‘Lean back’ and ‘Lean Forward’ remember that? Ahh the good old days of the early noughties, when marketing was transformed and we all talked about how ‘it’ was no longer just about ‘broadcasting’.

Well now, a decade on, broadcasting is not just about broadcasting.

Yes, we’re heralding in an era where a whole generation of young people are used to on-demand, snackable content and can’t actually watch TV without touching something – I’m referring to their mobile or laptop. They’re constantly connected to their friends.

So, here comes the socialisation of TV, Social TV, or even Connected TV. It was the talk of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas this month, as it became clear that web connectivity will now be standard in new TV sets. These connected TVs will mean that social content can co-exist with broadcast content.

It’s not just about Connected TVs, social channels like Facebook and Twitter have been extending the influence they have over TV for some time now.  Within these social channels broadcasters can find new audiences, new revenue streams and extend the engagement of what’s on TV. Why? It’s simple.

People love sharing their opinions and feelings about what’s happening on the telly.

In particular live events such as football matches, news, current affairs and shows like X-Factor, have great social currency.

Facebook’s CTO, Bret Taylor was quoted last year saying that he believed that social media can do for TV what it’s done for gaming:

“When you watch TV with a friend it’s such an engaging activity, we think a new generation of start-ups are developing social applications for TV, what Zynga is to gaming they will be to media and news.”

And he was right.

Facebook have just announced several new partnerships that will bring ‘Frictionless Sharing’ to your TV and make the most of the channel’s newly launched features such as Timeline and the Open Graph. What exactly does that mean?

People will be able to seamlessly share: what they are watching, see what their friends are watching and ‘Like’ and comment on what they are watching. Shows can be posted directly to your Timeline enabling you share the shows you like with friends.

If you don’t feel exhausted by the prospect of all that activity when you’re meant to be relaxing – here are some of the Apps that are leading the way:

Boxee: http://www.boxee.tv/ Boxee finds your favourite TV shows online and puts them on your TV. Boxee then lets people post what they are watching to Facebook.

Zeebox: https://apps.facebook.com/zeeboxtv/?ref=ts ‘could’ be huge – it lets users find additional info on shows and chat via Facebook and Twitter and even purchase products – all integrated into Sky +.

GetGlue: http://getglue.com/ a social service that let’s users check into content. It’s just raised $12 million and has 2 million users

IntoNow from Yahoo!: http://www.intonow.com/ci  Just tap a green button when you’re watching, and IntoNow will identify the show and the episode to share with your friends on Twitter or Facebook.

DIRECTV: http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/index.jsp Facebook is integrating with the DIRECTV app to let people share what they are watching

Snapstick: https://apps.facebook.com/snapstick/?ref=ts streams web content to your TV. Watch and surf with mates.

Letterboxd:  http://letterboxd.com is a new web app that’s focused on helping film fans find and recommend movies socially – think Last.fm crossed with IMDB

My oh my, what a year we have had here at Skive, let’s look back, before we look forward and marvel at some of the glimmers of genius 2011 had to offer.

The door opened and in walked a brand spanking new CEO in the shape of James Sanderson (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesjsanderson).

The new “captain” arrived to take the helm and steer Skive into brave new waters. In the samevein, he plans to whip us all into shape, batten down the hatches and further unite our already motley crew. We salute you Commodore Sanderson.
We had a great reason to crack out the champagne earlier in the year when we were voted no.8 in Pitch’s top ten Digital Reputation Survey. We were more than chuffed with the result; we aim to keep climbing the chart.
A warm welcome to three new clients…Carlsberg, Vauxhall and AVG. A host of highly creative and exciting work has been produced and more will come from these partnerships in 2012.

At Skive we love ideas, small, big, fat round or in this case skinny. Skive encouraged young creatives to swap La Croisette for Shoreditch Highstreet and have a scratch at Cannt Skinny Cubs. One brief, a whirlwind 48 hours of creativity lead to some brilliant work being produced. We even bagged ourselves two bright young talents, one Cornish, one ginger, Stevie and Dan.

New talent was the theme this year; the arrival of Lauren, Loren, Julie, Alex, Anne and Adrian sets us in good stead to produce brilliant work making 2012 extra exciting.

