|
FUTURELAB |
Home - Services - About us - Team - Business and Games Blog - Publications |
To find out more about Futurelab: Click here
For our other blog on Business and Games, Click here
by: Roger Dooley
When we wrote Brain Branding post yesterday, most of the mainstream press hadn’t picked up on the unassuming press release from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). What a difference a day makes - Google News counted nearly forty related articles by this morning, including:
by: Jon Miller
The best B2B marketers test everything, and almost everything can be tested: offers, copy, headlines, forms, bids, colors, designs, lists, and more. Testing removes any debate about what works and what doesn’t; testing lets your customers vote with their actions.
Continue reading "3. Test everything – but don’t over test" »
by: Gary Hayes
I did a short presentation at the Australian Communications Media Authority ICE conference last week. It was at the end of a plethora of panel presentations about regulation, media literacy, digital privacy and converged business models. There was also a range of keynotes that were pretty generic, about attitude to change eg: Steve Vamos (Microsoft Aus Head) or very specific about spectrum from Richard Peasey (UK Vodaphone Public Policy Group).
Continue reading "Personalized Home Entertainment and Human Behaviour " »
by: Iqbal Mohammed
In his last column for WIRED magazine, prognosticator Bruce Sterling takes on futurism itself. After tackling the directions the Internet is going to take us - more individualism, less institutionalism, low cost connectivity, ubiquitous creativity, collaboration and a blurring of where reality ends and virtuality begins - Bruce hones in squarely on futurism.
by: Joel Makower
It's long been axiomatic that energy efficiency is the awkward stepchild of renewables -- that is, that it's sexier to install cutting-edge renewable-energy technologies like solar panels than to engage in more prosaic (and less-visible) measures to get more value out of each BTU or barrel.
Continue reading "Can Energy Efficiency Be as Sexy as Solar?" »
by: Roger Dooley
How important is a strong brand image? A new study presented at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) shows that people presented with known brand images processed them in areas of the brain associated with positive emotions, while unfamiliar brands took more effort for the brain to process and activated areas of the brain associated with negative emotions.
Continue reading "Brain Branding: The Power of Strong Brands" »
by: Jon Miller
The main reason B2B companies use online advertising is to drive traffic to their website. But that only means they got a prospect to click. Once there, the marketer has just a few seconds to convince that prospect to stick around, read more, and perhaps share some contact information so the company can continue the dialog.
Continue reading "2. Landing pages, landing pages, landing pages" »
by: Jon Miller
The tradeshow must die – at least as a way for B2B companies to drive leads. The same dollars invested in webcasts, online demos, videos, and other online methods are more measurable and more effective. The same is true for other offline marketing methods.
by: Jon Miller
What’s the latest thinking in B2B marketing? What techniques and trends are today’s best practice B2B marketers using to drive more revenue and demonstrate accountability?
By: David Armano
2006 is almost over and I need your help (feel free to pass this around). I'd like to do one more visual before the end of the year, but I need YOU to provide the content in the form of an answer to this question:
What was the most significant event/aspect of 2006 in regards to marketing, advertising or user experience?
by: Dick Stroud
This is an interesting article about advertising and age in the US.
by: Roger Dooley
Earlier this year, we wrote Priming the Customer, which briefly covered some fascinating research in the area of priming.
by: Alain Thys
Ilya, Stefan and myself will be at the Marketing 3 conference in the Netherlands for the coming few days so if you happen to be there too, drop us a line. If diaries match, perhaps beers are an option :-)
For those who need extra budgetary encouragement, note that on 30th November and 1st of November participation is "free" .
By: Ilya Vedrashko
I was preparing slides for the marketing 3 conference and hunting around Second Life's malls for a good illustration and by chance teleported to Caliente City Mall.
by: David Polinchock
It's not often you hear people remark That's exciting while leaving a bathroom, but that seems to be the guest reaction so far to the new Charmin bathroom in Times Square. And, as you might have read at Experience Manifesto: Customer Experience Crossroads: It's all happening at the loo, bathrooms are no longer something in the back room that no one talks about!
by: danah boyd
Discussions concerning network neutrality have been occurring in the blogosphere for years now. Yet, at family events like Thanksgiving, i'm reminded of how incomprehensible this issue is to most educated people in this country. I'm curious if others out there are having difficulty explaining this issue (and its significance) to their parents, cousins, and other relatives who think email is a recent invention? What tactics have you taken?
by: Dick Stroud
The Reader's Digest Association is bought by a private equity-backed group for $2.4 billion.
