Successfully quit smoking? Or cut down on your drinking? We need you! (Payment £200)

January 24, 2012.

UPDATED POST – 24/01/12.

We are producing a series of short interview based films for Cancer Research UK to highlight the benefits of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Two of the key areas we will be focussing on are:

• Reducing alcohol consumption
• Giving up smoking

We are looking for real people with real-life stories. People who have given up smoking and found it a struggle but who have triumphed in the end! People who have decided to drink a bit less in order to maintain a more healthy lifestyle. Maybe the person in question used to binge drink but now only drinks in moderation? The ideal candidates will have made a successful change, come out of the other end and have a positive, motivational story to tell.

Interviews will be in London, take 3 hours at the most and anyone involved on the shoot day will receive a flat fee of £200 for their time. We are looking for people from all demographics and aged 30 – 90.

If you have a suitable story that you are willing to share or could recommend a friend for this project, please get in touch by emailing casting@nonsenselondon.com.

In your email, please write a few paragraphs to give us an idea of your ‘journey to quitting smoking’ or your decision ‘to cut down the booze’ and why you feel that you could tell a positive story.

From these we will develop a shortlist of people to attend a face-to-face meeting in London next week (week commencing January 30th) to further establish your suitability for the project. (We may be able to organise a skype or phone meeting if you are from outside London).

The filming date is scheduled for Monday 13th February and will take place on location in London.

We look forward to hearing from you with your stories.

All the best,

Will & the Nonsense video team

Original post

Documentary interviewees required with real-life stories on behaviour changes leading to a healthier lifestyle.

On behalf of our client Cancer Research UK, we are producing a series of short interview based films to highlight the benefits of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The key areas we will be focussing on are:

• giving up smoking
• reducing alcohol consumption
• eating more healthily / exercising more frequently
• avoiding excessive exposure to the sun.

We are looking for real people with real-life factual stories, not actors playing the role. We are looking for people from all demographics and aged 30 – 90.

Applicants should be able to talk openly and honestly about their experiences of making a lifestyle change in how they have battled with one or more of our key focus areas – smoking, drinking alcohol, weight control and skin safety – in their lifetime. The ideal candidates will have made a successful change in one of these areas come out of the other end of these problems and have a positive, motivational story to tell.

If you have a suitable story that you are willing to share we will require you to provide us with a brief outline by email. This should be a few paragraphs and give us an idea of your ‘journey to quitting’ and why you feel that you could tell a positive story. These should be sent through to casting@nonsenselondon.com.

From these will will develop a shortlist of people to attend a face-to-face meeting in London to further establish your suitability for the project.

The filming date is scheduled for Tuesday 7th February but this is subject to change. Each participant will be required on set for 2-4 hours and for this there will be a flat fee of £200.

We look forward to hearing from you with your stories.

All the best,

Will & the Nonsense video team

Twitter Brand Pages – our gut reaction.

December 22, 2011.

Exciting times over at Twitter’s Birdhouse, considering they rarely release new functionality – following hot on the heels of the new look Twitter* they’ve just launched their new Brand Pages, with a few blue-chip brand partners at first. This AdAge article has a full list of the brands on board so far – nice to see they’ve not sided with Coke or Pepsi… both cola giants are on the list!

(*Note: to see one of these new fangled brand pages, you’ll have to be using the new version of Twitter, which you’ll only have if Twitter have deemed you worthy! Don’t worry if you haven’t got it yet, you will soon.)

The new pages offer brands nice features including more branding and, crucially, the ability to keep a chosen tweet “front and centre” on your brand page, rather than simply your most recent tweet. These even expand to show whatever content (e.g. YouTube video, Flickr photo etc) is referenced in the Tweet. We also like the fact that @replies are now separated from the rest of the tweets – very nice from a customer service perspective. Anyway, rather than re-hash a full features list here, let us point you in the direction of the ever-reliable TechCrunch.

So, what do we think this will mean?

