Marketing is not a nostalgic business. With the constant emergence of new technologies, advertisers need to keep bang up to date to avoid being left behind. Just think back a year. At the beginning of 2009, Twitter was still a relatively niche social network, Spotify wasn’t yet available to the general public and search engine Bing didn’t even exist. One year on and all these technologies may be fundamental to creating a successful advertising campaign.

So what’s next? What will the ‘big thing’ of 2010 be? Well, I’m not going to try and predict that, but I will tell you what will make the next ‘big thing’ happen – and that’s the Ubiquitous Network. In fact, I’m confident it’ll change the future of advertising and marketing forever…

Read more…

Spurs 5 - Arsenal 1. Get in!

My school years are long behind me now, but I still have one or two memories of those days that I recall with fondness, now and again.  Bunking off double geography with Sarah Kirsopp when I was 16 is one. The other is a conversation I had with the 6^th Form’s Career Officer, Mr Kennedy.

The conversation started with a question we’ve all probably been asked.

“What do you want to do when you leave school?”

My enthusiastic response wasn’t greeted with the warmth or indeed excitement that I anticipated.

“Don’t be ridiculous White!  How on earth do you expect to be centre forward for Tottenham Hotspur?”

I left that meeting thinking to myself, “I’ll prove Mr Kennedy wrong, I’ll show you.  Mark my words”.

To be fair, whilst I haven’t completely given up on the dream, I have to admit it looks like Mr Kennedy was right.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.  Today I have actually found something I genuinely like doing.

Read more…

You, your wand and an adventure. Sounds deeply suspicious. But actually it’s the basic principle of a new live-action role-playing game called MagiQuest.

MagiQuest is your story, your adventure, your imagination brought to life. So says the blurb. It’s certainly unlike anything you’ve encountered before. Playing the part of a ‘Magi’ – kind of like an apprentice wizard – you have to complete quests, find gold and, here’s the really good bit, challenge your mates to wand-to-wand duels.

Read more…

QR Codes. Great little invention… bloody boring to look at though. Well not any more thanks to the Tokyo based agency SET who have found a way to make these two dimensional barcodes visually more interesting.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with QR Codes. A QR Code (The QR standing for Quick Response) is a Japanese invention that was initially used for tracking vehicle parts in vehicle manufacturing. They are common in japan and with the rise in popularity in smart phones on these shores… we’re beginning to see a lot of them in adverts and magazines.

Read more…

So what TV show you watched last night did you discuss at work today? CSI? The Wire? Lost? It’s fair to say at some point during your working day you will have discussed a TV show you have seen with someone. Or perhaps it was a movie you saw at the weekend.

Imagine, though, having a conversation with someone about what you have both seen… yet what you watched and how the episode or film ended was totally different for you both! Not only that, but while you were watching you took part in a car chase that meant you test drove the new BMW Roadster and during the episode the character put some music on when they got home… but the music they put on, you chose!

Read more…

On October 29th 2008 a 30-minute infomercial entitled ‘American Stories, American Solutions’ aired on virtually all of America’s TV Networks. This infomercial was the glittering jewel in Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign and garnered him over 30 million viewers and significant news coverage around the world… largely due to the $3 million it cost to air.

Obama’s Campaign, though, was newsworthy for more reasons than just this 30-minute infomercial. He was the first Presidential Candidate since John F. Kennedy to embrace a new medium successfully. In Kennedy’s case it was television… in Obama’s it was Web 2.0.

Read more…