I’ve been working with the fine folk over at Tequila/ and TBWA to support the development and launch of a new Facebook application for National Express coaches.

The idea is simple: targeting students mainly (although essentially this promotion is open to anyone and everyone in the UK), National Express is offering 40,000 £1.00 coach seats (plus 50p booking fee, ahem) available for travel in the UK during October and November 2008.

The Facebook application (pictured) is being used to promote the idea of ‘you should have been there’ to encourage members of Facebook to add our app to their profile.  By doing so, they can share their crazy pictures of fun they’ve had, vote for other people’s crazy pictures, book tickets for travel and win festival tickets, free travel for a year and lots of goodies from Apple.

Their is above-the-line support, a micro-site and activity taking place in Student Union bars all over the country.  From a marketing perspective (as that’s what this blog focusses on), its a nice example of integrated activity, combining broadcast with a micro-site, whilst blending in targeted online display ads and social media (blogs, Facebook groups etc.).

Give me a week and I’ll post the results, but the campaign officially launches on Monday.  Keep your eyes out for the TV ads and the display ads online.

So, last week Google launched its new web-browser Chrome (I would have written about it before, but was nowhere near my blog for most of the week - sorry!).  I’ve downloaded it and played with a bit and it’s…err….OK.  I think, given the hype in the media and the blogs of the past week that it might have been more special than it is.  It’s fast, I’ll give you that.  But, I dont think Firefox need worry!

Right now, the browser market splits pretty much in three: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which has 75% of the market (largely due to the fact that it comes pre-installed on any PC running Windows); Mozilla Firefox (God’s own broswer) has around 20% of the market and the other 5% is made up of the lesser known browsers like Opera, Maxthon, Safari (Macs) etc.

The install was quite easy and it pulled in all my bookmarks, passwords and search history easily from Firefox.  The tabs are simple and clean and there’s the obvious integration with Google search.  But, in terms of add-ons, Google are gonna have to play catch-up fast.  There are so many things in Firefox that I have come to rely on that it’s going to take more than a brand like Google to pull me away from.

Here’s what it looks like.  Like Google Search, it’s clean, simple and well executed.  One standard feature I quite like is the ‘Most Visited’ panels when you open a new tab.  It’s a bit like Firefox’s ‘Fast Dial’ add-on but not as good…

So, what can I say?  It’s OK, but I’m a digital marketing consultant not a techie.  For me, as long as it does what it should in handling properly the myriad of web technologies that sites out there are built in, then I guess it will do OK with Google’s backing.  If it doesn’t, then Google will either need to fix it or forget it.

You can download Google Chrome here: http://www.google.com/chrome

For those of you wish a passion for all things digital culture, why not give Loop a visit this weekend in Brighton?  Find out more at Loop 2008.

My students (I teach the IDM’s Certificate in Digital Marketing qualification) often ask me where they can find a useful list of facts and figures on digital. So, below is my attempt at bringing together such a list. It’s not exhaustive, but more a start. I will add to it periodically and keep it growing.

It’s organized by subject matter to make it easy to find information on the things you’re most interested in.

Also, you might like to try e-Consultancy.com’s ‘Compendium of Internet Statistics’ which is available via their website.

Enjoy!

Mobile
6bn - the number of texts we send every month in the UK
120% - the mobile penetration rate in the UK (that is, the number of handsets in active operation)
25% - the number of people with a mobile phone in the UK that access the Internet
58m - the number of users that sent picture & video messages from their mobile

Internet Audience
Worldwide Internet users - 824,435 million (total unique)
Europe - 232,866 million
North America - 183,823 million
Asia Pacific - 308,817 million
MENA - 39,904 million
UK - 34.2 million

The average age of the UK Internet user is 38.

Share of 55+ year-olds has increased from 16% to 19% in just over a year, hence the arrival of sagazone.

MiniClip has the youngest UK online audience average age (28.1).

Marks & Spencer has the oldest online average age (46.5).

Online advertising
£3.4bn - the UK market size forecast for 2008, according to the IAB.

By 2010, 80%of Microsoft’s $1 billion advertising budget will be spent online.

Search Marketing

According to the Internet Archive, there are over 85 billion web pages on the Internet.

There are 23 million web searches in the UK every day!  That’s 1 million searches an hour, or, 264 queries a second..

730 million - That’s the number of searches carried out in June 2008, with over half a billion click throughs.

£406m - Google’s UK ad revenue for Q1 2008
£1.7bn - Google’s forecast ad revenue for 2008

€8.1 billion - Forrester predicts that European Search investment will reach by 2012

72% of search users click on Natural Search Results in Google
61% of search users click on Natural Search Results in Yahoo!
71% of users in MSN click on Paid ads, whilst only 29% click on Natural search
AOL users click equally (50/50) on Paid ads and Natural search results

99% of Click-thrus come from Pages 1 & 2

16.6% - the average amount of Click-fraud now reported by search engines on paid ad campaigns

BBC iPlayer
1.5 billion - the number of programmes expected to be viewed in 2008 on iPlayer
2.8 billion - the number of programmes watched on iPlayer by 2012

Social media & Social networking

Social networks have grown by over 87% in the last year.

