Forrester CEO George Colony has looked to gain some respite from the new expert model through strict non-compete contracts with high-profile current employees and a recent change in policy to restrict their off-platform personal social media activity. Forrester suffered the most out of the analyst houses with a number of high profile departures including Charlene Li, Jeremiah Oywang and R Ray Wang to the Altimeter Group.

Altimeter Envy is described by SageCircle:

The buzz around Forrester superstars Jeremiah Owyang and R “Ray” Wang joining Altimeter Group was several orders of magnitude larger than all the departures in the summer of 2008. Plus there is just the general increase in hype and fever around social media. This buzz is bound to percolate into the awareness of even the most heads-down, lost-in-his-work analyst at Gartner, Forrester, IDC, AMR and so on. This may be case even if the analyst does not cover the social media market. After all, Ray Wang covers the unsexy enterprise applications market. There was a lot of hoopla around how Charlene, Ray, Jeremiah and their non-analyst colleague Deb Schultz used social media to build up their personal brands giving them the platform for a potentially lucrative new career path. Also, all the analyst firm layoffs in the last year certainly have some analysts thinking that they need to hedge their employment bets. “Altimeter envy” then is a condition that strikes an analyst who uplevels his or her use of social media for a potential departure from their current employer.

Is knee-capping (a la Forrester’s new social media policy) a knowledge professional’s personal brand a step too far, given that there is no such thing as a job-for-life any more? This was originally published on my personal blog.

I wanted to expand on a couple of concepts around the article as I realise that it maybe read by many people particularly in the PR industry who don’t understand how technology works and how the sector works.

Firstly, Google’s Buzz problems and ‘real-world’ product recalls that other industries from toys to cars face are very different. Since Google provides a service and the ‘product’ never leaves the Google data-centre it is really easy to make iterative improvements fast.

When I worked at Yahoo! we could roll out normal, (not high-priority) changes every fortnight; usually during the middle-of-the-week. It will be a similar situation at Google. When you have something as high-priority as the privacy issue, you can bet that heaven and earth will be moved, so that once-a-fortnight schedule can be shrunk a bit and it has been with the first fixes rolling out within a few days.

Contrast this with Kryptonite who took months to rectify their lock problem when it became worldwide news six years ago, or the months of fixing braking systems that Toyota is going to go through.

One of the things that Mark Pack was concerned with was that Buzz was obviously an early ‘beta’ release, but not labeled as such. Beta release is a software term that traditionally means that your mileage may vary on a product. Features may vary, appearances change and the service may be flaky.

But with the advent of web services beta has become more than a label or a stage in software development: into a state-of-mind. Google has helped train at least some of the public into the into the beta mindset. Most of the time that consumers bet on Google has been rewarded with a product that provides superior utility; for example Google Search, Blogger and GMail. This earned Google their licence to innovate.

So what would it take to have Google’s licence to innovate revoked? Will Buzz have it revoked? No. Not by a long shot. Google has made some products that disappointed (Q&A, Wave, Jaiku, Orkut - big in Brazil is a fact, not an excuse) of which Buzz may be one of them, but the licence being revoked will be a cumulative ’straw-on-the-camel’s back’ kind of thing.

As a good rule of thumb, check out the way the world slowly turned against Microsoft. It wasn’t Microsoft Bob and Windows’95 was a ‘greater-than-Vista’ technical cock-up that turned into a classic case study into how you can make lemonade out of lemons. It was a number of things: the anti-trust case, the devastation of the start-up industry as no one wanted to start a business in an area Microsoft may want, the BSOD (blue-screen-of-death) that told you it was time for a coffee break, the ‘I love you’ virus and countless other Windows perils that ran the goodwill meter down.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that Google is not slipping into darkness, despite Buzz not being the company’s brightest hour. This was originally posted over at my personal blog renaissance chambara.

The vast majority of these ads are from the USA and generally from Republicans. Like them or loathe them, they do campaigning very well, especially during the Karl Rove era.

First up however is one of Obama’s ads. He never created “great” ads, but a good deal of his involved just him, speaking directly into camera to the audience. This has the benefit of giving a personal message and engaging directly with the viewer. In this ad, he also personalises the story of his mother’s death and the extra pain of her death due to the insurance system in the US. He then brings that story back to the personal lives of everyday Americans which is vital for a successful visual engagement strategy.

