.
http://goo.gl/mmCyf

Is sarcasm the new creativity?

There is something dull about the latest advertising trend: brands promoting themselves by making fun of other brands. At least the Zubrowka ad is well done. Although aired in the middle of December, it took the Lynx Effect parody a good month to get noticed. Well, better late than never.

Samsung, on the other hand, is trying to capitalise on the unexpected success of its hilarious “Dude, you are a barista” ad we covered back in November. The latest addition to the series follows the same spirit, comparing various features of the powerful Galaxy handset to the allegedly technically inferior iPhone 4S. All three are as mildly funny as a single joke repeated four times usually is. In addition to that, the ads backfire on three levels: firstly, they position Samsung as a follower, fighting the brand that created the market. Secondly, the ads admit that Samsung have lost all hope of converting the current iPhone users. Thirdly, the ads do not attack Apple gadgets as much as they attack caricatures of Apple users. Bullying rarely inspires true love.

Technology

The future is here

Few people would expect Microsoft to come up with a great ad. Although it is the technology that really matters here, the commercial unveils the potential few would otherwise recognise. Who would have thought that a gadget created for better gaming experience can truly revolutionise so many aspects of our lives in one go? If Microsoft was looking for its iPod, it has certainly hit the jackpot with Kinect. I only hope that should a neurosurgeon ever use the device on someone I like, the operating system is not going to freeze.
http://goo.gl/JmpVY

Last chance for RIM

Back in August we wrote that in spite of the 47% rise in earnings in 2010, RIM was deep in trouble. As unfortunate as it is, we were right. Thorsten Heins, the new President and CEO who took control of the Blackberry maker at the end of January, has big plans for the company. Whether it involves licencing its software to competitors or the long-rumoured sale of the company, the plans better be good. According to the industry, the chances of Blackberry getting out of the void unharmed are diminishing by the day and the new marketing ideas like using cartoons to promote the gadgets, do not help. On a positive note, the German-born ex CTO of Siemens who spent the last five years rising through the ranks of RIM, Heins does look as conservative as they come. Unfortunately, according to the latest reports, Apple has already surpassed RIM in popularity among the corporate users and winning those back will be a truly Herculean task.
http://goo.gl/Um0J4

Googlean Stables

Google is brilliant in many respects. I was an early adopter of the search engine itself, Gmail and Chrome and I have to say, it is going to take something extraordinary to make me consider alternatives. However, the trouble with a company that has grown from Frodo to Sauron in just over a decade is that, very much like its fantasy alter-ego, it tried to conquer the whole Middle-earth in one go. Instead of mastering their core services (that are good but by no means perfect) Google launched and acquired a few dozen additional ones, most of which are feeble to say the least. It seems, someone at the top finally looked at the portfolio and said: “… Erm, folks? Do we really need a sky map when our blog hosting service is second rate and the new interfaces of both Google Analytics and Gmail have transitioned stoic to tragic?”

http://goo.gl/SuQpS

Zeitgeist

Between piracy and tyranny

Not unlike the Occupy movement, the events surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) crafted by the US House of Representatives and the US Senate’s Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) originated in the United States but quickly went viral. The global nature of the Internet and the dominating role America plays in it makes the argument as relevant in London as it may be in Washington, Buenos Aires or Canberra. On one hand, the proposed legislation would be a highly efficient weapon in support of the intellectual property owners; on the other hand, the number of ways the power could be abused should be obvious to even its most fervent supporters. In the words of Mikko Hypponen, the international cyber-security expert, “while we might trust our governments right now, right here, in 2011, any right we give away will be given away for good.” The events of January 2012 are really nothing more than a battle in a modern Hundred Years’ War, the next one is in Europe and there will be plenty more after that. The global 24-hour blackout of 18th January is a testimonial to the virtual society: under the pressure of social activists, the bill in its present form was shelved. The only apparent victim of the standoff seems to be president Obama, who may have lost the support of Hollywood for publicly opposing the bill. The New York Times offers a decent overview of the most efficient act of peaceful crowd politics thus far.
http://goo.gl/RBiPF

The US Department of Homeland Security monitors Twitter but doesn’t speak English

