Brands under fire, beware Google Sidewiki

Google quietly released a new social tool this week called Sidewiki Sidewiki is an addition to the Google toolbar, so far, so innocuous. However this could possibly enable the most visible feedback online brands have yet to face.

The Google Sidewiki toolbar allows any user with a Google account to comment, on any page, on any site. That effectively means users have the ability to graffiti corporate sites. Google say they are monitoring comments and have provided a reporting tool if posts are deemed malicious, however if the criticism is constructive, instructive and therefore destructive then the implications are massive.

Over the course of this year there has been a greater and greater demand for brands to listen from consumers, technology companies, agencies, in fact too many voices to list. In a way it's been convenient for companies to ignore it. If it's all going off on Twitter, or Facebook or “some blog” then it's out of sight and therefore out of mind (of course this an absurdity). What Sidewiki does though is bring it to the doorstep and now anyone can graffiti all over your front door. Now it's already been declared dangerous and doomed to fail and simply a way of Google monetising the whole web, but this is a Google beta product and it'll inevitably change and over time integrate Google's other features. And in the meantime the comments are going to start cluttering up the doormat and they're going to be difficult to ignore.

This kind of interwoven peer to peer feedback is the future of the web. It's going to force companies to change the way they operate so once again with gusto. Start listening and start taking heed.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

Tooth fairy index anyone?

When I was a kid and my first tooth fell out (actually it was punched out in a bit of a fracas over some space dust but that’s another story) the tooth fairy magically passed by overnight, took the incisor and left a shiny 10 pence.

Fast forward a few years (actually more like 4 decades) and the going rate for that first tooth for my daughter is a mighty £2.00. That’s a massive 2,000% increase or 52% year on year.

Compare that to house prices over the same period: 1,477% (source Nationwide); FTSE All Share: 1,396%. Less a sterling performance more an enamelled one!

But a more important point is that my daughter at 7 struggles to comprehend what that £2.00 will buy. The maths lessons at her primary school still have calculations involving buying cakes for 3p. 3p!!!! When did you last see a cake for 3p? Or 8 Mojos for a penny for that matter. Parents and schools need to get kids to understand how money works and the real prices of things as early as possible or we’ll be stuck with bad financial habits for another generation.

As for me, anyone know how I can access the Tooth Fairy index?

Jim Poulter
Client Services Director

Have you looked at consumer finance advertising recently?

I have and it isn’t very inspiring.

A lot of it is still rate led (even though advertising a rate of 2.80% would have seen as madness not that long ago).

Much of it is just boring.

Take the NatWest ads. The tv ads are about helpful banking and then in press ads they tell us “This year, we’re making £12.2bn available to help the property market.” It’s not wrong. It’s just all rather worthy and hard work.

HSBC ask us to “Realise the retirement you want with the help of our global expertise” with a photo of a lady having a golfing lesson. I’m not sure where the benefit is.

Halifax are more inspiring, encouraging us to save for the special things in life and for life’s lumps and bumps. But it all seems rather everyday.

So what’s missing?

Brands outside of financial services are much more optimistic. They make you smile, they thank-you for their attention. Budweiser are sure “Good times, they’re out there.” Even the rather marvellous Child Poverty work doesn’t lecture us, it gives us inspiring facts to get us involved in their campaign.

In financial services, the ‘meerkat factor’ has wowed and the results are astonishing for comparethemarket who work in a highly commoditised marketplace. I miss the ‘I want to be a slug’ ads from the Pru, or Allied Dunbar’s ‘We won’t make a drama out of a crisis’.

Consumer finance advertising just needs to get more engaging, more entertaining, more emotive, less left brain.

Given the news last week that the debt owed by British consumers has fallen for the first time since records began, it feels like now is the right time to be motivating, not confusing or mundane.

Oh and by the way, I do know that advertising is only a small part of the picture here. It’s about how a brand behaves. But actually I do think advertising is a window into brands and their businesses and what is missing is the desire to inspire.

Jo Parker
CEO

There's no queue at the bank

Having spent a few hours in the bank this month trying to sort out my mortgage something occurred to me. Although a lot of people (including myself) partake in online banking, and telephone banking, the big queue at the bank suggests that you do still need to go into a branch for some financial transactions.

With the power of tweet and other instant microblogging services, we could get updates from them telling us of the progress of the queues. It would certainly be handy for most of us Londoners who can nip out of work knowing we won't be faced with a huge queue at Barclays.

Emma Partridge
Art Director

Do you use LinkedIn and/or Facebook?

It's a question I asked on LinkedIn itself the other day and unsurprisingly unanimously the answer was Linked In for business, Facebook for personal. I expanded and asked if others were using Twitter or Friendfeed or any other social network and again the majority response was I don't have time.

