62% of all valentines day searches were from Mobile (and mostly the 13/14th of Feb) - this to me leads to 2 takeouts...

1 - Men are useless and they all panicked and did this last minute on the bus on the way into work.
2 - The importance of a change in shift of behaviour for certain search topics and the way we search.

http://searchengineland.com/google-62-percent-of-v-day-restaurant-searches-were-mobile-111746?utm_source=sel&utm_medium=scap&utm_campaign=email

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I attended the LSN trend briefing this morning. For those interested the event was held at ACMI and I have never seen that many black rim planner glasses or men wearing women's jeans in one place at one time in my life..  Outside of that observation, the content was really interesting and they had really good Friand at break.

Attached is the executive summary (PDF).

I also have a few hundred pages of notes, the best bits of which are below;

1. Anarconomy

Political / Social context; Arab Spring Uprising, Empowerment of disaffected youth, general disruption and unrest.

The internet has pioneered a culture of free (in terms of cost and liberation) service. This has circumvented the traditional commercial and infrastructural models of the industrial age. This same philosophy, which is characterised by its sense of collaboration, social connection and economic subversion is now moving into the physical world.

Interestingly its the younger generations that are championing this movement, and its also younger people who are teaching these new values to their parents - as they teach them how to use emerging channels.  This represents a fundamental shift in how experience and education works as wisdom used to be passed down from older to younger, and this is essentially reversed in this case.

Interesting links / examples for collaboration / open source / hack etc

Gilpin Whiskey - made from Diabetic urine http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/08/gilpin-family-whisky.php
Joost Bakker - who makes sustainable architecture http://byjoost.com/
Puma Creative Factory - http://www.puma.com/creativefactory

An interesting tip is collaboration and open source and hacking all create a unique experience, that said you need to still provide consumers and audiences with the ingredients to form a story to share - the devil is in the detail.

Implications:
Disrupt - figure out what appears consistent for your brand, and break and disrupt it before someone else does.
Orchestrate Open Source
Embrace Hackers and encourage creativity
Stand for something

2. Revivalism

Political / Social context; a reaction against technology overload, Turbulent teenagers (London riots)

 Revivalism represents a reconnection to ones roots, to safe known places. It's achieved via folklore, revamping, rediscovering skills etc.

Some examples of this one are; History book fashion trends, Meeting the makers (getting behind the scenes), Mashing up urban and rural (bee keeping or community gardens anyone?)

Interesting links / examples for collaboration / open source / hack etc

Max Lamb is a furniture maker who uses traditional techniques - this is amazing

Some watch outs - this one can also go bad. Extreme Nationalism emerges when we go back to find cues to culture.

Implications:
Positive patriotism
Show your workers - show people how stuff is made
Consider your heritage - everyone brand a story
Revive lost rituals

3. Personal Information Economy

 This one is all about digital data and its impact on our lives.  There are 2 routes to consider. people will either embrace brands and institutions collecting data on us and benefit from this, or refuse and reject data and become anxious and isolated.

A key trend is Self quantifying - this is the notion of  tracking our own behaviours in order to measure aspects of our lives. We talked about this in our own prezi trends piece when we talked about Sensors.

Interesting links / examples for collaboration / open source / hack etc
Memo Lane - an app that allows you to create a timeline for an event http://memolane.com/explore
UP a bracelet that tracks all aspects of your lifestyle. http://jawbone.com/up
Personal reputation management  www.kred.com

Implications:
Be transparent about data that you collect
Share your data with the crowd
Share back users data with users
Help consumers monitor their data
Help consumers manage their reputations
Collaborate for brand benefit

4. The Tomorrow Store

This one was all about personalising the shopping experience, in terms of service, experience, theatre.

Driven by; as we increasingly can access/ and buy products any where at any time, the role of an online store and physical one need to be differentiated.  

