The DCMS report is out now on influencers - well worth a look

Thanks to Stephen Waddington for sharing the report in his House of Marketing and PR Facebook Group. Being an 'influencer' is a relatively new career pathway and, despite what us oldies may think about it, is a growing sector. Marketing via influencers can be an effective way to reach your audience but behind the scenes, it's definitely not all glamour. Stephen highlights some key points from this morning's report:

• Influencer culture is a rapidly expanding and professionalising subsection of the UK’s vibrant creative industries, although the Government hasn't given it any attention.
• Behind the glamour that often colours perceptions of influencers, this is a challenging career beset by diversity issues, pay disparities, and a pervasive lack of employment support and protection.
• As the leaders of often small, niche and trusting communities, influencers can offer targeted and effective marketing services. Influencer marketing is therefore offering a lucrative opportunity for brands and advertisers as well as influencers.
• Updates to the enforcement powers of the Competition and Markets Authority and Advertising Standards Authority are urgently needed to prevent further damage to consumer trust.
• The lack of protection for children taking part in this new industry, both as consumers of influencer content and as influencers themselves, is a critical concern.

You can see the interactive version of the report here or download the PDF version here. It has also been widely reported on in the UK media, including the BBC here.

New comScore report: Mobile's Hierarchy of Needs

I just got an email from comScore announcing the release of a new global report, ‘Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs’. They tell us that this new report traces the global evolution of smartphones and tablets as they’ve become consumers’ primary digital tool, revealing specific behaviours for which these platforms are important to their daily lives. Data from 9 markets (USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, China and Indonesia) demonstrates audience and consumption trends, along with regional differences in digital landscapes.

Key insights revealed in ‘Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs’ include:

• Mobile devices account for more than 60% of all digital minutes in all 9 markets, led by app usage.
• The share of consumers abandoning desktop altogether varies dramatically by geography – from just 7% in the UK, to 70% in Indonesia.
• Messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ Instant Messenger and Line account for nearly 1 in 7 minutes in certain markets and led to a decline in standard SMS messaging.

I thought it was worth a look. You can download the report here: Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs report.

They have a bunch of other free whitepapers you may also find useful, including this recent one about Mums in the UK and their online behaviour, especially on smartphones.

Heroes of Mobile Goes to Leeds 3 & 4 November

I can't believe it's November already and it's just nine weeks to Christmas. Where does the year go? But as the evenings start to draw in, it's time to gather round campfires and tell ourselves stories about the battles we've won and lost, the monsters that lurk in the dark and the bright future that is waiting for us on the other side of winter. 

Ok, so maybe we don't have an actual campfire this time but we do have a beautiful converted Methodist Chapel in Leeds to hang out in. So this means that November is chock full of brain food from the team who brought you the Hacklands festival in August (you missed a cracker if you weren't there) – I'll be working again with Lloyd Davis of Tuttle Club fame, the fab aql team in Leeds and and James Tagg of Truphone.  

On Tuesday and Wednesday next week, we're all up in Leeds for the Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Goes North series – two days of talks and conversations about the future of work and mobile tech with contributions from Lesley Cowley, Bernard Ginns and Patrick Smith and includes the legendary Swedish Beers for the first time in the North of England. I'm also co-hosting a fabulous ladies lunch at Harvey Nicks. Fellow ladies in mobile and tech, you don't want to miss this! 

Come to as many of the sessions as you like, they're all free to attend and our friends at aql will make you very welcome indeed. There's plenty of space to hang out and co-work between sessions too.

Tuesday's sessions

10.00 for a 10.30 start to 12.30 Future of Work: Open Space with Lloyd Davis

14.00 to 15.00 Nothing Great is Easy with Patrick Smith

15.30 to 18.00 Innovation on the Fringe Goes to Leeds 

18.30 onwards Swedish Beers

Wednesday's sessions

10.00 for a 10.30 start to 12.30 Future of Mobile: Talk and Open Space with James Tagg and Lloyd Davis

12.30 to 14.30 Ladies Lunch with Lesley Cowley

14.30 to 15.15 The Yorkshire Post: The Journey from Print to Digital with Bernard Ginns

15.30 to 17.30 The Future of Mobile Advertising: Open Space with yours truly and Lloyd Davis

To RSVP, please click on the links above or go to http://heroesofmobileleeds.strikingly.com where all the registration forms are handily listed in one place.