We had a cuppa and a chat about what Twitter Brand pages will mean for brands, and here’s a few points we thought were interesting:

• There’s now more of a reason to advertise through Twitter. (Unsurprisingly, Twitter are concentrating on revenue generating features!) Now that brands can use a “Top Tweet” to place content prominently on a brand page, there’s a better destination for Promoted Tweets, and other Twitter ad formats, to point to – without making the user leave Twitter, which of course would see people drop out.
• Brand Pages will cement Twitter as an important customer services hub. People are already extensively using Twitter to register complaints or make requests of brands. The largely open nature of the network means these complaints are more public and therefore the brand feels more compelled to answer them. Brand Pages will arm brands with a better destination to service and display the successful resolution of these queries. Look out for brands making a big deal of great bits of customer service they do (and why not? if you’re going to complain in public, you should expect it!).
• More videos and images. The new UI prioritises visual content – and rightly so… Twitter knows that 140 characters, while hugely convenient and accessible for users, is not enough for complex brand messages. Users love rich media, and brands will need to consider their content strategy to ensure their feed is full of relevant, up-to-date content!
• This is just the start. This shiny new shop front is a clear indication of Twitter’s desire to provide a better and better service to brands. So, we expect more brand-centric features to be added. For example:
• Multiple “writers” / admins of accounts. Many global brands “sign off” each Tweet with the initials or name of the person who wrote it. We think Twitter could make this a feature, so you can see who is writing the Tweets – ideal for managing a global brand account. Services like Conversocial could get assimilated!
• Analytics. Brands will want to see how long customers are spending on brand pages, and which content they are most interested in. This will be crucial to them investing ad spend on the network, so we expect Twitter to deliver on this ASAP. Maybe they’ll buy PeopleBrowsr or Data Sift?
• Twitter will help brands identify influential fans. Twitter already suggests who might be of interest to follow, and the natural progression – of particular importance to brands – is show brands who their best advocates are. Brands will be able to react to this and pay particular attention to conversations with these individuals.

Of course, not everyone thinks Brand Pages are going to be a big deal. Why not tell us what you think in the comments?

Wishing you a cringeworthy Xmas and a cheesy New Year!

December 22, 2011.

Hi there!

We’ve put together a digital message to say Merry Christmas from everyone at Nonsense. It was inspired by a little something from the internet that made us chuckle.

Take a gander here…

Have a lovely Christmas and we’ll see you all in the new year.

Team Nonsense

Silence In The Square

November 11, 2011.

Today, we’ve had a fun day working with our friends at RAW Productions to broadcast the Royal British Legion’s Silence in the Square live from Trafalgar Square, London.

So, if you couldn’t make it to the actual event, you could head to the live stream on the Royal British Legion website or their Facebook page and watch all the enterainment that led up to the poignant 2 minutes silence. (Highlights will be up shortly for those that missed it.)

Stream UK provided the video serving and we integrated CoverItLive to the page so that users could post comments throughout the event. The engagement levels were great with people flocking to send their messages of remembrance… we’ll write a full case study soon!

Our team had a great time watching the event, moderating comments and being part of a piece of history. Now they’re off to relax and enjoy the weekend…

Testing the new iPhone 4S + iMovie video capability

October 18, 2011.

Last Friday (14th) Nonsense’s Head of Video, Will Savage, was lucky (and geeky) enough to get his mitts on a launch day iPhone 4S after some queueing he’d rather forget!

Being a video geek, Will was most excited by the promise to shoot, and edit, full 1080p videos on a device he could fit in his pocket. So, he took a trip to the Apple Store (where else?) to put the camera through it’s paces. The resultant video, and his thoughts, are below.

Shooting

First things first, I opened up the camera app and toggled the video mode. The display is self explanatory with flash controls top left and an icon to switch to the FaceTime camera top right. I had a little play with the flash’s auto function, testing whether it would pop on mid take if I entered somewhere dark. Unfortunately not, it just assesses the need for it on pressing record and then you can manually switch it whilst rolling if required. (This was largely it for testing the flash as the glorious afternoon sunshine was drawing me outside!)