The deal does not change RDA's overall strategy, says the president and CEO, in a letter to employees.
Continue reading "Whatever Happened to the Readers Digest?" »
By: Ilya Vedrashko
"In one small swing for man, but one giant promotional stunt for a Canadian golf equipment company, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin set himself up for a shot that would put Tiger Woods to shame.
Continue reading "Astronaut Misses First Golf Shot in Space" »
by: Nancy Baym
The New York Times ran an article this week about a phenomenon I’d entirely missed: the 21 year old blogger who has become the go-to source about the TV News industry. We don’t normally think of news junkies as fans, but how else to describe reminiscences such as this:
By: Guy Kawasaki
Check out this study by Prof. Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota (Go Gophers!). She tested the hypothesis that thinking about money can create social barriers. Here is a description of what she did:
by: Dick Stroud
Grandparent Marketing Group claims to be the world's first communications company to specialize in the grandparent market. Well certainly there are no companies in the UK making that claim.by: Roger Dooley
Those who are fans of commercial technologies spinning off from military or government research will be happy to know that the field of neuroscience is getting plenty of attention and government funding.
By: Ilya Vedrashko
Wired runs a great feature on Lonelygirl15. Besides all the behind-the-scenes stuff, the article offers a glimpse into a future of TV:
By: Ilya Vedrashko
Telegraph: "A glowing green logo drawn by scientists on the wing of a genetically altered butterfly could herald the day that the insects are adorned with adverts and slogans.
By: Ilya Vedrashko
New Scientist is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a special compilation of forecasts for the next 50 years gathered from the leading scientists. Among the most directly relevant to advertising is this one from Elizabeth Loftus:
by: Joel Makower
The most provocative statement of the past half-century on the role of business in society came in an essay in the New York Times, written by a fellow named Friedman.
Continue reading "Milton Friedman and the Social Responsibility of Business" »
A recurring theme in quite a few of our neuromarketing posts is the apparent contest between the amygdala, a brain structure long thought to be the seat of emotions in the brain, and other brain structures thought to be responsible for higher cognitive functions like reasoning and problem solving. Now, neuroscientists at Yale University have demonstrated that the amygdala plays a role in working memory, a function which plays a key role in higher cognitive functions.
by: Alain Thys
I'm preparing for a speech I'll be giving at the Marketing 3 conference in the Netherlands where I'll be "über-coolly" flanked by Chris Anderson, Stefan Engeseth and Ilya Vedrashko (makes me wonder what they were smoking when they called me :-) While I won't use this video, I did want to bring it to your attention, as it elegantly brings home a point I've been making for a while, possibly related to the mid-life anxiety of just turning 40 :-)
Continue reading "I Want to Be in Advertising ... The Video" »
By: Guy Kawasaki
Woz and I did a one-on one-chat for the Commonwealth Club on November 16, 2006 as part of his iWoz
Continue reading "The Top Ten Things I Love Most About Woz" »
By: Karl Long
After wandering around the eerily quiet “Dell Island” on SecondLife it struck me that most of the buildings in SecondLife are built to mirror buildings in the real world, with stairs, and impenetrable walls, windows etc.
Continue reading "If People Could Fly What Would Buildings Look Like?" »
by: Dick Stroud
International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) has done some research showing that more than 70% of the 400 luxury travel suppliers surveyed thought clients were looking for more authenticity when selecting a holiday. A further 59% stated holidays needed to be more experience-led and enriching than ever before.
Continue reading "It is al about authenticity and ‘experiences’" »
by: David Wigder
Carbon Trust (CT) predicts that by 2010, the UK consumer market will have reached a tipping point: Purchase decisions will take into account climate change impact and how companies are actively addressing it.
Continue reading "Climate Change in the UK Market - Part II: Consumer Tipping Point" »
by: David Wigder
The Carbon Trust, a UK government-funded think tank, makes the case that many companies’ brand value – a key component of the market value measuring intangible assets - is at risk from climate change.
Continue reading "Climate Change in the UK Market - Part I: “Brand Value at Risk”" »
by: David Wigder
An Interview with Rachael Ostrom, Director, Consumer Marketing and Advertising, Aveda
Since its founding in 1978, Aveda (an Estée Lauder Company) has been leading the personal care product industry toward a more sustainable future.