Brilliant ideas aside, nothing make us happier than cakes (well, eating in general). Imagine our sweet-toothed delight at National Baking Week. As well as the massive sugar rush, warm fuzzy feelings ensued as all proceeds went to the charity Children in Crisis.

Handlebars, Pencils and Bumfluff. This can only mean one thing, Movember. A bunch of our finestundertook the challenge to let the razor ignore their top lips, all for charity. Good work guys, or should I say guys and girls. Our lovely Emma started her own ‘Mo me’ campaign, whereby everyday she let someone scribble on her face for a couple of quid. A particular highlight was “The Lobster”.

It’s been a big year for many of our team too, Gaz got married (aww) Russ had a baby (double aww), Tim’s car caught fire, oh and Sean had many near death experiences. Never a dull moment.

We polished off the year with a good old Skivemas party, the less said about that the better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3_4NlqfhzY

That’s it for another year. Merry Christmas Everyone! 2012, bring it on.

Augmented Reality (AR) is becoming a big deal. It’s maturing from gimmicky games to sophisticated experiences that connect us to the virtual world.

AR opens the channels of communication allowing you and your audience to participate in a richer dialogue, making sharing content such as product information, exclusives, competitions, deals, dynamic pricing/group buying, more engaging for the customer.

When linked to social networks, AR becomes a powerful tool for communicating stronger brand experiences, ultimately driving sales and building communities. AR is set to play a big part in our future. Step forward the age of AR…

Augmented Reality – Everything You Need To Know

View more presentations from Skive

Yes our lot have also been sporting their soup-strainers this month and they’ve raised £700 between them so well done guys! 

(photo courtesy of @kateisgreatyeh)

Today I attended my first meeting of the recently formed IAB Future Trends Council, chaired by the all round nice guy that is Tim Pilkington (IAB Research Director).

Tim Pilkington of IAB and Sean from Skive (on the right) discuss the future.

The first subject that the Council is going to tackle is Connected TV. Internet on our teleboxes, what will they think of next!   Shoes that talk? Carpets that clean themselves? Seriously this “battle for the living room” is predicted to be next big technological shift with a wide range of corporate beasts like Google, Apple, Samsung, LG and Sony all trying to dominate this new sector. Anyway, watch this space as the Future Trends Council looks to help us all understand the opportunties that will undoubtedly develop as this trend unfolds over the next 1000 days.

Skive are a London agency based in Farringdon, I live in Angel and at the weekends if I’m feeling adventurous I go out in Shoreditch. I’m like most people, I’m lazy and when I’m not at work I like to go to places I feel comfortable that I’m going to have a good time. It’s all a bit predictable, I know what I’m going to get.

So when Jaroslaw Sobolewski from IAB Poland asked me to come and present at Forum IAB in Warsaw I jumped at the chance to spend two and a half days freezing my t*ts off and away from the genteel world of St Johns’ Street.

What follows are my highlights of the event but if you’re not a big reader here’s my Pummelvision of the event.

The opener of the conference was Rupert Slade from PHD who presented “Beyond the Horizon” which was a selection of punchy videos and perky factoids:

- 1 in 4 people in the developed world own a smart phone.

- By 2016 50% of TV’s in the developed world will have an internet connection.

- 28% of people want to watch TV on social media channels (Yahoo!, 2011)

- All finished with this marketing peach – “Change will never be this slow again”

Thanks to Rupert for stealing all my case studies...

I discovered that Rupert’s alter ego is a poet and he had a minor online hit in Poland with “London to Warsaw”, it just goes to show what a couple of Zyweics can do.

The highlight of the Tuesday was a live link to Gary Vaynerchuk’s NYC head office who gave a whistle stop tour of his rags to riches path to becoming an internet celeb. He was rumored to have been paid 20K for the hour long skype monologue and was unsurprisingly bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm.

Vaynerchuk didn’t tell you anything that the self respecting social media enthusiast wouldn’t already know but he delivered it in such a passionate way that it was difficult not to get caught up in his punchy and at times face in the camera performance. I envy Gary for finding his niche and nailing it to the tune of a small fortune but I worry he doesn’t have an off button.

