However, I can imagine as a developer it’s pretty difficult to maintain a fully functioning app across all devices, their operating software updates and any api’s from third parties being used.

If like me, when you spot a notification arrive you eagerly head over and check it out… It often surprises me what I’m greeted with. For each update you have a text field in which the developer can list the features of that app that were improved for that release.

The smart brands have noticed that this text field is an opportunity for further consumer engagement. You must also consider that the duration of an update can take up to a few minutes, so you are likely to have an audience reading your message, many brands forget this!

Below I have listed the good, the bad and the ugly of app update branding.

‘Truly awful’ are the only words to describe this wasted attempt from Groupon – shame on you.

Only slightly better is TripIt, but still makes my heart sink.

I like how Vine include some working instructions and also a Feedback email address.

Foursquare really warmed my cockles with this update and took a 2^nd place.

The winner in my eyes is Spotify with this comedic effort

Takeaways

This one’s pretty simple…

• Marketers – Really question EVERY touch point a consumer has with your brand, you might be surprised how many elements where your brand is exposed. Don’t leave any stone unturned because you believe it to be too ‘techie’ for your marketing role.

• Developers – Either pull your socks up and make more of an effort, or hand it over to the Marketers to manage the release of the update!

Do you think these experiences could become even more engaging? – Please leave a comment below with your views.

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Needless to say I’m really honoured and pleased to be shortlisted. The awards take place on Thursday 9th May at the Emirates Stadium, London.

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And the reason for the break? … too many to mention, but do include fantastic new company, a relocation, training, blah blah you get the idea.

One of my favourite sayings is “there is no starting or stopping, only doing…” so I’ll leave this post as me… just ‘doing’ again.

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What’s the big deal? – only your friends follow you right?

Well, yes and no. Yes your friends take an active interest in your stream of posts and comments, but this doesn’t exactly ring fence it all away from everyone else.

Ever since the uptake of Social Media any message, post or photo (*not actively made private) can be searched and viewed …even copied, pasted and printed. So that Twitter post you made last summer after a few drinks and commented on having a “S*** day at work” could still be floating around cyberspace.

Today, employees think they’re bullet-proof when they post anything on Social Networks. But if they bring their employer into disrepute, the boss of that company is well within their legal right to let them go.

Last year David Rowat was sacked by Argos after complaining about his job on Facebook. He was fired for gross misconduct after complaining about work on the social networking website after he arrived from a two-week holiday.

Mr Rowat said that when he went back to work after the holiday “the deliveries hadn’t been done and the place was a bit of a tip”. He posted on his Facebook wall: “Had a great day back at work after my hols who am I kidding!!” This was followed by: “Back to the shambles that is work.”

(Source: Telegraph.co.uk)

But it’s not just limited to main social sites such as Facebook or Twitter, even LinkedIn is eligible…

Mr Flexman is claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds from BG Group, a major gas exploration firm after being dismissed from work. As well as loading his CV onto LinkedIn, Mr Flexman ticked a box to register an interest in ‘career opportunities’.

He was contacted by his manager while on holiday and ordered to remove his CV. On his return he was accused of “inappropriate use of social media” and called to attend an internal disciplinary hearing.

(Source: Telegraph.co.uk)

However, there are cases where Social Media slagging have been acceptable…

Dawnmarie Souza, a paramedic, was fired after calling her supervisor a “scumbag” on Facebook, from her home computer. She was unhappy the supervisor had questioned her about a customer complaint.

The NLRB lawyers in Washington concluded the firing was illegal because the postings were made during an online discussion among employees about supervisory action, which is considered ‘protected concerted activity’ under law in the US.

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

In a 2010 survey, My Job Group asked participants whether they had ever talked negatively about their workplace on social networking sites. A third said that they had, and of those, the highest percentage (19 per cent) had criticised their boss or the owner of the company, 13% criticised their peers, and 12% had criticised their direct manager.

(Source: ACAS: Workplaces and Social Networking Research Paper [PDF])

So what can we take from this?

• Well you have to remember we’re not ‘just’ anonymous people – we’re employees of large blue chip brands, public sector workers, high-profile athletes, ministers of parliament. We have a duty of service during our ’9 to 5′, unfortunately that has now extended to 24/7 visibility.

• Always consider you have different persona’s in real life (eg. Teacher, Friend, Wife, Mother) and that these should also not disappear whenever you’re behind your computer or phone.

• *IF you do suffer from ‘tourretes like’ bashing online, at least make sure your posts are protected and hidden as much as possible!

• Perhaps, there isn’t enough opportunity today for staff to vent off steam in 1-1 meetings and employee appraisals, and maybe turning to some digital-slagging-therapy…

• Either way, what is known is that employers and employees alike need to get clued up on what is, and not, acceptable forms of ‘work related discussion’.

