The thoughts of a creative...

And I thought that dinosaurs were extinct.....

2011-04-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

......obviously I was wrong.

It started off with a simple, yet hectic plan.

Get up, sort my clothes out, make my son (3 years old and a half) a cup of tea and breakfast, get my daughter and wife up, go to the shop, make some packed lunches and head off to a business breakfast.

I was kind off figuring out that once I got to the business breakfast things would calm down a little.....

....I mean of course we'd have to have the preening session first over a bacon cob. A business breakfast wouldn't be the same without various businessmen and women displaying their feathers.

Nothing I hadn't done before. No problem.

Except I hadn't figured on one thing......

......see it was a business breakfast I thought was hosted by Flint, Bishop and Barnett - a legal firm - and it's theme was LinkedIn and the benefits of it.

I thought it would be beneficial to me - I'm not exactly your traditional businessman - I tend to specialise in the Social Networks and trends that everyday people use but I was eager to learn more. After all Liquid ID have a LinkedIn page I manage and maybe I could use it more fully.

It was decided therefore that a good - or maybe even great - idea would be to have some QR Codes printed that we could hand out that linked through to our LinkedIn profile to help us connect.

Clever eh? Getting people who had gone to learn how to connect with others on LinkedIn to connect with us.

Better still anybody that did got a free set of QR-coded business cards from our sister company - Immediate Design @ Printing.com.

Now maybe, just maybe, if I known that a "co-partner" at the event was BCS Digital - another digital marketing firm - was co-hosting the event I might have thought differently. I'm a naturally polite person, both at work and at home and I'd have probably checked for permission to hand anything out. Hey though, I 'm being honest - I might not of, it was after all an event based on Social Networking.

Either way I didn't know this and handed my codes out.

It went pretty well - the people there who I gave them to were recepetive and interested. But then - enter stage left - the figure of Murray Carmichael-Smith, Group Managing Director at BCS.

Now I don't know Murray at all. He may well donate half of his weekly earnings to charity whilst helping those less fortunate than him across the road. What I do know is Murray was angry - very angry.

After a brief conversation where I explained to Murray that I had no idea his firm were involved - I mean why would I? I've never heard of them - I apologised for any confusion and stressed, because I genuinely meant it, that no offence was intented and returned to my seat.

Murray decided to clear all of the codes from the tables - which I must stress was his right. But then round 2.

Murray now told me I could finish my coffee and must then leave the premises. Not his premises you understand, they were the property of Derby County with the suite honoured with the name of Dave Mackay - a working class, no-nonsense Scotman who may have possibly thought Murray was a mint.

Now I knew people at the event. They knew me and other people knew we knew each other. So I agreed politely that I would leave.

Did I have issues with Murray's attitude to the subject of "connecting"? Yes.

Did I have issues with Murray's level of manners? Yes.

But I decided that with no fuss at all I would leave. All I asked for was "10 seconds" of his time. 10 seconds. 10.

I'd like to think I was worth at least 10 second of anybodies time. But apparently not. Murray informed me that I most definately wasn't and he was literally coerced by my body remaining present in the room to give them to me.

At which point I.......once again reiterated my reasoning behind what I did - politely and calmly.

See the thing is this - I know something Murray doesn't know. Liquid ID knows something that Murray doesn't know.

We know the world is changing and changing fast. Whilst one side of the divide pulls down the blinds to spend a whole day and countless £'s of their clients money on pre-planning meetings for campaigns that take more planning, there's another side of the divide....

......a side that lives Social Media and breathes Social Media. That can get your message out in an instant and to thousands more people than any pre-planning meeting can generate.

It was once said that a lie can get twice round the world while the truth puts its boots on. A true Social Media strategist can send your message 10 times round the world while the others are just planning.

You can't keep Social Media and Networking in a box Murray. It's bigger than you and bigger than me. It's the biggest thing since the Industrial Revolution.

We want to connect with each other. The more the merrier. If you'd wanted an advert I could have organised you one. It was a business breakfast based on networking.

Some people just don't get it.

Liquid ID are open and honest - at all times. Ask a dinosaur for a quote - it's your right. Then ask a gazelle.

Then sit back and imagine which one will help you burst to the front of the pack.

PS: Murray. We got 28 direct scans in 3 minutes. And you owe me a bacon cob.

Regards,

DT.

The pulse of the Internet....

2011-04-03T00:08:00.000-07:00

.....came into being just over 5 years ago.

It was on March 26th, 2001 that this happened...

.....the first Tweet ever. Sent by Jack Dorsey (@jack), one of the co-founders of Twitter it set into motion a chain of events that leads to some of the most mind-blowing stats....

3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).
6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.
572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.

For you and your business Twitter is increasingly becoming a must-have. Customers could already be on there tweeting about you - hopefully it's good...but what if it's not? You need to be amongst them. Take your brand onto Twitter.

How the Internet Is Changing Advertising

2011-03-29T00:08:00.000-07:00

Nike - England Grand Slam Champions 2011 - Fail.

2011-03-27T02:35:00.000-07:00

Of course Social Media can go horribly wrong if the video you prepare in event of victory gets leaked when you lose!

