Numiko, an award winning Leeds based digital creative agency

Just by writing the word Skittles I have given Skittles.com more fuel for their social media inferno and helped tip Twitter further into the inevitable mainstream.
This week Skittles took a brave step and tied up all their digital existences and conversations with one great big digital rainbow.  Check www.skittles.com for evidence.
It’s bizarre that a brand primarily aimed at kids should find its chat room (well twitter) filled with media commentary on how cool or not so cool their digital marketing is.
The jury is out… but one thing’s for sure… no one would have thought skittles would be the first brand to step so boldly and colourfully into the world of social media… but I’m sure we will soon see some of the world’s less colourful brands jumping onto the rainbow!
What do you think?

I’ve read quite a bit about Facebook Connect lately – the service that lets sites allow Facebook users the convenience of authentication via their existing Facebook account details:

This implementation by “news mashup” Buzz Newsroom caught my interest as it manages to combine 2 of the things I love most about the web: the ability to build applications by linking different components and content sources together, and collaboration – or the (so-called!) “wisdom of the crowds”. Here’s how techcrunch describes it:

“You sign in with Facebook Connect, and then can not only vote up or down any story, but write your own entry.

Buzz Newsroom is a big Wordpress blog. You start off as a contributor, which means you can author posts but not publish them. Buzz Newsroom editors review the entries and publish them. Once you become a trusted contributor, your status may be upgraded to “author,” which means you can publish directly.”

Once you are connected to Facebook (from another site) you have instant access to all of your friends, and although it’s hard to see this openness by Facebook as an entirely selfless gesture  it certainly does seem to have some advantages for us too. Not least the convenience of being able to login to a site without having to create and manage another user account. (N.B. Facebook aren’t the only ones to recognise this and it would be wrong not to mention the Open ID project at this point, with which Facebook recently got involved). It could also help to reinforce brands – a user’s activity on a site can be published back to the Facebook news feed for all their friends to see. And of course, a visiting Facebook user potentially brings many new visitors with them – or as the Facebook site explains:

“With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites” –  et voila, instant social network!

Sources:

http://developers.Facebook.com/connect.php

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/19/buzz-newsroom-combines-wordpress-and-Facebook-connect-for-tracking-news/

http://mashable.com/2009/01/12/Facebook-connect-implementations/

Using similar technologies to that which numiko uses when measuring engagement with content and usability of websites using eye tracking technologies – NEC have developed intelligent digital signage with all the tools necessary to know everything about the consumers that enter its perimeter.

‘Eye Flavor’ uses a camera to gather demographic information about visitors, but also to gauge how engaged the shopper is with the advertisement. It can tell whether viewers simply glanced at the display, gave it a passing look, stopped, or ignored it entirely. From this information advertisers can know exactly which ads grab their targets in a real way, and the locations which host the displays can more specifically target advertisers with strong demographic proof.

NEC Press Release – http://www.nec.co.jp/press/ja/0812/1601.html

Humans throughout time, or at least of recent years, have known the value of engagement;

1: You get to have a party
2: You might get some presents
3: It sets off a chain of events towards a day when you get another party and more presents …

But now, brands and marketers are looking to engagement of a different sort and trying to apply some value measurements to better understand it.

Playing devils advocate, it would be easy to suggest that the reasons for doing this have been forced upon us. In the interactive space, direct response metrics have been falling for years. And, despite the age-old sentiments of ‘...digital being the most accountable and transparent of all media…‘ it becomes harder to sell a solution based on these cold figures alone. This in turn leaves us with no choice but to develop other ways to measure the impact of spend. Right?

Well, kind of yes and no. Yes the industry does need a new way of measuring the obvious (at least to us) value of people chosing to be actively involved with a brand or product; but no, I don’t think it’s a knee-jerk scramble to cover our backs.

We could, as TV does, blithely point to spikes in sales and make claims about how that must be related to TVRs of the latest 30s spot. Or, we could be a bit more prfessional and, as Mark Ghuneim has begun to investigate on his blog post ‘Measuring the Active Consumer’, start to develop a logical system for grading and rating all of the ‘web 2.0′ types of user participation, interaction and collaboration and allow us to ’score’ levels of user participation and their value to any company, brand or product.

It look’s like Mark and his company Wireset are in for the long-term on this, with a program of next-steps including…

* Top-20 engagement activities
* Further definition of engagement types
* Produce algorithm (compose related activity weights)
* Incorporate feedback/comments

It certainly makes for a ‘blog thread to watch’, or, parhaps more pertinantly, participate in!

Numiko has been nominated for ‘Digital Agency of the Year’ at the DADI Awards 2008!

The DADI Awards are open to all digital agencies, creative agencies, media owners or clients who work within the digital field, who are based outside of London’s M25, so we’re really chuffed to be in the running for this well recognised award.

The winner will be announced on 31st October at the Royal Armouries in Leeds, so once again, keep your fingers crossed for us!

To find out more about the DADI Awards, click here

Speaking of awards nominations, Numiko have been shortlisted for the Digital Agency of the Year Award at the DADI Awards 2008. The shortlist was decided on via a ‘lively client/peer nomination process’ which is exciting. Shortlisted nominees are announced on Friday 1st August so keep your fingers crossed for us! Click here to find out more about the DADI Awards…

New promo for the upcoming Kubrick season on More 4 – I saw it on TV the other day, and was really impressed.  It’s one long tracking shot through a recreation of the set and cast of The Shining, from the POV of Kubrick himself.  Really cool attention to detail, even down to shooting the whole thing with one of Kubrick’s favourite lenses; it’s one of those things you can watch over and over again and keep finding new things…

And of course, no post about The Shining would be complete without a link to Shining – rom-com re-edit goodness!

MocoNews have posted a summarisation of a report claiming that “Digital and mobile advertising revenues are expected to increase 12-fold to about $150 billion worldwide between 2002 to 2011.”

This has been nicely spliced together with a report on ‘Young mobile users’ of which “…35 percent of 16- to-35-year-olds would use more ad-funded multimedia messaging services (MMS) if those services were offered for free or at a discount.”

With figures like “18-35 demographic group currently consumes 56 percent of mobile media content” it’s easy to see why so many marketeers are desperate to crack mobile marketing in this category. The idea of sea saw marketing, where users pay for content by accepting advertisements alongside it, is something of the norm for the iGeneration. So does it work? Are we be able to create a meaningful relationships between brands and consumers simple by offering loyalty rewards that the consumer actually wants? Is this the holy grail of permission marketing, or is it simply just more noise? I guess we’ll have to wait until we get to the crazy Arthur C. Clarke world of 2010 before we really find out.