If, like us, you’ve been reading up on mobile technology over the past few months, you’ll have read that near field communications (NFC) is pioneering the way in which we use the mobile-orientated aspects of our lives, especially in terms of transactions and data exchange. Foursquare, for example, has announced that it will be introducing NFC support to its Android app. This will enable users to place their smartphones against an NFC tag or poster to check in, making the process quick and virtually effortless.

For London dwellers, NFC is part of everyday life with Oyster cards. However, this could soon be a thing of the past as Transport for London has stated that it will support NFC payments on mobile handsets later on this year. TFL is currently in the process of deploying NFC readers across London’s tube and bus networks, so soon that awkward moment of discovering you don’t have enough money on your Oyster card to pass through the ticket barrier with a disgruntled queue of people mounting up behind you will be but a mere distant memory!

Over in the Financial arena, Barclays has recently released details of its new initiative Pingit, Europe’s first NFC-based smartphone app. The Pingit app, which is available to Barclays UK current account customers and will be extended to all UK banking customers in March, is a free-to-use money transfer service which allows users to transfer up to £300 instantly.

Google Wallet is another hotly tipped mobile payment service. Released in the later part of 2011, Google Wallet uses NFC technology on HTC Nexus S handsets but also has an added incentive for users to redeem coupons and earn reward points whenever they use it to make a payment.

More ways to pay sounds good to us – convenient for customers and an exciting opportunity for businesses. What do you think?

This year is certainly shaping up to be the year of social TV. Simply by following tweets and Twitter trends during the airing of anything from X Factor to Newsnight, it’s become clear that TV has become an opportunity for online engagement and added entertainment. Most of us are probably using the “second screen” experience like never before, with some reports stating that as many as 86% of TV viewers use mobile devices whilst they are watching.

Broadcasters have responded by curating online conversations and publishing real time content, reposting relevant tweets and responding to our comments. Over in the US, second screen experience was incredibly popular during this year’s Grammy Awards and Super Bowl. During the latter, Hulu AdZone partnered with Advertising Age to bring viewers the infamous multi-million pound commercials in real time as they aired on TV, then asked viewers to vote for their favourite ads and share them on social media sites to create a socially engaged online experience alongside the more traditional TV viewing experience.

There’s been a lot of development over the last year in the film industry too, as studios have set about building their own social experiences for users. A good example of this is Disney who launched Disney’s Second Screen, an interactive on-screen film feature which is available as an iPad app download. This app allows the user to interact whilst watching and a film and includes elements such as a trivia, photo galleries and animated flipbooks which are great for captivating the younger and sometimes easily distracted target audience.

These have all paved the way for the second screen experience to be a social hit at forthcoming mass audience events such as this week’s Oscars ceremony and, of course, the summer Olympics.

We think this is just the beginning. What about you, one screen or two?

It’s the end of January already and we’ve settled into 2012 nicely – looking forward to the months ahead. There’s going to be lots of new toys to play with and fresh digital experiences so in our ‘Digital Trends for 2012’ series of posts, we invite you on a journey through some of our most anticipated developments. First stop –

Flexible Screens

Imagine being able to bend your iPhone or flex your tablet without a care in the world. Well that time could be nigh as affordable, flexible touch screen displays are set to become commercially available in the near future. These screen displays will be able to bend without the image being distorted, the screen cracking, or the inside workings being affected, and technology that currently has touch screen capability is first in line for a flexi makeover. A phone that, when dropped, would bounce right back up, couldn’t come too soon!

With durable displays perhaps usable screens could replace paper, everyday objects could have screens on them and, perhaps most importantly, people in skinny jeans can sit down with a phone in their pocket and not have to worry! But on a more serious note, user experiences could get a lot more interesting with new input methods, such as bending the display to zoom.

So what’s the reality?
Nokia have prototyped a mobile device that enables you bend and twist the screen to complete actions like scrolling and zooming. The most obvious advantage here is the ability to use it without looking at it. For instance, twisting it in your pocket to dismiss a call, turn an alarm off or change song.

Similarly, Samsung have come up with a transparent tablet that is expected to become available in 2012. It is combination of smart phone and tablet. This thin, flexible transparent tablet includes 3D technology and is easily foldable like a paper.

Would you swap your trusty iPhone for a literally more flexible version? Let us know in the comments below.

Top ads we liked

The heart warming Christmas John Lewis ad which had one of our MD’s in tears.

The Force – Volkswagen Commercial. The pick of the bunch from the Superbowl.

Unhate campaign (supported by United Colours of Benetton).

Controversial but strikingly brilliant. “Unhate is a message that invites us to consider that hate and love are not as far away from each other as we think. Actually, the two opposing sentiments are often in a delicate and unstable balance. Our campaign promotes a shift in the balance: don’t hate, Unhate.”