If only he was still showing this ad in the last 6 months.

This Carly Fiorina ad is bizarre. Nick named the Demon Sheep ad, it has become the object of ridicule but also fascination. It is weird and out there and I guess that is its charm. I don’t think it will work, it’s too long, appeals to a fairly small part of the population (the Tea Party) and most importantly, it doesn’t actually target the candidate that is leading the race. This is an attack ad for a spot of the Republican California Senator ticket. Fiorina attacks Tom Campbell, who is a leading member of Governor Arnie’s Cabinet. They are both losing ground to Republican Chuck De Vore, a State Assemblyman who is know for his ultra conservative stance. No wonder she was rated as one of the US’s top 20 worst ever CEOs.

George Bush Senior’s attack ad on Michael Dukakis is one of the most infamous ever. Drew Westen describes it as “one of the low points in American electoral history.” Willie Horton was a felon of the worst order and whatever happened for him to be released was clearly a mistake. The ad however has become part of history. Using emotive, almost subliminal written messaging such as Rape, Kidnap, Stab, stuck in the heads of the public. Fear is everywhere in this ad, the frightening statements, the scary mugshot, the fact that you could be the person stabbed, kidnapped and raped under a Dukakis Government. It is enough to frighten anyone. In fact, this ad wasn’t even an “official” Bush Campaign ad. It was made by the Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC).

Willie by the way wasn’t his real name, he went by William, but that’s not as scary either.

Hilary Clinton’s 3am ad made a big difference during the 2008 primaries and was one of the reasons why she stayed in the race so long. Questioning Obama’s ability and experience, she came up with a pretty powerful and effective ad. It preyed on the fears of parents and grandparents alike. It gave her a good boost in the polls, but let’s face it, the rest is history

Gough Whitlam was the Australian Labor Prime Minster from 72-75 after 23 years of Liberal-Country Government, mostly under Sir Robert Menzies. This ad may seem a tad naff now, but at the time, the ad and the slogan “It’s Time” was hugely influential. Delightfully simple, the slogan simply pointed at the last quarter of a century under a Conservative Government, similar to the Change slogan used by the Obama campaign. No one over in the UK would realise, but the singers are all Australian celebrities and politicians. Australian’s might notice a young Jack Thompson, Jackie Weaver, Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton singing away. Whitlam however only lasted 3 years before he was controversially sacked by the Governor General Sir William Kerr. Whitlam, on the stairs of Parliament House then made the statement “God Save the Queen, because nothing will save the Governor General.” Thus started the first big push for an Australian Republic.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jykIqQxEOw]

Ronald Reagan put this ad out for his re-election campaign in 1984 and it is brilliantly simple. Patriotic, conservative and a vision back to the halcyon days of America. He doesn’t even appear or speak in it, but at the same time he seems both Presidential and grandfatherly.

Just like his father, Bush Junior wasn’t officially behind this ad, but it was paid for by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. There were plenty of memorable negative ads that hit Kerry hard, but this was particularly effective. Kerry made a big deal out of his Vietnam veteran status saying in a time of war, it was important to have a Commander and Chief who had proper military experience. Kerry won two Purple Hearts and one Silver Star for his heroism, but there were controversial circumstances surrounding this award and this came to the fore in the 2004 Presidential campaign. Kerry also immediately came back to the US post the war and began protesting against it. His initial campaign strategy was to portray him as a war hero, but not long after, these swift boat vets came out and hit Kerry hard. Again, the rest is history

Cross posted with my personal blog

This list is by no means definitive and if anyone wants to send links to some campaigning ads, that would be great, I’d love to watch them.

This post will focus on a few advocacy ads, starting with the Robin Hood Tax ad that has been the focus of the media of late. It is a very simple ad, two voices, one face but plenty of emotion. Bill Nighy plays a leading banker who ends up squirming in response to the questioning about why a Tobin Tax shouldn’t be created. Squirming bankers is something that reverberates with a good portion of the public at the moment. This campaign plays to the slightly divergent emotions of good will and revenge brilliantly.

This next ad scares the heck out of me, although I’m not sure how effective it is. Shock ads, as I have written before, have the tendency to decline in effectiveness over time simply because of people being desensitized. I’m not sure anyone would be able to put themselves in this guys shoes, unless they have been in the same situation.

