Words of wisdom for the day!

“We all want to seem like we have it all figured out!

Let me be the first to say I don’t have a clue, I don’t have all the answer, ain’t going to pretend like I do.

Just trying to DJ find my way the best that I know how.”

Lifehouse, Trying

The city of love!

Paris is the city of love but I recently went with my mother. My first visit to Paris, a little less than a year ago, left me feeling warm, fuzzy and with a strong passionate bond towards the capital of France. Even if the waiters were rude as hell.

However as I sat typing notes on my iphone for this post (data roaming is to expensive to do in wordpress abroad) I found myself a little deflated and dissapointed by my second experience of the city. It may have been that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to embrace the culture, but even so I sat thinking if it wasn’t for the french bread (oh so good), the coffee and the architecture I would be runnning a mile straight back to the airport.

Before leaving for the trip I spoke to a colleague about whether I would choose to live in Paris or Venice and now the answer is clear cut – just in case its not clear the winner is VENICE. Don’t get me wrong nothing bad happened on the trip to leave me with a sour taste, but I don’t know,  I certainly realised all the things I craved about Paris where changes to my lifestyle I can enjoy in London. I suppose it was a realisation no matter where I am I can blame the place but 90% of the time you make your own happiness right?

However the things that initially captivated me about Paris seem to have withered and died, there was no awe of the beauty, no intrigue of their culture, no buzz or excitement. Guess they’re right when they say things are never as good second time round.

I certainly did a lot more this time round; visit to Notre Dame, trip up the Effiel Tower, Moulin Rouge and Lido but none of them overwhelmed me. Ok so the Lido was the best, the male waiter attention and free campagne and wine meant I was a bit drunk and giddy but this only serviced further the good food and show performance.

I found the Lido to be much more professional and polished than the Moulin Rouge. I guess sometimes reputation really is everything in terms of turning them a profit but the Moulin Rouge, for me, lacked in quality and substanance. The cancan was not what I anticipated, lacking in glamour and inspiration, but I guess like most things it comes down to personal expectations. Met, exceeded, let down or didn’t have any – we set our own benchmarks and decide our enjoyment of something often before it has occured. Ok there are occassions were we are pleasantly suprised but this was not one of them.

I  won’t be going back to France anytime soon, Spain or South/Central America will be my place for passion and good food – something I am dissapointed to say I didn’t get in France. However one tip as a girl – French people, but this I mean guys, are much more accommodating to a group of women than mixed sex or couples – but hey if the guy ain’t getting anything he probably isn’t going to bother right?!

ELx

Saturday night cook off

Ok so when the world forces you to be frugal I have foung myself being more creative with my time. Saturday night after spending the day in soho was taken up by a cook off with the boy.

As you can see below, he well and truly kicked my ass! But I did win the Pizza competition a while back so the game is on for the next round!

I’ll keep you posted on my progress of an uphill struggle to beat a semi-pro chef during, more often than not, drunken cook offs!

ELx

Search

On my commute to work instead of picking up my book I utilised my finger tips to access the world of information available to us. Namely I played around on my iphone. In my ritual habit of checking brandrepublic I came across an article on the things you need to know about Twitter search. This acted as a reminder of an article I had read the previous night about Twitters potential collaboration with Google and Bing to integrate into real-time search results.

These articles, among many others got me thinking about search and the future of consumer behaviour and how we as an agency have to anticipate this to be leaders in best practice – not to mention innovative problem solving. Search is a massive market as you will have seen from Neil’s and Geoff’s posts. We all use Google on a daily basis whether to find something we are looking, out of laziness or out of habit as a path to get where we are going. As an advertising medium this is relevant across all the industries and markets we serve – the results of University of Surrey’s last media analysis report shows Google Adwords campaigns as the highest traffic driver of ‘quality’ users to the site. The potential is massive – but how will the integration of real-time search, particularly from social media sites impact the service we offer to clients.

