Archive for August, 2010
Why I won’t be checking out the location check-in services
I’m pretty certain that I won’t be signing up to location based check-in services like Gowalla, Facebook Places and foursquare.
I know I’ve said the same in the past about facebook and twitter and subsequently done a major about-turn, but its not only that I can’t really see the value in participating, this time I have personal safety issues.
As a single girl, I don’t think broadcasting where I am, where I’ve been and (by implication) where I’m not (hello, local burglars) is a very good idea. In fact I’ve taken it as far as going into facebook’s privacy settings to make sure my online friends can’t check me in either (thanks for the heads up Roo).
If I’m at an industry event, I’ll probably be sporting a fetching name badge, so checking-in then to announce my attendance seems a bit pointless too.
It also occurs to me that mass adoption of check-in services is going to result in a lot of extra noise on news feeds for services like twitter and facebook. I haven’t worked out yet why I should care that my uni friend at the other end of the country has just checked into a bar.
I’m very googlable and fairly open online, but this kind of sharing feels like a step too far in several directions for me. Am I missing something?
mobile company in shock ‘here to help’ pledge
After my rant last week about customer service vs. customer acquisition, it seems that one mobile provider is trying to redress the balance.
Hotfooting it through Leeds city centre earlier this week en route to the library, I came across O2’s Guru Roadshow, which seemed to be all about showing you how to get more from your mobile.
I particularly liked this sign:
update 21/01/11 – I got a very nice email from O2′s online guys asking if I’d point out that they have a spangly new Guru youtube channel full of tips to help you get more from your mobile.
Putting my finger on an art direction trend
I’ve noticed a new trend in TV art direction recently – the Touchscreen Finger Effect.
Watch how we slide seamlessly from one product benefit to another! That’s how cool and relevant to your tech-savvy life our brand and product is!
Recent offenders include:
Recover Energy with ..
and, of course, Nokia (but seeing as they’re flogging a smart phone we’ll let them have this one)
why for some 70 somethings, digital exclusion isn’t fixable
At last week’s SupNorth we were talking about choosing the appropriate digital platform to communicate with your target audience (aka ‘the answer isn’t always an iphone app’).
But I raised the thought that trying to use digital channels at all for some audiences is still inappropriate. I’ve posted before about my 70-something technophobe Dad who is technically online but in reality uses me as a secretarial envoy to the internet. He gets quite miffed when Radio 4 merrily asks their listeners to text in or get extra content online as he has yet to master text messaging or anything computer related beyond the ‘on’ button.
I don’t believe this is down to him not being interested in mastering a whole new skill set or being too bloody minded to go with the flow – I truly believe that his generation will find it much, much harder than even the 60-something baby boomers to adopt and adapt to new technologies. The 70 and 80-somethings in the UK today grew up in an era when life was slower – and crucially life changed more slowly. Many 70 year olds today never had to use a computer at any point in their working lives.
The idea of a machine that more-or-less works most of the time so long as you do things that are basically counter-intuitive (click ‘start’ to switch off, hover over things to reveal hidden menus) and rely on invisible links to other temperamental systems is almost beyond comprehension for some of them.
Not everyone of course, there are lots of 70-somethings out there with the time, inclination and aptitude to master each new technology as it comes along. But there are those who wish that everything would stand still for a minute (or preferably go backwards) as not only do they lack the time and techno-joy to master the subject but they are so far behind they now have almost no hope of ever catching up.
I think Martha Lane Fox and her People’s Taskforce are a little naive in their attempt to get the whole nation online. Some of our older citizens are never going to be able to make that jump. So we have to either continue to provide offline access to online services, or we have to offer the kind of secretarial technology translation services I provide to my Dad on a national level.
When I rule the world:
- All marketing services companies and clients will stop work at 4pm every Wednesday to allow for a mid-week breather.
- All marketing trade magazines will include a ‘name and shame’ section citing bad pitch practice and unreasonable client demands.
- There will be a separate section in all the above magazines called ‘whoever thought that was a good idea?’ for agency management.
- The IPA, ISP, APG and MRS will all include free technical support as part of their membership fee.
- TGI will produce an easy to use, web-accessible, affordable version
- Mintel reports will refer to the last twelve months of activity in the category and not what happened two years ago.
- All agencies will produce a ‘freelancer information pack’, explaining how to log onto their wireless network, where the loos are, office coffee mug hierarchy and the location of the nearest sandwich shop.
- All agency, client and publisher accounts departments will pay their invoices within 30 days or see the total amount rise by 20% a week. ‘Loosing’ or otherwise mislaying the invoice in question will be no excuse.
customer service vs. customer acquisition
I’ve had a bit of a bad run with technology recently. In the last couple of months, the following have gone wrong on me: two mobiles, PC, laptop, 3G dongle thingy, TomTom satnav, Bluetooth dongle, printer and broadband. Trying to get all these technology issues resolved has been a real eye-opener around customer service and brand delivery (or lack thereof).