Top virals

Homeless man with the golden voice. Ted Williams, a homeless US man with a deep, refined voice became an overnight online sensation after being “discovered” by a local reporter on a street corner in Columbus, Ohio. The 53 year-old was subsequently offered a job by the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and was being pursued by NFL Films for possible work.

The Royal Wedding

Wedding of the year, Disney viral picture of the year.

Benton (formerly Fenton)

Benton the Labrador let loose in Richmond Park. Poor old Benton, the disobedient labrador who sacrificed his right to be let off the lead in pursuit of a fresh bit of venison.

Top Apps

Most useful – Hailo – iPhone – reviewed by MD Rhydian

“I love the integration of location into mobile. Hailo is an app that genuinely helps me and genuinely helps the cab driver and has a workable revenue model already up and running. It also uses wider social for added value. Cab drivers can share traffic black spot info using the app and also tell eachother where gluts of passengers are (theatres kicking out etc…)

It solves several problems that genuinely existed before the app was made. Not many tech advances can claim that.”

Most fun – Innocent Drinks – Banana Plane App – iPad/iPhone

Ok so we may have made this, but it makes the list regardless as its a whole load of colour and fun. See for yourself by downloading it here

Most cool – The Fancy – iPad/iPhone

A popular choice from the Public Social team. The Fancy is a collection of beautiful ‘things’ people have tagged across the web. A great source of inspiration if nothing else. Download here or sign up online .

Top Facebook campaign

Lynx Facebook App. Not a popular choice for the ladies in the office, but a good example of a big hitting Facebook campaign, even if it was aimed at spotty teenage men.

Nice bit of experiential to tie up any loose ends too :

Egypt and the Arab Spring

Wael Ghonim, a prominent online activist for democracy in Egypt wrote on the 26 Jan (doesn’t that feel like forever ago!) “I said one year ago that the internet will change the political scene in Egypt and some friends made fun of me”. The following day he was arrested and blindfolded for 12 days signalling a rallying cry for protestors and became a catalyst for change. Upon his release, Ghonim became a hero as he declared “If you want to liberate a government, give them the internet”.

Bin Laden live tweet

The 33-year- old Shohaib Athar was awakened in the middle of the night as he heard the sound of a helicopter hovering overhead. Naturally the first thing he did was tweet. Little did he know the significance of what he was tweeting.
“Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event),” Athar tweeted.

The London Riots

Without focussing on the negative, the power of social media came good with the #RiotCleanup initiative. Londoners coming together to help clean up the almighty mess the rioting left behind,all facilitated by Twitter and Facebook.

Steve Jobs – End of an era for Apple

A sad ending to the year with the passing of Steve Jobs, a truely inspiring visionary.

So the Moustache growing season has arrived and all the men in the office have stepped up to take on the challenge of trying to grow a moustache. The aim of which is to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. We shall be documenting the whole month by taking a photo every day at 5 O’Clock to watch these magnificent moustaches come to life. There are some strong contenders in the office along with a few baby faces so the results may vary from a ‘Tom Selleck’ style to a ‘Errol Flynn’ look.

In 2010, over 112,000 UK Mo Bros and Mo Sistas got on board, raising £11.7 million. Big steps have been taken towards changing attitudes and habits relating to men’s health around the world but there is still much to be done to catch up with the women’s health movement. Via the moustache, Movember aims to fulfill its vision of having an everlasting impact on the face of men’s health, by continuing to spark conversation and spread awareness of men’s health each year.

Funds raised will help make a tangible difference to the lives of others. Through the Movember Foundation and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and The Institute of Cancer Research, Movember is funding world class awareness, research, educational and support programs which would otherwise not be possible.

You can follow our progress and donate here http://uk.movember.com/donate/team-details/id/330462/searchTerm/team+public Search for  ‘Team Public’ and support us all the way!

However, the future of search can’t be solely linked to who you are and what you like as defined by your social media profile because your social media profile isn’t really you. Yes social media offers us much richer detail into consumers and subsequently, a chance to tailor products and services to their needs – but this only comes after a conversation, not a mere glance at a Facebook page.

By filtering results based on your friends’ activity online, the danger is that the content will eventually homogenise – particularly dangerous when you consider the most influential of consumers are those willing to try new things. How can we find out about restaurants my friends haven’t been to? There are serious problems here.

It provides an interesting parallel to the pitfalls of more traditional market research. Ask a consumer what they want from washing detergent and ‘whiter whites’ will invariably be a frequent answer – that’s what they’re told they need. They don’t engage in research and development on the subject, so they are unable (and indeed unwilling) to think outside of these realms.

Search needs to become more intelligent. It needs to use the data from the social graph to understand people not individuals, and it needs to learn from it. If I asked a friend what we should do this evening, they would offer suggestions not just based on what they know about what I’ve done in the past, but how they perceive my mood, my energy levels, if I’m in a relationship etc, the list goes on. Search is going to rely on more and more data but it’s how sophisticated the artificial intelligence that filters the data can become that will define how it develops.

