Month: February 2017

Things of note for the week ending Saturday 25th February, 2017.

Hey gang, good week?

Let’s do this.

1. THE FLEABAG MYSTIQUE

NY Mag has a fantastic interview with Pheobe Waller-Bridge and you should read it.

I am a fan.

Here are three things about PWB:

Thing one: I saw Fleabag at Edinburgh Fringe, before it was TV (see no 18. here), and it was ace (in fact, I think the first time I saw PWB was in the 24hr production of Sixty-Six Books at The Bush Theatre – that was something else).

Thing two: the last time I saw PWB, I was stood behind her in the queue at my favourite London food spot -  she looked cool, and I very nearly said ‘Hello, you’re great’, but didn’t.

Thing three: er… SHE’S IN THE NEW HAN SOLO MOVIE. WHAT.

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2. ZUCK ON FACEBOOK AND ITS FUTURE

Mark Zuckerberg published a long letter to the world explaining how he would push the company toward humanity coming together, as a global community.

You can read it in its entirety on Zuck’s page (it’s worth the time).

 

Dave Pell, of Next Draft, has a perfect response:

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3. JEDI MIND TRICK

That is all.

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3. SHOULD YOU TAKE YOUR PHONE TO THE UNITED STATES?

Rory Cellan-Jones at the BBC takes a closer look at whether or not you should reconsider taking your phone on your next trip.

Key part:

I decided to seek some advice from the UK Foreign Office and the US embassy in London.Was there a danger that I would be forced by border officials to unlock my phone or hand over my social media passwords? The Foreign Office told me their travel advice did not cover this subject because they had not received any calls about it. But they did suggest that if I happened to be trapped in immigration at JFK airport with a border agent demanding my passcode, I could call the British embassy and arrange a lawyer.

Something to keep in mind.

I’m headed to the US next month and I’m still unsure what to do about this, if anything.

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5. KRAFT v UNILEVER

You may’ve read about this during the week. The FT has the best write up. Bar none.

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A relatively short edition this week

But dems the breaks.

Until next time,

Whatley out.

 

 

 

Things of note for the week ending Satuday Feb 18th, 2017.

1. WHEN THINGS GO MISSING

As someone who may or may not be questioning his own ability to remember things as well as having to help a loved one say farewell to those he has lost of late, these reflections on loss make for compelling reading.

When we lose something, our first reaction, naturally enough, is to want to know where it is. But behind that question about location lurks a question about causality: What happened to it? What agent or force made it disappear? Such questions matter because they can help direct our search. You will act differently if you think you left your coat in a taxi or believe you boxed it up and put it in the basement. Just as important, the answers can provide us with that much coveted condition known as closure. It is good to get your keys back, better still to understand how they wound up in your neighbor’s recycling bin.

But then, it evolves.

The verb “to lose” has its taproot sunk in sorrow; it is related to the “lorn” in forlorn. It comes from an Old English word meaning to perish, which comes from a still more ancient word meaning to separate or cut apart. The modern sense of misplacing an object appeared later, in the thirteenth century; a hundred years after that, “to lose” acquired the meaning of failing to win. In the sixteenth century, we began to lose our minds; in the seventeenth century, our hearts. The circle of what we can lose, in other words, began with our own lives and one another and has been steadily expanding ever since. In consequence, loss today is a supremely awkward category, bulging with everything from mittens to life savings to loved ones, forcing into relationship all kinds of wildly dissimilar experiences.

Your recommended long read of the week.

(and it features Patti Smith too)

 

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2. FIT FOR PURPOSE VIDEO FOR THE NEWSFEED

I’m noodling on this one a fair bit at the moment. What with the ever-changing landscape of video being hurriedly forced upon us (see slide 52, here), how is any one way to market supposed to be correct?

Well, fortunately for us, Twitter and Omnicom Media Group have published some research that can at least act as a guide for content marketers.

