ZenithOptimedia

Find below a link to a clever initiative from Paypal with partners to reach small regional businesses.

http://www.drivingbusinessonline.com.au/

They have created / decked out a business bus and its on tour in NSW offering business advice particularly in the arena of digital marketing.

They have some great content on this website and whilst its very pointy, it works well with the Pay pal model of integrated online payment and e-commerce, so will be very useful information for many of the people they will reach.

This work was done by Publicis Sydney - so I got the low down from their CD today.

Seems they have a display plan and SEM supporting at this stage. I seem to seeing ads for this everywhere, even on 8tracks.com my new favourite mixtape website.

Great link and case study from our Asian digital head.  This is an example of how a supermarket brand is using subway signage and smart phones to help people do their shopping.  Purchases are made via QR codes via the panels in the subway station, paid for in the app and then delivered to the users home later.

Cant imagine the logistics of delivery and so on, but cool nonetheless.

Wonder whether this would work in Australia with our grimy graffiti ridden train stations.

Nice content / story, could really be for anything though..

We'd like to thank our lovely roving reporter Sian lane for this piece.

I have just got back from the presentation of the second telstra/mobile research presentation (deck can be downloaded at - http://www.sensisdigitalmedia.com.au/)

It is pretty cool as it tracks the year on year changes in mobile internet usage.

Below are my highlights;

- Biggest jump in smartphone penetration year on year has come from the 25 - 29 year old moving from approx. 50% - 75%
- Android ownership has grown from 2% to 11% but awareness has gone from 28% to 65%
- Women may still lag behind in smartphone penetration but they have significantly increased there usage of the mobile internet - up to 63% from 49%
- 23% of users accessed the mobile internet in a business meeting because they were bored - so look out for clients surfing their blackberry's!
- The stats for mobile advertising remain low but apparently one in five people ever accessed an internet site via an advertisement.  Mobile search however plays a significantly bigger role in mobile internet navigation
- All genres of sites have seen growth year on year - this shift is even greater when you look at more detailed demographics which females becoming even more nosey / active on the social networks
- Mobile commerce hasn't seen significant growth y-o-y but mobile price comparison has increased year on year.

The study doesn't cover tablets or have any insights / thoughts on the impending nfc technology (as you would imagine this would impact on mobile commerce), there is however a raft of data available behind the study which is available from the guys over at sensis so they can look at geo data / mobile operators etc.  One of the things that I would be interested in seeing is whether there is a broader insights into what prompts usage - from the site used the majority looks need based but I think it would be interesting to understand the extent that boredom drives usage as this has messaging implications.

Is a resource centre for twitter users. Has tips on how to use reporting, engaging, publishing and links to their support.

Great resource for the novice tweeter, and even some stuff in there for more advanced users.

The latest one is on the impact of the Internet on Word of Mouth conversations i.e. how does it initiate WOM or amplify brand related conversations - useful for NAB and Honda and any client about to run an ATL campaign or roll out a experiential activity / stunt.

• The Internet is both the leading spark of WOM conversations and the #1 resource utilized to take action after conversation. Search impacts more than 15% of all Word of Mouth conversations.
• Google is the #1 spark of Word of Mouth conversations and the #1 place people turn to after conversations for more information.
• Google directly informs 146 million brand conversations a day.
• Word of Mouth impressions generated by search are 25% more credible and 17% more likely to lead to purchase than those generated by online social media sites.

There's also a study on how Mums interact with Search http://www.google.com/think/insights/topics/moms-know-search.html

Thanks to Kevin (K-Dog) for these gems

Click here to download:

2011_Word_of_Mouth_Study.pdf (299 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

2011_Word_of_Mouth_Study.pdf (299 KB)

Thanks to Sue Ellen for this follow-up analysis

The Block launched to a huge audience of 1.342M which is way more than what most people in the office predicted.

Significantly, if you look at the average ratings for the survey year to date Nine has grown the audience in both the 1900 and the 1930 time slot by 54%.

But is this enough to turn around the fortunes of the network?

This is the first Monday of the survey year that Nine has won
And Nine's average Mon night peak audience was ahead of where it had been in recent weeks (total average peak reach last night was 1.075M vs an average over the last 6 weeks of 1.037M +4%)

Will the trend continue through the week? That remains to be seen.

But for now it looks like Nine's risky move to re format and strip The Block Mon-Fri has paid off.

Some classics

"Tell the truth, but make truth fascinating"

"The more you tell, the more you sell"

"A lack of ambition makes people so pedestrian in the advertising business"

Picked up here
http://curiositycounts.com/post/6705288662/david-ogilvy-essentials-everything-you-need-to

Simple, engaging, beautiful and imminently sharable.

This week we delved into the wonderful world of YouTube to discover that;

Shakira has got a new song out, but she has cut her hair and teamed up some some guy called pitbull - all good, but the music was pretty lame.

We also discovered this video from T-Mobile which depicts what first appears like a live activation angry birds stunt, but which is clearly eventually revealed to be produced staged content. Interesting as T-Mobile have played around with flash mobs in the past, and this looks similar in style.  

One of a few non-commercial videos in this weeks 10 top of the week was this piece seeking to draw attention to the plight of NYC cyclists and bike lanes

We also saw gaming trailers for Halo 4 and The Assassins Creed. We thought the latter was more appealing from a non-gamer perspective.

Finally, and possibly the most awesome of the bunch was this piece from Nintendo Wii - who are launching a new tablet style game controller.  The gadget seems to be a multi- touch sensory device and opens up a swathe of really fascinating new ways of being able to engage with the Wii game and screen its attached to. Very Cool, and cant help but wonder how long it will be before all TV viewing will be like this. HUGE for the loungeroom, and sad that real sports might be all become virtual one day.

Summarily - there are some clear and interesting things to take out about the world of online video.

• A large % of the top 10 videos are commercial in nature from popular film clips to game trailers and TV commercials.
• Even videos that are not necessarily commercial - Epic Meals - have cottoned on to the fact that they can cash in and are integrating commercial sponsors into their content in their own fascinating way.
• Shakira's hips still don't lie