mUmBRELLA: Everything under Australia’s media and marketing umbrella

mUmBRELLA has been operating since the start of 2009 and is ostensibly a place to pass commentry about Australian new media and traditional media. Recently Simon van Wyk of HotHouse passed comment about the state of play of the interactive industry in Australia.  In his own words, it was a rant, but if had removed the odd expletive and lightened up on the caning of AdLand, it would have become a whitepaper. The facts that remain are that his viewpoint and observations whilst requiring the odd appraisal and scan with the Politically Correct meter here or there are so close to the mark, it’s not worth worrying about. The guts of it is that he has proposed an Industry code of practice for us boffins who profess to be a part of interactive. Brave moves, one which you must and are obliged to tip your hat in respect too and more importantly, we should follow, because they make good old fashioned common sense.

This caused a stir within the Areeba offices, as there are many experienced and veteran practitioners of the art who I rub shoulders with. The one which Simon & I had revisions on was point 8 – we think it should be reworked to be: “Our job is be enablers.  Our job is to enable our clients to better sell product to their customers”. Splitting hairs really, but none of us wanted to be caught on a Saturday selling product down at the local at the front line. I’ve been there before and it ain’t pretty. We’d prefer to be (pick one): 1/ out on our bikes 2/ playing the PS3 3/ down at the pub 4/ with the family. Or in my case, all of the previous. At once.

Guest post: Interactive agencies need to stop being advertising agencies
Simon van Wyk, MD of HotHouse, is over advertising agencies

Industry Code of Practice:

1. I will always propose the least expensive, simplest solution to any problem.
2. I understand Google is the homepage and I will ensure everything I do is sensitive to this fact.
3. My job is to facilitate business. When I start talking brand dialogue it’s only because I can’t find a way to really add value.
4. My job is to help you with the interface between your company and the customer on the web. They are using the web for utility; my job is to find that utility wherever it may exist.
5. We’ll be clear about the returns.
6. We have a chance to do things better to improve from our learnings.
7. The Internet has changed the world; let’s make sure we treat it with the respect it deserves.  It took us many years of TV to develop the technology to skip ads.  Let’s not clutter our communities and forums with useless messages that add no value. Consumers want to hear from companies who are relevant to their circumstance; let’s work with that.
8. Our job is not to sell our ideas to the client.  Our job is to sell the clients product to their customers.

Mercedes-Benz: F-Cell Roadster

I spotted this on Wired this morning – a new fuel cell powered Mercedes-Benz in concept stage. Harking back to the original 19th Century horseless carriage, the F-Cell Roadster is MB’s effort at wielding industrial design with cutting edge technology. Simply put – I think it’s stunning.

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/03/the-past-is-pre.html

Digital Agency Structure

I was watching the Gruen Transfer on ABC tonight and as usual, was suitably impressed, entertained and intellectually stimulated all at once. It is a great show. In saying that, I thought I would have a look at the website itself and was drawn to their section titled Adworkers. It lists out the different roles within your typical ad agency -

Ad Agency

• Production Manager, Flash Developer, Copy Writer, Art Director, Creative Director, Strategic Planner, Account Executive, Account Director, Personal Assistant, Managing Director, Finance Director & The Founder.

More pertinent are the summaries attached to each – succinct, accurate and precise. Working within a digital services agency as I do at Areeba, it has become more apparent that digital as a career is so young and immature relative to the more traditional realms of sales, operations, accounting, law, medicine, engineering and the arts that we have a bit of a task in explaining ourselves to a client about how we work and why. Ad agencies have been around since the 1850′s and if you tell someone off the street that you work for one, most people have a reasonable idea of the field of endeavour. They might not understand exactly what you do, but they get the context.

Digital is different. There are dozens of niche areas of endeavour, expertise and excellence in this burgeoning realm. To name a few: ad serving, portal management (think working for Yahoo!, Google, Ebay, Amazon, Sensis, Bigpond), social networks, data mining, data planning, customer relationship management (CRM), media buying, analytics, search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) strategy, design, development, campaigns, brand relaunch & alignment, stakeholder engagement… The list goes on.