By: David Armano
In a recent post I wrote about my dislike of the word elite in the context of describing Technorati's top percentile of blogs. Some of you agreed, some didn't. It's all good.
By: Karl Long
One question that comes to mind as I read the excellent UIE article The Freedom of Fast Iterations: How Netflix Designs a Winning Web Site, what would have Netflix looked like if a big interactive agency had been involved?
by: Dick Stroud
What is the one thing all grandparents have in common? No prizes for the answer – grandchildren.
The grandparent/grandchild relationship is not always one made in heaven but it is very often very strong. That must be good news for marketers.
Continue reading "Grandparents are good news for marketers" »
by: Dick Stroud
According to a recent survey by the National Association of Female Executives, the problems caused by the menopause are a big issue for many of its members.
by: Joseph Mann
It's no secret that marketing to a busines-to-business audience is very different than marketing to a business-to-consumer one. A recent Silverpop study1 on the clickthrough effectiveness of various email marketing creative seems to bear that out:
Continue reading "Email Creative: B2B is from Mars, B2C is from Venus" »
by: Gary Hayes
Just spotted my old collegues Matt Locke and Frank Boyd launching another series of 360 lab initiatives at the BBC. Not much has changed since the labs of 2000 and earlier, when EXACTLY to the day, six years ago I was presenting slides including those on this post to wannabee cross-media BBC producers. Incidentally I have put a selection of my old and new presentations up as a permanent, growing page here if you get the urge. Think it is important to look back on ones crystal ball gazing to constantly hone future predictive media skills.
by: Lynette Webb
Click image to enlarge.
I find this statistic amazing. I knew that people used search engines to find out about all sorts of things, of which recipes were one. And I knew that laptops in particular were increasingly finding their way into kitchens thanks not least to the joy of wifi. But meals accounting for 2.5% of all Yahoo’s queries every day? I’d not anticipated it was quite that pronounced. No wonder they’ve launched Yahoo! Food. :-) I’m curious now as to how it compares to other search engines. Is this something that is particularly skewed to Yahoo or does the same apply to Google?
Continue reading "over 1m of yahoos daily 60m queries are related to meals" »
By: Guy Kawasaki
Amanda Congdon was one of the first, if not the first, videoblog sensations. As a host of Rocketboom, she had approximately 300,000 viewers in the spring of 2006.
By: danah boyd
I would like to offer my working definition of "social network sites" per confusion over my request for a timeline.
by: Dick Stroud
Vue Entertainment the third biggest cinema chain in the UK, with 58 multiplex theatres across the country and in Ireland. There are plans to build another 20 before the end of 2008.
Continue reading "The Cinema World Wakes Up To the 50-plus" »
By: John Caddell
In this month's Harvard Business Review, longtime Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter discusses how companies continue to make the same mistakes in their innovation strategies and how these "classic traps" can be avoided.
If you are into customer experiences and how we consumers are changing our behavior as a result of the digital experience renaissance, you should check out this post over at 3mew
Continue reading "Power Consumer Vs. The Eyeglass Industry" »
by: Jon Miller
In Earn a Seat at the Revenue Table – Part 1, I asked how can marketers take more control over the revenue process, build the respect of their organizational peers, and earn a seat at the revenue table.
Continue reading "Earn a Seat at the Revenue Table – Part II" »
Most of us attempt to treat each other fairly, and react negatively if we feel we are treated unfairly. We may even react negatively if we see someone else being treated in an unfair manner. Research shows that this sense of fairness isn’t something we learn in school or from our parents (though undoubtedly those environmental factors shape our perception of what constitutes fair behavior) - other primates also have a developed sense of fairness.
By: Stefan Kolle
Ilya Vedrashko is a regular contributor to this blog, so you are already aware of his insightful posts. However, I suggest to everybody to have a look at his blog right now - not only is the content top-notch, the new design he has implemented is really cool.by: Ilya Vedrashko
Not these shorts, though. Here's what we have to report.
-- Second Life apparently preps a roll-out into Asia and hires a PR agency Lewis, writes Brand Republic.
-- It also writes that Bartle Bogle Hegarty's offices "became the victim of a Second Life flash mob, who turned up sporting strap-on dildos and simulating various sex acts."