The dynamic is .............. Accessible to everyone vs Exclusive

We need to think not about customers but;
- friends
- family
- fans
- ambassadors

We need to think less about product as hero and more about;
- Product as a momento of the retail experience
- Show the process
- create multi sensory experiences

 It sprang to mind that wineries do this really well already,  We see the making we sense the heritage, we inevitably buy a bottle

Links and stuff
http://iouproject.com/
http://up.droog.com/

My big question at the end of this section was - well that's all well and good for a small niche shop - how does this apply to mass market brands?  The answer - Thomas Dux is what this is to woolworths.

Lot to take in, hope you find it useful.

0119_001.pdf Download this file

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These are 6 Interactive award winning Aussie works that are part of the SXSW festival. one is even by a creative partner SOAP.

The scope and beauty of these works shows that when you think 'interactive' you need to be thinking multi-platform, big idea, stunning execution.  I think in all cases the user experience is stunning, memorable and message is clear.

BIG STORIES, SMALL TOWNS 
www.bigstories.com.au
Synopsis Big Stories Small Towns is a unique web documentary project created by filmmakers living in remote and regional communities, working with local people to bring their personal stories to the screen. The result is a series of inspiring short films, digital stories and slide shows – full of humour and hope – released to the world via a specially created website:www.bigstories.com.au. The heartwarming project showcases stories of people living in the regional communities of Murray Bridge, Raukkan and Port Augusta in South Australia as well as Banlung in Cambodia.

CURIOUS CREATURES 

Synopsis Strange encounters are reported as inquisitive and beautiful creatures venture in from the surrounding woods at the festival site. Curious Creatures is a large-scale augmented reality projection project combining animation, sound design, gaming, installation art and electronic music. The work has been designed to reach new audiences in the festival environment. In 2011 it was installed at the Lismore Lantern Parade in Lismore NSW and Splendour in the Grass festival in Woodfordia QLD, Australia. Next stop in 2012 is Vryfees in Bloemfontein, South Africa, to a local audience of 250,000.

THE DRAGON CHILDREN
www.sbs.com.au/dragonchildren
Synopsis The Dragon Children is an interactive multimedia website exploring the success of Chinese-Australian students within Australia’s education system, as part of its continuing commitment to Chinese-Australian audiences and the SBS Chinese Virtual Community centre project.

GOA HIPPY TRIBE
www.sbs.com.au/goahippytribe 
Synopsis Goa Hippy Tribe is an online social media documentary about a hippy reunion in Goa, made by filmmaker Darius Devas and a vibrant community of online contributors.

THE GRADUAL DEMISE OF PHILLIPA FINCH 
www.abc.net.au/tv/phillipafinch 
Synopsis The Gradual Demise of Phillipa Finch is a cross-platform 2D animated project incorporating interactive web components, which brings acclaimed Australian artist Emma Magenta’s character, Phillipa Finch, to life. The project incorporates a 17-part animated series, an iPhone game and an interactive web experience called The Heartworks Project: a visual representation of a user’s current emotional state, told through the language and imagery of the animated series. Through this immersive, multi-platform experience, Phillipa Finch builds an interactive community based on a network of shared experience, within the framework of a story of love, beauty and hope.

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST PAC-MAN
http://worldsbiggestpacman.com
Synopsis The World’s Biggest PAC-MAN is a online game that allows PAC-MAN fans across the globe to create and play their own maze, adding it to an endlessly growing map of interconnected levels. The site was built to promote the power of Internet Explorer 9 and uses HTML5 technology to do so. To create a maze users sign-up through Facebook, which makes sharing their creations simple and easy. The maze created so far is the actual size of 37 real-life football fields. The site has received over 2.3 million visitors from 194 countries to date.

Inspiring stuff from some great Australian talent.

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Some other great lessons on how to create creative workspaces here also.

http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer

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Excess Baggage numbers dropped to around 500-600K after the launch episodes last week. In comparison Big Bang Theory repeats in the 7pm time slot last year were doing around 800K so the change definitely makes sense from a ratings point of view

But are audiences tiring of Big Bang Theory?

In 2011 Nine played 533 episodes of Big Bang Theory, 260 on the main channel and 273 times on GO!

Interestingly, up until the end of last year there were only 98 episodes available. Seasons 1-4, plus 11 episodes from season 5

That means on average each episode was telecast 5.4 times last year.

