True return on investment is a hard financial measure.
This really, really good presentation by Olivier Blanchard makes the point more eloquently than I’ve seen it made before.
The tone of voice is lovely.
And the content feels like stuff that you should know.
Which it is.
But lots of people still act like it isn’t.
(Isn’t stuff that they know).
What do you do when attention is your currency and making trouble is one of your core values?
Answer : some very interesting things indeed, based on the presentations at Channel 4’s Meet The Commissioners session in London yesterday.
We heard from Louise Brown, Head of Cross Platform, Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor for Education and Tom Loosemore, Head of 4iP.
As well as some impressive examples of digital thinking in action, there were some interesting themes for the afternoon.
Routes to attention
Ideas judged against how they…
Get attention.
Keep attention.
Turn attention into value.
Digital Business Models
This was a major theme from Tom’s presentation. As well as investing in sustainable non-broadcast public service initiatives, 4iP is actively experimenting with alternative business models for online start-ups. As he said, if Channel 4 finds an advertising revenue model challenging with 10 million monthly uniques, 4iP will take some convincing that an ad-only model will work for a start-up.
Accountability
Matt talked about a 9 point (3×3 square) grid against which each project is measured.
The objectives of getting attention, keeping attention and turning attention into value run along one side. Along the other are three types of audience engagement : visitors, fans, contributors/distributors.
Using this grid, objectives and metrics can be entered in each of the nine squares. A simple but highly effective way not only to retrospectively report on a project, but also to run actionable ongoing diagnostics during a project.
All in all a useful and thought-provoking session.
(Thank you to davysims for the photograph.)
As mentioned in previous posts, we helped Philippa Gregory and her team to implement the Twitter version of her latest historical novel, The White Queen.
We developed a strategy for how best to publish the 250 tweets over seven days on Twitter itself.
And we developed a rich, immersive Flash application that lives on Philippa’s site that allows fans to view the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure.
Twitter Flash App
The good news is that the book went to Number 1 on The Times bestseller list in the UK after only 5 days on sale, and achieved the equivalent number 2 position in the United States.
And here in November the number of views of the Flash application continues to grow month on month. The application is still delivering (increasing) value from tweets that were posted 3 months ago.
All good stuff.
Blonde is very proud to announce the launch of their latest website for The Forth Road Bridge.
The site allows bridge users to receive the very latest traffic and weather information on the bridge. A number of customisable widgets on the homepage feature webcams of the bridge, the latest weather conditions as well bridge restrictions and traffic delay information.
Bridge users can also sign-up to receive traffic delays by SMS or email as well as getting the most important bridge updates through Twitter.
So if you’re a regular, or even an occasional, bridge user get yourself signed-up to plan your journey!
Seeing the name Geocities again today started me reminiscing about the earlier days of the Internet. My thoughts drifted through many fond memories including submitting to DMOZ and the emergence of the manual web. Web 1.0 hmmm…
Anyway, there seems to be a small resurgence of interest in human based engines at the moment. Although at time of writing PreFound seems to have disappeared off the face of our virtual planet. So I thought I’d start a little list of human (not to be confused with social) search engines for your delectation…
http://www.gravee.com (social)
Please feel free to submit more if you fancy.