MillsMash

Since i was a child Christmas has been about spending time with family and friends and try to forget the woes of the year & work. Admittedly most years have massive arguments, fights over presents and certain family members falling asleep by 5pm. However, one thing that was certain is that no-one would be shopping not just because all the the shops where shut but because we had better things to do. Hell it was one of the fours days of the year that my step-father, being a green-grocer, would actually shut his shop (the others being boxing day and new years day + 2nd Januray). It was always strange but good to wonder around my local area and see all the shops shut and that the only people out and about where out for a walk generally with their family and friends. If fact since 2003 its been illegal for ‘large’ shops to open on christmas day.

However, it appears that, according to IMRG, nearly 4 million British people went online on Christmas day and spent £102 Million pounds! That to me seems immensly sad and an indicative of the state of current society when 10% of the population (over the age of 16) are spending their time (at least in part) shopping on their computers. It’s bad enough they are on their computers rather than interacting with their family and friends bar for the following reasons:

• Trying out a new game
• Communicating with family abroad / else where.

Has society really got to the point where would rather shop online on christmas day then spend time with family and friends? Ok i accept that there are people out there who don’t have large families or if they do the last thing they want to do is spend time with them or even that they are not christian and don’t want to celebrate Christmas. But to consider that 10% of the adult population is shopping on Christmas day, now that is sad! Christmas is truely dead!
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/245079/four-million-brits-went-online-shopping-on-christmas-day.html

David Cameron has recently stated that:

“Fibre optic broadband is changing the way people work and do business, and it has the potential to completely transform our economy.

“It could open up new markets for our creative industries, promote innovation, create new, family-friendly jobs as people can work from home - and help reduce carbon emissions.”

Really? What in the same way that we would have paperless offices and remote working within the last 10 years? I’m curious as to what basis he makes this claim.  I don’t see that fibre will bring anything other than a faster more reliable internet service. It will allow for IPTV, IP Telephony and a better on-line experience overall. As for working from home, current broadband allows for this and for the vast majority of what people need in as such that they can:

• receive and send large emails with attachments,
• use skype and other comms programs even with video
• remote desktop into work computers
• use online services such as salesforce.com, google docs etc

What would Fibre-to-the-home give them that they have not already got? And even with broadband things have not improved  within family life. In fact with faster connections, blackberries and the like it seems that people are working longer and harder causing a larger drain on the individual and the family. You could argue that faster ubiquitous communications are actually putting a great strain on familys as we all spend more time in front of the computer and not interacting with each other.

Businesses definately need faster internet connections as more and more personnel use the company connections for work and pleasure. Homes also need faster internet connections as more devices come online, with more laptops in the home and soon more appliances ‘needing’ internet connections we do need more bandwidth. I’m all for faster internet and Fibre-to-the-home but it won’t make the massive impact that Cameron is promising. Just another headline grabbing political gimmick!

I recently came across this great way to create YouTube virals that incorporate the “Choose your own adventure” story format.

The viral is based on a series of snippets of a story around one and a half minutes long. At the end of each snippet the user is presented with several options on how the story should continue with each option then taking the user to another YouTube video. Not only is a clever use of YouTube but the directing, editing, and soundtrack are also very well put together. This highlights the way in which YouTube (and similar sites) can be used to successfully market a company and it’s products online. Brandawareness can be just as valuable as physical sales in that it can directly and in-directly lead to future sales.

The point of the video, other than being comical, seems only to bring awareness to specbox.net and a number of similar online foram sites for geeks and gamers. However i can’t belive it will be long before similar online campaigns are being launched by larger agencies. Although similar campaigns have been done in the past where there have been online treasure hunts using a variety of mediams from PPC adverts through to GoogleMaps (Eqtr used this once as a Xmas campaign) this is the first I am aware of that soley uses YouTube in this fashion. Please do let me know if you are aware of any others.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AQhSLcTlUBA&feature=related