So far this year another 78 episodes have aired which takes the average number of times each episode has been on air since the 1st Jan 2011 to 6.2 times.

Yet audiences are still tuning in. The average Total Ppl audience for repeat episodes on the main channel YTD is 847K. New episodes in 2012 are averaging about 1.5M

So while there may have been a collective groan from audiences and media buyers of 'not more Big Bang Theory', for now at least, the numbers still stack up.

Audience figures sourced  from eTam based on consolidated data for Total Ppl in the 5 Cap Cities 1/1/2011 - 7/2/212

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Nine came in second with Excess Baggage at 885K. Not a bad number vs the competition it was up against. However, there is no doubt that Nine would have been disappointed with this number given the huge amount of on air promotion and the cost of importing international "celebrities".

That left poor old Loser to start it's second week with with 689K, well below the launch number from the previous week of 950K.

After almost a full week of head to head competition how did the 3 programmes stack up? My Kitchen Rules is going strong with an average for the week of 1.47M and a high of 1.5M on Thurs night. Safe to say that we enjoy watching people cook and eat food more than watching them sweat off the consequences of such excess.

After beating Loser on Monday night, Excess Baggage shed more audience than kilos with it's Tuesday night, losing -30% of it's audience and then another -12% on Thursday night. It has not finished the week in healthy position with only 555K on Thursday night. There are already rumours swirling that it will be bumped from it's 7pm time slot to later in the night or possibly even a digital channel. It's likely replacement, at least in the short term, Big Bang Theory repeats which typically rate a solid and dependable 800- 900K in the 7pm time slot.

Biggest Loser finished the week down vs it's week one ratings. And when averaged across the week it's ratings are on par with Baggage. But crucially, Tuesday to Thursday Loser had a steady 700-700K audience vs Baggage which consistently declined. Likely outcome of this battle of the bulge is that Loser will be the winner and Baggage will be sent packing

The other exciting development for reality TV this week was Please Marry My Boy which launched on Monday night. I love it already - and so did 1.25M other people. Seven have cast this well and kept the show fast paced, unusual for the reality format where every conversation and occurrence is dragged out in excruciatingly boring detail. So you are all clear this show has very little to do with the 'boy' and everything to do with the relationship between the mother and prospective girlfriend - who was hand picked by the mother based on some narcissistic similarity to herself.

All up it was a great week for reality TV and we are still another week out from the start of the 2012 rating season.

Audience figures sourced from eTam for the 5 Cap Cities w/c 29/1/2012

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Google+ Search Your World is now live and means a significant change to Google search results.

Search Engine Land has a good review of those implications:
http://searchengineland.com/googles-results-get-more-personal-with-search-plus-your-world-107285

This move is a clear strategy to encourage advertisers and other publishers to get on board with Google+. Given the non participation of Twitter and Facebook, Google can be seen to be moving into the "closed" eco system typical of Apple but against their historical open philosophy.

Product integration appears to make business sense though: using the dominant position of Google in search to support their social network product that is struggling to take off could be a winning strategy. However this move could actually back lash and prove counter productive if it was to disappoint users expecting to find "neutral" results when running Google searches.

Recent work from Facebook & Twitter engineers tends to demonstrate that Google is actually skewing search results with Search Your World to improve the ranking of Google+ data:

This could threaten Google's core business, which is the trust of its users relying on its unbiased algorithm to access all their information online. It would give ground for alternative search engine solutions to gain in appeal.

From a more philosophical point of view, being more social in search results presents some benefits in terms of being more relevant to users but isn't there a risk to narrow people's view: it is comforting to get results more relevant to oneself but isn't it the point of search to broaden your perspectives above all? We already know about the natural laziness of not going beyond the first page for results but is this new development even more a risk for searchers to just focus on what relates to their "own world" as social results are shown first?

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The Entrance and The Date are beautiful rich cinematic sequences with great soundtracks and alone they are great.  So last night I went on to YouTube and was happy to find the 90s version of the commercials.  Incidentally discovering that the story continues - within each of the main commercials we are introduced to a number of characters and each has a back / side story.  