The full report is available from Twitter and Campaign has a decent write up. The key takeouts from the latter are as follows (my comments in bold):

Tips for better in-feed videos

• The first three seconds do not need audio to capture attention (this has been true for a while – read this as ‘subtitles/interstitials/title cards matter).
• In-feed videos viewed in the morning are more likely to elicit a feeling of personal relevance and generate detail-orientated encoding (this is especially useful if your brand/client publishes tips  or ‘how to’ videos).
• Videos with an early story arc are 58% more likely to be viewed (this is really interesting, especially when you put it against Facebook’s own data that 65% of 3 second views go on to watch 10secs and  45% of 10sec views go onto watch 30 – in short: grab attention and do it quickly)
• Topical content is 32% more likely to be viewed and leads to an 11% higher completion rate (obvious).
• The presence of people in the first three seconds is 133% more emotionally intense (traditional marketers have known about people power for decades – the channels might change, the strategy rarely ever).
• Text (or subtitles) stimulates left-brain memory response. Videos with text are 11% more likely to be viewed and have a 28% higher completion rate (Twitter and Facebook both [currently] play video silently – not using subtitles in 2017 is like not putting paid behind your content: why bother publishing it in the first place?)
• Dialogue is more effective than music at driving relevance, emotion and memory (this is the people thing again – see also: Cialdini).

If you’ve been following literally any of the stuff Facebook has been wanging on about in regards to editing for the newsfeed, you’ll see a lot of similarities here.

How does that all fit against Facebook’s recent news about audio being on its way to auto-play videos?

Well, maybe I’ll have something on that for you next week.

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3. BUILDING A BOT? READ THIS

Venturebeat has three very good tips for bot-builders. Not rocket science and if you’ve spent five minutes talking to me about the topic then you may already know them.

However, this is definitely a good piece to have to hand if/when you’re trying to land a point about the basics.

One for the bookmarks.

 

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4. QUESTION YOUR ANSWERS

This is excellent.

Michael K. Williams asks the question (of himself) ‘Am I being typecast?’

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5. OK, GOOGLE, WHAT CAN YOU DO?

I won (!) a Google Home a little while ago and, combined with having a Google Pixel, I’ve been slowly getting accustomed to being able to tell Google’s Assistant to do/help with the things I need.. er.. assistance with.

Thing is, it can become a little painful trying to work out what it can, and more specifically what it can’t, do. Google hasn’t been that brilliant with providing a full list of these commands.

Fortunately, a savvy chap (and NOT a Google Employee, btw) by the name of Kristijan Ristovski has taken upon himself to fix that.

 

If you use Google Assistant, in any way, shape, or form – then do look at OK GOOGLE IO.

It’s dead useful.

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Bonuses this week are all a bit self-serving.

The best kind – ha!

• First up, the frankly amazing conference ‘ONE QUESTION‘ returns later this year (if you missed last year’s keep an eye out for my write up of that one, very soon) and tickets have just gone on sale. The one question this time around is: ‘Can we really trust technology?’ – and features speakers from Pixar (!), a former member of Obama’s White House staff (!!) and even someone from Ogilvy (!!!). Definitely worth adding to your calendar and seeing if you get along. I promise you it will be excellent.
• Next, the rather awesome people at Business Insider have put together a list of ‘The 30 best people in advertising to follow on Twitter‘ – and muggins made the cut. I’ve no idea how or why, however, I’ve gained about 200 or so new followers since it was published and I’m stupidly chuffed to be included with such legends and luminaries. Please check out the whole list and follow the lot of them (yes, even that guy).
• The full day of music playlists that my friend Sarah and I put together are still going and, for no real reason whatsoever, I thought I’d share the link to our latest before it’s finished. It’s currently around 3hrs or so long and we’ll cap it off when we hit 8hrs (a full day you see). So if you want a playlist that’ll slowly grow and update over time, give this a follow.

 

And that’s it.

Until next time, fam x

Things of note for the week ending Sunday February 12th, 2017.

A busy week this week and many projects either being sold in or at last coming to fruition; very exciting. Hopefully can talk about some of them soon…

In the meantime, would you like some things? Of course you would.