From a digital agency perspective, structurally, there are similarities, but due to intent, there are differences to your classical ad agency. Web sites by their very nature, are a technical discipline, because if you build a website, it’s not just the visual that gets taken into consideration from a brand perspective, it goes deeper into the usabilty and the enticements that keep people engaged with your site that start to play a part. Websites are a derivation of software development, which has to take into account human interface aspects like usability, accessibility, ease of understanding, communications and audience assessment. Kick in there technical considerations. Think on this as one: Internet Explorer 8 was released last week. But consider that there are still 25%+ using IE 7 and 17%+ using IE6 (as at 26th March 2009). Then take into consideration this: if a website works on IE6, then it’s highly unlikely it will work properly on IE8. Introduce Safari on Mac. Firefox. Chrome. Opera….. That is ONE technical consideration. Next: Flash. Version 8, 9 or 10? Next: Javascript. Next: Form’s validation. Next: Data interoperability between website capture database and legacy environment like SAP, Oracle or Siebel. Each of these systems cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to deploy.  So back to the digital agency structure.

Many liken web studios to a software development house.

Yes & No.

• Yes: technical rigour, testing, rollbacks, disaster recovery, code standards, compliance and then the digital hallmarks of usability, accessibility and legibility, which had their underlying foundations in software development.
• No: Brand preservation. Brand extension. Brand enhancement. Brand iconisation. Campaigns. Engagement. Loyalty. Retention.

Software dev houses don’t give a toss (generally) about brand – a logo in the top left corner will suffice. People in Marketing, Corporate Comms, Public Relations and Sales WINCE at this approach because it detracts from the overall cohesive message of a unified, cohesive and consistant company.

So. To the digital agency structure. In my experience, they are structured, one of two ways, depending on the skew of their origins – technical or creative:

Software Development Agency foundation and underpinnings

• Executive – Managing Director, Operations Director, General Manager, Commercial Director; Alternatively CEO, COO, CTO/CIO, CFO, CSO
• Production Technical – Solution Architect, Senior Developer, Developer, Analyst Programmer, Programmer, Delivery/Release Manager
• Production Creative – Design Manager, Senior Designer, Mid Weight Designer, Designer, Junior Designer
• Production Compliance – Strategy Manager, Project Manager,  Senior Business Analyst, Usability Engineer
• Sales/Account Management – Business Development Manager, Inside Sales, Pre-Sales, Account Manager, Account Executive

Creative Services agency foundation and underpinnings

• Executive – Managing Partner,  Creative Director, Strategy Director, Planning Director, Group Account Director, Client Services Director,
• Production – Executive Producer, Senior Producers, Producers, Senior Data Planner, Data Planner,  Flash Developer, Database developer, Senior Art Director, Art Director, Senior Designer, Designer, Junior Designer

Digital Agencies can be either of the above or a hybrid of the above. In addition, you can count as additional roles that pop up by the uniqueness of web: User Experience Architect, Digital Strategist, Engagement Manager, Digital Planner, CRM Strategist, eDM Strategist….. Areeba is unique in that we don’t really have an account layer, preferring to get those senior individuals in the industry who actually enjoy dealing with the clients directly. If you are a developer, you deal with the client. If you are a creative, you deal with the client. If you are a business analyst, you deal with the client. if you are a digital strategist, you deal with the client.  If you are part of the executive team, you deal with the client. No hidden mushrooms or low level juniors hiding in the background working in the sweat shop. Works for us.

So in saying all that, what is my point? Ad agencys are turning to digital, because its the new “it” thing. It’s also where the money is shifting too, driven by the clients who want a tangible measure on their dollars spent verses the result gained. From a marketing and PR perspective, the internet is able to empower clients so much more from an analytics, peer permission and social network context, that the dollars being spent are miniscule and a raindrop compared to where we will be in the next 5 to 10 years. It is only the start of the evolution that is igniting our industry and the first step in this is to get our clients to better understand the value that the industries staff and the digital agencies themselves are able to offer.

Regardless of the structure of your agency, or the agency you are engaging, I see it very firmly that it is our job  and obligation  to communicate the value and worth of each and every staff member across the business, so that the old fashioned values of trust, value, friendship, loyalty and understanding are met. Simple.