Here’s a breakdown of social media in a few Garyism (I’m paraphrasing here so don’t quote me quoting him):

1. “The only reason I care about Social Media – is because you can make shit loads of money”

2. “Social Media is the internet”

3. “Communication is the future of how we do business”

4. “Marketing is going back to small town rules”

5. “Your grandparents are ready for social media more than you are”

6. “Apple’s social media strategy is “make great shit”

7.  “Caring is not a commodity”

8. “Social Media is a marathon and not a sprint”

9.  “Why do you love your parents? Cos they loved you first, brands need to act in the same way”

10. “twitter.com/search is the most important website on the planet”

11. “We are living through the humanisation of business”

12. “People will care less and less about privacy”

13. “SEO is dead”

14. “It doesn’t matter how many followers you have, how many of them love you?”

15. “All of his advice will be redundant in a few short years.”

To his credit he promised to respond to post-presentation tweets to him – and in fairness to the man, he answered.

“@garyvee where’d you get your blue/purple shirt from?”

MARC LEWIS was a key feature of the Wednesday with his “How to Have Superhuman Creative Powers”. Marc is the Dean of The London Communication College and was a close second place for quality speakers at the conference. The purpose of Marc’s talk was to share his universal formula for creativity. His personal bible that he read 3 times per year was “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler. In the book Toffler asserts that everything has a process, from the growth of bacteria to the formation of a Galaxy and so then it follows that “creativity” also has a process.

The first element of this process is to combine two types of knowledge. The first is knowledge that you gain from experience (doing something) and the second type of knowledge is the experience you get from receiving (reading/hearing/observing). Lewis asserts that you have to combine the two types of knowledge in order to be truly creative and it was this process that inspired Kung Fu from the practice of acupuncture. In order to be able to do this Lewis insists you be interested, explore, read, make friends with people you wouldn’t normally, scare yourself – “the more knowledge you can collect the more creative you are.”

I missed the end of his presentation as I had to put on my Madonna mic and get ready for my presentation.

The last presentation I caught was Peter Tibor Juhasz - Digital leader, Procter & Gamble Central Europe.

He’s an interesting fellow who was bold in presenting a provocative and open representation of where P+G are in the Polish market. He described P+G as being “fast moving goods, slow moving company” but was keen to assert that these were his thoughts and not his company’s. He conceded that detergents aren’t a brand managers dream but Ariel’s “Fashion Shoot” work is brilliant and well worth a look. He was keen to compare TV with digital declaring that digital had a greater ROI than TV. Peter’s most resonant point that you can get away with a lot worse creative on TV than you can online.  Online is a lot less forgiving.

I write this on a cramped business flight back to London with fond memories of seeing my friends Jarek, @EndreSomogyi and making new ones whilst toasting the success of a very well run, well attended and well worth visiting digital conference.

—-

@mrtomollerton

about.me/tomollerton

By Loren Cook @loooooren

During Internet Week Europe, London was overtaken with a plethora of talks, events and parties all washed down with a free drink or two. One event in particular intrigued the tweets out of me…The boy with the tape on his face. All I knew of the event was that ‘It’s a show with a twitter twist!’ and unlike a normal comedy show we would be encouraged to keep our phones on and be ready to interact with ‘Tape Face’ and his live large-scale twitter wall.

I entered the theatre room to a sea of social media savvy bods, all mingling, status updating, checking in, but mainly sat around tables. The room was buzzing with excitement. I found a table, ate some bloody mary crisps, sipped some wine and took it all in. The giant Twitter wall, crafted by Smesh, took pride of place at the front of the room. A quick join to the TapeFace wifi, a note taken of the #tapeface hash tag, our table quickly became a multi-screen minority report. We were all set to interact.

We were informed that we were guinea pigs for a development for a TV pilot for the BBC, it could work and be brilliant or flop and be a crock. Luckily it was the former. Phil Ellis, our leader for the night took to the stage. In his own Twitter words ‘I am a comedian. Some say, THE comedian. Some say nothing & others just stare. I once ate an entire box of Wheetos even though they didn’t belong to me’, he explained we would be partaking in a quiz of sorts, fastest fingers and quickest minds made the ‘tweet wall’, fastest wit was made into a ‘hero tweet’ displayed largely to the whole room. A show reliant vastly on audience participation and interaction led me to believe who ever came up with the concept must be a sadist and/or have a mental health problem, whichever, it was brave.