• So on that note; here is a great resource on how to set up your ‘Employee Social Network Policy’ written by the ACAS.

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However, I have been noticing more throughout the years the retention of old ‘digital metaphors’.

To illustrate my point; anyone who has been working on a Microsoft Office document today would have at one point clicked a square icon titled ‘Save’. To anyone younger than 15 years old, the icon associated with this function is what they call a Diskette and were all the rage in the 1970’s till mid-1990’s!

If the Diskette hasn’t been popular for over 15 years then why is the icon still being used?

Well it all comes down to behavioural habits. When new technologies are introduced designers integrate previous behaviours to help communicate the functionality of that new tech.

If this continuation wasn’t in place and the ‘jump’ was too far then it can alienate people and cause confusion. Here I have shown a continuum of the worst offenders, through to those I find ‘marginally’ acceptable.

That said, I will concede ‘some’ evolution is happening within digital UI and you’ll be hard pushed to find an Egg Timer animation on anything designed later than 2003.

Going forward, new ideas such as the one below on a mobile device showing the battery strength are where we should be heading.

I think it’s time to push the boundaries a bit. We are already seeing new generations come through (let’s call them the ‘Tablet generation’) where they will never lay eyes on a Diskette, ever.

You can’t move forward until you let go of the past.

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It’s astonishing the speed of change within digital, and how great the implications are to a brand with a disjointed offline. To quote from the JUMP website “Any business hoping to maintain and grow market share needs to fully embrace the new footprint of consumer habits, and fast!”

The event was attended by approximately 1,500 marketers, all looking to perfect integration on their marketing efforts.

“‘Honeycomb Structure’ – Where digital is weaved through the company, even including staff whom have no ‘digital’ in their role” @AshleyFriedlein CEO of Econsultancy

Steve Wind-Mozley of the BBC speaking during a panel debate.

“We’re looking for single identity (and visibility) of our license payers (customers)”Steve Wind-Mozley, SVP eCommerce of BBC

Lunch time on the Thames!

“‘Searchandising’ – Amending product descriptions to fit current SEO trends”@mattycurry Head of eCommerce for Lovehoney

Alex Balfour, Head of New Media at LOCOG

“The key to obtaining customer data? – RESPECT”Alison Lancaster, CMO of WM Morrison Supermarkets

More photos can be found on Econsultancy’s Facebook album here. There were some great speakers present including representation from Porsche, Nokia, Just Giving, Experian, Adobe, The Guardian and B&Q.

Particularly fascinating was the panel chat with participants from BBC, WM Morrison, Euromoney Institutional Investor and Adobe. As well as a separate talk from Alex Balfour of LOCOG

Trending tweets can be found here, and more sound bites from the day can be found here.

Sean Meehan

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It’s a shame when you have to get on the defensive just to stand up for something – but here goes.

I’ve never known a single product ever to have such a mixed reaction between love and hate. Owners of the iPhone love them, those with other handsets don’t and are all too willing to be vocal about it.

The new iPhone 5 was displayed to the world last week, and as expected haters were quick to line up and make their opinion heard (as if it mattered).

Key developments for this new phone are; a precision manufactured aluminium body, new A6 chip (twice as fast as the 4S A5 chip), Apple’s own new Maps application, larger screen, new Siri functionality, and new reversible connector cable.

You can tell Apple have really focused on the feel of the device, as let’s face it, the phone is nowadays accepted as an extension of ourselves. It’s the one thing they do well – to put time and attention into the finished product so you have a little bit of luxury in your pocket. A simple screen height increase has enabled a larger viewing area and I’m thankful they haven’t gone down a route of ‘bigger is better’ – I swear I’m seeing phones on the market the size of a DVD case, do you really want to be having to use 2 hands to operate it whilst walking? – how big are these peoples pockets?!

There is one thing I will concede is missing from the new phone, and that is NFC. Near Field Communication is going to be big – You may have seen ‘contact less’ payments by hovering your bank card over a terminal, well NFC can do the same for payments too but instead just using your handset.

At the London 2012 Olympic Games VISA trialed NFC payWave app, whereby users could link their VISA account to a smartphone [*cough Samsung S3 *cough] and pay for food and merchandise up to £20 with a simple swipe. Funnily enough it did encounter problems but this was because of hardware issues at some venues themselves, and not VISA or the handset.

“‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’”

- Steve Jobs

Are Apple failing to take enough risks?

I’m not going to lie, we ‘may’ be seeing a downshift in Apple as a result of the loss of Steve Jobs. Does Tim Cook have the same passion for finding end-user solutions as Jobs? – no. Is Cook too ‘operational’ for the CEO position? – possibly. Would Jonathan Ive been a better candidate? – who knows. Either way, Apple running at 90% what they used to be is still better than most other company’s today at 100%!