This shock ad from PlaneStupid, the organisation that focuses on climate change issues caused by the global aviation industry, is different from the previous one however. Shocking - yes. Disturbing - definitely. Effective - most certainly. Polar bears dropping from the sky crushing cars and smashing into buildings may seem like an odd choice, but it is actually very clever. The stance is that every person on a trans-Atlantic flight creates 400kg of carbon. Most people can’t conceptualize what that means however. A polar bear, which is also an icon of climate change devastation, is imaginable. Therefore this appeals to our sense of wanting to save these animals, horror at their gruesome deaths but it also puts our carbon footprint into a physical and understandable context. It was filmed in Canada, but it could be any city, again personalising the imagery.

The final ad is one that has screened on UK screens recently and was the subject of a number of complaints, but is far more subtle that the polar bear ad. Act on CO2 is a non-departmental government body that is the public face of the Government’s climate change policy. This ad simply shows a father telling a bed-time story to his child, but it is a story of the effects of climate change and includes drowning pets and other disturbing results of unabated climate change. But this ad is clever in the fact that it appeals on a personal level to adults and children. This ad scares children, hence the complaints, but it also contextualizes climate change for them ensuring they understand the potential of doing nothing. It also will frighten adults on a parental level - how can I let my child live in a world like this, what can I do to prevent it?

As I said, this isn’t a complete list, but it just a tester. I’d love your thoughts and if you want to send me other campaigns, feel free. I’ll post the political ad blog in the next couple of days.

Cross posted with my personal blog

The user signed up for a Flickr account, favorited one of my pictures and added me as a contact. With flickr this connection doesn’t need to be reciprocated. After a suitable amount of time they then notified me by Flickr of a set that they had created that they thought I would be interested in.

This set consisted of two trailers for “Shen Yun Performing Arts”. I was struck by how much more involved the process of creating this spam was compared to the usual email. This is cross-posted from my personal blog renaissance chambara.

Arun’s interest was raised by the initially cool reaction from the analyst community. This often happens when a product launches after months – or in this case years – of speculation. With pent-up expectation in the market, however great the eventual product turns out to be, there are commentators who write about how it could have been just a little bit better. When this happens, monitoring of initial reaction is crucial. The communications programme must adapt quickly and address any misconceptions that can quickly spread and threaten product adoption.

The Google brand is now embedded in our daily lives and, for most people, means more than just search. Translating the brand into a physical product-in-your-pocket is something new and potentially risky for the company. It will have to quickly develop competency in consumer hardware communications and manage the huge global interest in its new strategy. Initial media coverage has concentrated on the handset itself. The first challenge is to communicate the benefits beyond a shiny new mobile phone and get the media to focus on the power of the underlying Android platform and associated apps.

Google still has a lot to prove. If it gets things right (and Google isn’t used to failing), it has a huge opportunity to grow a new hardware business to complement its online products. One thing is certain, the battle of the smartphone platforms has only just started.

According to Forrester, digital marketing spend has increased almost five-fold over the past decade to account for 12 per cent of marketing spend. Most of this is email marketing, search and display advertising. However, the decline of clickthrough rates (or effectiveness in terms of acting on the call-to-action) of these marketing vehicles has been well-documented as far back as 2007.

In addition, Google search advertising has largely become optimally priced from an economic point-of-view, so smart online marketers are becoming more open to experimentation.

I expect this to continue and expand in 2010. A second reason why expect this to expand is that with the recession-led decline in spend on above-the-line (ATL) marketing through reducing spent on advertising inventory in print and broadcast media marketers are starting to think differently about their relationship with current and prospective customers. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Google sees a corresponding decline in spend on keywords as well.

A classic example of this ATL change came out of an interview that Tyler Brule did with Gildo Zegna (pronounced Zen-yah), CEO of luxury brand titan The Ermenegildo Zegna Group for the Monocle magazine podcast series. Zegna is interesting because he sits at the head of a dynamic family-owned business not hamstrung by institutional investors trying to second guess him.

Tyler Brule: Share with us three or four business lessons that you learned over the past year?

Gildo Zegna: From a personal standpoint, I think that what I learned was stick to the DNA of the brand. Be real, be genuine, try to keep a very close contact with the customer, listen to him and if he or she says something that you don’t like just be sure to execute rapidly.

It could be something about the service, it could be something about the price, it could be something about the creativity, it could be something about being more aggressive on how you enter markets so I think that in one word: stick to the DNA of the brand.