‘The boy with the tape on his face’ took to the stage, no words, just brilliant timing, emotion, creativity, and the ability to reduce the room to fits of laughter with an oven glove (See him live BBC Comedy ). So good, I blew a snot bubble.

Phil began to ask weird and wonderful questions from ‘when did the first mental asylum open in the UK?’ to ‘how big is the sky?’ (answer: very). It was up to us as an audience to provide the material, in a way; even the most socially inept had the ability to be a stand up comedian for a night, without talking, just like ‘The boy’.

I must admit, it was a thrill, tweeting a thought, sending it to the Twitterverse and seeing it appear on screen moments later. The same thrill I get from taking a minute to look at a light switch and think, wow, how does that work?. A winning tweet scored me a tea bag strainer, proof that gamification does indeed work.  Using twitter in this way, bridged the gap between the audience and the comedians; it was inviting, inclusive and made me feel I was a part of something big. I got a warm fuzzy feeling every time one of my tweets made a room of people laugh. Just like the taped up boy, I didn’t even have to speak and I was funny. Me…funnny. Who knew?.

This feels like the first small step in to giving yet more power to the audience, we now have the choice in whether we sit back and enjoy or we get stuck in and have a voice in the way we are entertained. The event took away barriers and what could of been an epic disaster ended up being a clever and above all absurdly funny, enriched experience. I should also mention that our relatively small collection of Tabernacle tweeters got #tapeface trending in London in under an hour. The power of tweeting should never be underestimated. I personally can’t wait to see what is next.

To summarise, never in my life have I seen so many competitive quick fingers, desperate to win a soap dish or a bag of nuts, I have never seen a pair of shoes sing the Jackson 5, an oven glove serenade, a stare off resulting in crotch grabbing, a stripping builder, a man be so incredibly funny with a piece of gaffa tape on his face, but thanks to Twitter, Phil, The boy, the BBC and Smesh I have now won a soap dish for knowing the answer was Richard Blackwood.

It’s a conference, Jim, but not as we know it.

2) Digital is changing consumer behaviour

Although it’s clear technology is changing at a rapid pace in a short time frame, I have always felt that human behaviour does not change quickly as it’s been built on 100,000 years of evolution. However, there seemed to be an agreement from a few speakers that consumer behaviour is changing. For example Laura Jordan-Bambach of LBi showed a video where a kid tries to use a magazine like an ipad.  Ahlvarsson believes that a “battle for the living room has begun” and this will massively change the way we consume media.

A crazy but very engaging German Futurologist called Roman Weishaupl was the last presenter. During his whirlwind of a speech he predicted a number of exciting new innovations coming our way such as AR contact lenses, face recognition technology and ubiquity of digital screens. Clearly these will fundamentally change the way people consume brand marketing messages.

Michelle Klein explained how Diageo were helping to evolve a cultural change in the form of the impressive Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project campaign. Her key points were that consumers were ready to engage when there was the right reward for their participation and the sweet spot is finding the balance of what you do in the physical world and linking it to digital.

One of my favourite presentations was Simon Waldman of LoveFilm. Simon was the only person to present without slides, which (if you can carry it off, which he did!) was a refreshing change. Simon talked about where we were 20 years ago and how much has changed dramatically. He also talked about how LoveFilm was “nudging” its customers daily to move from DVDs to streaming films online. He believes that “small incidents of change by millions of consumers are what cause disruption and change”. Clever man that Mr Waldman!

One small step for a Guy, one huge leap for IAB Engage 2011

3) “Industrial Revolution” of Advertising

Brian O’Kelley, CEO & Co-founder, of AppNexus spoke about online ad exchanges and the power of Real Time Bidding (RBT). For the last 10 years, the auction model had helped drive the massive growth of SEO due to its precision and cost effectiveness. Now technology is bringing these benefits to online advertising through RTB.  Brian explained because of the significant benefits that RTB brought to agencies, brands and consumer it had grown from $0 in 2008 to $1.5 billion by 2011. It is predicted that 25% of online ads would be RTB by 2015, although O’Kelley feels that it will be nearer 50%.

