I recently attended the 55th Annual Cannes Lion 2008 Advertising festival and saw the presentation from Unicef and their fund-raising partner David Droga of Droga5.  What these guys have achieved is nothing less than…amazing.

You see, what David Droga pitched to Unicef was such a simple, yet powerful idea for raising money and awareness of the plight of people around the world who dont have clean water.  Essentially, it works like this:

Restaurants in New York City (the initial launch city for the campaign) were invited to ask their customers to donate a minimum of $1 or more for the tap water they would normally drink for free with their meal.  For every dollar raised, a child somewhere in the world will have clean drinking water for 40 days.

Now imagine this.  If every restaurant in every major town or city in the world got behind this and did the same, unclean drinking water could become a thing of the past to those where sterlised and sanitised drinking water has been merely a dream.

So, I love this idea for its pure simplicity and scalability - two aspects of marketing and business I believe very strongly in.  I also love this idea because it has united the marketing and advertising communities in ways I’ve never seen before.  Since its launch in March 2008, it has leveraged over $7m of pro-bono creative fees and 1 billion FREE ad impressions online.  Not bad eh?

So, if you’re any agency or work clientside, join the likes of AMEX, Esquire and Turner Broadcasting, amongst others, & get involved.  Take a look at www.tapproject.org then contact Stephen @ Unicef or David Droga @ Droga5.   You’ll be glad you did!

Credit: by David Hughes, Non-Line Marketing

For several years I have been urging marketers to kick their dependence on “Moveable Type”.  It was a great way to scale information dissemination in 1439, but the world has moved on.  Ironically it has been the publishers who have managed to seize the video content initiative.  Conservative organisations like the Telegraph have morphed into a CNN/BBC hybrid with loads of video content… and they have even cracked the monetisation with pre-roll forced viewing of ads.

However, few sites have really optimised video/flash for their “successful outcome” journeys.  I was recently encouraging a hotel chain to do more engaging things than “download sample menu PDF” on their site, or think of alternatives to call-out boxes with short text testimonials.  By the end of the session, we’d identified 20 different “rich media” opportunities to bring their hotels to life including…

• Video interviews with the head chef
• Virtual tours of the gardens - season by season
• “Vox Pop” testimonials recorded before people leave
• Welcome message from Hotel Manager

I have a couple of clients who have even dismissed my over-cautious recommendations about “testing” text versus “rich media” because they know that the video/audio stuff is the right thing to do (with search-optimised text transcripts alongside!).  So, why wait?  Today’s digital project for you…Ask yourself: What’s on my web site that would be more successful if it were in audio/video format and how cheap and quick would it be to execute (get your teenage kids to do it for you..they are the video generation)?

I admire the efforts Salesforce.com have done with a flash presentation for each of their target personas delivered by the most appropriate person…it shows an understanding of the need to tune messages to decision makers and that a personal touch is engaging…although it may be a little too cheezy for some puritan British prospects.

I have been a fan of MSN’s Bring The Love Back campaign – watch the latest video installment below.  The idea is simple.  To promote take-up of integrated marketing by having a giggle at marketers who don’t get it… “I did try and look at that Web 2 dot zero stuff you told me about, but I just couldn’t find the exact URL”.

You’ll have to watch the first video to get the point of the second one!  So, MSN are getting across a complex business proposition (don’t be a stupid marketer…get to know and use digital marketing, preferably with us not Google!) through video.  Now, who’d have thought that likely a couple of years ago? Here is the latest video.

With thanks to Laurence Parkes, Head of Digital @ WCRS

The two WCRS case studies featured identify a number of key learning’s we can all take forward in our use of social media:

1. Use multiple “engagement agents”.  Identify them and leverage as many opportunities within this community as you can.
2. Don’t worry about using agents outside of your target area.  dothetest.co.uk would never have been as popular in the UK if we hadn’t made it popular in video-sharing sites in the US first.
3. Test and learn.  A general principle with (digital) marketing activity, but particularly important here.  Go with the flow and capitalise on interest where it catches.
4. Be open and transparent with the “agents”.  Be clear that this is marketing activity.  Do not pretend to be someone you are not!
5. Give the “agents” relevant content.  Whether this is the opportunity to win £20,000 in a competition or an engaging update of how the competition is developing.

This is a case study for the post Communication in the ‘Age of Recommendation’.

TfL wanted to make both driver and cyclists realise how difficult it is for drivers to see cyclists.  In order to encourage both groups to see or been seen, a powerful film was created to run on TV.  The London-only TV campaign (and supporting press) had a very limited budget and, therefore, agency WCRS were asked to use digital to lengthen and amplify the campaign.  The agency knew that social media and recommendation could do just this.

Experts – bloggers specialising in cycling and motoring were approached to get them to spread the word and post the video.
 
Interest Groups – WCRS joined London cyclist / motoring groups on Facebook and uploaded the video.