My next significant discovery was that the ‘volume up’ button on the side of the phone doubles up as a record button. This helps you achieve a steadier shot as no need to take your hand off the casing and tap the screen to roll camera. When holding the phone in this orientation the lens is at the bottom right of the phone, a bit too near your flailing fingers for comfort. I’d advise getting your phone insured and in a decent protective case as the polished metal edges coupled with this slightly awkward handling make it very easy to drop! (Maybe I won’t feel so paranoid once it has that first scratch but on day one I was terrified of damaging it…)

I was instantly impressed with the quality of the shots. The colours look really accurate and the camera handles light brilliantly, an area where other small cameras I’ve used such as our Kodak Zi8, Flip cameras, goPro HDs and even Sony’s £2000 MC1P really struggle. Even shooting directly towards the sun, you could clearly make out details of subjects in complete shadow – not great if you are after stylised silhouettes but amazing for general use. The auto exposure quickly adjusts when panning between areas with very different lighting conditions, raising the exposure of dark areas and reducing the exposure of bright areas – particularly evident in the shots where I quickly pan from a shady street straight toward the sun.

Another advantage the 4S has over all of its pocket camera rivals is the zero shutter lag which allows it to capture fast movement really nicely without too much blur. The image stabiliser is also pretty good when slowly tracking or panning (evident where I track past the construction site with the sun behind). In slightly more extreme situations, like moving in close to the guitar amplifier, it is not so good – you still need to concentrate on keeping it steady, very difficult with such a lightweight device.

The control that you have over focussing is brilliant. A single tap anywhere on the screen and the focus shifts to the chosen area, resetting the exposure simultaneously too. By pressing and holding your finger on an area, it activates the AF / AE lock, meaning that the camera‘s focus and exposure no longer auto adjust. This makes it possible to achieve shots such as the ones I took tracking past the railings looking down to the underground kitchen. Without this lock feature, the camera would be constantly struggling for focus.

I would like to be able to disable the auto exposure as shots with focus shifts often end up unusable as the camera ramps up (or down) the exposure in an attempt to expose the area of focus, completely shifting the levels in the rest of frame. The result is often less than desirable (an example of this is the shot with the bus and the bike towards the end of the edit). The focussing / auto exposure is also a little laggy, not as quick as DSLRs as Apple suggest! That said, let’s not forget that this is a phone, and for a phone it is AMAZING!

Although I didn’t do a lot of testing, the shots of the busker and the Coke Zero girl show that the built in mic is actually pretty good. I am surprised that it didn’t distort much when in close proximity to the guitar amplifier and also that it picked up voices so well in the hustle and bustle of a busy Regent Street. I hope to do some testing with an external mic in the near future.

One of the best features that iOS5 offers up is the shortcut to the camera – bypassing the process of unlocking your phone and opening the camera app. By double tapping the home button and pressing the camera icon you are ready to roll in under a second. I am sure that it won’t be long before this shortcut enables me to capture a shot that I would otherwise have missed.

There were a few things that frustrated me slightly whilst out shooting. Maybe because of the slightly fiddly nature of using the outer record button and the resulting need to keep your fingers away from the lens, I kept hitting the switch camera icon in the top right by accident. So, quite a few times I pulled up the camera to shoot, only to be greeted by my own face staring back at me! Similarly, Siri kept popping up and trying to have conversations with me, overriding the camera’s functionality. I cannot work out what I pressed to make this happen so it continues to frustrate me!

Editing

I downloaded the iMovie app for iPhone for £2.99 and got cracking. Being so used to FCP, iMovie drives me insane and I generally avoid going anywhere near it. Let’s just say my expectations were low!

Importing and arranging clips was easy and intuitive. Tapping the media icon gives you a timeline type clip browser familiar from iMovie and FCP X. Here, you can drag the in and out points to trim the clip before tapping again to send it to the project timeline. Once on the timeline you can alter the in and out points and by clicking the clip you access the clip settings. Here you can adjust or disable the audio level, apply titles to the clip or delete the clip from the timeline. I had hoped to see some basic effects here such as speed adjustments and brightness / contrast but unfortunately there is nothing like this available in the app. I assume that such functions requiring rendering would be too heavy for the iPhone’s processor. I found no mention of how to split clips so carried on without this functionality but have since found out (by reading the help files – I would thoroughly recommend this!) that you need to select a clip in the timeline, position the playhead and swipe downwards to chop the clip. Still feel this should have been made a little clearer!

