I’m very excited to be invited by SaaS accounting system provider Xero to do a presentation to their customers and partners.

Xero is an amazing New Zealand company and if you haven’t already you should demo their product. Currently only available in New Zealand, but will be coming to the UK and Australia very soon.

Here are the details if you would like to attend:

The advent of social media, the increased uptake of broadband worldwide and the growing choice of communication tools have changed marketing forever - to a new era of customer participation.

Xero, along with interactive agency Marker, invites you to attend a breakfast to discuss this new participatory era and the impact for New Zealand businesses like yours.

Date: Friday 16 November 2007

Time: 7:30 am

Place: Xero, Level 1, Old Bank, 98 Customhouse Quay, Wellington, New Zealand

Register to: Lucy Hempseed lucy.hempseed@xero.com or phone: (04) 819 4837

Technorati Tags: saas, web 2.0 events, xero

Have finally had some time to try and hack this 1.1.1 iPhone again. Managed to do it WITHOUT downgrading the firmware to 1.0.2, which is what all the guides say you have to do.

It was quite a process though. I’ll post up full instructions soon as I’m sure I can’t be the only person that has problems. Most of the guides out there assume a certain older model of iPhone I think.

But for now, I’m too busy setting up my toy.

Technorati Tags: iphone

I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at the Uber:savvy event this morning to kick off the yMedia Challenge.

"the yMedia Challenge is a 2 week competition designed to connect media students with not-for-profit organisations."

I think my presentation went down okay, I got lots of questions at the end, but they did offer small bottles of 42 Below Vodka to anyone who asked one, so that might not be a fair reflection of interest from the audience!

I met some interesting people though:

Mike Brown who is the organiser of Webstock, easily the essential local event for the web community which is coming to Wellington in February. Very much looking forward to that one. Mike was the first speaker and did a fascinating intro into how people really drive web 2.0, not the technology.

Nigel Parker from Microsoft who gave an excellent overview of the emerging ways in which digital media can be consumed. This included demos of some of the latest Microsoft technologies including Siverlight, PhotoSynth and Microsoft Home Server. You can not understate the amount of investment Microsoft puts into research and development as well as the developer community.

I didn’t get a change to meet her personally, but Janet Mazenier, Programme Director, for the government’s Digital Strategy gave a speech. She admitted it was very hard to activate progress web projects, even within the organisation that is supposed to be leading the country. Three months to get a blog live. I can’t actually find the blog though. I think this organisation can make a real difference, if they can provide direction for government departments and state owned enterprises around blog policies. Tell the public sector that having a blog where people might make a comment that disagrees with your view is okay. This is still a democracy isn’t it?

It was well worth giving up a Saturday morning for this, everyone I met had something interesting to say and the organisers Pamela, Adele and Jade at yMedia are all exceptionally friendly people to deal with…plus they gave me Vodka as a thank you.

Technorati Tags: ymedia

This is a fascinating look, by GigaOM, at how Web 2.0 is playing a part in the tragic California Fire Crisis.

It is so appropriate that the only industry with an acronym for a name, FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods), should be so dominated with jargon. I have only worked with clients in this industry in the last 18 months and I have to say I find it quite fascinating.

They do, however, speak a different language. Here is a quick guide to get you started:

Oils

This refers to the petrol stations owned by the major oil corporations. E.g. Shell, BP, Caltex etc. There is far great margin on chocolate bars and soft drinks sold in the shop, than the petrol on the forecourt. Due to the consolidated nature of the industry, the "oils" are an extremely lucrative trade partner for FMCG marketers, whilst at the same time having enormous purchasing power. They can literally make or break your brand in some cases.

Route

These are the diaries and small convenience stores. Much smaller customers, but important due to the large volume and the ability to get your products into as many neighbourhoods as possible.

Grocery

This is more obvious, the supermarkets.

BIB

Bag in Box - in the soft drink business this is the product you sell to fast food restaurants. Large plastic bags filled with concentrate which the restaurants can put into their machines and mix with carbonated water.

Flavour Flow Planogram

No, this has nothing to do with aging rap legend turned reality show star. A planogram is how products are presented in a glass fronted fridge or on a shelf in a shop or supermarket. A Flavour Flow Planogram is where products are arranged in order of flavours, so all the cola drinks, then all the water drinks, then all the lemon flavoured drinks etc.

Larger brand conglomerates like Coca-Cola obviously don’t want this. They want to be at the top of the aisle with all their products grouped together, so that you get all your different flavour products from their range and so by the time you get to the competitors, you already have everything you need for the week in your shopping trolley.

Carbonated Footprint

This is my favourite, refers to when a consumer will choose to buy a diet/sugar free soft drink when purchasing fast food so they can reduce their "Carbonated Footprint" and justify that extra burger/slice of pizza/fried chicken wing.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but I’ll add to it over time for my own reference more than anything.

