Watch out!
Like a lot of people I’ve given up on wearing a watch during the working day, replacing it with glancing at my phone, tablet or computer. So all the current noise about mooted smart watches from Apple (immediately dubbed the iWatch), Google, Samsung and now Microsoft puzzled me. Why would anyone try and replicate the features of a smart phone on a tiny screen on their wrist – particularly when they were probably carrying their phone in their pocket?
Take the Pebble watch. It essentially syncs with your smartphone and reminds you about your latest tweets, emails and phone calls – a cute accessory but hardly game changing for most people.
But a bit more thinking unlocks why the tech titans think there’s a market out there. The only time I actually wear a watch (except on the few occasions I want to appear smart) is when I go for a run and I use GPS to measure where I’ve gone and exactly how slowly. Essentially I’ve got a wearable sensor around my wrist, rather than a time keeping device.
That’s where the interest will be, not as a smaller second screen for your iPhone, but providing a way of measuring where you are, what you are doing and your vital signs. After all a watch has the benefit of being intimately connected to your person – few people are going to hold their phone to their wrist to measure their pulse. With an aging population, and increasing desire to manage our health, this is where the mass market will be. Add in the Internet of Things and you can see a connected web of wearable sensors managing our lives.
Thinking of the smart watch I’ve come up with five applications where it could be used – from the basic to the far fetched.
- Patient monitoring – both in hospitals and more importantly at home, the watch can send back vital statistics to doctors and monitoring services, raising the alarm if issues occur
- A smart wallet – why get your wallet or Oyster card out when you need to buy something? The watch automatically debits your account as you pass through ticket barriers or pick up that latte.
- Obesity control – measuring calories burned is standard on sports watches, so combine this with a camera and an electric shock buzzer. Not burnt enough calories and reaching for a doughnut? Cue a mild electric shock to remind the wearer of their diet
- Getting your dinner on the table. The watch senses when you’re half an hour from home and sends a signal to your oven to switch it on. Get stuck in traffic and it changes the heat so your dinner isn’t burnt to a crisp
- Surveillance. Very 1984 but just imagine if every smart watch could be tracked by governments – not only allowing them to see where you are but your state of health and everyday activities. Obviously the most far fetched application of all (we all hope)…..
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Telling a Whopper on social media
Rather than covering a range of subjects I could probably write a weekly blog called ‘Which brand has f@cked up on social media’, without running short of material. This week it was Burger King’s turn on Twitter – though to be fair to the fast food giant they believe their account was hacked. After all the background picture was changed to a McDonald’s logo and one tweet claimed the chain had been sold to the Golden Arches.
The tweets stopped after an hour after Burger King asked Twitter to suspend its account (unlike HMV, they knew how to switch social networking off). They even had a supportive tweet from @mcdonalds commiserating with their rivals.
So no real reputational damage done – the online equivalent of breaking into a local Burger King, daubing graffiti on the walls and putting quick drying cement down the toilets. Illegal yes, but once the mess is cleared up, Burger King on Twitter will be back open for business.
But the financial damage could have actually been enormous. Imagine that rather than tweeting an obviously untrue rumour (We just got sold to McDonalds!) the hackers had put out something different and subtler – such as news of finding horsemeat in the company’s burgers (not true I hasten to add). Think of what that would do to the stock price, spooking investors and sparking a sell-off. Financial institutions would have seen company news from a reputable source and acted accordingly. Given Burger King is US-listed I’m sure litigation wouldn’t have been far behind from disgruntled shareholders too. And the problem isn’t just malicious hacking – do companies have corporate policies about what they can and can’t tweet/blog/put on Facebook in case it is share price sensitive? My betting is that many don’t, leaving it to the discretion of whoever is actually running the Twitter feed. Hardly foolproof.