I quickly managed to get a load of clips on the timeline and started to explore the 8 available themes. Each theme has a default music track and a default transition / title style and it is this simplicity that make the themes so good. The fact that it limits you to cross dissolves and a single coherent transition / title style means that the project always remains clean and stylised. If you had access to all of the transition styles, I bet the majority of users would end up with edits that look like a dog’s dinner with every transition thrown in for good measure! I used the “Modern” theme and the opening title has a space for title and also displays the location but you can change this to read as anything you like so I used this as the sub heading.

Things began getting a little more tricky when I started to add music. I selected the default track for the modern theme as this had the right groove to it (and as my phone was brand new I didn’t have any music on it). For some reason the music track can’t have any gaps in it. So, when you try and trim off the front, to reduce the length of the intro for example, it seems like nothing has happened. In fact, the trim operation has been performed and then the clip has automatically moved in the timeline to close the gap. (Difficult to explain but play around and you’ll see what I mean.)

This inability to have empty sections of the audio track also caused problems when I wanted a break in the music to showcase the internal mic. After some frustration I managed a work around by importing a new instance of the music track and turning the volume to zero for the section where I wanted no music. Also in this section I experimented with sound effects which are dead simple to use. I added 3 guitar chords and some applause. The app automatically reduces the volume of the background music where there  are sound effects or when the video has it’s audio enabled. In my opinion it is too heavy handed with this, making a very noticeable drop in the music level. In instances where you just want the clip audio to add a bit of background ambience it would be good to be able to override this, keeping the music a constant level. I had hoped that reducing the volume of the video clip audio would balance this out but it only seems to have these two levels.

On to the fine cut. Making tiny adjustments to the timings is really difficult due to the small screen size but just about doable if you zoom right in – although this level of zoom makes it difficult to preview and navigate around the edit. All in all it is pretty fiddly and could really do with some kind of precision editor, something that I believe is available on the iPad version. Once you have everything timed up, you need to be really careful not to accidentally shift / trim the music as this could then slip the entire edit out of sync. To be fair, when I was editing, I had not discovered the undo / redo function (shake the phone) which would have made this less perilous (again; read the help files!).

In terms of performance, when I had the project filled with numerous clips, sound effects and music tracks the app did start to get a bit glitchy and less responsive. Playing the video takes a while to kick in and often the preview freezes up for the first few seconds of playback. Possibly the most frustrating element of this is where you are trying to move a clip in time. This action is achieved by simply dragging and dropping the clip into a new location on the timeline but is jerky at best. As dragging a clip off the timeline deletes it, there is always a danger that you will delete the clip inadvertently if you remove you finger mid-jerk! Not so bad after working out how to undo but a little annoying nevertheless.

I can’t stress enough that you should read the help docs. Nearing the completion of the edit I decided I needed a shot to go behind the opening title with plenty of space for the caption on the left of frame. I shot this at the train station and for some reason (to do with the way I was holding the phone, I suspect) the video recorded in portrait orientation. I was a little gutted as really wanted to feature the train arriving and didn’t fancy making another journey. After a quick search on the app store I found an app called Rotate Video (0.69p) which does exactly what it says on the tin! Since finding the help files for iMovie I realised this was a complete waste of money as I can do it right within the app. I could have spent this cash on a King Size Lion Bar.

Uploading

I tried to upload straight to our Vimeo account from the app. This was simple enough but despite selecting HD, it uploaded at what looks like a pretty heavily compressed 720p resolution. Although it still looked pretty good, I decided to render the file at 1080p to my camera roll, import onto my computer using Image Capture and upload to Vimeo in all of it’s full HD glory. Another limitation of the app is that although you can choose who can see the video (everyone, contacts or nobody) there doesn’t seem to be an option for uploading with password protection, which is a shame.

Conclusion

In terms of quality, flexibility and control, it goes without saying that this workflow is never going to be the same as the 7D to FCP approach that I am so used to but the advantages of having an HD camera in your pocket that can be out and rolling in under 5 seconds and adapts to almost any lighting situation puts iPhone videography into it’s own unique space.