The story would be quite funny if it wasn’t deadly serious. Two British tourists were stopped at LAX, detained in a cell with some colourful characters for 12 hours and packed off back to their home-towns with a stamp in the passports saying they have been refused entry to the US; something that will without doubt make future trips to the New World both exciting and adventurous. So, what did the guys do and why do I bother writing about it? The answers are interconnected. I bother writing about the story because, sadly, the incident seems to be symptomatic of this day and age. The reason The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) went ballistic on a skinny 26 year old and his girlfriend was that the gentleman used the words ‘destroy America’ in a tweet to friends. Now, if the sentence were provocative, the issue would be less straightforward. The tweet, however read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?’ Not only did it become obvious that American special services monitor all Social Media, it also became apparent that their analysts do not speak the language. I do not know what is scarier, the fact that DHS could miss a real terrorist or shoot someone for ‘killing time in NY’.
http://goo.gl/BxLgM

Unless you are from a planet with a red sun, gravity is a fixed parameter that we all have to accept.  What comes up must come down.  There is nothing we can do about this.

At times we may try to bend gravity, for example getting an aeroplane in the air, but this comes at a cost. Even after this cost, there is the inevitability of gravity’s effect – what comes up must come down.

In which case, it would be fair to assume that there is no sense in fighting gravity.  You learn to embrace it, and evolve accordingly.

Change

“Change” is a bit like gravity in the sense that it exists and will continue to do so in the future. In the web industry, it is a necessary constant that is accepted by web professionals.

It can take many forms, from software and code specifications to working methodologies and organisation structure. It allows the industry to grow and solutions to become more effective.

Here at Adgistics, we’re committed to embracing change. To this end, we regularly hold “lab” and “brown bag” sessions to keep abreast with industry changes so that we can be sure we’re always offering the best possible solution.

Our commitment

As an example of our commitment to change, a while back we decided to evaluate WebSockets which are a modern web standard, currently residing under the HTML5 umbrella. One of the results of this was an overhaul of our file upload mechanism which, at the time, was solely reliant on the proprietary Flash plugin.

We concluded that WebSockets were mature enough for our use and so set about creating a multi-tiered upload mechanism which utilised WebSockets in supporting browsers, with either Flash or HTML4 to support graceful degradation in older browsers.

This means we support the very latest technologies for users with the latest browsers, whilst still catering for those using older versions.

According to the Gartner’s new Emerging Technology Analysis report on Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies published last week, the popularity of the cloud-based solutions will continue to grow in comparison to the on-premises ones. With over a decade of experience in delivering highly popular configured solutions, Adgistics is referenced as a Cloud Services Digital Asset Management expert.

Responsible for 6% of the $4.3 billion global ECM market in 2011, cloud-based solutions are expected to almost double their share bringing it to 11% by 2015 with the predicted annual revenue growth of over 30%: way ahead of the 11.3% for the ECM software market in general.  Fast and easy content sharing is mentioned as one of the factors responsible for high adoption of the off-premises solutions that have seen significant uptake since 2009.

The report also provides an expansive overview of the advantages of SaaS and cloud-based offerings, touching upon computer elasticity, disaster recovery, stronger security and higher availability to name a few. Finally, as our lives become ever more mobile, the accessibility of the off-premises systems plays an important part in their success. Marketeers, photographers and account handlers all around the world use Adgistics’ Brand Centres to manage brands in and out of the office.  Adgistics is proud to support some of world’s most popular ones, including adidas, Cirque du Soleil, Ford and Vodafone.

Please contact Gartner for the full report (subscription required).

When the “World Wide Web” was introduced in 1990, it was only accessible via personal computers. Today, the web can be accessed thought a range of devices – laptops, tablets, mobile phones and even smart fridges and windows as demonstrated at CES 2012 in Las Vegas. Contemporary websites come in different shapes and sizes and provide a vast amount of information on practically anything one can think of.

With Internet surfing becoming a natural part of life and considering the ever growing number of browsers, web developers and designers have had to tackle a number of issues, for instance getting sites to render perfectly in different browsers, and supporting mobile browsing. Mobile Internet consumption has increased dramatically, with half of the current UK Internet users accessing the web via mobile devices. Following the trend, web designers and developers have adopted a ‘Responsive Web Design’ approach with the use of CSS3. In short, it makes websites automatically adapt to the elements of the users’ viewing environment: be it screen size, Operating System or device orientation in space.