After the launch conference iPhone were taking orders on pre-sale, and sold out within 60 minutes! A record by any of the Apple handsets, with the iPhone 4 taking 20 hours and iPhone 4s taking 22 hours sell out – the World’s most popular phone is about to get more popular!

Either way, when my contract is due for renewal there is really only one replacement.

Sean Meehan

Sent from my iPhone 4

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Well in a great new report from Google here, they discovered that 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a single goal…

This could be on Smartphones, PCs, Tablets or TV. Google set out to learn not just how much media consumption happens on screens, but also how we all use these multiple devices together, and what that means for the way that businesses connect with consumers.

Two types of multi-screening were identified:

• Sequential screening where we move from one device to another to complete a single goal.
• Simultaneous screening where we use multiple devices at the same time.

Nine out of ten people use multiple screens sequentially, and unsurprisingly smartphones are by far the most common starting point for sequential activity! So completing a task like booking a flight online, or shopping doesn’t just happen in one sitting on only the one device.

The accessibility of our devices enables us to use small moments in the day to get things done, such as search, shop, communicate and keep entertained. They also found that people often turn to nearby devices to complete ‘spur-of-the-moment’ activity. For example, 80% of the searches that happen on smartphones are spontaneous, of which only 44% are actually goal-oriented!

With simultaneous usage, they found that TV no longer commands our undivided attention, with a whopping 77% of viewers watching TV with another device in hand.

This is not great news for television media advertisers, but what does it all mean for digital marketers and business owners? Well it’s important to understand both the sequential and simultaneous multi-screening patterns -

• ‘Second Screeners’ will start interacting with you on one device and then pick up where they left off on another, so making experiences seamless between devices is key.
• Additionally, cross-media campaigns can help you remain visible and make the most of consumer’s simultaneous usage across devices.

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Social Media Tracking company Socialgility have monitored the main Games partners, starting 100 days prior to the opening ceremony till closing. They looked at multiple channels such as campaign micro-site, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

They used an algorithm based on more than 50 sub-metrics. Early leaders in the table were P&G, BMW and Cadbury, check out the table below to see how everyone ended up once the Games finished!

One highlight was Adidas, a ‘Tier 1’ partner, starting late in the promotional race to boast about being official sports wear brand. A fact highlighted by some clever ambush advertising by non-2012 sponsor Nike, whom many instead believed were the official Olympic kit supplier due to this clever campaign below.

Takeaways…

The organising committee LOCOG were all over the Olympic advertising, where blatant rip-offs and false claims are quickly removed and dealt with. They can’t however control association such as ‘winning’, ‘competing’ or even different London towns. Sometimes rules are there to be twisted…

Sean Meehan

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Usually at the fault of Senior Management, spurred on by Finance Directors, you’ll see all sorts of irrelevant items thrust under your nose, in their hope that you’ll shed a few more pennies at the checkout till.

Too often, brand destinies are at the mercy of the balance sheet trying to get all the figures going one way – up.

This ‘all in’ approach works only temporarily, as slowly the DNA of the brand is weakened with every cross-sell that is trying to be achieved. Customers now find themselves asking “remind me, why did I go into this shop again?!…” as the original product message is lost by the wayside.

Soon enough, a raw and passionate start-up competitor will recapture the minds and hearts of the customers, but by this point the damage has already been done:

The Virgin Megastore chain were cross-selling many items, I remember at one point they were even doing toys and confectionery. Some say trying to be like…

Woolworths, whom were stocking everything from books to bathroom fittings…

I don’t need to tell you where these two ended up.

What can’t be seen behind a plush desk in a head office is that invisible lines are drawn around which brand you choose for which products. Once these lines are drawn, they are notoriously hard to bend or twist. And why would you even want to? – customers are now the champions of brands, not the management, and can dictate the destiny.

Shoving some penny sweets under your customer’s noses in the final approach to the checkout till may help turnover in the short term, but it certainly makes that expensive dress they’re looking to buy feel a lot ‘cheaper’ by association.

I will however concede a few brand anomalies, and these are both related to the positioning and how they were pitched to us originally.

Virgin

Spread over 150 companies, Richard Branson doesn’t take himself seriously, and neither do we if one of his new ventures doesn’t hit the ground running (Virgin Cola). If anything, it makes the ones that do succeed (like Virgin Atlantic, Rail, Media or Money) all the more pleasurable to deal with, knowing that we’re on board with his journey.

Google

They need no introductions here with the success of the Search Engine, Analytics, Maps, YouTube, Chrome browser etc, but even they can fail – let’s not mention Google+ or Buzz (Google’s version of Twitter, which was pulled earlier this year!).

So unless you’ve pitched your brand as a ‘jack of all trades’ then I suggest you stick to one thing, and be the best at it – simple.

Sean Meehan

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