Advertising is not the thing you do... its the stories of the things you've done!

Are Brands Fracking The Social Web? from John V Willshire

John Willshire - founder of The Smithery gave a great talk to the chaps on the Squared course from Google (you can read more about Squared here)

I think my favourite 2 parts were the recognition that the "making of" is just as important as the product you made as reflected in the quote in the title of this post! Plus Peter Field's quote on slide 158 which says "I firmly believe in the demise of the traditional campaign and the need for constantly innovating stories around a core brand meaning"...

I have full belief in that and really enjoyed reading this presentation - I wish I had been there in person!

Is Facebook about to do everything?? According to the media it is...

Honestly - the journos of the world seem to think that Facebook is like a giant alien race trying to take over the Earth, like in this Guardian article about Facebook here where they think the whole IPO was a conspiracy

The rumours abound of what Facebook will do next.... Make a mobile phone, buy Opera the Browser company and replace Instagram with Facebook Camera - oh they actually are doing the last one...

I know that Facebook does push to innovate on a startlingly regular basis and not always with much thought of their user's sensibilities and aversion to change. I always find it ironic that the newest of innovations, once it reaches critical mass, is subject to the usual human rubbish of not wanting to change anything about it...


To listen to all the blow ups in the news around in the last week or two since the Facebook IPO, you would think that this was the biggest thing to ever happen in the history of everything, not just a fancy pants sharing site going public...

The site can only remain relevant while it innovates and I think will only achieve its true advertising potential when ads can be served and tracked as part of a regular campaign. The adverts on there can achieve startling ROI for brands in terms of sales figures and can, if done properly, create real engagement with the current fans/consumers and drive incremental growth through driving new consumers as well. However, some advertisers are not seeing the value - cue GM's pull of its $10m advertising spend on Facebook recently.

Facebook is a powerful tool for sharing and increasingly for advertisers, but it is hardly the Decepticons... so please can the media stop overhyping and getting far too overexcited about a company going about normal company things like trying to expand and make money!!

They may be a bit dubious on the privacy front etc but they never promised to be Google and "not be evil" - we shouldn't assume that digital/internet companies have the ideal outlook on being good online citizens...

Everyday I'm shuffling...

The best advert of this year? Quite possibly...

This is reinforced by the fact that my mates Beej and Lev love this song and every party has a shuffle off on the dance floor! I have yet to capture the awesomeness of this on video yet but here is the hamster version for now!

Brilliant use of cultural relevancy in advertising - which is usually done very very badly!