The reason I asked in the first place was I just can't get along with Linked In. I'm a big fan of social networking and in terms of it's educative qualities it's been an enormous addition to my professional development. Twitter has almost completely surplanted my RSS feedreader as a research tool. Friendfeed helps me to understand who influences those that I choose to follow. Facebook keeps me in touch with friends who due to family pressure I don't get to see much and cousins I don't see regularly, you know the score. Delicious and Digg help me to share my bookmarks and content I like.

All of these platforms help me be social and hopefully helpful. They allow me to be myself but also keep on top of business and that's where I part the way with LinkedIn. It's not a social networking site, nothing about it is social. It's about networking, but not the ecademy way, it's more the bad glass of sweet white wine and guard up kind of way. It's not intuitive, it doesn't aid in the sharing of information, in essence it's far too closed.

I concede that it is great at finding professionals and if you are looking for a job, but Twitter and Friendfeed do that as well as everything else and as an added bonus you're likely to understand whether you'll get on with them on personal level as well which for me is just as important.

In my opinion it really needs to step up it's game if it's going to continue to grow, there are rumblings that there is a major overhaul in the planning stage, I just hope it's a significant improvement.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

p.s. I did have an amazing response to my question when it was posed on LinkedIn but it still isn't enough. I know, I'm too dogmatic.

Search just got interesting again

All the talk yesterday was about the long awaited Yahoo/Microsoft search deal, but that was only half of the story when it came to how competition in the search market has ramped up.

The launch of Bing in May finally paved the way for the 10 year Yahoo search deal and the search engine will now be integrated into Yahoo as it's search platform. There is no doubt that the deal furthers Steve Ballmer's insatiable need to take on Google and with just under a third of the search market Microsoft finally look like they could gain some traction.

However, what Google and Microsoft have yet to crack is the newly emergent real-time search model. Two developments occurred on Wednesday that took this into new territory. Twitter relaunched their homepage and switched the emphasis away from followers and into search and arguably turned itself into a destination portal. Some argue that this won't actually benefitted users, however as websites become less important to users and the importance of web presence becomes more and more essential the body shift from Twitter makes sense. At the same time the newly launched Collecta.com improved it's already impressive offering by adding an additional layer of search capability with video and images.

Microsoft has got bingtweets in beta and Google launched search options back in May but the improvements in realtime search is going to keep the big boys on their toes. Ultimately the smaller players look like acquisition fodder, but the longer they stay ahead of the curve and hold out against a takeover the more expensive the battle's going to be to win. Certainly Wednesday will go down as a pivotal moment in the field of search and certainly from the marketing community's perspective Wednesday's announcement was music to the ears.

Crispin Heath

Head of Digital

Is consumer trust online misplaced?

It's true that trust in the Financial Sector is at an all time low, but the sector is not unique and many brands are suffering from the loss of corporate trust amongst consumers.

From a digital perspective you'll hear many commentators stating that the trust model now lies squarely with peer to peer relationships. You'll trust your friends, those your linked in with, your followers etc. before anyone else, but why? When it comes down to it, alot of what we're relying on is someone's (and yes it's often one person) opinion or experience. On the whole they're unlikely to be an expert in the subject (unless you have a profiled set of friends that can provide you with expert insight across your entire consumer need portfolio) and maybe that's fine if you're buying a T-Shirt but actually if you're looking for a SIPP product or a new mortgage you'll still need some advice even if you've had a decent lead.

In terms of the maturity of online ratings and advice models across a whole spectrum of products we're not there yet in the UK and while peer to peer recommendation is becoming more and more important aggregating that opinion in a meaningful way is not there for every sector yet.

In Financial Services we've still got some work to do before we can reach the same sort of user experience as Mint.com in the US. There are some emerging in the UK. Martin Bamford recently announced the imminent arrival of Brilliantwithmoney.co.uk which if it fulfils it's promise will provide a powerful knowledge resource for personal finance, but we're going to have to be a wee bit more patient before we throw all our eggs into the peer to peer basket. We're seeing glimpses of what the future could hold but we're currently at the bottom of what could prove a huge mountain.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

70 is the new 68

Lord Turner just 4 years ago shocked the nation when he published his report into the state of the UK’s pensions system.

Well I’m actually a bit of a fan of Lord Turners, but it just goes to show that a little Hero worship is a dangerous thing!

For no sooner than he releases it, than this week he announced that he got his sums wrong and that my expected retirement age of 68 is just too much of an aspiration. No for me I must head back to the marketing salt mines for another two years until I’m the ripe old age of 70.

What for me, is the crux of this story is that, on the plus side we are seeing a continual improvement to life expectancy this positive spin is however challenging the retirement income market to almost breaking point.

