Archive for July, 2014

Q: “What thing about humanity surprises you the most?”

A: Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health.Then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present, and as a result he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he’s never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.”

When people think viral they often think it comes down to all us humans switching onto something and sharing it like crazy. In fact, very traditional marketing techniques matter. Like celebrity endorsement.

Take Samsung’s dominance of videos over the last week. As Ad Week reports Samsung’s YouTube video for its music-streaming Milk service includes cameos from Iggy Azalea, Little Dragon, Childish Gambino, John Legend, Lady Antebellum, Cold War Kids and Chromeo. The video has 22.8 million views, 458 tweets and more than 9,500 Facebook Likes.

Sure content matters. But endorsers and talent really matters in the world of viral.

• Chromecast is on fire. Wait till you start using Chromebox. It is going to change your workplace forever. A year after launch, Chromecast streaming sticks have been used 400 million times to cast media to TVs. But the bigger story is that Chromecast is starting to change our concept of a TV itself.
• And this is what happens when you focus on customer experience. Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales up 23% to $19.34 Billion. Thank goodness because their TV ads aren’t going to do it for them.
• The Evolving VC Industry – some great observations. The VC industry is changing. The press has focused on the wrong story – crowd funding. The bigger story is the shift from public financing to private financing and the bifurcation of the venture industry. This presentation examines the case.
• Facebook now worth more than Coke or ATT.
• Big banks need to adopt practices from little start-ups. Senior Westpac banker Brian Hartzer says banks should try to act like start-up companies if they are to thrive in an era of sweeping technological change.

• Australia is a prime target for digital disruptors: Boston Consulting Group’s CEO nails what Aussie businesses need to do to stay alive. “Australian companies are in danger of being pushed aside by innovative competitors from at home and abroad unless they move more quickly to catch up with the digital revolution.”
• What is your cognitive bias… go on, have some fun, find out.
• So much for privacy. Are you correlating purchase data with advertising behaviour? Here’s how. Everyone in advertising is buying exhaustive records of your purchases—all your purchases—and comparing them to your viewing habits so that they know which ads you saw and whether or not they changed your behavior.
• And on privacy… more than half of mobile users don’t want their location tracked. And the reason is practical. Of the 50 percent of participants who didn’t want to be tracked online, privacy was the No. 1 reason offered, at 51 percent. Another 13 percent didn’t want to receive too many messages and 8 percent were wary of irrelevant messages. An additional 5 percent of users were afraid a marketer would manipulate their information or send inappropriate and uninteresting messages.
• Your actions will be tweeted. Southwest deals with a Twitter issue, the wrong way. Again exposing how quickly a great social program can be corrupted and polluted by actions at the edge of the network. In short, have you trained your frontline staff on social media and your preferred response to issues.
• Yes We Cannes: Chris has some great takeouts from his journey to Cannes. Wrestling Possums is a blog to follow.

Great few days meeting with VC in Silicon Valley. 

Five years ago they wouldn’t have looked at a Kiwi or Aussie company that hadn’t started moving all its operations to the US,  or,  we already here.

Now,  thanks to Xero, Atlassian and others they see this as an advantage – especially for teams like engineering and development.

That’s a huge shift.