Going onto facebook today I was pleased to see that these narratives are there to be found and explored.

This is a great example of transmedia - however the TVC content seems not to allude to the additional content.

The Entrance

And facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/heineken?sk=app_140779849328482

The Date

Has a making of clip on the facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/heineken?sk=app_137291299679912

This is - Great advertising!

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I think managing client expectations surrounding "Viral" is important, this article points to the fact the agency designed the content for the audience not that content was designed around the brand and then shared with the audience - subtle differentiation, but a great one nonetheless.  Picking up on cultural cues that are relevant to the spaces and places where content is being shared is a short cut to finding some traction - and what is relevant now might not be tomorrow. What does that mean for brands? Well that they need to be flexible, patient and always attentive to online culture.

This video did not go viral
http://whatconsumesme.com/2012/posts-ive-written/this-video-did-not-go-viral/

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Seemed like a sound strategy to get audiences to sample Ten's new programming before the other networks had their regular line ups in place. At least until Friday night when Tomic got through to the quarter finals of the tennis and booked a Federer show down right in the middle of Ten's Super Sunday.

No doubt the Tennis put a dent in Ten's numbers for the night. But the ratings reveal that as the night wore on there was a gradual switch from the Tennis to Ten's new line up. Ten even took the lead for a brief half hour during the first episode of Homeland,

So what were the final numbers for the night?

Based on primary channel overnight figures Seven won the night with a 48% share. Seven's share peaked between 1930-2030 at a huge 52%. Ten's share was a respectable 31% for the night given the competition and built to a high of 39% once the Federer / Tomic game was over. Nine was not really competitive with a share of 20% which got to as low as 16% between 1930-2130.

Programme by programme Seven's Tennis was the number one programme for the night with 1.6M, followed by the News with 1.47M. New Girl was the third most watched programme of the night with 1.28M. Homeland was fourth with 1.22M and Modern Family achieved 1.13M. Ten would be disappointed with the 1.05M it got for YTT but in the face of the competition on Seven the result is not a complete disaster. In Ten's favour the audience that did tune in stuck with it for the whole episode. And chat on twittter indicated that a lot of people are into the revitalised format. The real test will be next week to see if Ten can keep the audience week on week and hopefully build it as the competition part of the show gets under way.

So was Ten's Super Sunday gamble worthwhile? Overall the numbers were not spectacular but they were respectable under the circumstances. Audiences tended to stick with each of the new programmes and didn't switch off or over to other channels indicating they at least were enjoying what they were watching. I think YTT will build audience as the competition gets under way and people get to know the new young talent team.

What do you think? Did the gamble pay off for Ten?

Audience figures sourced from eTam based on overnight data in the 5 Cap Cities

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You know you are really onto a potential awesome trend when the first few things you read on the commute to the office all talk on the same theme.

So I have been moderately obsessed with the idea of sensors now for a few weeks, you know you can buy little DIY kits at www.greengoose.com? These will essentially allow you to 'gamify' or track daily tasks and activities and certainly de-complicate complex electronics and human behavioural alteration and make it all feel like fun.

Then I flicked my attention over to Adverblog and saw these ads for this new NIKE device; the fuel band.  Sensor + App + tracking your activity --- errrr "quantifying" your awesomeness maybe.

But what I realised today though that I was missing the broader context for this - sure it makes sense that we are inspired and motivated by competition scoring points and so, on...but there is a bigger movement at play, and this Venture beat article sums it up perfectly; there is desire for users to quantify everything in our lives, a parallel land grab is also going on for that data - so what about this seemingly innocent capturing of your information? where does all this data go? who owns it? and how will it potentially be used?... http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/21/quantifying-our-lives-will-be-a-top-trend-of-2012/

Sensors people, and tracking, cool and scary in the same breath.

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A great article and super interesting from CNN - worth a read..

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/16/tech/social-media/must-tweet-tv-cashmore/in...

It would seem that this virtual "water cooler" we have been banging on about for a while now is really well and truly working its magic. 