Roger Dennis, over at IdeaPort, posts a multi-part email interview with Tony Ulwick, founder of Strategyn, and creator of Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) and author of What Customers Want.
Continue reading "Interview with Tony Ulwick, author of What Customers Want" »
Many years ago, my first job out of college was working on Main Street at Walt Disney World in Orlando. For the first summer, I worked in one of the retail shops on Main Street and learned a whole lot about creating a great guest experience. Later, I became what they called a cross U, meaning that I worked a half-shift in the merchandising group and then I got to head off to the entertainment division and perform for the rest of my shift.
Continue reading "Holographic Advertising 3D Displays by Holo FX" »
When i was a child, i used to get super excited when the postman came. Although i almost never got anything, those handful of letters from penpals were such joyous gifts. Email was the same at first - even the pyramid schemes and bizarro forwards were a reason to celebrate. "You've got mail!" Today, snail mail is full of bills and email is full of spam and expectations. Joy comes through IM or SMS or MySpace. At least for now.
Continue reading "what i mean when i say "email is dead" in reference to teens" »
Continue reading "P&G Creates Virtual Reality Research Room" »
by: Jon Miller
Who is in charge of revenue at your company?
Continue reading "Earn a Seat at the Revenue Table – Part I" »
Udanium235 has posted a whole range of his Design Concept Maps on Flickr. Meaningful and a piece of art in its own right, here are my favourites:
by: Gary Hayes
Been hit by a server hacker in London today so would have blogged about this earlier this morning!
Continue reading "TV Formats in Shared Spaces, Virtual "Big Brother" " »
The concept of transmedia planning, described by MIT/CMS/C3's Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture, is finding fans among agency planners. In a nutshell, "There would be an evolving non-linear brand narrative. Different channels could be used to communicate different, self-contained elements of the brand narrative that build to create an larger brand world. Consumers then pull different parts of the story together themselves," writes Faris Yakob, a strategist at Naked; Jason Oke from Leo Burnett Canada takes it further.By: John Caddell 
I wanted to point out an important post from the consistently excellent Business Innovation Insider, in which Dominic interviews Gary Hamel, the renowned management researcher, on innovation. Hamel makes a provocative statement in the interview: "If one looks back over the last 100 years of industrial competition, it is management innovation, more than any other sort, that has produced big and enduring shifts in industry leadership."
Continue reading "Management Innovation is the best way to achieve c..." »
Three of my buddies who are patent attorneys disagreed with my diatribe against patents as a key component of a startup’s defensibility. Being the open-minded Guy that I am, I offered to publish their counterpoint so that you can obtain a broader perspective of intellectual property issues for startups.
Continue reading "Counterpoint: Patents and Defensibility" »
Continue reading "Second Life Lures Big Brother, Older Traffic" »
By: Roger Dooley
Neuromarketing and Pricing. Why do people sometimes set prices that are too high, and then stubbornly stick with them despite evidence from the marketplace that the price is indeed wrong?
By: Ilya Vedrashko
Monetize this. "More than 80 percent of Web video viewers polled by Forrester Research called in-stream ads -- placements that appear before or after clips -- "annoying" and 75 percent said they ignore them."
-- adweek
Original Post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2006/11/viewers-annoyed-by-in-stream-ads.html
by: Dick Stroud
In the UK there is a lobby group trying to get the advertisings of toys banned until after the little darlings are safely tucked in their beds asleep (more likely accessing the Web). Why bother advertising to kids when you can get to their grandparents - the ones with no mortgages and deep pockets. No doubt somebody will try and ban this soon!By: David Armano
Is this Advertising? Yes. Is it product placement? Maybe. Did Nintendo pay for any of this? (I have no idea—but I'm guessing no?). The Nintendo Wii has what the industry is calling Momentum. Nintendo's managed to create a product that is seems almost designed to generate buzz (in addition to what looks like a great experience).
by: Jon Miller
Seth Godin recently had a post called The 249% Solution, in which he referred to a Yahoo! study on how brand ads and search ads interact. The study found that for one Yahoo! client, (Harris Direct, an on-line brokerage), a "reasonable buy of banner ads" grew unaided brand awareness by 7% but increased clicks on text paid search ads by 249%.