Popularity Charts – SEO techniques were used to increase the likely views of the film on video sharing sites as well as encouraging and enabling promotion of the video on social bookmarking & news aggregation sites, such as delicious & digg.
 
All of this was done without giving the game away!  Key terms, such as “moonwalking bear”, couldn’t be optimised, for example!

After only 2 weeks, (until March 26th, 2008) the ad had received a total of 4.4million views, including: 

From Popularity charts

• 2.9 million views on YouTube & other video sharing sites with over 1,500 comments
• It was 6th most viewed YouTube film (in March) in the UK and 1st most viewed in its category (How to & Style) in both the UK and globally. 
• million views on dothetest.co.uk driven by social bookmarking sites

From Experts seeding

• 5,092 views driven from niche cycling/motoring blogs
• The film had circa 34,000 results on Google and over 1,400 blog mentions (source: Technorati)

From Interest groups

• 11,630 views from groups & profiles on Facebook: 4 fan groups

It is estimated that the TV campaign directly delivered 5.92m views.  It, alongside the press campaign, drove 400,000 online views (based on the first week’s visits).  The social media activity then amplified this, delivering another 4m views.  This meant Tfl got around £140,000 worth of views for £20,000, delivering a saving of £120,000 and an ROI of 600%.

This is a case study for the original post Communication in the ‘Age of Recommendation’.

With thanks to Laurence Parkes, Head of Digital @ WCRS

The objective of this campaign was to re-engage a young male audience with the new B Range. WCRS came up with the idea of “Effortless Cool” and had a TV script showing a Brylcreem user showing their cool by doing really cool tricks (skateboarding, magic, etc.) effortlessly. In order to create even greater engagement, we decided to run an on-line competition to cast the hero of the ad and the music track to be used. The competition was hosted on Myspace. This was, in itself, an “engagement agent”. But we used further agents to create interest in the competition;

Experts – we approached bloggers in extreme football, magic, street basketball, etc. to get them to write about the competition and drum up interest in it.

Interest Groups – we joined discussion forums and Facebook pages around interests like pen spinning (yes, they exist!) and talked about the competition. Using a channel on YouTube we engaged with these groups by building up lists of our favourite videos.

Popularity Charts – we used SEO to increase the likelihood of the finished ad being found on sites like YouTube, whilst engaging in an old-style media campaign, but with the new media channel that is StumbleUpon.

In all of these types of agents, we gradually released content (including recent entries) to pique interest and build momentum. We created our own blog on Myspace to discuss how the competition was developing.

For only £40k we had 1,208 music entries and 194 video entries. We also had 115,000 views of the top 5 video entries alone.

The landscape is increasingly difficult for brands

The Information Age has brought around a shift in media consumption.  Consumers have an abundance of choice online; Google has 9 billion indexed web pages, Amazon have 2.3 million books, Technorati tracks 65 millions blogs and YouTube serves over 100 million videos per day.  So much content and so little time!  How do they manage?  It also means that it is getting harder for brands to efficiently get their messages across and this is a time of increasing economic instability where efficiency is essential.

Rise of the ‘Age of Engagement’

Some predict an end to the Interruptive model of advertising.  Consumers have more control over the content they engage with meaning we can no longer force our way into their attention (we will just be fast-forwarded). We are now in the Age of Engagement, which means that to efficiently deliver our message, we must make it sufficiently engaging that people will seek it out and pass it around.

But, is this now expecting too much of consumers?  As the amount of digital content grows and its novelty fades, it will become harder to get people to forward content to their friends.  So not only do we find it increasingly difficult to interrupt people’s chosen content with our messages, but it becomes harder to distribute our own content. We must, therefore, find a new method.

Welcome to the ‘Age of Recommendation’

Consumers are increasingly turning to filters in order to help them make sense of the Long Tail of content they want to experience.  Web 2.0 technologies are helping them. Social bookmarking sites such as del.licio.us, content sharing sites such as YouTube, recommendation software like Last.fm, review sites like ciao.co.uk, even special interest bloggers and discussion forums help people find and share content they are interested in.

Putting aside Richard Huntingdon’s fear for the “death of serendipity”, consumers find these filters essential to avoid being bogged down in content.  These social media channels are our “new media”.  We are moving to an Age of Recommendation where, in order to get our target audience to engage with our message, we must go through the recommenders, or “agents of engagement”.

Agents of Engagement

There are three types of agents:

Experts – There is an increasing number of bloggers (both amateur and professional) with a particular area of interest / expertise.  They are creating new avenues for brand messages. While the number of people blogging is small (Only 2.25 m people have created a blog in the UK according to BRMB Internet Monitor) the numbers who read people’s views on-line are huge (56% of UK population, BRMB Internet Monitor).