In Australia we only have to listen to the commentary of the ever cool Mr Jim Courier on 7's coverage of the Aus Open to hear the constant references to Fango and twitter, and its clear at least from twitters perspective there is a lot of chatter out there on the tennis.  That said its still the Tennis we are there to watch and the drama on twitter is never likely to that of a live sporting event.

What's different between Live Sport and a Telecast of the Golden Globes is, well the comedy.  Its pretty obvious that the producers enlisted the likes of Gervais because he will attract comment and PR for the show, but did they really plan for to make their TV show more appealing via the snarky (celeb bashing) back stream? Which in advertently brought them better ratings. In the case of the Golden Globes it's clear that the back channel has actually improved the popularity of the program and attracted a greater viewer-ship and ultimately more rad revenue.

Yahoo and Seven are trying to commercialise this opportunity via their Fango App, sure its got some ads in it, but the numbers are pretty low right now and the content needs major improvements to make it better than the alternatives, but its a good strategy and opportunity.

 I'm loving watching and now back channelling this space.

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I know there have been a tonne of trends documents and reports flooding the airwaves this year already, so i thought I'd take the time to present the key ones on the ZO radar in a Prezi format.

Ive been using this as a bit os a test for the tool too, and besides the constant crashing and server connection issues I have experienced, I have found the experience pretty good.

I'd strongly recommend the following steps in creating a prezi though;

1. write the text based material first
2. save all the images and video links you are going to embed in a file before you start
3. plan out a concept or theme for your prezi before you begin adding slides
4. don't even touch the 'paths' button to create the prezi flow until you are all done

Link

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It was exciting to read today that Paypal, eBay's online payment service, are progressing their journey towards the mobile wallet though a trial with Home Depot, one of America's biggest retailers. The trial allows consumers to pay for items by typing in their mobile number and ID number linked with their PayPal account into an in-store PayPal unit. Whilst a small trial (5 stores with a small number of PayPal staff) Wall Street analysts see huge potential:

"We believe a full Home Depot roll out would increase PayPal's addressable market by more than 35 percent overnight," Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush, wrote in a note to investors on Friday.  "Although penetration would start at zero, we believe that by adding value to consumers and merchants, PayPal may eventually approach penetration rates comparable to its online presence." (http://www.cnbc.com/id/45925365)

Google launched their mobile wallet in May 2011 which has been built into the Android 2.3 operating system on Nexus 4G phone on Sprint (a US Telco). It links with Mastercard and Citi cardless payment technology.

Obviously at this stage the mobile wallet is at infancy with security, consumer familiarity with NFC technology and  retail outlet compatibility providing challenges for the likes of Google and PayPal, but it's a great start.

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Moxie 2012 Trends Report - Jan 2012.pdf Download this file

Moxie - the 2012 Trends Report - that summarises the big digital trends for this year.

The report covers the following 10 mega-trends:
1.        The Always On Web
2.        Web of Things
3.        Big Data
4.        Next Gen Search
5.        Mobile Sharing
6.        Mobile Social Activism
7.        Impulse Commerce
8.        Brands As Partners
9.        The New Living Room
10.        Personal Data Security

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I Love this

I don't know if I missed this one last year or it simply flew under the radar, and got no airtime in Aus, so its not new news and some of you might have picked it up.

This is what you get when you have a somewhat interesting product feature (the ability to change the voice commands on your Nokia GPS navigator) + a decent budget for production + a sense of humour + a really great , talented and cool band at your disposal.

Great example of creating an interesting media with a product and content that is not quite what it seems.

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This is a nice use of the tactile digitised surface table from Scion that incorporates unique ID cards which are manipulated to create a unique mix of a music and visual elements. Adjusting the images and assets; rotating, swiping enlarging and so on affect the tempo, volume and interplay of the underlying music and assets.

The video does not demonstrate it, but it would be cool if you could mix, download and take away your own version of the model experience - as a reminder of the vehicle and potential opportunity for Scion to talk about a sale.

Lots of people have been predicting an increase in screen based experiences everywhere, looks like it happening already.

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