Let’s take a look at the Earth Hour  website as an example. If opened on a laptop, the users will see the full website. Accessed through a smartphone or tablet, however, the site gets resized while keeping all the relevant information in place. You may also notice that while the main navigation has reduced to a drop-down to save space, it still complements the site perfectly.

A quick note: if using media queries, the website may not fit all mobile devices unless developed with a fluid layout (which should become a standard when creating responsive websites), since they differ in screen sizes and platforms.  Although not yet finalised by W3C, the international consortium on web standards, CSS3 has been used by developers on live projects as the technique supported by “modern” browsers (e.g. Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, and Safari – all with the use of prefixes).

An alternative to media queries are Touch Optimised / Web App frameworks such as jQuery Mobile and Sencha. These frameworks are built specifically for touchscreen devices and bring back some user interaction. The framework is cross-platform compatible, so there’s no concern about styling the website for individual devices. The only downsides – this would be a separate development from the standard HTML CSS site to which users would have to be redirected, and the result may not look as slick as the desktop version: the design capability of the framework is quite limited. It would, however, work flawlessly across a galaxy of touchscreen devices.

Overall, due to the popularity of mobile browsing, the need for responsive web design (mobile design) is a must for a customer-facing site: not only does it help market the company, it also shows the company is meeting the needs of its browsing customers.

The following post is written by and reflects personal opinion of Ben Fowler, UX Engineer at Adgistics.  

In a world where new CSS specifications are constantly evolving, the existence of browser prefixes has never been more important. Despite the flexibility we now have, some developers are complaining of having to repeat themselves in their code to achieve the same effect in several browsers, and that there should be just one ‘development’ prefix for all browsers. So why wouldn’t this work? Surely we shouldn’t have duplicate code?

A brief history

Back in the late ‘90s, the varying browser implementation of certain CSS properties was such that a site could render perfectly in one browser, but completely fail in another; hence the classic “This site works best in….” plaques found on many landing pages back then. Out of this and several other problems, the ‘standards’ and ‘non-standards’ (quirks) DOCTYPE implementation was born, which arguably saved the use of CSS on the web.

The generic ‘development’ prefix

If browser vendors were forced to use the same development prefix for a property i.e. dev-border-radius, developers would be forced to accept each browser’s interpretation of the property.

But if one browser implementation is different from another browser and breaks a site layout, the only options available are either to sniff out (not nice) the offending browser(s) and hide the property or abandon the use of the property altogether in all browsers, until the browser(s) changes its implementation.

Of course there’s every chance it won’t ever change and developers decide to abandon the use of the property altogether thus securing its journey into obscurity, never to be seen again.

The browser specific prefix

Browser-specific prefixes allow browser vendors to develop and potentially fix bad implementations, with the ability to leave any flawed behaviour behind in the prefixed version of the property.

During a property’s specification development, it allows developers to serve the property only to browsers which implement the behaviour correctly, preserving graceful degradation in other browsers. Whilst this might seem like an unnecessary duplication of code, it ensures the best possible development of the property implementation in all browsers.

Conclusion

Generic prefixes stifle property specification development, they offer developers limited flexibility, and potentially create more work in cross browser support.

Browser-specific prefixes save developers time and effort, and ensure healthy development of new property specifications which have seen the dramatic rise of CSS3 and its cross-browser support. Now there are even solutions that automatically add the relevant browser prefixes, allowing developers to code prefix free, without duplication of code.
 

In my time as a developer I’ve had the arguable pleasure of using a number of version control systems, from SourceSafe to Subversion. Most of these tools generally got in the way of what I was trying to do and resolving problems with them was less than carefree. After switching to Mercurial here at Adgistics, I haven’t looked back.

First of all, branching with Mercurial is dramatically simpler, meaning you’re more likely to use branches and therefore can isolate your commits from the main development stream as well as being able to merge changes from it into your branch. This really works for our agile approach as each story / unit of work has a branch associated to it. By having these branches we can identify issues quicker since it is much easier for our code review process to look at an individual branch.

Merges are simpler as well; I used to get the fear inside me when faced with a svn merge. With Mercurial you merge so often and (mostly) smoothly, it makes you realize how much the other tools were getting in the way.

