Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 ( 3 responses )
Several years ago, before the iPhone was launched I was thinking about the current man-machine interaction methods. Most of them are built around touch. Buttons for example or the latest trend - the multitouch interface popularized by Apple.
But is this as good as it gets? Probably not. Enter motion detection and processing.
1. Motion detection and [...]
Written by Mihai Dragan on Friday, June 26th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: iran, michael jackson, social media
“Michael Jackson, Mike, Jacko, RIP Michael Jackson, Michael, Thriller, King of Pop, Iran”
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: conventional, digital, media, online
As I’ve worked so far with quite a few, I have noticed that advertising on large media companies usually means selling digital as an extra to existing TV/Print/Radio clients.
I think this is wrong. A large client that usually advertises on TV, print and others might not really be interested in the company’s digital content advertising.
Also, a client that is not usually a conventional media buyer might be really interested in the digital content. It seems that they are unfortunately ignored usually.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 ( 4 responses )
Tags: agencies, future, interactive, media
As I previously gave you a brief (very brief) history of advertising here and here, now is the time to talk a little about tomorrow. About tomorrow’s agencies, as I see them.
New Media. Printed on old media.
I found a great post by Tim Williams called “What if the advertising agency died tomorrow”. Probably the best sentence I found there was “The advertising agency passed of a narrow mind. It died from a lack of understanding that there is no such thing as “new media”“. It states my take on interactive versus conventional perfectly.
Long time ago print was king. Along came radio and TV. They changed the media scape and advertising as well. It was the birth of the 30 second spot, the blockbuster brand and helped advertising industry establish itself as one of the fastest growing industries.
This was also the birth of “trumpeter swan” creative and art directors, the birth of advertising festivals and a certain lifestyle for all those in this industry.
One day, a bright computer scientist by the name of Tim-Berners Lee, started what will has become the fastest growing media in the history of human kind: the world wide web. This was the wonder that tied people together and changed the way we see information, media and even ourselves as citizens of the world.
Frankly I find old media (print, TV, even radio), those one-way communication channels, so limited and limiting that I cannot comprehend their survival to this day. I am, however, sure they will converge to interactive driven media in a very short span of time.
So will agencies. Tomorrow’s “conventional” agencies will be interactive - powered. That’s why MB Dragan was repositioned to “Agency for Tomorrow”. An interactive agency that can deliver results just as well as conventional agencies.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: advertising, direct mailing, ogilvy, targeting
In his legendary “Ogilvy on Advertising”, David Ogilvy had a very interesting opening sentence in his direct mail chapter:
“One day a man walked into a London agency and asked to see the boss. He had bought a country house and was about to open a hotel. Could the agency help him to get customers? He had $500 to spend. Not surprisingly, the head of the agency turned him over to the office boy, who append to be the author of this book. I invested money in penny postcards and mailed them to well-heeled people living in the neighborhood. Six weeks later the hotel opened to a full house. I had tasted blood.”
Ogilvy fell inlove with direct mailing and he later mentions the wonders he has witnessed over the years: computers. He shows enthusiasm in how can they be used to select names by demographic classification, by frequency or amount of purchase. The man is thrilled at the idea he can merge and purge lists, send personal mails and many others we now take for granted as the internet evolved. Have I mentioned we are talking about 1983?
He is also known for his clear and to the point copywriting, for inserting coupons encouraging readers to “buy now” or send feedback to companies.
With his focus on targeting, filtering, measuring and interacting with consumers Ogilvy built one of the biggest agencies in the world and probably the most popular.
But that was then …
[to be continued]
Written by Mihai Dragan on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: advertising history, giants of advertising, raymond rubicam
Back in the day (and by that I mean around 100 years ago) Raymond Rubicam (founder of the famous Young&Rubicam) had a hard time getting clients to admit or even understand his impact on their business. Business back then had more to do with production and assembly lines than it had to do with sales, marketing and others.
These notions were not too popular with the big guys at the time but Raymond knew what he was doing. He knew his impact on the business he advertised was huge.
So he helped his clients hire the best sales managers around. He helped them see a new way of doing business. He opened their eyes. How did he do it? He trusted what he did. He left his mark on the clients he advertised. He helped them evolve. Most important - he didn’t quit. He did not settle for the second place either.
“Resist the usual” Raymond used to say. He encouraged copywriters and art directors in his company to change whenever needed. He was a genius and an innovator.
But that was than…
[to be continued]
Written by Mihai Dragan on Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: online ads, Online Media, tv ads
I recently came across this report, from aArkStore regarding the online oportunities and trends. As IAB UK states the online ad spending will rival TV spending in the years to come.
Growth seems to have been made possible even in economic downturn times by the rise of social networks and an increasing number of internet users.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: quizoo, social media, twitter application, twitter bot
This week my colleague Andrei Gheorghe launched a pretty neat thingy using Twitter, a small website you might have heard of 
Andrei thought of giving users something too do while not blabing around about their lives and proffesion: play.
“Quizoo is a highly interactive trivia game build on top of the Twitter API platform. It asks a question every few minutes and the first twitter user to reply @quizoo with the correct answer wins the round and the point. Daily rankings are available at www.idevelop.ro/quizoo. Plans for the near future are to include more complex quests and tasks that need to be accomplished in order to find the correct answer” said Andrei.