For this, there is nothing better in my opinion. It absolutely destroys our Kodak Zi8 in every way! Add to that the ability to put edits together whilst on the toilet and you have a whole new way of working! The iMovie app is pretty intuitive (but read the help docs anyway!).

I would love to see a few more manual control options available in the camera settings, particularly the ability to control the exposure independently from the focus. Although the simplicity of iMovie is a really good thing, a few motion / filter options such as speed control, colour FX and zooming clips, along with more audio control would be a great addition. It would also be great to have a 2nd video track, making it possible to overlay cutaways whilst maintaining the audio of the original clip.

Can’t wait for the next upgrade… I’ll be queuing again.

The super-speedy evolution of memes.

August 18, 2011.

If you’re into your digital engagement, you need to get “memes“. Memes are ideas, behaviours or styles that spread through groups of people. Advertisers have used memes – either piggybacking existing ones, or creating new ones (like WCRS did for 118118) – to great effect for a good while now, and we won’t bang on about why they’re important.

We’d just like to point out that it’s critical to understand, when it comes to the digital environment, how fast memes evolve. This is because people love creating and adapting ideas that have taken hold, and everyone else loves an interesting twist on something they already love.

Today, we noticed the perfect illustration of this, all of which has happened in 2011.

1. Back in May, the BBC report on the “Planking” meme. A photo-phenomenon where people lie down flat in silly places.
2. Roll on to July, and we see the Daily Mail notice that Owling has got big! (Owling is like planking, but you perch on objects like a bird, rather than lying down!)
3. And then Today (August), we clock The Metro talking about the next iteration; Horsemanning, which requires two people to make a “headless horseman” type effect!

Just a thought. Hope you guys like it. And Specsavers? If you’re reading, don’t worry, that one’s free.

A Creative Thursday

August 11, 2011.

Down in The Nonsense Bunker when we’re not busy cracking creative briefs, we like to have fun by… well… cracking creative briefs! Here’s our MD, Robbie, giving us the lowdown:

See, last Thursday the whole agency was set a little challenge to come up with some ideas for a fun side project we could spend a day playing with sometime soon.

Every entrant had to get their idea down on 1 side of A4. These were then pinned to the wall for all to see and we had a quick vote, with everyone naming their favourite 3 ideas.

Then the votes were totted up, and Pablo came out on top with his idea to make our office a bit more fun. More on this soon, but for now we’ll just say we’re off to buy some thermal printers and arduino kits! One last pic here of the winner being announced… unfortunately Pablo was taking the pics, so we didn’t get his reaction.

Gourmet Burger Kitchen appoints Nonsense London for digital and social.

July 26, 2011.

We’ve been keeping this quiet while trying to convince Nonsense employees that this doesn’t mean unlimited free burgers for life! But we can now announce we’ve won a pitch to work with the really rather brilliant team at Gourmet Burger Kitchen.

In fact, we’ve already helped the guys with a Social Media Strategy, and just launched a cute little Facebook competition to help them celebrate reaching 10,000 Facebook fans!

Anyway, here’s the official press release for those that want it:

The Kiwi inspired eatery Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK) has appointed Nonsense London to handle their digital marketing and social media following a five-way pitch.

Nonsense will handle all digital marketing and social media for GBK, initially starting with creating and implementing a social media strategy & guidelines for the business. Once these foundations have been embedded GBK will then look to utilise the social environment for a wider range of activities.

This represents a shift in approach for GBK, as they seek to move away from voucher-centric marketing and building long term loyalty through social media.

Gourmet Burger Kitchen Managing Director David Sykes said “Our customers love the care and attention we put into our food and the authentic kitchen experience they get in our restaurants. Nonsense showed us how we can extend this brand experience into the social media space through innovative, creative digital engagement campaigns. We’re very excited about working with them and unlocking the enormous potential that exists.”

Brands should charge for apps. Discuss.

July 20, 2011.

Further to our post about why most branded apps fail, we’ve been thinking about what brands can do to ensure the success of their app. One of the answers we’ve come up with piqued our interest and we’d love to hear what you guys think.