Cloning is much quicker. If I want to get started on a new project I don’t want to wait for a good 20 minutes to pull the changes on my machine; that’s just wasting my time.

Mercurial is distributed. If I’m on my laptop I want to be able to commit things as I go along, not wait till I have a network connection to the office. With Mercurial I can commit all changes to my local repository and push them up when I get in.

I embraced the command line much more. With svn I tended to use the, admittedly very good, TortoiseSvn rather than the command line version. With Mercurial, the commands are so simple it’s often quicker and easier to type them. I still use a GUI for some of the actions I need and thankfully TortoiseHg is more than enough for my needs.

A few more ‘fluffy’ reasons why I like Mercurial include the web interface for the repositories. It allows me to view  a repository without checking it out. The Visual Studio 2010 plugin VisualHg works great.  It informs me of what I’ve changed and keeps track of file moves and renames, which used to be an utter pain in svn.

Overall, Mercurial has been a fantastic addition to our development process and works great with our build system which is built upon Hudson and also our code review tool – ReviewBoard.

Story of the Month

New Horizon

I could write a few pages on Adgistics’ quantum leap of 2011 – huge clients wins, new verticals, new market segments, and so on and so forth. However, since we have agreed not to look back and instead concentrate on things to come, I am very pleased to pre-release the news that Adgisitcs will be establishing an Australian presence some time in the next few months. Australia is a young and growing market and from working with our first client from the “land abound in nature’s gifts”, Kubota, serviced in collaboration with the creative agency: redhanded, we came into touch with local businesses and were overwhelmed by their extraordinary interest in Adgistics’ technology as well as our business approach. We are extremely excited and look forward to enlarging our footprint with great anticipation.

Marketing

Silly little claims

Good marketeers are expected to be creative. At the end of the day, it is in the job description – we create stuff. Usually a piece of copy or an image, should the muses be gracious – a new product perception. On a very rare occasion the best of us get to think of something that consumers pick up and actively promote themselves. December celebrates two great teams: Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, who seem to have developed a working photoblocker for South American beer brand Cerveza Norte, and Air New Zealand, who showed us that great promotion is not about global media campaigns with exorbitant budgets.
https://byebyerico.com/

Sore losers

Sometimes it takes more than an average amount of restraint to stop us from jumping up, hands lifted in dismay, shouting something along the lines of “come on! Really..?!” The industry is full of examples of bitter rivalries – Pepsi vs. Coke, Mac vs. PC, not to mention the legendary BMW-Audi-Subaru-Bentley standoff; picking on the competition comes with the territory. Instead of embarrassing itself by publicly accusing MacDonald’s of “breaking the rules of comparative advertising by degrading the Burger King brand” the chaps from sunny Florida should have learned from the ad and fought bullying with a touch of creativity.
http://goo.gl/y4TeB

Come on! Really..?!

Remember the humiliating Facebook-Google scandal of May 2011?  Burson-Marsteller, the crisis management PR experts hired by the Social Media giant were caught trying to pay journalists to criticise Google’s Social Circle. Well, guess what? Now the PR gurus have someone to discuss their woes with. Unbelievable as it seems, Bell Pottinger, the legendary spin masters whose list of patrons includes such gems as the government of Belarus, Augusto Pinochet and Ali Abdullah Saleh, were caught being very creative on Wikipedia. To do something so blunt is shockingly unprofessional on its own, but to be caught boasting about it? Hilarious.
http://goo.gl/6WtH6

Technology

Blue Chip Facebook

A possible IPO for Facebook, the company that has long become the symbol of the Social Media economy, has been discussed for ages. A year ago we rather sarcastically commented on the company’s $50 billion valuation. Twelve turbulent months later that number has doubled. In a way, investing in Social Media makes sense: with new wars looming in the Middle East, the European economy slipping in and out of comas, Japan in ruins and the United States losing its top-tier credit rating, people certainly will not be short of subjects to discuss. In that context and considering the company is allegedly responsible for a remarkable third of UK divorces, investing in suicidal post reporting tool will not be a waste either. In preparation for the IPO, Facebook will start incorporating sponsored stories into the main news feed of the site. Considering the woes IPOs brought tech firms in 2011, going public is a brave decision for a company whose valuation surpasses its current annual revenue 25 fold. On the other hand, who wouldn’t want to grow a blue chip company in 8 years?
http://goo.gl/vV0YF

Sick of Apple

I am often (deservedly) criticised for writing too much about Apple. Whereas I totally agree that there are plenty of other important players in the industry, and trying not to give in to the hype and not treat every newsbite tagged “Apple” as if it announced the discovery of life on Mars, the Californians do provide an unrivalled amount of stories. Just for a laugh, I have counted the main ones from December; you may decide whether they are newsworthy for yourself.