But what has really struck me is that perhaps these brands should be directing a little more resource towards keep my loyal custom than charging after the holy grail of Brand New Customers. It seems that even in today’s reputation conscious era, some companies really would rather take the (contract) money and run.
For example, it turns out that Vodafone have a bit of a chinese wall between their retail operation and call centre which meant when my new mobile died after a fortnight I faced a 30 mile round trip to the store I bought it from for a replacement. Add in overseas call centre staff with a ‘computer says no’ mentality and I didn’t really feel like the brand cared about me and my custom. I’d much rather have my problems resolved quickly and painlessly than the remote possibility of VIP tickets to some event, thanks all the same.
Tiscali / TalkTalk undoubtedly suck the most. I’m having to upload this via my rather slow ( but at least now fixed) 3G dongle as my broadband has been down for 48 hours. It turned out that Tisacli / TalkTalk’s second line engineers aren’t available for some reason at 9.30am on a Friday and a promised call from them booked for Saturday evening never materialised. When I called on Saturday evening to ask why an engineer hadn’t rung, the guy on the other end of the phone pointed out that it was 2.30 am his time and the engineering department were “not there”. Neither apparently were any supervisors, managers, or anyone who could help in any way. But I did get a customer satisfaction survey on email. I expect you can imagine how I scored them ‘on a scale of one to ten’. Talk Talk might be spending squillions on X-Factor sponsorship, but if their customers are going to keep complaining about customer service online like me, perhaps some of that cash should be redirected towards retention rather than acquisition.
Oh, and in an effort to get some results I tried contacting both brands on twitter. Only Vodafone bothered to respond and that was to ask me to email their customer services team…
It might be Glamour-central in Manchester, but I live in Leeds
So there I was looking at the magazine rack in the Co-op today. I reached for Glamour…and then changed my mind.
This was the cover:
A special regional edition for Manchester. Which apparently sits alongside versions for Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Bristol, London, Newcastle and Birmingham this month. Except I live in Leeds (and only really make it over the Pennines to Manchester for the SupNorth meetings a couple of times a year). So a magazine packed with insider info on where to eat, drink and shop in Manchester is just a waste of paper from my point of view.
I wonder if the female residents of Hull, Plymouth, Peterborough, Sheffield, Leicester and so on feel the same way? I’d love to see this issue’s circulation figures.
I love the library
I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago about the undiscovered mine of FREE information that is your local Central Library’s Business/Information centre.
Since in Freelance Land I don’t have the luxury of access to desk research resources like Mintel and back issues of the trade press I’ve really rediscovered the library and am becoming quite evangelical about it.
Not only does Leeds Central Library boast super-helpful library staff who will happily log you onto a database and dig out back issues for you, but seeing as they are, y’know, librarians they’re also really good at desk research and come up with places to search you would never have thought of. As a bonus libraries tend to be shhhh-mobiles-phones-off kind of places where you can actually work without distractions, in contrast to the usual agency open plan office.
Last week I was working at an agency in the city centre and almost as soon as I was briefed I announced that I was off to the library. Cue some very confused faces. When I came back with insight from two Mintel reports and loads of back issues of The Grocer the penny seemed to drop. In fact the account handlers were queuing up to find out a) where the library was (!) and b) what it had that might be useful for them. This was a new-ish agency without any in-house information provision so the idea of all this insight a brisk ten minute walk away was really appealing to them.
Sadly, the one thing the library system doesn’t seem to have access to is TGI. I know I’ve slagged it off recently as being rather out of date by the time the data is released, but now I haven’t got access for the first time in eight years I’m really missing being able to sense check and/or post rationalise stuff with it. On the off chance anyone from KantarMedia is reading this and needs someone to trial a back to basics freelancer version of TGI…
the view from the other side of the research fence
I needed to get a quote from a research agency today. For the first time in eight years I don’t have the luxury of an in-house research department and it’s been a real eye-opener.
Using the excellent MRS Research Buyers Guide as a starting point, I knew I’d like to work with someone local as I want to ideally sit in on the analysis session and so on, so that narrowed the list down for a start. Then since this was for a marketing agency’s client, giving the brief to one of their competitor’s in-house research teams was a bit of a no-no.
Take out the big name players that have their HQ locally (Leeds being a bit of a magnet for research for some reason) and you’re left with only maybe half a dozen market research agencies.
Having removed the public sector and youth specialists and the one man bands there were only three names left on my list. None of which I had any real experience of, two of whom were not what you’d call very googlable and the last one’s website suffered from a serious case of what I think you might term flashturbation.
Maybe the smaller research agencies need to get a bit better at their own PR, website design and SEO as I can’t be the only one on the look out for a local, reliable, reasonably priced research supplier.