Where is Quizoo going? I don’t know. What I do know is agencies around the world have not yet tapped into Twitter communication.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: adoption rate, Interactive Advertising, Online Media
Last night I was invited to debate weather online advertising is overrated. Two people representing conventional agencies (some of the best) and two representing interactive agencies. Things got a little heated, we’ve got a little carried away (Latin characters, you know…) but in the end we had not reached our conclusion.
I couldn’t help think about it all day and reached some conclusions of my own
In the end we must see the holistic view: we do it for the client. And the client has separate objectives from the agencies’ . These objectives don’t really depend on GRPs or CTRs. They depend on keeping the business growing, having a larger and more satisfied customer base and others.
We can do this for the clients using our tools. Interactive agencies work with some tools, classic agencies work with others. In the end it’s the result that counts.
TV is more popular than Internet. So are newspapers. Radio used to be there too. Therefore they get more viewers and advertising.
TV also gets more money, more influence bla bla… you get the point.
However… rarely has human kind adopted anything as fast as it did adopt the Internet. As you can see here Internet has been adopted faster than automobiles, air travel, television, cell phones … well - everything.
This has caused quite a commotion with business in general. “Man, we have this new thing, the Internet”. “What does it do?”. “Well…I am not quite sure. But everybody’s doing it”.
Companies are not yet sure of what to make of it. Should they use it? Should they ignore it? Is this “Internet Advertising” thing good or bad? What is it with this “bloggers” and such? And how come all this Google-Doogle companies are making so much money - they have no product.
But they are there. Real or not their services are accessed and used by billions. They worth billions. Media companies are shifting to internet based, on demand services. Paid or not. News Corp invested 600 millions in something it’s yet to understand and monetize.
What Ogilvy invented might not last beyond the next 50 years. What Burnett used in the eighties might not have any kind of relevance for iTV or something similar to Apple TV.
What happens when written media is electronically updated, kind of like your RSS reader? Syndicated too, just like it. What happens then to the old-school ads?
What happens when people start being the advertising agencies? Think about it. Things like affiliate marketing take out the agency and connect the publisher directly to the client.
And in the end - what if … just saying … what if someday there will be no advertising left. Just information. Created, organized, consumed by the masses?
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 ( 3 responses )
Tags: brain to computer, brainwave computer, camspace, future, interaction, interactivity, motion detection, video
Several years ago, before the iPhone was launched I was thinking about the current man-machine interaction methods. Most of them are built around touch. Buttons for example or the latest trend - the multitouch interface popularized by Apple.
But is this as good as it gets? Probably not. Enter motion detection and processing.
Imagine having a huge screen in front of you. How would you interact with it? With a remote? Pressing buttons? Why not waving your hands around?
Funny? Maybe. Easy to use? For sure. We use gestures to communicate. Actually nonverbal communication amounts to almost 60% of meaning. And most of nonverbal communication is based on gestures. So why not really talk to computers?
About 3 years ago I was building a team focused on the study of video interaction based solely on gestures. The project was meant to run on Flash platforms and later used on mobile phones as a revolutionary way of interaction with mobile devices. Remember - that was previous to the iPhone. The project got canned due to lack of finance and I moved on.
This year I was thrilled when CamSpace launched. The technology is simply amazing not only by what it does but by what it can do. Imagine interacting with any device without keyboard, mouse or even touch. Here’s a quick demo:
I expect this kind of interactive processing mainstream in the next 5-10 years, used in entertainment, advertising, communication and even home appliances.
Throughout the centuries mankind has learned to control animals, tools and the world around it with physical gestures. Means of control got restricted to push, pull, touch etc. The time has come to redefine that.
Scientists and technology companies are working on developing brain-to-computer interfaces. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are working on the mind-reading computer. Better yet - the device that lets us communicate to computers in a way we could not before.
What you have there is one way we can use this. This man was paralyzed from the neck down. He managed to get 90% of the tasks he was supposed to correctly. Using only his brain. This kind of technology can offer paralyzed people, people that are trapped in their bodies the freedom they’ve once lost.
But it can do much more. Using it we can one day achieve instant connectivity to anyone on the planet. We can drive complicated machines without any prior training. We can communicate like never before with computers and humans and much more…
…But that will take time. My bet is the close future belongs to touch. And for those embracing this new interaction method - here are a few tips on designing touch user interfaces.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Friday, April 10th, 2009 ( 4 responses )
Tags: brands, conversation, death of advertising, evolution, management, Marketing
I can safely assume that advertising as we know it is bound to disappear in the next 10-15 years. Why? Because it’s loud and boring. Useless most of the time.
The internet, our fastest media yet is a conversation. People talk, discuss and engage one another just like they do in the real world. The best online advertising does the same thing. Once in a while something, which I would define as conventional-to-online advertising comes in and bothers them. Screaming. Waving hands. Going all “look at me, I am here!” on the users.
Just like TV. Just like print. Just like outdoor advertising. All of them scream. I belong to a generation that was born with advertising in its current form and that can’t be tricked into “seeing” ads. We want what we want.
We will google before buying, read reviews, ask friends and google again. We need to trust a brand before engaging it. We need to bond with it. We need to know this brand gets close to us and has a chat whenever we feel like.
The advertising as we know it can’t provide this. And it goes beyond advertising. The changes companies need to make to survive are also in their marketing department, in their management attitude and just as well in the R&D department.
The death of advertising is coming. Long live the brand conversation.