And if you fancy making the trip from down South to Leeds, then may I recommend using http://hotwire.com for your hotel. I got a great deal there when I booked last week. Expedia also had a comprehensive list that included B&Bs and not just the big hotels.

Dear Mary Portas…

I had a bit of a rant on Facebook earlier today when grappling with Mary Portas’ latest report on the High Street – essentially an update on her Portas Review from a couple of years ago. She states that digital is one of the solutions to keeping our High Streets alive. There is some irony around her championing digital as part of the solution but then having a 40+ page document pretty much unreadable in a digital format. Suffice to say, I haven’t managed to read much further as I’ll have to print the document to read it properly. If someone else has read it, feel free to share the key points here!

You can read the full post here. The comments are also pertinent about why our High Streets are still important (or not). Feel free to add your point of view.

Download the free Mary Portas ‘Why our High Streets still matter’ report here (links straight to the pdf).

Download the original Portas Review here (links straight to the pdf).

Post by Helen Keegan.

Meeja–The Times They Are A-Changin’

Apologies for being a bit slow on the blogging front recently. I just got out of the habit. However, I’ve been busy squirreling away lots of articles and links to follow up on with blog posts should the moment come to blog.

As many of you already know, I do consulting work with media owners of all types and sizes, helping their senior teams get their heads around what’s happening in mobile and social and how it is impacting their business and what they might do about it. I recently did a talk to a group of Nordic media owners who were pretty horrified that I rarely went directly to an online or mobile newspaper to read it but followed random links from people I followed on a variety of social networks and as such, wouldn’t necessarily know which publication or which journalist I was reading.

Don’t get my wrong, by all accounts, media consumption of all types is in rude health when it comes to mobile and online. What isn’t so healthy are the business models to pay for that as well as the fact that many outlets are still focused on print as the main product despite declining revenues. And that’s the challenge that media owners face. The existing business models are in (fast) decline and the news ones are not (yet) replacing those revenues often coupled with a reluctance to change or move with the times.

If you’re interested in where mobile meets media, the future of advertising, the future of journalism and the like, the following links will probably be of interest.

Why tablet magazines are a failure by Jon Lund. Jon’s key point is to encourage media owners to build for the web rather than tablet app only. But while he’s telling us that, there are some really interesting case studies quoted and some rather useful numbers if you need to persuade your boss to move with the times.

The Financial Times to move to single global print edition. This is a very interesting move by the FT. They’re changing their workflow and product focus to reshape the paper for the digital age. Although the printed paper is still part of their multi-platform operation, the shift in how they’re managing it all shows a keen eye on the future and they’re changing before their hand is forced. Smart move, I say.

Ken Doctor highlights what’s coming for media owners in 2014. It’s not news to those of us who’ve been working in mobile and media for a while, but I suspect, the pointers are a bit scary for a lot of media owners who haven’t yet started the change process or haven’t invested in preparing themselves for the future.

Josh Marshall doesn’t believe in Flipboard’s model for media owners and he tells us why, even as far as calling Flipboard a scam. I understand where he’s coming from, but what he doesn’t talk about is who and where his audience is and what their needs and wants are, what their reading habits are and how that matches with TPM’s offering. It’s still early days for Flipboard and its ilk, but I don’t think services like them are going away any time soon.

Canada’s Globe And Mail’s CEO tells media owners ‘we have to think more precisely about what it is that will make people pay’. There are some useful pointers in this article explaining some of the things G&M are doing to get readers to pay for content.

How much are you willing to pay for digital news? There’s still no definitive answer to this, but this article (and the links within it) highlight some of the key issues faced by media owners (yes, it’s getting a bit repetitive isn’t it – the need to innovate, the acceptance that the print decline is real and not stopping, that the digital ad sales aren’t replacing print ad sales etc.).

Attention v. Relationship Economy – this article explores they way that media owners could or should be thinking about how to monetise. And I think I agree with the author, Jeff Jarvis, that it’s about the relationships newspapers have with their community of readers, advertisers and more.

