I’m in Canada, writing from my second hotel of about four I think for this trip. The first night, in the Wyndhams, my body clock was still adjusting. At 4am my eyes opened like it was 9am and kicked me up into the day. Damn. “Best start work then…”
First, coffee…. and this is what I’m faced with -
There isn’t much tech in the world that I don’t get on with, however coffee machines (along with most fax machines) would be on the very short list if I ever made one. In fact, I just did and look – they’re at the top.
Were there any instructions for the machine anywhere in the room? No.
Any tips or pointers on the actual machine itself? No.
Brilliant.
Tweet tweet -
About 90mins later, this appeared -
What’s the twitpic behind the link?
Well… THIS:
How freaking amazing is that? My tweet, illustrated.
To give you some background, I stumbled across Irkafirka sometime ago now, back when they randomly sketched one of Benny’s tweets. I thought it was amazing and started following them. Both on Twitter and on RSS. Irkafirka illustrate tweets. Randomly. And they’re awesome.
Yesterday they did one of mine and I’m grinning form ear to ear.
T-minus 2hrs until take off. I’ve never been to Canada before, this time last year I was just packing my bags to head of to Wyoming and still a little bit unsure of my future. Amazing to think how far and how much things can change in a year.
Why Canada? Work, naturally.
1000heads have been signed on to do some work for Nokia Canada and since the start of July we’ve been executing our first kick off activity; the N97minitour.
Driving from Vancouver to Toronto (with stops along the way) and timed with the Canadian N97mini launch, our team on the ground over there have been organising meet ups, competitions and generally blogging and tweeting their little hearts out.
I’m flying over for leg two; Montreal to Toronto. What with Mobile Geeks this coming Friday and a whole host of other events lined up for the ten days following, it should be pretty awesome.
As I type, the team are en route to Montreal and I’m already grinning at the thought of the RV pictured above pulling up at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International and my team waiting to greet me. Amazing.
Like I said, I’ve never been to Canada before. What a way to see it first hand?
Sometime ago now, some friends of mine asked if it was OK to film a short interview piece discussing the future of the shopping experience – aka – the purchasing journey.
I don’t know what happened to the footage (if I find out I’ll see if I can upload it later), but what I do know is that the thoughts from that day still rattle around my head like it was only yesterday:
In today’s super-connected society, how can any one activity (be that marketing, advertising or PR) truly claim to be the sole driver behind product sales?
Let’s take a look. Using the analysis of one of my own purchasing journeys; Split/Second, a new racing game for the Xbox360.
The first part, the very beginning, was when I saw a tweet from a trusted friend saying “This looks awesome!” with a link to a game trailer. It was so long ago now that I forget who it was, it might’ve been Kev or Joe but I’m not sure. Anyway, like I said, that tweet led me to YouTube, where I watched the trailer. Then I watched it again. In HD.
It was a Saturday morning, the girlfriend and I were getting ready to go out and I stopped her to watch it with me. It was that good. Excitement. I am a fan of Burnout, a similar arcade-style racer. I’ve finished both Burnout 1 & 2 for the Gamecube and I’m very close to finishing Burnout: Paradise City on the 360. Split/Second is very similar (but in the same breath very different), so this game spoke to me.
Interesting.
Next, came the research phase. When was it out? What could I do to find out more? My Firefox history tells me that it was May 1st when I saw the video above. At that point, I was in game-buying mode. I tweeted:
A few things came back, but nothing that really grabbed me. I waited. A week later I saw this tweet from Nik Butler:
Nik played it. He liked it. I went to bed thinking about it and, the following morning, I wake up and download the demo. It’s one car, one track, one race. But I like it.
A few days after thatit’s holiday time. Dubai. Beautiful, relaxing, sunny Dubai. I buy Edge; the thinking man’s games mag. What’s inside? A review of you guessed it, Split/Second.
They said:
Ultimately, much like a summer movie blockbuster, Split Second offers thrills galore, but there’s a hint of glossy superficiality to it, too. Large-scale explosions distract from a lack of tactical depth for a while, but the game’s lifespan would have been improved, particularly as far as multiplayer is concerned, with a more comprehensively involving strategic element. Yet there are few games in the genre that create quite so many sharp intakes of breath and instances of unintentionally barked profanity as this one, and sometimes that’s what racing gaming is all about.
That quote there, that last sentence even, was what finally clinched it for me. The journey was long but on May 31st, a full month from my first encounter, the bought the game.
It started with a tweet, then a trailer, then trusted referrals, a demo of the game and finally an official games review (in print no less).
The purchasing journey can be long and winding with many different touch-points. I hear conversations about acquisitions, downloads and click-throughs and I despair. The modern day ROI model cannot be put down to just one thing. There are many routes to my wallet and none of them are exclusive. They live and breathe around each other and, it’s only through that understanding will we ever really make an impact.
Points of interest:
Modern technology helped my map the data; Firefox history with viewing the trailer, my Xbox Live account with my demo downloads and of course Twitter, time-stamping my progress. This stuff can be mapped, it’s just knowing where to look.
Also, massive thanks to the cool cats at Edge who, after I managed to lose the copy of their magazine that I wanted to quote from (see above,) kindly emailed me a PDF of the original article I needed. Rockstars.
Altitude is a small problem. It takes 30-40mins to find your rhythm; breathing, walking, clambering etc… it’s hard. But when we make to the ice, things are easier. Well, I say easier. What I mean is, ‘less hard’
On thing is for certain, the view is stunning…
The big part of this challenge is being lowered down into a crevasse. Turns out the lowering part is the easy bit.
You can hear the glacier crack and move under your feet, the ground itself isn’t moving but the concerned looks on the faces of our Italian guides gives them away, it’s time to move. By the time we’re on our way back to camp, the clouds have moved in and finding the journey becomes just that little bit more precarious.
Hold hands lads, we don’t want to lose anyone out here…