Konrad Feldman of Quancast spoke on Powering Advertising with Real Time Data. He explained how as computers became increasingly powerful we would see “the industrial revolution of advertising”. He argued that fragmentation of media was a good thing for both consumers and advertisers but not for the process of buying and selling media. However Real Time Data was doing that.  And to illustrate this point about the buying and selling process, later on during the panel session, Pete Robins of Agenda21 said that digital takes 40 times more resources to plan and buy than TV. Pete also said that he felt technology was moving ahead of creativity in terms of online advertising – which received lots of high fives and nods on Twitter.

4) Fear of Too Much Change!

One of my favourite speakers was the chairman of the IAB, Richard Eyre. Clever, funny, charming and humble, he really is a perfect Chairman for IAB.  After some hilarious examples of parent’s texting to deliver a well deserved piece of light relief, he talked about The Trouble with Progress. The phrase of the day was his “behavioural targeting is the idiot son of advertising. Everyone knows that something is wrong but we are too embarrassed to talk about”.

His major insight was that connected TV was going to be the next big thing in digital. However what struck me most was his story about a well known Marketing Director of a large brand admitting that “it’s simply impossible not to keep” with the innovation in digital marketing. And that she found the whole thing “scary”. Another had admitted to Richard that she had no clue how configure her marketing department in terms of skill sets.  The pace of change is both exciting and scary for everybody who works in digital.  That’s why attending conferences like IAB Engage are really important.

5) Check your socks before you appear on panel!

By the time of the panel session at the end of the day, the audience was obviously tired and distracted by the problems with the microphones.  Therefore most of the chatter on twitter was about Guy Phillipson’s (IAB)  and Andy Hart’s (Microsoft) colourful socks.  My final lesson of the day was if you are appearing on panel sessions, don’t wear loud socks that will distract your audience from your wise words!

There was a huge amount of content covered during this conference and this is just my take.  For another point of view, please check out Sean Clark’s blog who’s IAB Engage post focused on the importance of mobile moving forward.

Presentations from the day can be downloaded here

Although I didn’t have the chance to participate to the actual event in Los Angeles, I took the 1km trip (all expensed) to the Barbican Center to enjoy a small taste of it. Between all the things I already knew (because they pop up everyday in my RSS feed), I finally discovered new things in the very last presentation. I hope that, like me, you haven’t already heard what you are about to read.

The man who blew my mind, and probably everyone else’s, is Jean Marc Le Roux (Twitter: @promethe42 // Blog : http://blogs.aerys.in/jeanmarc-leroux/). He is a Developer and CEO of the company Aerys. What does this company do? A few amazing things actually, so let’s start at the beginning.

Orbit (http://aerys.in/orbit/showcase)

Orbit is a cross-platform tool that allows communication between your mobile device and the application (web or local) you are experiencing. If you’re a crazed and tormented creative thinking: “I want the user to use his phone as a remote!” this thing does it perfectly. Here is an example of what has already been done :

Here is the actual experience: http://www.eristoff-black.fr

This is stunning! A simple way to improve the user experience to a great extent without having to invest in some expensive Augmented Reality. Besides, before adding virtual things to the real world, connecting real devices together is the way forward, and there is a lot to do! Could we call that augmented virtuality.

Minko (http://aerys.in/minko)

If you search for flash 3D engine, you’ll probably find Away3D, Alternativa3D and Papervision3D (RIP). But you haven’t lived without knowing what the newly born Minko is.  Well, it’s here to kick some ass.

Let’s clarify things. We are talking about:

Dynamic shader coding

For those who might not know, a shader is a mathematical model. It tells you how a 3D object can be projected onto a 2D surface. To make it simple, to see the shadow of something on a wall, you need a shader to tell how the wall reacts against such light, depending on the context and the others objects around. We are talking about heavy coding with a head-melting programming language, and even if not everyone wants to handle that it somehow has to be done. In flash it can be done using PixelBender and most recently PixelBender3D (available on Adobe Labs). Well, in Minko, you can just do it using your well known and loved Actionscript!! It means you no longer have to care about any heavy programming language, as AS3 is now the only one you have to care about (sorry, no code example yet) But there is more than that. There is an actual shader lab! Import your 3D models, and then you just have to drag ‘n’ drop boxes to avoid having to code at all. Here is the actual example:

This shader lab is to be released before the end of the year.