On an almost on a daily basis we’re told that the funding of retirement will continue to be a major concern for future governments and generations alike. Recently to give some scale to this issue a phrase has been bandied around that means that you should stop worrying about the ‘Credit Crunch’ and start to worry about the ‘Demographic Crunch’.

There was a great article by Dominic Lawson in this weekends Sunday Times that outlined the issues and scale of the problem well.

Anyway I’m off back to the salt mines and will be scrubbing Lord Turner from my Christmas Card list upon the way.

David Mccann
Group Planning Director

Hello. Where’s the customer in CP 09/18?

So I’m reading this thing, no real surprises (no commission right, clear independent labelling check, no grandfathering makes sense, factoring of fees hmm nightmare etc etc) and I have to keep reminding myself this is for investment/pension business only.

Is it me? But are we giving labels to advisers for one set of products and not for all? Yes I know investment products are the most complex and risky. But as a consumer, most would say getting unbiased mortgage advice is pretty damn important too (most of us think of it as our biggest investment you know). And if commission is still available on other products, then consumers will still think that all advisers get commission won’t they?

And when I decide to have investment/pensions advice, I will get to choose to pay a fee or offset it against my investment (but if a provider thinks this is against my best interest, I may hear back from them)…

Oh and there is moneyguidance, basic advice, restricted advice and independent advice (possibly simplified advice tbc). Hmm…

So why doesn’t the FSA decide to regulate advice or products, why does it have to be a bit of both? I know there are lots of good reasons why it is the way it is, really I do and yet…

Is it me?

Jo Parker
CEO

(Ps: By the way I think it is great for independent advisers and that is great news!)

Happynomics: What makes people happy?

As anyone who knows me will tell you, this is absolutely my favourite topic, so I’ve read a lot of stuff that relates to it. And I have to say, much of it’s bollocks and doesn’t really help. So I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if you are a tea shop in Harrogate or a large financial institution – happiness can be achieved simply by giving great service.

Happiness is mainly an attitude of gratitude and acceptance. (Think dog). It’s definitely not about money. All the research says, once you’ve reached a salary of £35,000, most people won’t become any happier with more money. (Bollocks!) And just in case you really want to know…happy people are open to change and have a positive outlook on life. They engage in purposeful activities that test their abilities, and develop relationships of respect and closeness. (I read that in a book somewhere).

According to Juliet Schor, Professor of sociology at Boston College, there are huge opportunities in helping people achieve higher levels of happiness. (Look at the growth rate of mentors, life coaches and psychologists in the UK). But most current products and services promise happiness and only deliver short-term satisfaction. Successful brands understand the ‘happiness trend’. They know they can’t sell happiness because true happiness is something people create for themselves. Smart brands choose to be facilitators so people can create their own happiness.

And savvy consumers know the difference between brands that want to sell happiness and brands that want to facilitate happiness. And they will endorse those brands that help them find and create happiness in themselves. As the majority of blogs will show, most are focused on bad customer service experience.

So who is getting it right? Which brands are helping people create happiness, well the obvious one’s are Apple and Innocent, they have a positive outlook and are looking to make the world a better place. But even brands that have got it wrong can start to put things right. Remember Dell Hell? Jeff Jarvis used the BuzzMachine to slam Dell for his horrific customer experience buying a laptop four years ago. This series of posts epitomized growing dissent against the company, and served as a channel to punish the Texas computer maker for bad products and customer service experiences. By listening to their customers and responding to what made them unhappy they have begun to turn it around and now have an incredibly loyal community across the web. At the start of this 49% of blog posts were negative. Today, overall tonality is only 22% negative.

So next time the client provides a brief, try asking this simple question: How is this product or service going to make the audience happy? A damn good service always works for me.

Kirsty Maxey
Managing Director

The changing nature of news aggregation

If you've been watching the situation unravelling in Iran you'll probably be aware of the almost complete silencing of journalists in the mainstream media. This has seen the mainstream channels turning to the social channels to aggregate and report the news. Both the BBC and Sky are streaming, Youtube, Twitter and Flickr straight onto their site as well as offering opportunities for individuals to upload their videos directly to their sites.

Twitter has been such an essential part of the information flow out of the country that they and their IT vendor NTT took the unprecedented step on Monday of putting off essential site maintenance for a day to ensure that the channel remained open for Iranians reporting on the ground as their blog outlined. Interestingly it emerged today that it was the US state department's intervention that led to the suspension.

What this starts to reveal is the maturing role of citizen journalism and the mainstream media's willingness to use it as a major contributory source within their own reporting. It may lack quality, it may need far greater verification, but in terms of speed and it's ability to reveal the true picture there has yet to be a more effective medium for information flow.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

At last! The best thing I’ve read about the pensions debate for years…

Just read this and thought it was the best thing I have read about restoring faith in pensions in the UK for ages. Read more here!

Jo Parker
CEO