So, at a time when cyber security is top of the agenda, companies need to make sure that they not only know their Twitter logon details, have clear policies in place, protect their passwords and have an instant crisis plan if security is breached. I’d hope that if it wasn’t before Burger King’s investor relations department is now much more involved in social media planning. Handled properly this is another chance for marketing/PR/social media to become more strategically involved in vital financial communication – so marketers should ignore the Burger King experience at their peril.
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Bringing Silicon Valley to the UK
Silicon Valley comes to the UK (Photo credit: Cabinet Office)
Looking out at an another chill autumnal morning, the lure of Silicon Valley’s sunshine is increasingly powerful. But there’s a lot more to the success of tech companies in the US than simply climate. The question is what is it and can we in the UK learn how to replicate that success here?
That’s one of the key missions of Silicon Valley Comes to the UK (SVC2UK), a programme of events across the UK that brings across leaders from US companies such as Google, LinkedIn and Facebook to help, nurture and assist local entrepreneurs and their companies. Originally a Cambridge event it has now spread across the UK, covering London and Oxford as well. The theme of this year’s programme is scale – addressing the fact that while the UK and US are pretty evenly matched when it comes to starting up businesses on a per capita basis, the UK’s scale up rate is less than half that of the US.
Another strand of the programme is looking to uncover the next generation of startups through intense bootcamp events. The most interesting one of these is the Future Business weekend being held in Oxford and running in collaboration with SVC2UK.
It is looking to build on the research strength of the UK by providing access to existing patented technologies and essentially allowing teams to generate new ideas and innovative businesses around them. It’s often said that not enough research makes it out of the lab, and the event aims to change this by taking scientific intellectual property and making it available, along with support and mentoring.
Held between 9-11 November the weekend will be run by the Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (OxCEI) together with the Future Business Pre-Incubator (FBPI) and Silicon Valley Comes to UK (SVCUK). The aim is bring together entrepreneurs, scientists, technologists and mentors to generate ideas and new companies to take existing patented technology to market.
The event uses the proven Idea Transform methodology, which underpinned the extremely successful Idea Transform weekend in Cambridge back in April 2012, providing structure and support to teams through mentoring, team creation, inspiring speakers and networking. And the good news is that selected projects from the event will then be supported through the Future Business Pre-Incubator with access to facilities, resources and ongoing mentoring.
Silicon Valley Comes to the UK starts on 15th November with an event at the Houses of Parliament – to find out more visit the website at http://www.svc2uk.com/
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Social media and the sales funnel
Due to its massive growth companies are flocking to social media. In today’s world you can’t be a self-respecting marketer without a Facebook page, Twitter handle, YouTube channel, LinkedIn profile, blog, Pinterestboard etc.
facebook (Photo credit: sitmonkeysupreme)
This is all very well – social media provide a completely new channel that lets your brand interact with consumers in a genuine conversation. However there’s not a lot of thought (or rigour) going into the social media presence of a lot of companies. Some are simply chasing follower numbers, despite the fact that these can be easily bought and others are launching campaigns (like the Waitrose Twitter hashtag project) which seem doomed to attract only ridicule.
Companies need to take a step back and work out where social media is going to help them. If you’re selling a toilet cleaner is it worth having a Facebook page – will people really think it is cool to Like a bottle of bleach? It is time for marketers to put their puppyish enthusiasm to one side and look at some basic marketing and sales concepts.
When it comes to generating sales there’s a well recognised marketing acronym called AIDA, standing for:
- Attention/Awareness – i.e. attracting the consumer
- Interest – piquing their interest by focusing on benefits
- Desire – making them want what you’ve got
- Action – getting them to take a positive step such as purchase
Essentially lots of social media marketing is focusing on the first point, but doesn’t have a strategy to move people through the rest of the process. I think marketers are getting confused by the speed and accessibility of social media to think that you can skip the middle sections and go straight to Action. In some cases consumers do work like that – a tweet with a special offer on a new film/book/CD is a straightforward transaction, but these are the exception rather than the rule and merely replicate what you are doing through other channels.
