A large part of my job at isobar involves staying abreast of what's going on in the world of communications, especially digital. How consumer behaviour and attitudes are changing; what technologies are coming up and the implications thereof; what opportunities and challenges face brands in this new era, etc.
Given this, you'd think I'd be a poster child for industry news blogging. But I'm not.
After a few false starts years back, I made a deliberate decision not to blog about digital developments. Partly 'cos there are so many other great people out there doing it. Partly 'cos back then the company I worked for was pretty sensitive and didn't like me sharing things. Partly 'cos, frankly, I didn't want what little personal time I had to get sucked into the vortex of writing a work-related blog.
But times have moved on, and nowadays it seems you're nobody without a web presence.
I still don't have a traditional style industry blog. But I do have a bunch of things you might be interested in.
These are what I consider to be the most important consumer trends in the digital arena. For each I've written a description - occasionally these might get a bit rambly so apologies in advance! - plus slides and various other stuff that backs it up. I'm going to try and update this regularly.
- Blurring between real and virtual worlds
- Rise of on demand media
- Grassroots media and user-generated content
- Rise of ecommerce
- Others
This is my opinion on the implications of these developments for marketers. Note: perhaps extracts from this might pop up on A.N.Other site later, but as they're my words I wanted to put them here too, in their original form before they get tweaked beyond recognition. Link
These are my forecasts - in very condensed form - for the next 3 years in terms of developments in media from a device/technology perspective. I wrote these back in January 2006 in response to a question from a client. Thought I'd post them here, as it'll be quite fun to look back in a year or two and see how far off I was! I'm also going to spice it up a bit by adding in links to the odd slide or article that relates, so hopefully this will grow into something that's a useful reference.
- The next 3 years: TV
- The next 3 years: Internet
- The next 3 years: Games
- The next 3 years: Mobile
This is a selection of slides that I post on Flickr. They're in no particular order and they're not limited in scope, other than that generally they're all related to the changing communications landscape. Many of them, but not all, you'll have seen scattered about the other sections of this site. Basically, whenever I come across a quote or stat that particularly resonates, I now try and make a slide about it. It's starting to take on a life of its own, to the extent that they're soon to be syndicated at Futureblog. I've found them to be particularly helpful in terms of sparking conversations, far more so than the usual powerpoint guff.
These are my delicious links. I use delicious as a kind of digital filing cabinet, albeit one in which the labelling sometimes gets a bit out of control! Feel free to have a rummage.
And, what the hell, this is my LinkedIn profile.