Long story short…

• digital media consumption is high
• mobile set to overtake desktop very quickly
• tablet magazines probably won’t save your business
• media companies need to restructure
• we need some new ways to advertise (I still don’t understand why we’re shoe-horning old ways into new media)
• we need to create and try more new business models
• no-one has the definitive answer
• And as Bob Dylan sang many years ago, ‘The Times they are a changin’’.

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013

The rather good Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013 is out now. It’s quite a long report – you can download a copy here and below you’ll find the PowerPoint charts that support the report.

I won’t lie, there’s a lot to read here and, clearly, a lot of work went into it and I will be taking my time to go through it all.

The short version based on what I’ve read so far is…

• News is becoming more mobile, more social, and more real-time
• Digital patterns becoming more entrenched – particularly amongst the younger half of the population
• Audiences increasingly want news on any device, in any format, and at any time of day.
• Digital revolution is not proceeding at an even pace in all countries.
• Social media take-up varies across countries
• Ever-greater competition and more disruption to business models to come
• More people say they've paid for digital news in the past 10 months so there’s still hope

Some of these points are no surprise to those of us working in mobile. And it just confirms that the pace of change is fast. Even if you’re not in the newspaper industry, I think this is worth a glance as it reveals some key trends that are relevant and of interest to other sectors.

Based on the methodology, the UK findings are perhaps the most pertinent as that’s where there were the highest level of respondents. Of course, they did only survey a limited amount people so it’s a representation but the data was weighted to targets set on age and gender, region, newspaper readership, and social grade to reflect the total population of each country. The sample is reflective of the population that has access to the internet.

As if you need any further convincing that now is the time to get your mobile strategy sorted, maybe this reports will be the nudge you need if you’re not already on the case.

Interested to hear your thoughts and examples of other recent reports that back up or contradict Reuters’ findings.

 

Reuters digital news report 2013 from Nic Newman

Service is not yet back to normal

There's a lot going on right now in my life and finding time and mindspace to blog is low-ish on the list of priorities I'm afraid. Yes, I'm still here and I will get back to blogging more regularly at some point in the future but not right now. You might find the odd post here and there when the mood takes me but for now, I'm still on a break.

So to keep you going for now, here are some links:

Print Media needs a proper mobile strategy (or so say the panel, me included) at World Telemedia in Prague.

Moblogtech launches CityClickers, a standalone moblogging site.

Shop Scan Save launches mobile couponing to the masses in the UK. This is one that I'm watching. In a world that is going down the road of uber targeting (e.g. Blyk), SSS takes the opposite approach and does no targeting at all. Thoughts?

Women love their phones and can't live without them but only use them for talking and texting. Research at Blyk would concur that 16 to 24s use their phones for talking, texting and the alarm clock, in that order.

Mobile technology organisation kiwanja.net has launched nGOmobile, a free to enter competition to help grassroots NGOs take advantage of text messaging.

UK Media consumption report is worth a read and is reviewed over at NMK.

And finally, the lovely folks over at SMStextnews interviewed me and you can find it here.

ttfn

Youth and digital life - what's really going on?

MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft have jointly prepared an in-depth study of 18,000 or so young people globally to find out how they're spending their digital lives. And there are some interesting findings, including:

Mobile usage:
Indian youth are most likely to see mobile phones as a status symbol and globally, under the age of 14, kids generally use the phone as a toy. After 14, the mobile phone quickly becomes a means of self-expression and communication.

68% of 8-14 respondents said they felt safer having their mobile phones with them outside the home, rising to 81% in the UK, and 71% said their parents use the phone to find out where they are.

Digital life:
Globally, the average young person connected to digital technology has 94 phone numbers in his or her mobile phone, 78 people on a messenger buddy list and 86 people in his or her social networking community.

Yet despite their technological immersion, digi-kids are not geeks

• 59% of 8-14 year-old kids still prefer their TV to their PCs
• Just 20% of 14-24 year-old young people globally admitted to being "interested" in technology.
  

They are, (as anyone who's ever watched a teenager at work), expert multi-taskers and able to filter different channels of information.

