"first direct has launched a marketing campaign to illustrate how their award winning customer service would be delivered if it had a team of representatives out and about on the streets"

This just about says it all... I loved the video when I first saw it - thought it was a bit of an exaggeration but was really keen to see what the Buddies actually did do, and what would happen if the app existed - where would it lead? How helpful would it be? Was this going to be a revolution in online service from a bank?

But alas! Not only were all the viral clips a complete spoof campaign, the Buddies don't exist at all - in no shape or form. Not online, nowhere. It's just business as usual at First Direct but they wanted to highlight how great their regular staff were.

So all in all it's irrelevant to me how their award winning customer service would be delivered if it had a team of representatives out and about on the streets. Because it doesn't have street-based reps, and it's an online brand. (BTW Why couldn't they have buddies who go out of their way online?). So it's just another brand shouting about how good it is without actually changing anything.

Lovely infographic but more importantly it's flexible enough to let you compare the information you need.

I particularly like this one as it highlights the different experience of the internet between two countries - in this case it shows how people in Nigeria tend to use mobiles more than PCs to go online, whereas it is the reverse in the UK. Interesting that we see our future in mobile whereas developing countries are already there.

This did the rounds last week and it is just such a useful collection of inspiring stuff that I am keeping it here.

 

 

 

http://fuckingpowerpointgold.tumblr.com/

Once you've figured out what the f*ck your social media strategy should be, you can use these to deliver serious powerpoint impact.

When the happiness machine struck last year it was a truly exciting piece of content that went viral immediately and seemed to actually bring a little bit of coke happiness to those who watched it.

Now's it has struck again, this time in London. The students all look really delighted, but I'm guessing they never saw the original video. I just can't get any sense of joy or surprise out of this version.

I came across this YouTube Street Soccer Tour channel entirely by accident today and it screams Nike even though it's unbranded. Is Nike behind it? If they are, it's a pretty awesome approach to owning football at the time that Adidas is sponsoring World Cup. I was aware of Pepsi's (rather well executed) strategy of owning football at World Cup time without actually being an official sponsor (and therefore undermining Coca-Cola's huge sponsorship investment), but I hadn't thought about it in terms of Adidas/Nike until now when this Edgar David tour and this fabulous video pop up in the same week. 

I loved this video when it was first shared, but here on his "In less than 6 minutes" TED Talk, Derek Sivers draws out a few guiding principles for how movements are started. It's so short you might as well watch it, but I wanted to capture the two final conclusions anyway:

1. If you are a leader, nurture your first few followers as equals, it's about the movement - not about you.

2. Leadership is overglorified. It's really the first follower who transforms the lone nut into a leader, so if you're really trying to start a movement have the courage to follow and show others how to follow.

Nice!

This is just a quick observation that I wanted to share. 

Watching Michael Palin's Himalaya tonight took me right back to my most memorable holiday in the Hindu Kush in Northern Pakistan and I thought it was time to get those pictures out again. Since Chitral is a pretty basic town, we even stayed in the same hotel, owned by Siraj and his lovely family.

Judging by the comments in the Brand Republic press release you would think there are some among us in the marketing community who are a little jealous...

"Lisa Prince, a planner who encounters a lot of data in her day to day job, noticed from sitting in the (occasional) boring meeting that the way in which data was being presented was becoming more interesting, and if you squinted your eye a little, even quite beautiful."