Although this debate is not new, the evolving social landscape has heightened the role of influence and influencer for brands and agencies alike. While many are laying claim to owning the winning formula, with no industry standard, influence remains an elusive force.

Central to this debate is: how do you define influence?

The industry is currently wrestling with this question. Recent contributions have been made by the CIPR which has created a panel of specialists to try and quantify influence and the implications for UK business.

The ever excellent Brian Solis is currently conducting a poll to clearly define this area, with the results being published later this month. We’re also waiting for the outcome of the Fast Company’s hotly debated Influence Project which, while being an exercise in popularity more than influence, has helped push the topic up the agenda and brought tiara-wearing Mari Smith to online prominence.

We’re monitoring this debate closely and our next session will cover the role and influence of the peer group vs. wider relationships on influencing action.

What are your thoughts on the importance and role of influencer for social media and marketing?

If Kanye West wants to interrupt anyone for any reason at this year’s MTV awards then it should be over Arcade Fire’s latest video for “The Wilderness Downtown”.

It’s a refreshingly different way of creating a music video, utilising some pretty slick web technology such as HTML 5, Google maps API, and a mash up between the two, including 3D tree rendering on the maps, and a flock of birds flying from window to window.

I like it because it’s not a traditional video in any sense and, more importantly, it’s not a traditional website. It doesn’t follow any of the web standards that we are so used to seeing.

Yes, it’s not the nicest design in terms of the window pop ups, but I like it for that; it’s honest and it’s really more about how the site interacts with the user. The relevancy of the technology to the song makes the video a complete experience; the song is about childhood so you are asked to enter the town in which you grew up in, which then becomes part of the video.

I’d really like to see more like this on the web and hope that this inspires designers and developers (and even marketers willing to take the risk!) to break free of the current website formulas and really utilise the web to its full potential; creating truly dynamic pieces of work.

There are many HTML5 examples out there but this is bringing the technology to a different audience. If you know of any other sites that really break the mould then let us know in the comments section!

(Oh, and if the Kanye reference is lost on you, take a look at this YouTube video.)

Matt features in a two page spread in this month’s Graduates issue of Creative Review, which features his smiling face on the front cover.

Fresh from Leeds Uni, where he graduated with a 1st no less, Matt’s already nabbed a prestigious D & AD pencil for his work, which includes animated films with a simplistic, ‘lo-fi’ style, using paper and stop motion techniques, and bespoke book designs.

Excitingly for us, Matt’s work will be displayed alongside his fellow Sh! finalists’ in the Brass Gallery from the 7th September.

Pop in and have a browse round – we’d love to see you!

If you haven’t, we’re not talking about Michelle Pfeiffer unfortunately, nor Halle Berry. In fact, to avoid any confusion, we’ll refer to her as catbinwoman from here on in.

Catbinwoman is in fact a grey haired lady from Coventry who was caught on CCTV placing an unsuspecting feline in a bin.

Due to a strategically placed CCTV camera outside the cat owners’ residence, catbinwoman was caught in the act of petting the animal before picking it up by the scruff of its neck and throwing it in a wheelie bin.

The cat was eventually retrieved by its owners and you can read the story in more detail pretty much anywhere on the web.

What makes this story particularly interesting however, is that the cat’s owners put the CCTV coverage up on a Facebook page called Help find the woman who put my cat in the bin, and the news story to some extent then turned into one about social media, as opposed to being simply about the event itself.

Twitter was of course abuzz with the topic before very long, with every man and his dog (or cat) jumping on the bandwagon, whether to offer outraged opinion, bewildered bemusement or simply to crack a few jokes. (You can also now follow @catbinlady’s very own tweets, but, be warned, this may be a ‘joke’ account..)

The question is, how has social media impacted upon this whole story?

Personally, I first picked up on the story through twitter. If it wasn’t for the huge, snowballing response on twitter and Facebook, would this really have been such a big story?

Looking at newspaper coverage, the crux of the story has become less about a woman committing an act of animal cruelty, and more about the social media storm that was caused as a result.

Event takes place – social media picks up on it – traditional media reports on the fact that social media picks up on it.

Is this the shape of things to come?

If so, is this simply another example of newspapers losing their grip and social media forging ahead in the battle to provide timely and relevant news? Is the cat out of the bag; has social media proved itself to be the only news we need?

We’d love to hear your thoughts…

Lürzer’s received over 4,732 submissions from 55 countries, so it’s a fantastic achievement to be featured alongside the likes of designs for Coca Cola, Levi’s and Panasonic.

As Lürzer’s themselves say, the book is “not only an extensive source of ideas for all those involved in packaging design but also a veritable treasure trove for marketers seeking designers able to extract that added value from a product”.