Kids and young people don't love the technology itself

• they just love how it enables them to communicate all the time, express themselves and be entertained.
• Digital communications such as IM, email, social networking sites and mobile/sms are complementary to, not competitive with, TV. TV is part of young peoples' digital conversation.
• Despite the remarkable advances in communication technology, kid and youth culture looks surprisingly familiar, with almost all young people using technology to enhance rather than replace face-to-face interaction.

What's happening in China?
China has lower mobile usage amongst young people, a less-evolved print media market and a family life of no siblings with parents and multiple grandparents. As a result, the internet provides a rare opportunity for only (and lonely) children to reach out and communicate using social networks, blogs and instant messaging. In stark contrast to their Japanese peers, 93% of Chinese respondents aged 8-14 have more than one friend online they have never met face to face.

"Chinese kids inhabit a world very different from their parents, and because of that they would rather find advice and support through their friends than through family," said Colleen Fahey Rush, Executive Vice President of Research for MTV Networks. Amongst 8-14s globally, only in China was TV not the No. 1 choice. "This is encouraging 8-14-year-olds in China to select online over TV, a trend not witnessed in any other market," she said.

Typical activities haven't changed much
For kids (8 to 14 year olds), they may be immersed in tech from the day they were born, but the things they enjoy doing most are:

• 85% watching TV
• 70% listening to music
• 68% hanging out with friends
• 67% playing video games
• 51% spending time online

As they grow into teens so the ranking of their favorite pastimes change. At the top of the list of 14- 24s favorite pastimes is

• 70% listening to music
• 65% watching TV
• 65% hanging out with friends
• 60% watching DVDs
• 60% relaxing
• 59% going to cinema
• 56% spending time online
• 55% spending time with girl or boyfriend
• 53% eating
• 49% hanging out at home

"There is a powerful link between TV and the Internet, especially for 14- 24s. TV is watched to relieve stress. Sixty percent said they watched most of their TV lying down. But the Internet is cognitive and active, especially if young people are using it for studying or social situations," said Fahey Rush.

As with any research commissioned by large corporates, there's bound to be some bias towards the commissioning company, not least, because of the asking of the right questions 'Ask the right questions and you'll get the right answers'. MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft, clearly want to demonstrate the link between TV and online (and clearly there is a link as I write this with the TV on at the same time) but it's worth a look nevertheless. I'd love to see the whole report but I can't find any links to it. So if anyone else has found the link to the full shebang, please let me know by commenting here or dropping me an email.

You might also want to take a look at the official Viacom press release here and the MTV one here.

What are you doing on 13th June?

If you're in London Town, you could do worse than head over to LSO St Lukes for the NMK Forum 07. Curated by Mike Butcher, it promises to be a day of discussion and debate around the new wave of innovation in the digital media industry. Leading industry figures (ahem, that includes me and pals Justin, Sam, Jemima and Alfie as well as luminaries such as Jason Calcanis of Weblogs fame and author and citizen media specialist Dan Gillmor) will talk about the future digital landscape online, offline and mobile (I'm on a panel entitled 'Communities, Commerce and Marketing' in the afternoon). There'll be a good turnout on the day if previous events are anything to go by so the knowledge and networking should be great, greatly enhanced by the unstuffy 'cabaret' layout thus enabling a proper conversation.

To book your, very reasonably priced ticket, go to http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2007/06/13/NMK-Forum07. Tickets are £345 and there's a reduced rate for students, not for profit organisations, employees of micro-companies and freelancers of £245. Money well spent I reckon.

And if you can't wait that long to hear me in action, then you'll have to follow me to Denmark where I'm speaking at "Knock Knock The Future of Music" Conference in Aarhus from Innovation Lab on 31st May (It's being held in English not Danish). You can download the PDF flyer here. If you're interested in music and the impact of digital media and innovation in that sector, then it's probably worth a trip. Not least because there's also a music festival on that weekend as part of the conference and exhibition programme. A mini, Danish SXSW maybe?

If you're going to be there and fancy meeting up, let me know. I'll be at the networking dinner on the Thursday evening and am planning to hang around for the weekend too to check out some of the music, all being well.