Saturday, 26 March 2011
Sunday, 20 March 2011
eCircle Connect Europe Review in Pics | #eceuro11 @ecircle @duncanbanantyne @dcobley
@LucyAHudson | Lucy Head of Marketing at eCircle UK introduced all the big names to the main stage whilst managing to smile at all times. If Lucy was nervous it didn't show.
@dcobley | Dan Cobley | Google's VP of Marketing | See the materials at http://goo.gl/uqj8t.
Dan reminded us about the power of making people happy. In a day full of psuedo-science and statistics this was a simple, compelling and welcome reminder.
Making reference to Maslow's hierarchy Dan showed this bus shelter that had been turned into a human oven - depicting warmth (on a winters day) as a way to make people happy (and warm).
Personalisation: Being Noticed
I too got one of these e-mails from LinkedIn and it having faces of people I knew definitely made take notice.
Torn open: Wired's extreme example of personalisation caused controversy and made for, for one, think about how much I readily share on social sites.
Dan's colleague (Anthony Hall) got a shock!
The Old Spice "smell like a man campaign" totally eclipsed it's initial groundswell; gained virally from it's YouTube video's by actually providing personalised replies to comments on YouTube. The responses to video's reached over 17m viewers!
Barney Willis | eCircle | Spoke in the performance theatre on the topic of Display versus Email – The SEAT Study,
There were some great stats from the top 100 retailers | the one that struck me was that 60% do not send a thank you or welcome message to signing up. A) how rude B) wasted sales and brand opportunity.
This slide lead to a question that I asked Philip Story - "do you think technology is still holding companies back when handling e-mail marketing". Philip said no. The person sitting to my left was from the largest incentive card programme in the UK and agreed (with my view - that tech is still a hindrance for many).
Making one customer happy at the expense of the masses is a fools errand.
Inbox relationships with people, Philip Storey, eCircle (sorry for the pic Quality Phil I didn't want to use a flash whilst you were in full stride)
I was really looking forward to hearing Groupon's story. If I'm honest this presentation was a bit of a disappointment. Claiming Groupon got so big so fast because they are agile and were funded from the start only rings as partially true; the well funded bit. Forbes naming Groupon the fastest growing online business ever, raising serious VC money (from ebay founders) and buying an established (BIG) business, followed by Google giving them the ultimate kudos, (offering $6bm and now an IPO floatation of $15bn) might have something to do with it.
Don't get me wrong, I buy into the fact that 'everyone loves a deal' - and being 'service only' is working - but was 'letsbuyit.com' so different? What I wanted to hear more about was how they actually help clients deal with the huge sales volumes they deliver in a day, and maybe even a case study of five!
Groupon's Jonathan Mann
Groupon is definately a beter brand name than mycitydeal
What I would love is for Groupon to allow me to select the type of offers they send me. I'm really not interested having my lady-parts waxed on a daily basis.
Everyone with money then.
Strange benchmark. Unless there is a correlation between people checking their bank balance before committing to a deal.
Still Jonathan was a huge hit with some fans in the audience.
A huge thank you and a hearty well done to @lexi_clarke (pictured) along with @AllyBurt and the whole @ecircle team.
The networking and sponsors' area. The hotel was a fantastic venue.
How IBM helps Wimbledon deliver a rich experience to millions of fans around the world, Alan Flack, IBM
It was the demo of the IBM 'seer' reality app that blew me away; with its live data and video footage from the BBC - awesome.
This really is the future of sporting events; for geeks like me anyhow.
Inbox Relevance – Optimising Halfords Lifecycle Marketing, Saj Bhojani, Halfords & Adam Bennington, eCircle - this tag cloud, specifically the orange highlighted words, were, according to Saj Halford's main areas of focus for 2010.
I liked the categories used to describe the different campaigns.
Re-targeting with relevance, Chris Journeay, Adobe
Chris's presentation was very analytical. The cool bit for me was Adobe's ability to dynamically change an e-mails content based on what, I assumed, is a complex set of rules. If anyone knows how this really works please add the comments here.
On stat to rule them all!
automate, automate, automate
The journey from e-commerce to o-commerce, Steve Robinson, MandMDirect.com started with a trip back in time.
P3171401
e-tailers should be able to get to 10%
Looking for questions.
@duncanbanantyne got up and told his story. An unapologetic, funny, and frank talk with more than a hint of fraud!
My takeaways: Be bold, be persistent, ask lots of questions, learn how to speak the lingo, entrepreneurs are the answer!
Lively Q&A's | plenty about 'den' stories.
A few pints of the black stuff were enjoyed in Club X and under good advise I tool the lift to the roof garden for a breathtaking view of St Paul's
All in all a great day away from the office; listening to some truly knowledgeable speaker to pick up new stories and stats. My gratitude to eCircle.
Please stay connected with me @mylesdavidson
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Experimenting to learn - getting to grips with a manual lens
SLR Magic is a company that sells some interesting camera gear through their E-Bay listing and one of those products is a lens that has been modified to work on the micro-four third mount cameras. The lens, featured in this post is their 35mm f/1.7 lens (which on the Olympus and Panasonic M43 camera's is equivalent to 70mm) and it comes with the lens, a sun shade, metal cap and rear cap for about £85. Although the lens was subject to import duty (about £20 -- which was an unwelcome surprise).
So it's a cheap, fixed (no zoom), manual (no auto-focus) fast (wide aperture) lens but what's it for? Well having first read about it over at http://www.stevehuff.com and looking at a few some samples from a few people online and I got the distinct impression it is for FUN!
Having had it for just a couple of days here's what it and i have captured:
The Kit (Olympus Pen EP-2 with SLR Magic 35mm f1.7 manual lens
Incredible control over depth of field.
This shot is noisy and not pin sharp; this was, however, before I figured out how to use 'manual assist' (a 10x zoom feature).
The natural characteristic of the lens create a soft 'dreamy' feel towards the edges; helps to direct the eye to the centre of busy scenes.
At F1.7 you can throw the background way out of focus and get some cool creative backdrops.
Using the lens with the Olympus' built in art filters (such as pin hole) has the making for some great shots
This was shot through a train window; this looks almost 'toy-like'
@dereckjohnson shot this on the way into London Euston (Dereck is now thinking of buying an Olympus Pen :-)
A quick snap; with a bit more work (changing the letters) this might make a good stock-shot
In the pub; this was shot in pretty low-light.
The table looks like it's the sharpest point of focus; where as the mayo bottle was the intended point of focus - hmmm maybe i need a tilt-shift (or more practice)
Shot in the office; this set-up really lends itself to be picked up, at a whim, and shot a candid shot.
The box.
Discovering the manual assist mode (a 10x zoom function) allowed me to really 'dial-in': almost on a single word.
Having tried to refer to the manual I soon gave up, opting for a search instead. As ever the world provided the answer in a forum.
Testing the 'manual assist' mode to the max. This is quite sharp considering it's hand held and under artificial light (pictured: pussy-willow)
Using the pin hole art filter rocks.
Myles can be followed on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/mylesdavidson (@mylesdavidson). If you have a second do leave a comment or critique...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)