Building interest and engagement with your brand takes time – you need to create a community, listen to your consumers and deliver sustained benefits to them. A money off voucher may be good for short term sales, but isn’t building long term loyalty (and who’s to say they wouldn’t have bought your product anyway?)
So marketers need to take a step back and ask themselves an honest question. Do consumers want to have a conversation either with or about your brand? Would they talk about it positively down the pub or is it just something that they buy because the toilet needs disinfecting? It could be that you don’t need that all singing, all dancing Facebook page and you should focus on other offline channels. Less sexy (and not as exciting on your CV) but there could well be better ways of connecting with consumers and driving sales.
Making sense of Big Data
Big data is a very sexy subject at the moment. Given the enormous volume of digital information in the world, being able to bring it together and analyse it should make it easier to spot overall trends and, in the case of marketing, build up a personalised picture of consumers so you can better target them with products and offers.
Like everything in IT this isn’t anything that new – I remember a story from 20 years ago about a US supermarket that analysed the buying patterns for nappies. They found that lots were being bought at 6pm on a Friday, and by staking out stores saw that the majority of buyers were fathers on their way home from work. By moving beer nearer to nappies, they increased booze sales dramatically as dads stocked up for the sleepless weekend ahead.
What has changed since then is the enormous increase in the number of data sources and the sheer amount of data out there. We live in a digital world and the majority of what we do leaves a data footprint behind us. However in a lot of cases this data is either in multiple formats – or is completely unstructured, such as academic documents (or this blog).
Big Data (Photo credit: Kevin Krejci)
And analysing big data isn’t just about selling us more beer – by comparing and questioning multiple information sources, including patents and scientific papers you can speed up research in areas such as life sciences, helping make drug discovery more efficient. A great example of a company enabling this is Linguamatics, which has just opened its new worldwide HQ on the Cambridge Science Park. Its flagship I2E text mining software uses natural language processing to understand the meaning of unstructured data delivered through a search engine approach that is fast and accurate.
Already used by nine out the world’s top ten pharmaceutical companies Linguamatics is growing fast, both in Europe and North America, but has operated under the radar, focusing on building its business. With big data being flavour of the month, the time is now right for Linguamatics to raise its profile, both in Cambridge and across the world.
Is there such a thing as an independent blogger?
The current Oracle vs Google patent case could turn out to have far-reaching implications – not for whether Google’s Android operating system breaches Oracle’s Java patents but on the independence (or otherwise) of bloggers and other commentators.
Essentially the judge in the case has ordered both sides to reveal the names of reporters, bloggers and other industry experts they may have paid as he was concerned that supposedly impartial commentary was biased by links to the two industry giants. Oracle has named a blogger and a professor it has financial ties to but so far Google hasn’t provided details of any paid relationships.
First off, a quick public service announcement – I’m not paid by either Google or Oracle (nor the judge in the case for that matter), so my opinions in this blog are very much my own.
When blogs began they promised to give a voice to a much wider group of people, outside traditional media, enabling them to share their thoughts and opinions with the world. Generally they didn’t have any formal journalistic training and were unpaid/doing it as part of a wider role. It wasn’t their main livelihood. But almost immediately lines began to blur – leading journalists launched their own blogs (either officially or unofficially) to talk about stories that didn’t make it into their mainstream output and the influence of successful bloggers/blog sites (think Huffington Post, Guido Fawkes) spread to rival existing news sources.
The combination of this with a 24 hour news media desperate for interesting comment means that more and more bloggers are quoted as experts without any real check on their credentials. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the more advanced amongst the PR industry who realised that it opens up a whole new channel to influence – whether through providing early sight of news or, as is alleged in this case, financial inducements to write positive stories.
So it isn’t surprising that the possibility is there for bloggers to be biased in what they cover – particularly as they need to earn a crust through consultancy and other activities. While it is clunky, the only way to get round this is to publish a list of any links (financial or otherwise) to companies they talk about – and equally journalists, analysts and other influencers should declare their relationships to anyone they are writing about. As an ex-history student I know that everything we write or think is biased in some way, whether due to our background, education or the fact that Google Docs went offline at a crucial moment. At least by displaying relationships and potential bias readers can make an informed decision on how much credibility they give a blog, article or statement.