Drew’s digital seminar highlighted the need to be findable and relevant. I and many others have spoke of the importance of talking to our clients about social media. Surely this emerging trend means we not only need to be talking to our clients about Twitter and why they should be using it but also brings another element into the how. It is no longer going to be good enough to simply have a profile – the key will not only be engagement and interaction with the audience but will be how we optimise what we tweet to be high within the real-time search platform. I am not condoning holding optimisation over the true communication and community building social media offers – it is more about a balance. This links more and more to why we can’t just build profiles for our clients we need to manage their social media accounts and activities.

Will we soon have a purely social media development and management team to include a dedicated content developer, SEM specialist for social media among other roles outside of Google/Yahoo etc… This also closely links to a report I read on the increased use of Twitter but also Facebook to search for information. When looking at creating online Buzz and being findable and relevant this stems across all social platforms and requires us to adapt our clients thinking and approach. We need to ensure we are at the top of the gaming and thinking two steps ahead when our clients may be two steps behind. Some people fill with pride to say their organisation is on Twitter – good for them but as strategic agency we need to working hard in the background to ensure our clients are making the most of the social world not just put their name to it to seem update and cool.

Julie and Julia

I have just finished reading Julie and Julia the book. I tend to enjoy reading books before I see the relevant film as I find many films don’t live up to the essence of their literary counter parts. I suppose it is not so much that these film representations aren’t very good, Harry Potters I love, but it is more they don’t live up to the parallel fantasy world I created when reading them. I mean how can they, the point of a good book is that there is room left for interpretation and imagination so we all have to stretch our creative inner being every now and again. As with advertising messages – what you put out may not be the way another perceives it, and how they perceive it may be something completely different to someone else however if what they take from it is enjoyment, intention (positive of course) and the want to share it then everyone is a winner. You can’t be all things to all men, or so they say.

Anyway I have yet to watch the film, I have heard mixed reviews, not sure why Julia Child even needs to be in it from reading the book, but that is another, big star name, pulling in an audience matter. What I took from this book was the need to have a focus in life. I had been feeling rather unfulfilled before Christmas, and as most of us can probably admit, I was expecting the answer to smack me in the face. Of course it didn’t, you only get out what you put in. All I put in was a lot of money into the till behind the bar and a lot of food it my mouth. What? It was Christmas.

Anyway back to the project/focus. Now I have established what I need it is time to find what project will mean something to me. I want to do volunteer work this year, mainly with kids but all and any kind. I also want to learn Spanish as I picked up a lot the month I was in Mexico and really want to get back to it. I also want to learn guitar as I got one for Christmas. However none of these ‘goals’ in themselves constitute a project, well to me they don’t anyway.

I need to find a way to make these mainstream goals into a project that is really me. Maybe I will try my hand at all of them and see where I fit.

Anyway, this post was more me stamping my purpose onto something other than my brain.

I shall share my progress no doubt.

ELx

Another post on social media

Social media is talked about everywhere but how relevant is it. A lot of people are continually talking about social media in the same instances, saying the same things with a different twist. However we are still lacking in a plethora of well performing social media campaigns, ok Burger King’s swap your friend for a whopper was cool. I believe it is true that not many marketers really no how to use social media, but who can blame them the fast development and everchanging realm of the social sphere is a hard nut to crack.

They way people use social media has changed rapidly, not to mention, the uptake. Also the changing demongraphic of different social platforms is another concern. Surely we have come beyond the knee jerk reaction of yes I should be using facebook and twitter for my brand and started with the age old approach of first asking why? What are the benefits? What is the strategy?More importantly, where are my customers?

I think the fundamental fall down is not that us marketers don’t get social media, we just don’t apply the usual approaches of first establishing a clients problem or need and drawing from the process of research and analysis the best strategic approach. This is when we need to take into consideration the different elements/goals/objectives and measures of social media not before.

Social media does not fall outside the basic principles of marketing. Talking to your audience in the right place at the right time applies across all communication and interaction, social media simply brings to like the word ‘talking’, thats right this is a conversation and possibly for the first time you are going to get a response and ‘dialogue’ going you have so strived for all this time. Welcome to getting closer to your goals of targeted communication and actual ‘direct’ one-to-one interaction. Embrace it, but only when your ready and know what to do with it.

People can say all they want about the benefits and complications of social media, what brands and agencies need to establish is how they can align their objectives with a social media strategy and continue to be innovative in their approach and differentiate in what will no  doubt become a crowded market place. So lets stop talking about it and start doing more of it.