Interest Groups – As Clay Shirky has identified in his book “Here comes Everybody”, it is far easier now to organise into groups of common interest via online networks such as discussion forums and social networks.  He references the Facebook group of HSBC students who managed to get the bank to reverse its policy through organised pressure.  The effort that is required to self-organise is now so small that there is probably an online group for practically any interest you might think of.

Popularity Charts – Reading Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” you might be forgiven for thinking that in the future there won’t be blockbuster hits.  But, as Mark Earls has pointed out, we are, if nothing else, herd animals.  What we find entertaining is often what a lot of other people find entertaining.  This explains the popularity of content sharing sites (MySpace, YouTube and Flickr) with their in-built charting mechanisms and social bookmarking sites (whose raison d’etre is to enable people to find what other people found interesting). 

There are increasing numbers of clients that are realising the benefits of using recommendation.  Miles Calcraft’s Trident campaign used club DJs, music shops, TV/ radio stations, posted on social networks and video sharing sites to get their anti-gun track called “Badman” distributed.  It was watched by 399,000 people; it became YouTube’s 4th biggest viral of 2006 and won the agency a Marketing Week Effectiveness Award.  Sony have also recognised the importance of recommendation.  They used the digital PR agency Immediate Future for their Sony Paint ad.  They contacted bloggers and created a del.icio.us page to support press release activity and enable bloggers easy access to further information.  Blog posts and comments were added to enrich the content.  Press releases, optimised for search engines and posted to syndication wires with embedded links, were also pitched to online journalists.

And there are 2 very successful (WCRS) case-studies of campaigns that successfully utilised “agents of engagement” for very different objectives:

1) Brylcreem: B:Effortless
2) Transport for London: Awareness Test

See our Case Studies category for more info on these campaigns.

Initially, please contact me via email. You can email me at: james[at]mydigitaljam.com or by using the contact form on this site. More than likely, if there is common ground, I’ll be happy to hand out my mobile number. 

My day job varies by the day – one day I am lecturer for the IDM’s Certificate in Digital Marketing qualification.  Next I am planner for a client.  The following I am a speaker at a conference, or a judge for an awards ceremony, or a writer / presenter for e-Consutlancy.com or media sales trainer for The Times!

Here’s a few of the clients I work with on a regular basis.

Who am I & what do I do?

Hello!  For the most-part of my life, I work at a digital consultancy called ‘My Digital JAM Limited’, which I founded some 5 years ago after leaving agency life.   I’ve been in digital over 13 years, mainly working for myself, and in that time, I have crafted out myself a role as digital therapist, problem-solver, mediator, strategist, negotiator and general digital dog’s body!

My day job varies by the day – one day I am lecturer for the IDM’s Certificate in Digital Marketing qualification.  Next I am planner for a client.  The following I am a speaker at a conference, or a judge for an awards ceremony, or a writer / presenter for e-Consutlancy.com or media sales trainer for The Times!

My world is a strange one!  I do a kind of strategy, planning, analytics, advising type thing often with clients who need help with defining or executing their digital strategy, or just with help fixing a specific problem (like renogiating ad-serving rates, IP rights to a piece of work or agency fees charged!).  I specialize in online advertising – you know, that annoying rich media stuff that so many do so badly – hence why I specialize.  But, I’m also a generalist and I work across all digital media, including search, email, mobile, affiliate etc etc.

I’m pretty straight-talking, honest and not generally interested in all the bullshit that goes on in digital.  I don’t think I have an ego, as I’m not the worried about my 15mb of fame, but…

So, this site is about me telling you, the reader, what I think about when it comes to digital stuff.  I hope you like it.  Post your comments, tell me what you think – if its crap, I’ll make it better.  If its good, I’ll do more of it!

And now my past

My past is varied, but in the mid-90s I established Netfinity – a digital agency – which was successful and re-branded to Shrinking Earth.  That grew out of control and eventually became part of the Yellow Submarine.  I joined their board as Director of Digital, but that didn’t remain the case.  After some time out, I established My Digital JAM (aka Trust Digital) 5 years ago!  Today, I am a Fellow of the IDM, trainer in all things digital for e-Consultancy and i-Level and father of two beautiful girls (Willow 4 and Coco 3).

You can read more about my background, skills, experience, clients etc on LinkedIn.

James (Digital JAM) is an International speaker and trainer on digital marketing.  He covers all topics on digital, including web 2.0, social media, display advertising, media planning & buying, email, search, affiliate, analytics…have I missed anything?

You can ‘hire’ him by the hour, day or week (if you can bare it) to deliver conference keynotes on digital through to 2-3 day training courses for your team.  Recent international engagements include workshops in Dubai, Slovenia & China.

James has educated in excess of several thousand professional marketers in all things digital – here’s a list of the companies he has trained:

Royal Mail
Cisco
MBNA
JWT MENA
Wunderman
The Times, The Sun
Mirror.co.uk

Want to book James for a course or speaking event?  Get in touch here.