You can see all the details on our work for Mallard the full case study at – http://www.brassagency.com/our-work/mallard-tea.aspx

Since 2008, a few search engine start-ups have joined the search war to compete with the world’s most powerful search engine, Google. Many claimed to be Google killers: like Cuil, the search engine that defines itself as the ‘coolest’, or Wolfram Alpha, the search engine that claims to be the only one to provide all the answers you need. But how many of these new search engines ever got popular? The answer is none.

Cuil is basically dead while Wolfram Alpha is struggling to be recognised by users as a search engine such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. You may be wondering, if new search engines may never be able to compete with those search giants, why would I want to talk about Blekko, a search engine that most of you have never heard of?

The answer is simple, because it is different.

Blekko is a search engine that aims to provide transparency to all web users. Its principle is to make web data directly available and ensure search is open. The search engine was first spotted in the wild in 2008 with the image of a paper bag puppet and nothing more.

It wasn’t  until this year that I heard about it again, when it finally announced it’s under Beta testing, and is about to launch.

What makes Blekko different?

It lets you SLASH THE WEB (like a ninja!). The enforcement of Slashtag in Blekko makes it easy to obtain search results only relevant to what you want (or kill off the results you don’t want).

Let’s use the movie Inception as an example (great film if you haven’t seen it). When you type Inception into the search box for a general search, the results usually contain anything to do with the word inception. But if you simply want the results to be related to the movie, just use the Slashtag in the search box to define your search result.

-    If you’d like all results related to the movie, type in : Inception /movies
-    If you’d like the results from blog post, type in : inception /movies/blogs
-    If you’d like only the pictures, type in : inception /movies/pictures

Slashtag not only benefits users from having a easy way to redefine their search result, it can also work as a way to access tools and API available from Blekko.

-    If you want to limit your search results from only twitter, type in Inception /twitter

-    If you’d like to see only pictures from flickr, type in Inception /flickr

-    If you’d like to watch video from YouTube, type in Inception /youtube

What I like about Blekko the most

It provides web data that is usually available from the backend or SEO tools. If you look at the search results, every result all comes with a SEO and a Link hyperlink. By clicking these two links, you can easily get the website data relevant to search engine optimisation, both on-page and off-page.  It even allows you to make data comparison for up to four websites.

So is Blekko a Google Killer?

I don’t think so, and Blekko doesn’t think so either. In terms of search relevancy and website indexation, there’s still a very long way to go before Blekko can reach what Google has achieved today (and Blekko knows it well). That’s the major reason why Blekko lays low, and only aims to become the third most popular search engine instead of No.1.

To conclude, Blekko is a very likeable search engine as it brings users fresh search experiences.

Try it, you might like it!

A new product launch in itself doesn’t usually garner such extensive press coverage or buzz online, but the fact that brand ambassador Kelly Brook was naked (but for said pair of trainers) may have had an impact…

It seems that yet again, the ad world has returned to the assumption that ‘sex sells’.

Brook’s repose in the Reebok ad is reminiscent of the controversial campaign for Yves Saint Laurent Opium in 2000 featuring a naked Sophie Dahl. The campaign, which saw Dahl wearing nothing but a pearl choker and gold stilettos to promote the designer’s perfume, accounted for one in three complaints about billboard advertising in that year, making it one of the most complained about in the ASA’s history.

Around that time the ‘sexual sell’ in advertising had increased in prominence, not just in adverts for the likes of YSL’s Opium and Paris fragrances, but also in campaigns for fashion labels French Connection, Patrick Cox and Calvin Klein.

There was lots of talk at the time around the changing nature of advertising, often questioning whether advertising techniques had started evolving faster than ethics, and a great deal of research was carried out.

Some of the discoveries made included:

- Young consumers view ‘sexual advertising’ as ironic and playful, and take it in their stride.

- Consumers in general prefer subtle sexual sell ads, as opposed to blatant ‘overt’ sexuality in advertising, which is seen as assuming a lack of intelligence in consumers.

- The general view of sexual advertising is a negative one – consumers have seen it all before.

Although the research was carried out 8/9 years ago now, much of it remains true for brands today.

There can still be practical problems inherent in using sex to sell: distracting target consumers from the brand’s real message or value, and offending other consumers. Shock value can have an immediate impact, but the advertiser needs to ensure their product or brand is still seen to offer something of genuine value.

It would be interesting to take the research a step further and see what changes/effects the digital era may have had on consumer perceptions.

Has the glut of online sexual imagery led consumers to become desensitised to such advertising, therefore challenging the advertising industry to be even more creative to ensure effective cut-through for their campaigns?

Only time will tell whether the Reebok adverts will create the same stir as the Yves Saint Laurent Opium advert did in 2000. However, as Wonderbra announce the appointment of a new advertising agency to recapture the glory days of their “hello boys” campaign, all the research and commentary on consumers’ perceptions and buying habits may fall by the wayside. When that campaign ran, Wonderbra witnessed an unprecedented surge in sales ensuring the brand became a household name and even causing car crashes on its release.

If Reebok Easytone sales increase to that extent, it might be worth the risk. Only the sales figures will tell.

