When I were a lad in advertising, topical ads were all t’rage.

Responding quickly to take advantage of an opportunity presented by something in the news was a win, win, win situation.

It made the agency look proactive, engaged, interested in the eyes of the client.

It made the brand team look good in the eyes of their business.

It made the brand look good in the eyes of consumers.

I remember a couple of days after the 1987 hurricane, Volvo ran a black and white press ad featuring a press photograph of one of their cars that had been hit by a falling tree. The occupants had emerged unscathed, reinforcing the brand’s reputation for safety.

Brands such as Heineken and Durex clearly had contingency budgets ringfenced to allow for this kind of activity.

More recently the same topical principle has been applied to this bus-back execution…

That’s the ‘traditional’ approach to topicality.

But what does topical advertising look like in 2010? Maybe a little like this?

During the extended cold snap of January this year, we noticed a few people on Twitter talking about the fact that cans of IRN-BRU left in the car overnight had frozen solid.

So we created WillMyIRNBRUFreezeInTheCar.com, a simple, single-function, topical microsite that answers its own question.

The site was conceived and built in an afternoon. It cost less than £x (where x < you think), including purchase of the domain.

The user simply selects the predicted overnight temperature in their location using a slider device and the site tells them whether their IRN-BRU is at risk via a series of randomised, amusing responses.

We then waited (not very long) for the next cold snap and promoted the link via IRN-BRU’s Twitter account.

In next 36 hours or so we generated just under 750 unique visits, and some very favourable qualitative response.

No doubt we’ll have a few more opportunities to further promote the site before the end of winter, next time hopefully with an offline PR ‘booster rocket’.

Expect to see more of this down-and-dirty, low-cost, do-and-learn style of topical/tactical digital activity over the coming months.

Social channels thrive (nay depend) on social content or social objects as they’re commonly referred to.

And clever, brand-relevant, topical content is as good a route to generating social objects as any.

People are pesky.

So it says if you click on the ‘People’ button in the affectionately named ‘amoeba’ flash panel on our homepage.

They are pesky, not just because they have too many shoes. They are pesky because they have a habit of surprising you and confounding your assumptions.

At Blonde we embrace this peskiness by talking to people. We talk to as many people as we can as often as we can.

And they never fail to surprise us. For which read that we always learn something useful.

That something might be a huge insight that unlocks an innovative strategy. It might be a smaller insight (for instance that b2b audiences are no fans of locked pdf documents), responding to which allows our clients to appear more thoughtful. As often as not it will be a reminder that we need to get our heads out of the emerging technology clouds and get our feet back on the average Joe ground.

Take a look at this video if you want to see just how far we can get our heads up our own bottoms if we insulate ourselves in an early-adopter world of Buzz versus Twitter blog posts and such like. It was produced by Google and asks a simple question of normal people – ‘What is a browser?’

In the recent past we have spoken to classical musicians, breast cancer sufferers, energy advisors, record company execs, independent financial advisors, journalists, high net worth individuals, social entrepreneurs, runners, higher education managers, internal stakeholders from several clients, and a whole range of ordinary folk of various shapes, sizes, backgrounds and locations.

Every conversation has been useful, having a direct impact on strategy and/or execution.

As it says on our homepage, ‘People are pesky. Everything we do is for them.’

Primary research to understand the people associated with a brief sounds like an obvious thing to do, but it can be inconvenient to the agency and/or the client that is in a blinkered hurry to use the latest technology.

We are huge fans of Forrester’s people-first approach to digital planning, and their Social Technographics model.

Understanding people’s relationships with technology (by asking them) ensures that your digital strategies are underpinned by the truth rather than wishful thinking.

Big news yesterday. Forrester introduced a new category of social behaviour to their Social Technographics model.

Welcome the “Conversationalists”.

Full details of the rationale behind this addition can be found in the Forrester Groundswell Blog post. But the new category has been introduced to recognise the rapid fire, short format status update posting that is epitomised by Twitter and which is now a major part of life on Facebook.

The Conversationalists take their place on the second from top rung of the Technographics ladder as shown below.

Some of the initial commentary has focussed on the positioning of this new behaviour category on the ladder, contending that its relative importance is currently being overstated. (Check out some of the comments on this post on the We Are Social site).

But I think there are bigger issues.

We are huge fans of, and subscribers to, Forrester. And we actively use the Technographics model in planning comms strategy for most of our clients.

Thus far, the model has been very easy to explain. Each behaviour category, from Creators to Spectators, does exactly what it says on the tin. Simple, intuitive, and precisely descriptive.