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Why aren’t more MPs Twits?
Public trust in politicians has never been amazingly high, but it seems to me that it is at an all time low. The impact of the expenses scandal, the Leveson enquiryand a general disbelief that they can do anything to get us out of the current economic mess have led to a real disconnect between politicians and their electorate. You can see this in falling turnout at the polls and a growing cynicism that our elected officials have our needs and concerns at the heart of what they do.
Free twitter badge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The wider that this disconnect grows, the greater the danger that people will simply switch off from politics and democracy will be endangered. What is needed is a new way of building bridges between politicians and the communities they serve, and technology offers some great new channels (and new pitfalls).
As a student I remember you could just turn up at the House of Commons and ask to see your MP – if they were free they were pretty much honour bound to come down and talk to you. Of course it didn’t work if they were busy (as Prime Minister my local MP was running the country) and nowadays the security checks would take an age, but at least it advertised they were accessible in some way.
Looking at technology, you’d think email would be the perfect way of communicating with constituents. However in an era of Freedom of Information Act requests many politicians are now too scared to commit themselves to responding to emails in anything but an anodyne, inconclusive way – the fear is that their words will be dragged up to haunt them in the future. While I don’t buy this – words are deeds after all and you should have the courage of your convictions, it means we need another way of keeping track of our elected politicians.
The perfect channel to me seems to be Twitter. MPs can provide short updates on what they are doing, be accessible to constituents and actually demonstrate what they are doing all day. They will also come across as more human, though we can probably live without knowing what they had for breakfast. Obviously Twitter sits alongside other channels such as constituency surgeries, answering correspondence and face to face visits, but it provides a real-time view into the politician’s daily life.
That’s the plan, but not really the reality. Talking to Cambridge MP (and prolific tweeter) Julian Huppert, at last Friday’s Creating Cambridge BBQ, I was struck by the gulf between those that have embraced the channel and those that shy away from it. It isn’t about age or party – my local MP in Suffolk uses Twitter mostly to RT point scoring stories knocking the opposition, with nothing about what he does all day. And he’s a similar age (if not younger) than Julian Huppert.
So here’s my manifesto for making MPs (and indeed all politicians) more accessible – get them onto Twitter and make it compulsory to tweet all the meetings they attend, their voting records and the constituency visits they make. That way there’ll be a complete public record of what they’re up to, allowing their constituents to question them, increasing engagement and hopefully re-connecting politicians and the electorate.
MicroSocial?
There are a lot of people convinced that what the world needs is another social network. After all technically they’re pretty simple to set up and if half the world is on Facebook, there’s still plenty of opportunity to recruit members.
Image via CrunchBase
I’m being flippant, but in a week that saw Microsoft launch two forays into social networks, I think that’s time for a reality check in the area. To be fair to Microsoft, the mooted $1bn acquisition of social enterprise platform Yammer is a logical move. It means it can add collaboration and social network style features to Microsoft Office, helping tighten its grip on enterprise desktop software. Essentially it’s meeting the continuing corporate desire to help share information and enable collaboration that has been going on since the launch of Lotus Notes and intranets 20 years ago. So, social network yes, Facebook competitor no.
Microsoft’s other new social network So.cl is a lot more difficult to fathom. Described as ‘an experiment in open search’ it is designed to be a layer on existing social networks, with a particular focus on social search (something that Microsoft’s Bing search engine is also majoring on). All a bit confusing and really lacking a killer reason to sign up. I can only guess that successful bits of So.cl will be integrated into Windows Live and Bing – but that really relies on people using the service to test it and see if it works.