The idea:  Brands should charge for their apps.

The logic:

• In general, brands like to make their apps free.
• This is because the way success is judged is in the no. of downloads. Probably because this is a comfortable metric as it’s so close to “views” that Marketers are used to dealing with in other channels. (In fact, the Deloitte research we based our last post on even cites downloads as it’s “Success” metric, with brands getting under 1,000 downloads being ‘failures’.)
• But that’s not a great way of measuring the success of an app, because it ignores what apps are actually for; their purpose is not one single interaction like an ad. The purpose of apps is to provide utility; i.e. be useful in some way in the users’ lives.
• So, repeated interactions (a.k.a loyalty) or depth of engagement are better benchmarks of success for mobile apps. And these can normally be measured.
• These things have real value for people, so charging money for them is OK!
• …which is just as well because building well thought-through, relevant utility is more expensive than disposable, one-dimensional apps!
• Therefore, by adopting a paid-for-utility mindset when developing apps, brands can ensure their apps are genuinely worthwhile for people. i.e. constantly ask the question Is this genuinely helping people in some way?  is a way to ensure the finished project is something people want. (Don’t know what your customers would find genuinely useful? Ask them! A little research goes a long way.)
• And if people want it, it should get more downloads than a “failure” app!*

It’s easy to think “well it’s free, so people won’t mind if they only use it once”, but this ignores the cost to the user in time and effort expended. App stores aren’t like TV – apps don’t just wash over users as they go about their business. People have to put effort into getting them and installing them before they see any benefit at all – so even if your app is free you’re still talking to the customer in an environment where they’re expecting a good level of reward. Charging 69p might raise this expectation a little, but if the app is good, people will pay… and that’s so much better for brand perception, right? (At the moment, many apps are the digital equivalent of cheap and nasty branded keyrings!)

The Guardian wrote the following in relation to how branded apps are insufficiently promoted:

“The fact that few branded apps are promoted in this way suggests a belief that the brand itself is sufficient to cut through the app store clutter.”

We would go further and say that this extends to the way apps are built too… too often the belief appears to be that people who like a brand will want its app. Charging for the app helps eradicate that kind of dangerous thinking.

Why do most branded apps fail?

July 18, 2011.

According to a piece of research by Deloitte last month, most smartphone apps built by brands fail (80% getting less than 1,000 downloads). But why is this? And what can brands do to ensure their forays into the world of apps have more chance of success?

The content trap

Having digested the facts and recommendations in the report the first thing that strikes us is that many of the apps in the survey should never have been built! Or, to put it another way, a lot of failed apps would probably have been more successful as mobile versions of the brand’s website.

Think about it, if a smartphone user wants to read some interesting content that you may have to offer, where’s the first place they’ll look? We’d argue that 9 times out of 10 this will be their browser, rather than their app store. When you also consider Deloitte’s estimate that making an app function on 2 platforms costs 160% of the price of doing it on one platform, this makes even more sense. A well designed mobile site should work across all smartphones.

We’ll come onto this later, but brands need to think what else can they offer app users, other than straight content. Or at the very least, think about what functionality they can build around the content to improve it, as The Economist and Guardian apps do so well. So, a key question early in the app strategy process is:

Do we actually need an app? Or can this be done through our website?

The losing game

The next biggest trap brands appear to be falling into is trying to create games for mobile platforms. Although “Games” is the most popular category in the major app stores, we think this is a high risk strategy because, quite simply, a brand is very unlikely to make an excellent game.

Let’s take Rovio, makers of the hugely successful Angry Birds games. It’s pretty much inconceivable that a brand would have come up with this game. OK, so it’s not like anyone’s brand guidelines expressly forbid the use of borderline-suicidal birds attempting to destroy evil pigs… but you’d be hard pushed to argue it through, right?!

For a game to be successful, it needs to have this level of freedom. The freedom to be completely frivolous, off-the-wall and funny – and that’s really hard to reconcile with trying to communicate brand messages, which are so often shoehorned into games to their detriment.

Even worse, Rovio didn’t exist 8 years ago… and there must be another million* talented game developers with amazing ideas trying to copy their success. What chance do brands have in this playing field?