Lightweighted 3d models

Minko is built with a browser experience in mind. One of the main concern in a browser experience, is the bandwidth available and the weight of your application. To give you an example, to appreciate the whole experience of MAX Racer build using Alternativa3D, you will need to load about 145mo, which is a lot!

Minko has come up with a new data format, .mk, that will allow you to create a rich experience without having to wait a few minutes for it to load.  And because good things don’t come in ones, an interface will be available to convert your own models to this format! The compression ratio for a Collada model is about 90%. (Collada is the most widely-spread exchange format for 3D models). We all saw the demo of a complete FPS (music, effects, lights, AI), and it only weighted 10mo!

Plugins

Many are already there, to handle lights, physics, collada file loading, and more!

Here is an example using lights and physics:

Minko is completely open source and free ! You can of course write new extensions and add your own building block at the top of all this!

A growing community

Jean Marc Le Roux, as a very invested and carring man, is already working on many forums and places to exchange about Minko. If you are French ( I am), you may be happy to know ( I am !) that the most visited Adobe forum, MediaBox.fr is now hosting a Minko forum! Many more are to be created in different countries for you to feed on.

So many things to get you going on a Monday! What are you waiting for?

I was put forward to speak @socialsummitcz this month by our client AVG in Prague. Skive had been pitching the day before which meant a 4.30am start was called for on the day of the presentation. I flew into Prague, lept in the cab and arrived just in time at the venue. As I got out of the taxi one of the event organizers - Pavel Hacker informed me that the theme of the event was “power” and I had to walk on stage dressed as a boxer (silk scarf and boxing gloves) with a young conference hottie holding a Union Jack on a stick in front of me. I thought it was a stitch up but decided to do it anyway (see video above).

One of the highlights was @giannicatalfamo from Ketchum who produced a funny and engaging presentation on how large corporations should adapt to use social media titled “The Challenge of Relevance ready or not, here it comes”. Gianni used this photo to show that people will ignore designated paths and walk across the grass to create their own path in the car park outside his house. He used this as an analogy to illustrate how users will make use of social media in the way that suits them and not how corporations want them to.

My time to present arrived and I walked on to the stage feeling like a prize idiot (as opposed to a prize fighter)  and the presentation went well despite the fact that outside of Europe my jokes never go down well, maybe the English are just more polite (I hope).

I had to jump off stage and back into a taxi to the airport to get on a flight to Romania in preparation for the IAB Romania Forum the next day.

It was flattering to be invited to Bucharest by the charming @ianescu_abe to present to a digital disbelieving Romanian audience. The internet population of Romania is not to be laughed at as it is roughly the same size as the population of London. The IAB wanted the event to ” let our audience understand an agency’s contribution to the overall communication strategy and the need to use online in order to follow the offline message as a complementary tool not an independent one.”

It felt like Romania is where the UK was 5 years ago in terms of adoption but the appetite for progression within the industry was palpable and they were keen to catch up with their bigger brothers in Europe. The conference featured quality presentations from Yahoo, PWC, IAB Europe and BBC Worldwide and was a well run and interesting event. One of the highlights of speaking at non-UK events is that there are usually a mix of nationalities in the speaker line up which makes the presentations varied and more entertaining than London-based events that can get very samey. Despite the IAB’s protestations about the countries reliance on traditional media there was a great bit of experiential work for True Blood outside the conference hotel.

The following Friday I was asked to join the social media breakfast organised by Standout where we discussed the differences in uses of social in the UK and Romania. The group was keen to discuss the relevance of blogging in the UK as it seemed to be a pivotal force in the Romanian social media scene. This campaign for Petrom stood out as a really well worked piece - http://www.redescoperaromania.ro/en which sent bloggers round discovering forgotten gems in Romania.

Here are my photos from my travels in Pummelvision

—-

@mrtomollerton