ELx

Thoughtful Girlfriend of bordering on stalker

My boyfriend has been away for three 1/2 weeks spending time with his family in Texas. On his return today I was religiously viewing the baa.com website to see the status of his flight. This reminded me of the type of behaviour my Dad would exhibit and it suddenly dawned on me am I being a bit stalkerish? Not that my Dad is stalkeresk this role is reserved for my Nana, who being her only grandchild has an unhealthy obsession with my ever move and word.

I am not the wholesome girlfriend type of girl who easily breezes through the stages of a relationship. I am a novice when it comes to such circumstances and often find myself demonstrating behaviours of a Looney banshee I would never have contemplated when playing the role of singleton. Such in ability to feel comfortable in the role of the ‘perfect’ girlfriend and often playing the boy in the relationship makes me question a lot of my behaviour. Hence the dreading creep from within my gut as to whether I was acting like the caring and considerate girlfriend or the stalker girlfriend who can’t just lay back and play it cool.

I often find myself slightly cringed and embarrassed by my actions when in a relationship. I normally pride myself on independence, coolness around spending time with others and ability to enjoy my own company. When in a relationship this all changes. I should probably note at this point that I have never had a relationship that lasts longer than a month up until now, and often go for guys who I know it can go nowhere with. Maybe this is a protective barrier my subconscious places to make life a lot easier but does it really?

Hmmm, let me contemplate this and I will return to tell you about the hilarity that was – informing my parents and grandparents of the boy I am courting – oh the pain that emanated from my cringing. However looking back it is actually quite funny.

ELx

Blogging in 2010

The blog is not a new thing, but for me it is a new experience I am committing to in 2010. My aim is to blog regularly to people who are interested in things about advertising, communication and life. Please accept my spelling and grammar may be bad, I bought a book to work on it, but hopefully this will be an experience that I, and hopefully you will enjoy.

2010 is going to be a new life experience for me. The cliché and the pressure to set resolutions for next year is not something I buy into but general life focuses and changes will be something I am aiming to achieve.

I have now been in London for a year and instead of being caught up in the newness that is living in the capital it is time to enjoy the bonus of living in London and re-establish my goals. Hopefully this is something I can share with you along the way and no doubt there will be funny stories, hard times and generally interesting things that many others have experienced or want to experience vicariously.

Thats it for now, time to start getting ready for my first New Year going out in about 4 years – I am not a big fan.

No doubt  hungover hazed portions of stories will follow.

EL x

Christmas No1

Rage against the machine came in at Christmas number one and I am not surprised. They say Simon Cowell offered the pair who started the campaign a position in his company but they turned it down. I think rightly so, these people are not social media marketers they are just guys with a cause and a belief which was something a lot of others believe in. The success of the campaign was not based on the use of Facebook the success of the campaign was the story, something people wanted to talk about and rally behind the success was due to collective consciousness not a Facebook group.

Social media is great but it is not the be all and end all. I want to run a campaign to sell more – I know I’ll use Facebook will just not cut it. So many people are against manufactured chart toppers that taking on the Christmas no1 with a 15year old song was the genius idea. Facebook brought to the table a medium through which to distribute the message, it was not the strategy or the message or the success story it simply worked for the type of campaign these guys were running. Welcome to word of mouth with real-time potential. Social media will not work if you don’t have something to tell people – that they will be interested in. How many fan pages etc… run without any activity. I might join it but then never go back as it doesn’t draw me in. I join groups for nostalgic reasons from my youth – yes I remember pogs but it doesn’t mean if they came out again I would buy them and then go back to the group and say wow lets all get together and do swaps.

My key message is the Christmas number 1 is a perfect example of social media as a means to generating online buzz and getting your message out to people not only in the right time but in the right place. Social media has massive potential but unless you have strategy, a goal or something people want to get involved in then don’t expect it to solve your problems. The basics of marketing don’t go out of the window when it comes to social media. Rage against the machine was a brilliant ‘campaign’ lets not forget that.

ELx

Its Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas to all – hope santa brings you all you desire!