Image one courtesy of Reebok. Image two courtesy of http://www.handbag.com/fashion/top-10-iconic-ad-advertising-campaigns-sophie-dahl-ysl-opium-perfume/gallery.

It’s enough to make you don your apron and get making some blackcurrant jam, isn’t it?

You can see the rest of the photos from our day out at the farm on the Ribena Flickr page, as well as the Ribena Facebook group.

Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=81wFZavdhPU

In the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest at the prospect of military intervention in the UK’s largest ever street demonstrations. Those opposed to the invasion could not see the logic of war; others, including many members of parliament, were firmly in favour, seeing continued inspection and multilateral action through the UN as appeasement.

The tendency to seek out and spend time with those most similar to us goes some way to explaining this. This phenomenon is called homophily – literally meaning ‘a love of the same’.

Like it or not we are likely to befriend, work with and share our world with people who have common backgrounds. Without us realising it our opinions are often confirmed, reflected and reinforced – not challenged. This is important as we understand much of the world we live in indirectly, through what we hear about it, not what we encounter ourselves: it’s possible to miss all kinds of changes, trends and opportunities by talking only to those who agree with you. Had East Coast liberals widened their dinner party invite lists in the run up to the 2008 presidential election they might have understood what they found irritating about Sarah Palin – her being short on specifics and long on folksiness – was precisely what appealed to much of small town America.

So, what does the phenomenon mean for marketers?

First, re-examine your assumptions when planning.

There are 60 million people in the UK. 10 million of them have never used the internet. 52 million of them don’t live in London. 57 million don’t own an iPhone and a good 15 million couldn’t afford one.

Secondly, when you look at the right data you can see that people buy in a predictable manner.

Behavioural marketing used by Amazon and iTunes lets consumers know that “people who bought x also bought y” because consumers buy the ‘y’ they recommend. It works. Without need for demographic information this collaborative filtering turns our predicable tastes into pounds and pence. It doesn’t matter if you are a single mother in Aberystwyth or a fund manager in Chelsea, if you bought the latest Stereophonics album you’ll probably be into Coldplay too, God help you.

Thirdly, that technology can reinforce the trend, making routes into segments narrower.

Just thinking about news, the way we can customise iGoogle means we are imposing a filter right from the start compared to a viewing standard half hour TV bulletin. It’s the same with digital TV, music and culture. As J Walker Smith and David Bersoff of the Henley Centre write:

“Fragmenting technologies, and fragmented markets, have disaggregated the audience for marketing, and the mass market has splintered. But we’re still using models that were developed when mass media was dominant… People are surrounding themselves with input they have chosen. The result: people get more of exactly what they want, but are closed off to other ideas.”

Fourthly, the way we recruit our staff and build our teams reflects this bias.

We unconsciously seek similarity. Look around you and check for clones.

Lastly, that market researchers should have the courage of their convictions.

Be it a new product, campaign or packaging client teams quickly become close to ideas they have brought to life and lose perspective of what the marketplace will make of them. One of Market Research’s roles is to hold up a mirror to what people think. There is nothing like a group of disinterested strangers in a room to gauge whether an idea really works. If it bombs, don’t sugar the pill.

And for us all, as people? Perhaps, from time to time, to be prepared to try something even though it flies in the face of your preconceptions… Even if it is Jodi Picoult.

So, why has this become such a talking point amongst the site’s users? I think that some are simply keen to have the button from an “I want to dislike things” point of view. I’m referring mainly to the 3.2 million who have joined the group and signed the petition supporting the concept, probably without giving a second thought to the impact it could have on brand pages. And conversely, there are those who have; namely those who utilise Facebook on behalf of brands who anticipate such a function to be an issue if it were to be created.

However, according to Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, there’s nothing to worry about. He thinks that Zukerburg is “humouring us” and that Dislike buttons won’t be coming to Facebook anytime soon for one key reason: “it would damage the company’s relationships with brands, businesses and web publishers – these groups are essential for building both web traffic and ad revenue”.

I agree. It wouldn’t make sense for Facebook to damage such relationships for the sake of a Dislike button to please the general user, but is that the final word on the whole debate? Of course not.

New Facebook buttons keep popping up through third-party sites, so although the Dislike button might not exist on Facebook officially, it has already cropped up in other forms – Facemod and Facebook Dislike – and can still have a detrimental impact.

It’s widely agreed that a Share button would be more appropriate, especially for the more distressing stories where it is seen a tad distasteful to Like, i.e. ‘I like Swine Flu’. But, like many of the said-to-happen developments in the social media world, unless it comes to fruition, everyone will just lose interest and move onto the next thing. Next week, I might be posting about a Hate button that has been launched by Facebook which is causing massive controversy. Quite doubtful I realise, but I’m no Mystic Meg.

Image courtesy of Oldmasion: http://www.flickr.com/photos/httpoldmaisonblogspotcom/221227903/.