Through the glass ceiling

Check our my article about Women on Boards in this month's Market Leader (Quarter 1, Page 50) published by warc.

And happy to announce my first non-exec role on the QAA for Higher Education Board.

Introducing 'queets'

A new word emerged during the Warc MAP (Monitoring Advertising Performance) conference last week, ably chaired by Nick Higham.

A question sent by Twitter is now called a QUEET!

Like it!

Social media rules

According to WARC the top search phrase on its site in 2010 was 'social media.' Facebook was also the leading brand being searched for (sought after?) on the WARC site, confirming users' thirst for more content and comment in the social media area. Feels almost omnipresent now doesn't it? 'Press Button B' could almost only have happened in an episode of Dr Who it seems.

On the IPA site, of the top six successful search terms used on the site, 'behavioural economics', 'case studies' and 'databank' were all in the top six. This reflects also the desire of users to understand better the decision-making processes that result in hugely effective advertising and marketing case studies, published for us by WARC. Unsurprisingly the IPA databank of case studies increasingly demonstrates the role played by social media in advertising effectiveness.

Refreshingly, cider was the product category most frequently searched on WARC in 2010. Love pear cider and love seeing brand entries for Copperhead, Strongbow and Magners all being submitted as case studies to the annual IPA Effectiveness Awards competitions: over 1400 case studies are available for download from the IPA databank. Cheers

Global connections

According to a report in WARC News today, Forrester are predicting an increase to the global online population of some 40% by 2014. They reckon it had already expanded from less than 1 billion individuals in 2005 to 1.6 billion in 2009 and will continue to grow to 2.3 billion individuals by 2014.

As you might expect, Forrester expect China and India to be key drivers of this expansion - with virtual retail mirroring the increase in physical outlets - but also Russia and Brazil.

Growth is good but we marketers must never forget that these are aggregated figures and each node, each login is made by an individual person, whether we call them netizens or not. Personalisation will surely be the key to converting more of them into online consumers but, simply by the laws of probability, the huge numbers involved suggest that online retail sales are about to go through the stratosphere.

Canvas of content for today's netizens

I was reading a piece in WARC news this morning about Unilever's response to a "radical transformation" in US media habits by creating a "canvas of content" whereby ideas will be rolled out to the multiple screens now available to US consumers.

They plan to do this through 'superdistribution' - in other words syndicating it beyond corporate web properties to those areas where today's consumers or 'netizens' will see it.

Unilever don't see the future as 20 seconds OR, in the traditional sense of media buying of A or B; they see it as 20 seconds OR in the Boolean sense whereby you may see their idea on TV or on the iPad or on the web but that idea will live and grow with each individual medium rather than be transplanted on to it.

To the consumer, the brand proposition should be seamless.