And, equally important, up until now none of of the various behaviour categories overlapped. People overlapped, in that one person could exhibit more than one of the behaviour types, but the behaviour types themselves were discrete.

The Conversationalists moniker is not so straightforward. For two reasons.

1) It is neither single-minded nor precisely descriptive of the behaviours it claims to encapsulate.

2) It describes a behaviour type that overlaps with at least two of the existing categories.

Let’s look at each of these issues in turn.

Is Twitter a “conversation”?

For some people it might be. But the people whose Twitter streams are a constant flow of @replies are the exception rather than the rule in my experience.

Twitter is a lot of different things to different people. That’s why it is not easy to explain to the uninitiated. Sure there are sporadic outbursts of conversation but certainly in “our” world it is primarily an information/content/ideas exchange. And “conversation” doesn’t accurately describe the nature of that exchange.

The short format status updates of Facebook and Twitter allow you to do similar things. In fact some people annoyingly do exactly the same things at the same time on both, simultaneously posting the same content, verbatim, to both streams.

But, for most people that I’ve spoken to, the whole tone and purpose of Facebook is very different to that of Twitter, even if the status update functionality is similar.

“Conversation” is probably a more accurate description of what happens via Facebook updates.

And that brings us onto the second issue of overlap.

“Conversation” is also an accurate description of what happens in the comment threads of many blog posts. And, in a more lowbrow manner, in the comment threads that accompany YouTube videos.

So there is significant overlap between “conversing” and “commenting”.

To a lesser degree there is also overlap between “conversing” and “creating”, to the extent that regular micro-blogging can be construed as content creation.

And then we have the overlap between Conversationalists and Joiners. Joiners maintain a profile on a social networking site and/or visit social networking sites. Conversationalists update status on a social networking site.

In fact Conversationalists actually feel like a subset of Joiners, exhibiting a particular aspect of Joiner behaviour and doing it at least weekly rather than at least monthly.

All this matters to us because we actively use the model to influence communication strategy. We frequently conduct primary research to create bespoke Technographics profiles for specific audiences.

For instance, we found (perhaps not surprisingly) that people on the UK Hip Hop dance scene indexed through the roof against high-end Creator behaviour. Being able to categorise and quantify this gave us the confidence to create a community hub that largely depended on user generated content.

Hitherto, constructing questionnaires and research methodologies to generate bespoke Technographics profiles has been relatively straightforward because none of the behaviour categories overlapped. If we are to embrace the Conversationalists, this will be more tricky henceforth.

This is a hot topic right now.

Mr Murdoch has created more than a bit of a stir with his comments about Google and the ownership of content. This interview with Sky News in Australia is worth watching. It’s 37 minutes long but well worth finding the time for.

It [monetising content] became a hotter topic for me as a result of a conversation with a content provider.

And hotter still as a result of the confluence of a couple of blog posts that I read subsequent to that conversation.

The content provider is The Daily Mash, the UK’s biggest satirical website.

I met up with Paul Stokes, one of the founders of the site and ex Business a.m. client, for a couple of drinks and a chat.

And it was interesting to hear him talk about the monetisation of his content. His site publishes a steady stream of high quality, highly amusing, unique content to a large, loyal, high quality and growing audience.

He also has an open-minded and creative attitude to generating opportunities for brands to engage with that audience. But it appears that getting traditional media agencies to think beyond variations on the display advertising theme isn’t as easy as it should be.

That really chimed with me. Blonde has picked up a couple of really interesting clients recently, based purely on their desire to explore more innovative approaches to achieving online objectives than clickable rectangles (banners). A desire to explore that clearly wasn’t being serviced by existing suppliers.

There is a structural obstacle at play here for any agency whose business model is based on taking a cut of money spent on paid for media. For more and more clients the emphasis is shifting away from bought media to owned and earned. Paying for space is becoming a last resort in digital channels.

Enter this post by Norwegian planner Helge Tennø.

He talks about a book called Business Model Generation, which contends that there are three basic models for business : customer relationship businesses, product innovation businesses, and infrastructure businesses.

Helge argues that “media” has allowed itself to become an infrastructure business in a world that requires it to be developing customer relationships.

“I would suggest media position itself to the relationship business, and be selling completely different, more scarce and more valuable products to brands. What I would like to see is a change of business model focus. From infrastructure destruction, to creating valuable relationships – providing new and interesting products for brands to sponsor in order to increase the value being created between media and the participant.”

That quote from Helge is a pretty good description of the direction in which Paul would like to take The Mash.

We also talked about the potential opportunities afforded by mobile applications.

The Guardian’s iPhone app sold nearly 70,000 downloads at £2.39 each in its first month and is being touted as a potential £2million annual revenue stream.