I’ve talked before about how any technology (including social networks) has to cross the chasm into the mainstream from early adopters if it is to be a lasting success. Another useful bit of business development thinking is that in mature markets there are essentially four positions to be in. You can be the market leader (Facebook), the follower (LinkedIn), the challenger (Google+) or successfully own a niche (such as Twitter). Outside these four it is difficult to build the scale you need to succeed as a decent sized social network – it really relies on getting people to sign up and use the service on an ongoing basis. As Apple has found with its Ping music social networking service, which is rumoured to be closing, brand name and access to a potential audience isn’t enough to get people to sign up.
So whether you are marketer or a social network startup take a good look at the business development textbooks before you launch and ask yourself does the world really need your social network?
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- Samsung to launch a Facebook-like Social network next year (buzzom.com)
- Microsoft Said to Be in Talks to Buy Yammer Social Network – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
Where’s the money going?
In a week that saw the publication of the long-awaited Cambridge Phenomenon book, celebrating 50 years of innovation in the area, some more sobering figures concerning continued investment have been published.
Punting in Cambridge, UK (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Research from tech-focused investment group Ascendant found that while generally VC investment is up in Q1 2012, money doesn’t seem to be coming to Cambridge. £307m was invested in tech companies in the UK and Ireland – with £188m going to London-based outfits, and £27m to Irish ones. Cambridge (and Oxford) saw very little new money.
While it can be misleading to generalise based on three months of data this could be a worrying trend as centralised government action to boost London’s Tech City draws potential funding (and talent) away from the Cambridge ecosystem. After all, as Rory Cellan-Jones points out in his BBC Blog, Cambridge has potentially a better chance of creating world-class tech companies than London as it has already developed an ecosystem with research at its heart to feed innovative ideas to the market. But investment funding for Cambridge is key – not just in ‘scientific’ spinouts such as Owlstone and ARM but the more internet-style businesses and the thriving cleantech sector that Cambridge also supports.
So how does Cambridge compete against the media-savvy Tech City community when it comes to gaining funding? I may be biased as a marketer, but really feel that public relations has a strong role to play. There is still a tendency amongst Cambridge startups to treat PR as an afterthought rather than an intrinsic part of how you create a company and drive its success. You need to know your audience and deliver the right message to it at the right time using language they understand to succeed. Otherwise the risk is that Cambridge will become seen solely as the domain of technical wizardry rather than as a driver of customer-focused innovation that leads the UK tech scene.
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- VIDEO: Views on the ‘Cambridge phenomenon’ (bbc.co.uk)
- Start-up Britain – Cambridge v Tech City (bbc.co.uk)
Bye bye angels, hello Kickstarter?
There’s been a lot in the press recently about crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Electronic paper watch Pebble raised over $3.4m for its smartphone linked timepiece while the first Kickstarter scam – trying to get backing for a non-existent video game has just been uncovered.
Kickstarter (Photo credit: Scott Beale)
At a time when money is tight Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites look like the perfect way for startups to raise cash. Essentially you pitch your idea to a receptive audience of people that want to be able to buy your product – and they fund your development in return for a small stake. Your product gets validated by the market, future sales are generated and you get backing – what could be simpler? It also provides another opportunity for public relations agencies to extend their reach by using press and social media campaigns to build a buzz and drive people to their client’s Kickstarter page.
However while Kickstarter is great for certain types of products, it can’t replace more traditional types of funding. First off, the Kickstarter audience is comprised of early adopters – the type of people that are going to spend $150 on a watch that links to their smartphone and are happy to pledge money to get it built. It won’t work for mainstream products that need to appeal to a more conservative, mass market demographic.
Secondly, startups need a lot more than money to succeed – they need help, connections and business advice from people that know what they are talking about. This is something that angel investors and VCs both provide over and above cold hard cash. Otherwise the risk is that companies raise the cash on Kickstarter but then can’t make best use of it as they run into technical, marketing or sales issues that outside advice could have helped with.
So while Kickstarter is a good (and cheap) way of validating your idea for startups building physical products it can only be part of the story – if you want lasting success you still need to knock on doors, make the contacts and do the hard work.
Chris Measures
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