A random collection this week.

Oh, and one last thing before we dive in: do please recommend this newsletter to someone this week.

Thanks, y’all x

Let’s do this:

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1. THE STATE OF VIRTUAL REALITY IN 2016

I’m pretty bullish on VR becoming mainstream – at least as a gaming experience – and the numbers coming out of 2016 tell a decent enough story to support that.

• An industry revenue figure of $1.8bn (£1.4bn)
• 4.51m Samsung Gear VR headsets shipped
• 750k PlayStation VR units shipped
• HTC Vive: 420k unites
• Oculus: 250k units

A few things to note here. First, the above numbers don’t [seem to] take into account any Google Cardboard / Daydream numbers. Admittedly the latter only launched at the back end of last year however, this time last year, the former was touting all sorts of huge usage/shipped numbers; it would be nice to get an update from the big G on those numbers…

Second, PSVR (the one I have) has done well – which pleases me! And I’m kinda shocked that Oculus, arguably the poster-child for consumer VR – is shipping at so low numbers. Then again, the price of entry at that end has only just started to come down.

Unsurprisingly, the Samsung Gear VR headsets are leading the pack. Something to do with Samsung throwing a LOT of cash at awareness – both with advertising and freebies (if any of you bought a day one Samsung phone last year, you no doubt have one of these headsets sat at home somewhere).

Point being: VR arrived in 2016. Where it goes next, we shall see…

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EDIT: it’s interesting, a day or so after I drafted the above, I read this story about how Best Buy was closing/pulling around 200 or so of its 500 Oculus demo areas across the US, citing ‘seasonal changes’ –

In a statement, Oculus spokesperson Andrea Schubert told The Verge that the closures were due to “seasonal changes,” and that people could “still request Rift demos at hundreds of Best Buy stores in the US and Canada.” She noted that other retail outlets, including Microsoft stores, offer demonstrations. Affected Best Buy stores will continue to sell Rift headsets and the accompanying Touch motion controllers, and Oculus plans to keep up public demos. “We still believe the best way to learn about VR is through a live demo,” said Schubert. “We’re going to find opportunities to do regular events and pop-ups in retail locations and local communities throughout the year.”

If you believe the press, then this is the first death-knell of the end of the VR industry. I don’t believe the negative-hype. As shown above, Oculus is the highest cost and the lowest selling VR product on the market. Gaming is still the core area for VR, I think, but we’ll see what the next couple of years bring…

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2. RUSSIANS HACKING… SLOT MACHINES

According to Willy Allison, a Las Vegas–based casino security consultant who has been tracking the Russian scam for years, the operatives use their phones to record about two dozen spins on a game they aim to cheat. They upload that footage to a technical staff in St. Petersburg, who analyze the video and calculate the machine’s pattern based on what they know about the model’s pseudorandom number generator. Finally, the St. Petersburg team transmits a list of timing markers to a custom app on the operative’s phone; those markers cause the handset to vibrate roughly 0.25 seconds before the operative should press the spin button.

I mean, as cons go, this is pretty darn good. Best of all, because of the nature of the hack, there’s no immediate way to fix it.

Fascinating reading.

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3. GETTING TO MARS

This is really quite lovely.

Click and enjoy.

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4. AVENGERS INFINITY WAR

Is looking pretty spectacular.

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5. THE WORST INTERVIEW EVER?

You’ve just been given an opportunity to interview the White House Press secretary and you decide to send in this clown. Jesus.

Can you imagine if they’d actually paid attention in school?

(could be worse, they could’ve attempted to shake hands)

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Bonuses this week are as follows:

• The Lego Batman marketing machine is in full effect (perhaps a bit much, depending on your perspective) and this Radio 1 Alphabeti-call is awesome.
• Snap Inc. Growth 2015  v 2016.
• A personal trainer for heartbreak.
• I accidentally bought a giant pig.
• Castlevania (if you don’t know what it is, don’t worry) is coming to Netflix.

And that’s it.

This is the end.

You made it.

AREN’T YOU AMAZING?