Breaking News....Porn only the 2nd most popular thing on the Internet...and MySpace is dying....

2011-03-27T01:52:00.000-07:00

.....does that sound like news to you? Well it is.

Since the conception of the Internet and its use in homes in the UK porn has pretty much riding high since the beginning. Think of Bryan Adams doing everything he does for you for week after week and month after month - a number 1 that had lasted for ever.

But not any longer.

Research company Experian Hitwise has released results that show in January of this year site like Facebook accounted for 12.46% of all internet traffic. To put that into perspective that's 2.4 billion hits or 1/8 of all web site visits.

In comparison Entertainment websites including porn accounted for 12.18% of traffic.

It's the first time that Social Networking has overtaken Entertainment in terms of popularity with Facebook accounting for 56% of these types of visits.

In the UK 30 million people have now signed up as members of Facbook - almost 50% of the overall population.

There's no such good news for MySpace however. 10 million users deserted the site between January and February of this year and with half of the staff being made redundant and year on year losses of members hitting 50 million all is not rosy in the social domain of Rupert Murdoch.

Social Media is not only here to stay but it's getting big...very big....and very fast. Soon you wont have to look for products online. Advertisers will find you - and they'll show you want you like when you like it.

But only the best will prosper - the comparison between Facebook and MySpace shows that.

What's your Social Media presence like?

It's advertising Jim....but not as we know it....

2011-03-23T00:19:00.000-07:00

......it's Social Media..or Social Intelligence.

The landscape is moving and everyday it moves faster.

Did you know??

Over 50% of the worlds population is under 30 years old.
Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users, TV took 13 years, the Internet took 4 years, the iPod took 3 years - Facebook added 200 million users in less than a year.
iPod application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months.

Spotting a pattern here? You should be. Here's some more...

If Facebook was a country it would be the worlds 3rd largest.
The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55 to 65 yr old females.
Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more followers on Twitter than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama.
50% of mobile internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook.
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world - in the time it took you to read this post 100+ hours of video will have been uploaded to it.
Wikipedia has over 15 million articles.
If you were paid a £1 for every article posted on Wikipedia you would earn £1,712 per hour.
There are over 200,000,000 blogs - word of mouth has now become world of mouth.
25% of search results for the worlds Top 20 Brands leads to user-generated content.
34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.
78% of consumers trust peer recommendations.
Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI - 90% of people skip adds on TV.
60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily.
We will soon no longer search for products online - they will find us on social media.

Social Media isn't a fad. It's a fundamental shift in the way we communicate - welcome to the revolution.

Deadlines....and worry lines....

2011-03-20T04:02:00.000-07:00

.....so next week is our latest company deadline.

The calm become stressed and the stressed become psychotic.

See our company and its parent company is a unique blend of sales, advertising and hi-tech...

....imagine a place where the pressure of selling advertising space - something we've done on behalf of many high profile organisations since 1987 - meets the demands of a customer base seeking newer, better and more innovative ways to promote their business to the masses.

And it's madness.

And you know what?? I love it. Every single second of it.

Why?? Well there's two schools of thought on it. Possibly people in creative are clinically insane. I have a wife working in Mental Health who'd be happy to give you a full breakdown on why I am.

Or maybe - just maybe - the world needs business people who live close to the edge. People who bring something new to the table, people who want to provide something different to their clients, something that works - something that improves their life and their business.

In this age the world is open to us all. Commerce, ideas and innovations are open to us all.

Sure it's stressful at times. But my god it's fun.

Adapt or die.....

2011-03-20T02:50:00.000-07:00

....it made me laugh.

Why? Because I laugh at things I shouldn't I suppose.

It you work in a creative organisation it should scare you too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERGrSQoY5fs

And then when you've finished feeling scared...

Work harder.
Fail harder.
Move faster.
Break stuff.

So we needed a blog....

2011-03-20T02:38:00.000-07:00

....but why?

Why does anyone need a blog? After all companies and businesses have survived for years without them. It's just a fad or a passing craze isn't it?

Or is it?

It depends on your (mental) age I guess. For sure, many years passed before something such as this was even a possibility. To let someone - anyone - know your thoughts within seconds of having them, sharing them with people, reading what they think - maybe even having them pass on and share your thoughts with their friends - is a relatively recent phenomenon.

And of course - if we survived for years without it - do we need it to survive?

The answer is probably yes and no. The survival of a business can't be attributed to one single factor such as the ability to reach the masses with ease.

Good product and good service are probably the two most important things any business could have. And after all, you don't need a blog, website, Facebook or Youtube account for any of these.

Think of the fruit and veg salesman. He needs a physical premise, good products and a good demeanour with his customers. With these there's every chance he'll survive.

But prosper?

We live in an interactive age. It arrived in the 90's and it's never going away. Not ever.

Customers and clients have higher demands. Bigger demands. More demands. And as with any business - you're are the servant of your customer.

Anything that sets you apart, allows the customer inside the world of the business that serves them, shows them you, your business and the way you work sets you apart.

It's a competitive world. Do we need all these new methods of communication to survive? No, our parent company has been going strong since 1987.

Do we need them to prosper? Yes.

And you do too.