Tyler Brule: What are your key focuses on 2010/11?

Gildo Zegna: I just had my management meeting last week in Milano, I said listen guys back to new normality and back to growth. Cost control, shorter lead time, work with low inventory and keep investing. I think that I can believe that if you cannot afford new investment today, because unless you are a brand that has the capacity whether it is your money or money you borrowed from the financial system: now you will not make it.

I think that speed and the way you make a well thought decision is important, but surely don’t stop investing either in your store, new markets, new people and of course marketing. I think one of the biggest cut I had to do this year is in media, but you know above-the-line, below-the-line I did not save anything, events - I have never done so many events in-store. Why? Go and meet the customer, talk to them, even if he doesn’t buy anything he will come back next season. Because next season he will be poor not to buy, or not to enjoy. These are some of the activities, you know, working with you guys (Monocle) on new ideas: co-branding or new products or new services. So I think just be energetic and be creative, but at the end you have to have the resources to do it. You just can’t do it by mouth and if you do it well and if you do it in the right way then I think that business comes back.

New areas of experimentation are likely to include the use of location-based services. For instance, restaurants are already offering discounts through Foursquare and Plantronics sponsored the development of the Work Snug iPhone application (which is awesome) targeted at road warriors and digital nomads. In common with all the applications utilising GPS it eats batteries like nothing else, so use, but use sparingly. There is a lot of life left yet in cell triangulation yet.

In common with me-too social media campaigns and applications, users will soon tire of overused mobile ideas in the same way that Vampires, poke variants and re-skinned Flash platform games bored them in the past.

I hope that the biggest change will come from businesses not thinking of social marketing in terms of Facebook or Twitter; but in a more holistic way which takes it into the analogue world just like Mr Zegna’s small store events because this is all about people, everything else is just facilitating stuff. And if business becomes a more human thing, it is harder to replicate and easier to turn into a lifelong customer relationship. This was published over at my personal blog.

However, you then have the problem of seeing your name plastered over absolute tat.

Welcome to Shawn Stussy’s world. I am a big Stussy fan and it is a rare season where I don’t buy something from their collection, but some of the stuff is pretty ropey and I sympathise with Shawn Stussy’s predicament; which is why I look forward to seeing what his new venture S-Double Studios will come out of the trap with. This was posted from my personal blog.

On the 4^th of January The Conservative Party launched their election campaign by releasing this new 15-ft wide poster, which is erected on 759 sites across the country. Already it has been one of the talking points of the election campaign and like marmite, people either love or hate it. So, I wanted to have a look at the key features that are drawing attention:

The face: The Conservative Party have conceded that the face has had ‘minor’ airbrushing. Left-wing critics have drawn attention to this saying it shows his preoccupation with style, whilst the Conservatives say the picture was chosen partly by Samantha Cameron as it was serious-looking.

The clothes: Cameron is shown without a tie, which has become a common feature of his leadership. Apparently this was developed by Steve Hilton, his PR guru, to show that he is both in touch and ready for business. Advertisers have said that this image gives off a strong message of his willingness to get on with the job of Prime Minister.

The text: The use of the term ‘I’ in the second sentence has been used to emphasise Cameron’s popularity over Gordon Brown, advertisers suggest. Combined with the photo it emphasises him rather than the party as the selling point to the voters. It is reported that Conservative polling suggests this is one of Cameron’s big pluses. Critics have parodied the big brother nature of the poster and said it shows Cameron is a modern element in an old-fashioned party.

The message: The message, highlighting the NHS, has been used to counter the Labour attempts to define themselves as a party of investment. It is also highlighting one of the cores of the Conservative election strategy - the size of the budget deficit.

Some people have highlighted the use of the term ‘cut’ in the same sentence as the NHS may impact negatively. The terms could be associated and seem too negative.

Reaction to the poster

Labour party figures immediately attacked the poster because it was airbrushed. John Prescott went on the attack parodying David Cameron and the Daily Mirror also criticised the poster.

But other advertising figures have said it sends a strong message and plays to his key strengths. Commentators also say that it shows the speedier start to the election campaign on behalf of the Conservative Party. This could reflect the greater funds reported to be at the Conservative leaders’ disposal.

So, bearing that all in mind, what do you think? Hit, Miss, Maybe?

For me it is a HIT - simple, effective and to the point. But I know others will think differently.