Of course there is the odd exception; Volkswagen had good success with games for the Polo and Touareg, but this is the rare occasion when a game is perfect for building brand experience and was also done at a time when competition in the mobile gaming sector was less fierce.

But there’s hope. We don’t think brands need to build their own games, and should instead look for opportunities to partner with games developers to feature in their successful franchises. This not only has the advantage of a ready made audience, but also the creative guardianship of the game developer: “Can we have a 30 second promotional video between each level?” …”Nope.” … “Can we allow players to unlock a mystery level themed on one of our product benefits?”… “Yep!”.

Of course this has already started happening, with – for example – a special edition version of Angry Birds “Rio” to support the movie of the same name. Games are ideal for the short-lived, global campaign a movie requires… not so great, say, for a brand looking to drive sales, foster long-term loyalty or change behaviour.

That said, as games developers get better at offering sponsorship opportunities, we think we’ll see better targeting, so that brands can be involved only in specific territories, or towards specific demographics… so keep an eye out!

Location, location, location?

So far, we agree with most of what Deloitte are saying, but one bit we have to quibble with slightly is the assertion that brands should utilise as much of the smartphone’s capabilities as possible, in particular location-based technology.

While the observation that apps that use this functionality perform better may be true, we would warn that they’re by no means a guarantee of success. In fact we suspect that this kind of functionality, especially “Augmented Reality” type apps that let the user see extra stuff through the smartphone’s camera view, can be quite gimmicky; not a recipe for long term success.

Rule of thumb: only use clever features of the smartphone if it’s relevant to a good piece of utility you’re creating…

Utility is King

We’ve all heard the phrase “content is king”, but we think that in all aspects of digital communication utility is fast becoming a genuine rival to the throne! This is especially true of smartphones as the small screen format, touch screens and accelerometers make them much more suited as devices people use to do things rather than just read or watch stuff.

We believe the question brands should ask themselves when considering mobile apps is this:

What can we help people do that other brands can’t?

Sometimes, the answer is deceptively simple. Launched in the last 2 weeks, Pizza Express’ answer to the above question is “Pay for their Pizzas faster” and the result is a very simple app that, as well as the menu, store finder and other functionality typical of the Restaurant app, also lets people pay for their meals (relatively) simply and quickly using PayPal.

Although they’ve had technological teething trouble, you can’t fault the strategy and we’re sure they’ll get this right very soon; a nice interim solution until contactless payment through NFC (basically Oyster-card-in-your-phone) arrives in the next 12-18 months.

Promotion

The Guardian’s conclusion on the report is interesting. Their key recommendation is that brands aren’t promoting their apps well enough. This is probably true, although we’d argue it’s a secondary issue as far as creating long-term brand engagement is concerned.

Yes, it’s possible to use well targeted influencer outreach campaigning to create some buzz about an app, and there are techniques brands can employ to influence their standing in the various app stores, and even sites like An App A Day can have their place in a well planned  promotional push… BUT unless the app itself is genuinely engaging, ideally providing useful utility to the user, then we would argue that the best any promotional push could achieve would be a spike of initial interest.

That said, sometimes this might be enough if the aim of the app is to create a tactical short term buzz. Take iHobo for example, an app by the homeless charity Depaul UK where players can “look after” a homeless person Tamagotchi style for 3 days. This app created a huge amount of interest in a very short period of time forming the centre of a well executed PR coup. 100,000 downloads in its first week, now over 600,000. While we doubt many people are still “playing” their game now, that doesn’t appear to have been the intention.

In conclusion

Although the number of failed apps makes for an horrific read, this is only to be expected as brands rush to invest in mobile (a bit like how most brands’ first website wasn’t perfect!). Of course it’s easy to say in hindsight that certain brands should have spent more time considering why they need an app in the first place and planning their mobile strategy but this is all part of brands learning how to succeed in a new medium.

We’re really excited about seeing brands using the unique opportunities smartphones offer to build excellent pieces of branded utility that extend the brand into people’s pockets. And of course, we’re looking forward to helping our clients do exactly that!

* well, loads anyway.