BBC Book List

[Thanks to Kate M for this one, which landed on my Facebook page]

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions: Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read – even those you’ve read more than once!
Make sure you delete my x’S! When you’ve finished, tag 10 people to do it too, and put your total at the bottom.

1 – Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – x
2 – The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – x
3 – Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 – Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – x (all 7….)
5 – To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – x
6 – The Bible – x
7 – Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – x
8 – Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell – x
9 – His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 – Great Expectations – Charles Dickens – x
11 – Little Women – Louisa M Alcott – x
12 – Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 – Catch 22 – Joseph Heller – x
14 – Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 – Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 – The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien – x
17 – Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 – Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 – The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 – Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 – Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell – x
22 – The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald – x
23 – Bleak House – Charles Dickens – x
24 – War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – x
25 – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams – x
26 – Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 – Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 – Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 – Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll – x
30 – The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame – x
31 – Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 – David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 – Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis – x (all 7…)
34 – Emma – Jane Austen – x
35 – Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 – The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis – x (huh isn’t this part of 33?)
37 – The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 – Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 – Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne – x
41 – Animal Farm – George Orwell – x
42 – The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – x
43 – One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 – A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 – The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 – Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 – Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 – The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 – Lord of the Flies – William Golding – x
50 – Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 – Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 – Dune – Frank Herbert – x
53 – Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 – Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 – A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 – The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zifon
57 – A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens – x
58 – Brave New World – Aldous Huxley – x
59 – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 – Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 – Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 – Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 – The Secret History – Donna Tartt – x
64 – The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 – Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 – On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 – Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 – Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 – Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 – Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 – Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens – x
72 – Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 – The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett – x
74 – Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 – Ulysses – James Joyce
76 – The Inferno – Dante
77 – Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 – Germinal – Emile Zola
79 – Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 – Possession – AS Byatt
81 – A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 – Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 – The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 – The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 – Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 – A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 – Charlotte’s Web – EB White – x
88 – The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 – Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – x
90 – The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton – x
91 – Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad – x
92 – The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery – x
93 – The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks – x
94 – Watership Down – Richard Adam – x
95 – A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 – A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 – The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas – x
98 – Hamlet – William Shakespeare – x
99 – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl – x
100 – Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I’ve read 41 and now have a bunch of new ones to tackle. There is a particularly strong skew towards a British style of schooling with a great deal of the English “classics” in there. I’d be somewhat impressed if half these books were even heard of by anyone from outside the United Kingdom.

A quick Google of “BBC Book List” returned back a slightly different list on the BBC Website itself, posted in 2003  BBC – The Big Read – Top 100 Books with the pre text

In April 2003 the BBC’s Big Read began the search for the nation’s best-loved novel, and we asked you to nominate your favourite books. Below and on the next page are all the results from number 1 to 100 in numerical order!

Shame there isn’t more:

• Fantasy & Adventure (Eddings, Feist, McCaffrey etc),
• Sci-Fi (Banks, Gibson, Asimov, Heinlein, Scott-Card etc) &
• Espionage (Clancy, Le Carre, Ludlum etc)

Information Architects Japan – Web Trend Map 3

This is very cool. Using the Tokyo Subway as an overlay, the uber smart dudes at Information Architects Japan have listed out close to 300 of the WWW  most visited and influential websites. Each train line represents a trend which the site portrays i.e. social network, news etc.

Interactive version here: http://informationarchitects.jp/start/

Information Architects Japan - Web Trends Map 3

The Last Supper – Battlestar Galactica

Recently the season & series finale of Battlestar Galactica aired globally. As part of the massive push to promote this much anticipated event by Sci-Fi.com geekdom and represent the interests of the general mainstream public, the series producers commisioned a photo shoot that portray’s the characters in the seminal “Last Supper” painting, as immortalised by Leonardo da Vinci. This reminded me of a number of other well known screen folk lore variants that I have seen over the years. Each brings a smile to my face for the endless religious connotations they imply.

Battlestar Galactica Last Supper

Star Wars “Last Supper”

The Brick Testament "Last Supper"

The Simpson's Last Supper

Tom Lovejack’s Blog however tops them all in terms of collating all the different approaches in his entry below, which he updates on a regular basis as entries hit the WWW.

http://blog.tom.com/tomlovejack/article/2519.html