I was reading an old issue of Wired (I have an unread stack) and stumbled upon Russell Davies article - ‘Where is value now that rarity is extinct?’
An simple example of my definition of rarity: gold and other materials are scarce, of limited supply, and therefore valuable. Russell’s point is that in a digital age where everything is code replicated (as with music), where does value really lie? Novel attempts aside.
Russell subtly refers to the time economy. The value in services can depend entirely the craftmanship (skill+experience+time) that it takes to create the ‘thing’ in question. Thereby increasing it’s value.
It’s one and the same really (things that take a lot of time and skills that are in short supply - e.g. UX freelancers - cost lots of money). Capitalism in the most basic of settings.
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I write very long posts. The beauty of having a blog is that you get to wax lyrical to outer space, simply in order to clarify your own thoughts. For this I apologise to the internet. Hopefully this one will be shorter.
The agency of record. Also known as the ‘retained’ agency. There was an article or blog post in some sort of industry paper that talked about ‘the good old days’ of advertising that got me thinking.
On this particular post, there was an outpouring of complaint. What happened to advertising? Why isn’t the same? Procurement. Cost cutting. No retainers. This sucks!
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There has been a lot of talk about the benefits of gamification to businesses and to the world. Turning life into a game to create behavior change sounds like some seriously smart thinking. Especially when it comes to turning activities that are traditionally seen as difficult to get people to do for their own benefit (eating fruit, exercise, watching less of The Only Way Is Essex)
Gamification is interesting because it seems to have been a core element that behavioural economists like Thaler and Sunstein appear to have missed from their bag of tricks. It is also something people have a sense of through the huge amounts of time that men have spent playing Call of Duty, and that women have (generally) watched men doing so. Or those who have read about gamers dieing in cyber cafes due to forgetting to like, eat and stuff.
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I’ve recently added a section to the blog which is called ‘Links’.
I’ve linked to some planning blogs that I’ve been reading of late. There are some pretty interesting opinions in them that have shone a light on my small brain so take a look.
I’ve been reading those, scouring the trade press, downloading PDF creds of fancy agencies, looking at ‘new’ job titles (shopper marketing planner and content planner are gaining traction) and asking smart people at Engine (where I work) lots of questions. All in a bid to understand where agencies are going. In a big to know where, as a planner or strategist, you should go next to be one step ahead of the next curve.
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So, amid cries of marketers of ‘this is only the beginning’, let’s future gaze on some possible scenarios for Facebook (not forgetting Google, of course!)
Zuckerberg has only just started
Facebook will undoubtedly hit a billion users soon. Despite lagging growth in developed markets like the UK. But this is a generational issue; those who would adopt have - slow growth will continue but Facebook will inevitably become the default platform for the next generation.
A huge amount of users are visiting on mobile. This is currently not monetised but an ample revenue stream.
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A housemate of mine who has been very successful in the business of taking an online budget of X million and bringing back a return of 3 times X Million and I were having a chat. Yes, he does earn lots of money.
We spent a while geeking out about online commerce and weighted cross attribution modelling (paying for affiliates as a percentage relative to being first or last click in the journey, while relating the remaining budget to the intermediate channels accordingly). Interestingly, his agencies have SLAs to hit in order to be paid in full – forcing them to work hard optimise their online channels. I wondered if the same thing would happen to creative agencies…
We then spoke about how Google was effectively coaxing brands into using Google+ and whether they were ever really going to steal share from Facebook.
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