By: John Caddell
More than just a way to capitalize on the "long tail" phenomenon, pairing the right book with the right outlet can mean significant sales volumes. "Specialty outlets," for one publisher at least, now sell more books than independent booksellers. Says the Times:
Continue reading "Bookselling: it's a distribution game now" »
by: George Silverman
Here's a great example of word-of-mouth marketing, on many levels.
Continue reading "Tim Berners Lee - Scientific Study Of The Social Web" »
Continue reading "How to Advertise in Second Life, Part 2" »
By: David Polinchock
I like the way that trendwatching.com has updated their TRANSUMER definition to include the whole concept of experience.
With experiences starting to trump goods, many fixed items run the risk of becoming synonymous with boredom, with hassle, with quickly-out-of-date, with maintenance, with taking up too large a part of budgets, if not lives. Which brings us to a new definition of TRANSUMERS:
Continue reading "trendwatching.com: November 2006 trend briefing on TRANSUMERS" »
By: David Armano
The Word of Mouth Marketing Association has recently made public a "Discussion Draft" of ethical guidelines around blogging. The entire draft and supporting documents can be found here.
And here's what the 10 point checklist looks like:
The world is running amok with entrepreneurs pitching every sort of Web 2.0, social networking, user-generated-content startup. It’s the attack of the bull-shiitake startup projections, so I’m losing my hearing; there’s a ringing in my head, and I get dizzy every once in a while. Before the world implodes (again), here is a top-tenish list of ways to create realistic projections in this Dotcom 2.0 world.
Continue reading "The Art of Projections in a Dotcom 2.0 World" »
by: George Silverman
One of the most frequent questions I’m asked in my speeches and interviews is, “Don’t all the word-of-mouth tools, such as feeds, blogs, the proliferation of other web sites, etc. cause chaos? There is so much crap out there, how do people sort it out?”
Continue reading "Word of Mouth Helps People Separate the Good from the Crap" »
A few years ago, French artist Christophe Bruno created the Google AdWords Happening, in which he utilized the AdWords program to publish abstract poetry instead of ads. Google didn't find the happening appropriate hence, he got banned.
Continue reading "Kurt Cobain's Suicide Letter vs. Google AdSense" »
Adweek reports that American Express has tapped two small business owners (who also blog) as part of a campaign which recently kicked off (full disclosure, American Express is a Digitas client — though I have no idea if we are involved in this effort).
Here’s something to pin up on your cube or office wall Download 12_values.pdf . The next time you work on a major marketing or interactive initiative—ask yourself this question: “is what I’m doing hitting at least some of the consumer values on this list”? The 12 Consumer Values to Drive Technology-related Product and Service Innovations was created by the Washington, DC-based research and consulting firm Social Technologies.
by: Iqbal Mohammed
Some time ago, Russell Davies wrote a memorable post on the tyranny of the big idea. In it, he talked about how big ideas effectively behave like monopolies, making it difficult for other ideas to get in. The ideas that usually get shut out are the steady stream of small and refreshing ideas that would have otherwise driven up the interesting-ness score of a brand.
Continue reading "Footnotes to : the Tyranny of the Big Idea" »
Why do spokespeople in ads who aren’t professional actors do so badly most of the time? No doubt we’ve all seen the ads featuring the owner or sales manager of the local car dealer, or the guy who owns the furniture outlet, that seem painfully bad.
By: Karl Long
From a couple of clips i’ve seen it seems that Borat is going to combine the brilliant fake interviews in the movie just like in the TV show (the Ali G Show). I think one of the reasons the Ali G movie failed was it had none of the “reality” of the TV show, ie famous and regular people being set up with fake interviews with a supposed foreign corespondent.
Watch this clip showing Borat with a supermarket manager, exploring proliferation...
Continue reading "Brand Proliferation - From Borat’s Perspective" »
By: David Polinchock
You just have to love this! And what do you think companies will be lining up to sponsor this crap? PayPerPost.com systematically enables marketers to pay consumers for writing positive comments about products in blogs. Folks, seriously, if this is the best you can do, you're in serious trouble! This isn't anything new. If you pay someone to say nice things about you, it's advertising, pure & simple. Yet, because it's about blogs, one of advertisings latest darlings, it gets press and I bet he got a bunch of calls when the article came out.
Link: Advertising Age - Digital - Want to Build Up Blog Buzz? Start Writing Checks for $8.
Continue reading "Want to Build Up Blog Buzz? Start Writing Checks for $8" »