By 2010, they will account for £2.2 billion in advertising revenues worldwide.

Facebook - 14.35m unique users in April 2008

Bebo: 12.03m unique users in April 2008
MySpace UK: 8.5m unique users in April 2008

YouTube: 100million video views daily & 65,000 new videos uploaded daily
Technorati: Tracking 65m+ blogs

Article provided by Colin Elms, Country Manager, Eyewonder
Interactive Digital Advertising is the next evolution of advertising - combining the accessibility and intelligence of the Internet and other forms of digital media with the benefits of interactivity - the final frontier of proactive engagement. As importantly, digital media delivers information in the form of consumer data that can be diced and spliced to optimize impact for both advertisers and consumers alike.

Digital advertising isn’t just about the digital delivery platform; it’s about the interactivity and data that can be extracted and utilized. Many of the larger industry players, such as Google and Microsoft, fail to see that brand advertising is as much about creativity and interactivity as it is about the numbers. While this model may, on the surface, appear to create more efficient media buys, it actually lessens
opportunities for brand differentiation and ultimately limits potential for the future.

Open and shared access to data between advertisers, agencies and content owners allows for more effective advertising in the long haul, whereas the “black box” model stunts creativity by placing all data and decisions in the hands of the publisher. Over time, this “commoditization” will result in a battle of who is willing to pay more for better results - effectively hobbling overall advertiser media efficiency and limiting a brand’s ability to compete. Media efficiency can’t overtake creative strength. Consumers want and demand uniqueness from a brand. Creativity is the key to that uniqueness.

The impact of this new focus on Interactive Digital Advertising is that the desired brand experience drives the creative input, requiring artistic skill and analytics to work in harmony. The sustainable difference for brands will be the combination of creative and data. Brand managers will be tasked with a more thoughtful and detailed approach to the brand experience because of the new, multifaceted options for interaction. They will think not in terms of 16 ads to make an impression, but rather one or two.

The future will find consumers demanding real-time, highly customized and intimate brand interactions. A boundary-less Internet will allow for digital media to live and breathe across multiple digital platforms, further integrating itself into our everyday lives. It is in this environment that Interactive Digital Advertising will thrive - advancing brands in ways never imagined.

Interactive Digital Advertising is the future. We are standing at the threshold of an entirely new marketing experience where technology becomes the facilitator for unlimited potential rather than the gating factor to creative innovation. Consumers will realize more relevant and enjoyable brand experiences delivered at their discretion and pace. Advertisers and agencies will enjoy a limitless creative palette matched with a “crystal ball-like” sphere of data placing the industry’s elusive Holy Grail - the seamless marriage of creative and data - within their reach.

In light of declining ad revenues from its print directory & use of online services, Yell.com, the online service from Yellow Pages, has launched a new Facebook application called ‘Yell Socialiser’. It was developed by digital advertising agency AKQA and hopes to inspire Facebook users to find new activities to do and places to go.

The Yell Socialiser, currently in beta mode, is an application which allows Facebook members to pick from a range of activity types including “arty stuff”, “pampering”, “eating” or “night clubs”, then select up to five different venues in their chosen area.

These venues are marked on a Multimap map and personalised invites with themed images can then be sent to the user’s Facebook friends. Users can edit and adapt the plan once it is created.

The new Facebook application is Yell’s first move into social networking as part of its strategy to connect with new communities outside of its declining platforms. By combining the core business-finding strength of Yell.com with the additional social functionality of Facebook, Yell hopes to approach a wider audience and interact with it in a different, more social environment.

See www.facebook.com

Us digital marketing consulting folk have been touting for some time the message to clients that developing fake blogs (known fondly as ‘flogging’) is bad practice. Well, now new official Government legislation makes it illegal!

Brands that have fallen foul of this practice historically include Sony with their ‘alliwantforchristmasisapsp.com campaign & Walmart with their fake ‘Across America’ blog. Both were caught out by their online audience and simply faced ridicule. But, since 26^th May 2008, under the new EU Directive on Unfair Business-to-Consumer Commercial Practices, any UK company doing this faces prosecution, fines or even jail terms for staff.

The kind of activities the legislation seeks to address includes:

• ‘Astro-turfing’ - where employees pose as ordinary members of the public to post favourable reviews about their company

• Posting entries under different aliases to make something look more popular than it is

• ‘Sock-puppeting’ - where marketers poses a question online, then logs in as different people, all posting favourable responses

So, not only is it bad PR now to get caught-out engaging in this kind of thing, but the message is quite clear. Don’t fake it – if you do, you could go to jail!

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.