• December 1st: Apple: stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5.
• December 3rd: Apple licensed iOS scrolling patent to Nokia and IBM, offered license to Samsung.
• December 9th: Motorola Mobility wins German patent suit against Apple. How often does that happen?
• December 12th: Amazon.com announces Steve Jobs’ biography to be the best-selling book of 2011. It hit the shelves in October.
• December 13th: Federal Aviation Administration approves the use of iPads as electronic chart and digital flight manual readers in the cockpit.
• Another one for December 13th: Apple is rumoured to be discussing buying Anobit, an Israel-based flash memory manufacturers. For Californians it would be a rare acquisition of a non-software company.
• Yet another one for the day: a three-page contract that established Apple Computer Co. is sold for $1.59 million at Sotheby’s, soaring past the presale estimate of $100,000 to $150,000.
• December 14th: Steve Jobs becomes the hero of a graphic novella.
• December 16^th: it is reported that the Samsung A5 processors used in iPads and iPhones are manufactured in Austin, Texas. Samsung builds microchips in the States. How often does that happen? Seriously…
• December 22nd: Apple is investigating fuel-cell-powered MacBooks.
• December 22^nd: Apple posts a document detailing the international availability of iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud.
• December 23rd: It is announced that Steve Jobs will be awarded a Special Merit Grammy. Steve Jobs. A Grammy.
• Another one for the same day: the Vatican Library’s collection of writings and drawings by Michelangelo is available on iPad.
• December 29th: The US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that offers a possible glimpse at next generation device security: Face & Presence Detection.

Oh, there is one more thing… On December 28^th it was reported that the next generation of Windows Phone is going to come with a cloud backup tool. Now, I could say that the description sounds a little like iCloud but hey, 14 stories are enough.

Zeitgeist

The Times are A-Changin’

Even in the (generally alien to most people) world of luxury goods, few brands attract as much spite as Vertu. Founded 14 years ago, the British-based division of Nokia became the unrivalled symbol of status toys. Its concierge service may indeed be very good but then there are professionals one can hire just for that. Vertu phones are hand-made and the simpler models indeed look very “solid”. For as long as the differences between the mobile handsets were determined by differences in manufacturing quality, Vertu had a reasonably solid stream of clients. Simply put, one could pay £400 for a piece of plastic or £4,000 for a piece of polished steel (£40,000 for white gold etc.). Provided money was not a factor, the purchase made sense. Unfortunately for Vertu, the unprecedented technologic progress of the last decade changed the conversation. Suddenly, the company found itself in a corner: the market for technically outdated handsets that cost tens of thousands of Pounds is small. It certainly still exists but it relies on people who are either very conservative when it comes to technology or status hungry nouveau riche. The more conservative clientele would not buy a touchscreen, those younger in spirit would prefer something cool, the upper middle class – something a touch cheaper, while the elitists (and it is safe to assume a considerable number of Vertu’s clients like the idea of belonging to a small private club) would abandon the brand altogether if it dropped the price. In good times Nokia could afford an eccentric aristocratic uncle who shuns the plebs. In days of global recession that see both Nokia and many of its customers bleeding cash, the kooky relative has become a nuisance. Ironically, financially, he is not a liability, but there are two aspects more important than money, both casting a shadow on the core Nokia brand that doesn’t seem to need any assistance sliding into the cold abyss as it is. The social aspect aside, it is the technology. Combining the concept of Vertu with cutting edge specs is impossible – these handsets are not bought for 18 months; keeping the status quo is embarrassing, the phones are archaic. The sale is unlikely to be the end of the brand though. It has fans in China, the Middle East and Russia, countries less finicky when it comes to social stratification. Very much like Maybach, Vertu cannot stay in the West, not in this day and age.
http://goo.gl/zHLKk