Technorati Tags: fmcg

Google Analytics is going to get even more features soon.

"First, you’ll be able to use Google Analytics to track site search activity. Simply edit any of your Google Analytics profiles to enable “Site Search” and you can find out what people search for on your site and where these searches lead.

We’ll begin a limited beta test of the new Google Analytics Event Tracking capability. These new reports are designed to help you understand how people use and interact with Ajax, Flash and multimedia on your site without artificially increasing your pageview metrics.

We’ll also initiate a limited beta test in the coming weeks of our new Outbound Link Tracking feature.

Finally, Brett announced the Urchin Software from Google limited beta. Urchin is a software product that you run on your own servers. "

Since Urchin was acquired by Google, they have clearly invested substantial resource in the the product development and in my opinion, have definitely scooped the entire category. The ability to track internal search easily and also handle the complexity of AJAX and Flash applications, which have traditionally been very hard to do with other analytics packages, is a huge advancement. This type of product/service requires continual re-investment in both product development and hosting capacity, and Google obviously have deep enough pockets to do both.

There are still some ongoing questions around the accuracy of the data, but to be honest, every analytics solution I have seen (pretty much all the major ones) in the last 10 years in this industry have had this. It is more that the data is consistent rather than the absolute numbers as really it is about trend analysis.

The other major question is will Google ever start charging for the service? Joel and Tim from our team met with the Analytics guy from Google this morning and he said they have no plans to charge for it, as it is great for them to sell more AdWords.

Technorati Tags: google, googleanalytics, webanalytics

Well not for you, just for me. My esteemed business partner is in the US at the moment and has just picked us up a new Apple iPhone each and it should be in my hands by Tuesday.

Technorati Tags: iphone

Very excited that renowned Australian search marketing event, Search Engine Room is coming to Auckland on 13th November 2007. This is a must for marketers interested in understanding more about search.

I’m even more excited that I’ve been asked to sit on a panel discussion in the afternoon.

4.45pm - 5.10pm … Search and The Online Marketing Budget: How fast should marketers shift their traditional advertising spend to the web? Where should that money go? How large a role should search play? This panel will discuss these and other key issues such as: what to look for in a search marketing company?
- John Schofield, Managing Director, The Internet Bureau
- Jon Beattie, Director, Marker

The short answer to these questions are:

• Very fast!
• Huge!
• A company that cares about performance and is prepared to base their remuneration on this

For the long answers, you’ll need to come to the session.

There are going to be some fantastic speakers and I urge you to come along if you can. If you are a client and would like to come as a guest of Marker, please let me know as we would love to have you there.

Technorati Tags: search, searchengineroom

I had posted about PayPerPost.com after I saw a presentation from their founder in New York earlier in the year. It seems they signed up TiVo for a campaign which was subsequently pulled.

PayPerPost is a marketplace where advertisers can pay bloggers to post up content allowing a marketer to seed a viral campaign. Bloggers who are paid to post must disclose that it is paid content, however, there is no shortage of critics who believe the concept of paid content will destroy the largely forthright nature of blogs in general.

It appears this is a similar issue to that which Microsoft faced when they gave Ferrari Acer laptops to bloggers when they launched Windows Vista. In that case, Microsoft was not very clear on what was expected of the blogger. It appeared to be a bribe when in fact all they really wanted to do was make it easy for bloggers to experience Vista without having to upgrade their own computer. They issued a statement later clarifying their position, but it was too late

TiVo paid for video clips to be posted on PayPerPost, but they didn’t make it explicit that this was essentially an ad.

The lesson for marketers is this:

You can not be disingenuous because you will get found out. If you are doing an advertising campaign, don’t try and dress it up as a consumer generated viral campaign, just be up front. Better yet, forget about trying to advertise and think about how you can truly engage with your customers in a conversation, not a campaign. That is the real opportunity online, not video ads.

For more on paid content read out Chad’s post “Why paid blogs will kill the blogosphere”

Technorati Tags: payperpost, tivo

All Blacks lose to France and drop out of the Rugby World Cup 2007 in the quarter-final. Ouch, isn’t that the worst result yet?

So how do New Zealand deal with losing what most consider to be “our cup”. They blame someone else. This is what New Zealand does best.

Don’t get me wrong, the referee did a terrible job in the first half, and that second French try was from a forward pass, but the All Blacks just didn’t step up. The French were dogged in defense but are an unremarkable team. These guys got whipped by Argentina remember!

Today it will be the referee, but in the coming weeks, the coaches will start to be brought into the blame game. The controversial rotation policy will be touted as a major strategic mistake, and some serious questions will be asked about the decision to leave Doug Howlett out of the game.

Blog Posts

• Referee win against the All Blacks
• All Blacks lose RWC to crap ref

Technorati Tags: all blacks, allblacks, rugbyworldcup, rugbyworldcup2007, rwc2007