European regulators unveiled long anticipated plans this week for guidelines about how social networks such as Facebook and MySpace should handle European privacy rules, writes the Wall Street Journal. Regulation in a young and fast changing space is always risky, and many will argue lacks necessity because of the existing data protection directive. However the guidelines appear to have been set very low, simply reconfirming what would be common knowledge even for novice internet users.
Continue reading "Social networks: A first step towards European regulation " »
Food manufacturing giant Nestle has come up with an innovative use for Twitter that combines together a mix of digital channels. Their latest advertising campaign for JuicyJuice includes a Twitter feed within the advertising creative. This social media campaign lets people post their own tweets within the advertising that appears online. At the time of writing, the brand is testing it on US sites CafeMom and BabyCenter. Here’s how it works: there are questions inside the advertising space that relate to parenting (How do you stimulate your child's mind? How important are vitamin-enhanced foods to you?). People can write their message or tweet inside the advertising.
Continue reading "Case study of Twitter: Nestle tweets in online ads" »

This Friday, Austria plays host to one of Europe’s largest internet marketing conferences. If you’re coming to the Digital Congress in Graz, then join us in Channel 3: the special session on digital media and digital brand management. Here’s more…
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Getting digital marketing right means far more than having a website. Smart brands have shifted the centre of gravity of their communications to digital platforms, and the effects can be staggering.
In the pre-digital days, relationship marketing was a rather crude ‘one-size-fits-all’ tool, driven from simple databases with only very simple segmentation. It gave an improvement on the mass marketing of broadcast television and newspapers, but did little to build real relationships with customers. When email went mainstream it changed the landscape for relationship marketing because it provided a seamless link between a broadcast media tool and much smarter database driven segmentation.
At the Austrian Digital Congress, we’ll hear from one of the world’s leading relationship marketers: the campaign manager behind the Obama election programme. While this might not seem like relationship marketing on the surface, if you were on the receiving end of the dialogue, then you’d be hearing from the presidential campaign team every day; relevant, powerful and engaging messages that were part of a movement for social change.
Continue reading "Digital Congress Austria 2009: The best place to be in Europe next week" »
The centre of gravity for web access is shifting. Mobile internet use began with a trickle of email and Google searches, then it started gaining momentum with video clips. When Twitter and Facebook updates arrived the link between the web and social media began, and now we’re seeing a torrent of use with the explosive growth of apps. While the iPhone trail-blazed the culture change of getting consumers valuing apps on mobiles (and seeing them as core to the value proposition of the device), Nokia’s announcement this week is raising the bar. Apple launched with a tiny number of apps, but Nokia and its Symbian platform has been a win with developers. There’s a vast amount of content for the launch of their ‘Ovi’ Store: a staggering 20,000 apps according to StrategyWire and the Forbes interview with Niklas Savander (EVP of services at the mobile phone pioneer). There’s also a smarter process too with real focus on quality: they’re getting each apps developer registered so there’s better control over the consumer experience. And for the developers, chew on this: a reported 30-70 revenue split in favor of developers :-) After 10 years of the promise of a powerful mobile web, this is the year it finally starts delivering.
Share on Ovi http://share.ovi.com/mobile/ | How sharing works http://share.ovi.com/tour
Continue reading "Mobile web: Nokia raises the bar with 20,000 apps" »
As a kid I remember tuning in to pirate radio in the UK. There was something edgy about the two music stations that broadcast from international waters. This week's legal verdict in Sweden about Pirate Bay (the file-sharing site hounded over copyright violations) feels like an echo of the troubled waters in the Irish Sea 30 years back. But anyone with nostalgia should ditch the rose tinted specs: this is an enabler of grand scale piracy.
Continue reading "Radio Caroline 30 years on" »
When confidence is down and budgets are tight, marketers focus on what they know works. It's a way of editing the media plan and rebuilding the strategy, and the greater the challenge ahead, the greater the shift. So today's financial results for the Google's first quarter (ending March 31,
09) should be no surprise. While print ad volumes were down 26% quarter on quarter, Google saw only slight decline, with like for like year-on-year revenues enjoying modest growth at 6%. It was "a good quarter given the depth of the recession, underlining both the resilience of our business model and the ongoing potential of the
web as users and advertisers shift online," said a confident Schmidt. And in a sector where it's all about the product, their focus forwards is both perfectly smart and a depressing contrast to most of the media and apps industries: "our priority remains investing for the long term to drive future growth in our core and emerging businesses."
Continue reading "Search: where the centre of gravity of marketing moves in recession" »
The nature of the privacy debate needs to broaden. The centre of gravity of crime has shifted to personal data, and as the centre of gravity of communications consolidates on digital platforms we need to complete the legal framework. There needs to be a clear legal age of consent – for publishing personal data. The static web, sms and email have been joined by the richness of social networking, and the democratisation of access to data provided by social media. But there’s a subtle and critical paradox in law. The rigidity of the data protection act, the oversight of RIPA (the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) and the fallback / legacy of Data Retention are part of what remains a young legal framework. But this framework is missing one critical link - clarification on what data people post about themselves and when they are legally responsible for what they publish. When I worked on RIPA at the time of launch, and the EU data protection directive at the time of revision (for incorporating sound and image), social media was not clearly mainstream and Facebook not yet an idea. As consumer culture evolves to entrench openness more deeply, both the risks of data publishing and the burden of responsibility need to be clearer.
Continue reading "We need a legal age of data consent - and a national debate to get us there" »