The Viz Roger’s Profanisaurus application is also apparently doing well at £2.99.

Then on the way home I read this post from Bud Caddell, which contains an idea for an interesting alternative model for monetising content.

Bud suggests a model that is based on rewarding subscribers for sharing your content. The greater the degree and reach of sharing, the greater the level of subscription discount. So loyal subscribers are happy, accessing great content at a reduced price. And you’re happy because you’ve recruited a highly engaged and cost effective sales force to recruit new subscribers on your behalf.

Sorted!

Or maybe not based on this final post by Andy Sernovitz – “Nobody wants to talk about something if everyone is talking about it”.

It’s all about maintaining the perceived value of your content. In Bud’s sharing model the subscribers are very important to business growth. But they also need to feel important, and that means restricting the supply. Think Spotify or Google Wave invitations.

To be continued…

What’s your poison?

We’ve been hired by Channel 4’s 4iP fund to promote a new iPhone application called You Booze You Looze.

4iP is an investment fund administered by Channel 4 that is designed to support non-broadcast public service initiatives.

You Booze You Looze (YBYL) is one such initiative . It is the brainchild of a game developer in Dundee called Digital Goldfish. DG is already responsible for “Bloons”, one of the biggest selling games on the iPhone ever.

YBYL is an app that keeps tabs on what you and your friends are drinking. In a fun way it also informs you of the short and long term financial and health impacts of your drinking. It has Facebook Connect technology built in to allow groups of friends to be acutely aware of what everyone else is drinking. It features various sobriety tests/games that measure the effect of alcohol on things like balance, co-ordination, reaction time and concentration.

What has this got to do with public service you may ask.

Well.

One of Channel 4’s core values is “Making trouble in the public interest”. (One of my favourite brand values of all time).

The aim for this app is that it will be fun. Being fun will lead to social use in bars etc. Social use will hopefully lead to discussion.

Anyone who has read Nudge will be aware of the Amerian campus survey that showed that students tend to overestimate what their peers are drinking, and increase their consumption accordingly. Once told that their friends are actually drinking considerably less than they thought, their alcohol consumption dropped markedly.

So this app approaches the issue of excessive drinking by accepting that social drinking is fun, in the hope that it will provoke discussion. It is very different in tone from your average public sector anti drinking campaign.

Blonde is working with Stripe, Opticomm and one of our EdTwinge friends, Andrew Burnett, to promote the app through various channels, with a heavy dose of social media activity in the mix.

Read more at http://www.youboozeyoulooze.com/.

And if you have an iPhone click the Buy Now button to get one. A bargain at only 59p.

Follow @BoozeLooze on Twitter too.

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).

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.

(Image borrowed from Jessica Smith)

Herewith a list of lists and interesting initiatives by financial services organisations in social spaces. Part of an ongoing planning project. I’d be really grateful if any readers who know of other examples could include links in a comment. Thank you.

Jeremiah Owyang (Web Strategist) – ongoing list of social media efforts from financial services all and sundry.

Jeremiah Owyang again – another Web Strategy blog post with additional examples.

Mashable – 5 ways banks are using social media.

Net Banker – Banks and credit unions on Twitter.

Visible Banking – Not very pleasing on the eye, but incredibly comprehensive list of organisations and social media activities across various platforms in various countries.

Insurance Networking News – “Social technology strategies for insurance and other ‘boring’ brands.”

Wells Fargo – Social media case study presentation on Slideshare.

First Direct – ‘Little Black Book’ by customers for customers.

Groundswell -  Young & Free Alberta case study on this Forrester blog

Hope this is helpful. Once again, thanks in anticipation for any further examples.

Blonde’s attention was diverted yesterday from the virtual aspects of the IRN-BRU Can Clan to the Homecoming event that everyone’s work has been leading up to.

7,000 people turned up to Glasgow Green on a lovely day to enjoy free music from Pearl & the Puppets and The Zutons, and to break a world record.

Here’s the “the man from Del Guinness, he say yes” moment when the new record for the most people simultaneously dancing the cancan was confirmed. Still waiting on the final official figure but it will be over 1,000.

Meanwhile, back in the virtual world, the online cancan line is tantalisingly close to the magic 5,000 ‘BRUZERS’.

The BRUZERS were also a prominent part of the event branding. Here they are behind one of Pearl’s puppets on stage.

Live tweeting of Philippa Gregory’s new novel ended on 17th August. To coincide with the book’s international publication date, the following day we put live a bespoke Flash application on Philippa’s website that allows fans to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure.

The White Queen on Twitter.