Social will be a challenge for digital marketers who have until now separated out search from social. Search has been seen as largely paid-for media that drives sales, with social as earned media that drives brand equity. If, going forward, social is going to influence search, then marketers of brands not yet engaged in social media are going to have to find a reason for their brand to join the conversation, unable to ignore it any longer. Search engine optimisation will depend on how relevant your content is and how engaged your followers, friends and customers are in the conversation with your brand.

Sometimes agency life can be a little introspective. When everyone in the business is focusing on their project work and looking at milestones, delivery, relationships with our clients and normal agency life you don’t often get the chance to get a little perspective on how you are performing. Being satisfied with your output as an agency is what we all strive for and making sure the client is satisfied is also fundamental to your ongoing growth and of course, success. Occasionally you get feedback from your peers or maybe friends of yours who show interest in what you’ve been doing when you catch up for a pint, but if you are lucky you also get recognised by the press. On two occasions during the last nine months we have been delighted to see that our work has been picked up by the trade press and this is not something we take lightly.

Last September we featured in the ‘Ones to Watch’ section of the NMA Top 100 agencies. Throughout our infancy we had been hoping that we would appear in the list because it is a fantastic justification of the hard work that everyone in the agency has put in and shows that the hard work is paying off. It’s not easy to start a new business of course, but when we looked back over the six years it had taken us to reach this point and survey everything that had gone before it was with a great sense of pride. It’s a benchmark also and a challenge, because a good performance is something that you have to constantly work hard to maintain.

More recently we were equally pleased to be told that we had made it into Pitch Digital’s agency league table for the first and hopefully not the last time. We debuted at number 14 which is incredibly satisfying, particularly as this league table is based on the opinion of our clients. We had no idea this was coming and therefore the surprise element only added to our joy that we had made it onto the league table. We scored really well on R.O.I and Account Management which shows that our clients think we work hard to deliver tangible results. From a business point of view this is very satisfying feedback.

All considered this is a great endorsement of Public and the hard work put in by everyone associated with the business. We hope that our staff and associates share in our pride and enjoyment of these accolades because they have been hard earned. We look forward to building on these achievements in the coming years…

When Nike launched its micro site “Better World” in January, the reaction to it from the design community was one of across the board admiration, mainly directed towards its stylish use of the parallax scrolling effect. It certainly wasn’t the first site to use this effect, sites such as “Row To The Pole” had already incorporated the idea into their backgrounds, but it was one of the first to bring the effect to the literal foreground of a site’s design, turning scrolling down the page into a enjoyable and involving way for the user to reveal content.

Endless blog posts have been written about Better Worlds, the concept behind it, the design process and the advanced javascript and html5 that was used to build it so I won’t dwell on it, but rather use the site as a starting point to chart month-by-month six more examples of how designers and developers have continued to experiment with new ideas using interaction with content through scrolling.

January 2011 – Nike Better World - http://www.nikebetterworld.com/

Not the first but certainly the best known example of a parallax scrolling site and the likely catalyst for a lot of the scrolling experiments that have been explored so far in 2011.

February 2011 – Head 2 Heart - http://www.head2heart.us/

A more playful, bouncy take on parallax scrolling, but this time left to right instead of vertical and opting for navigation buttons rather than a scroll bar.

March 2011 – Ted x Portland - http://tedxportland.com/

Particularly original use of parallax scrolling with an entirely aesthetic purpose.

April 2011 – Unfold - http://unfold.no/

Vertical parallax scrolling with a clever trick when you get to the end of the page.

May 2011 – Cantilever Chippy - http://www.cantilever-chippy.co.uk/

Vertical parallax scrolling, another good example of how a bold style, large graphics and parallax scrolling fit well together.

June 2011 – Nizo App - http://nizoapp.com/

As you scroll down the page elements from an iPhone 4 and a Super8 camera slide from off screen into a neatly organised pattern, the site was so popular when it launched that it became a trending topic on Twitter.

June 2011 – Visit New Zealand - http://www.newzealand.com/uk/

Scrolling down the page loads a brand new image from a sequence for every click of the scroll wheel for a stunning stop-motion effect.

Last month, American radio host Ira Glass claimed he had cracked the Coke code and discovered the highly-guarded secret that is Coca-Cola’s recipe. Bearing in mind that the corporation maintains that only two people at any one time know how to mix the ‘7x’ secret flavouring ingredient, and they are not allowed to fly on a plane together, this is huge news if true.

News it may be, but in the grand scheme of things? If competitors said they had the recipe and their product actually identically replicated ‘that great Coke taste’, would people switch? Happily for Coke I think the answer is no. Generations of parents have been assuring kids that own brand Cola is just the same as Coke and it’s only served to reinforce their children’s relationship with ‘the real thing’. More than that, 77 days in the spring of 1985 showed that people love the brand not the product.

Back then, both the Pepsi Challenge and research conducted by Coca Cola clearly demonstrated that people preferred the sweeter taste of Pepsi. So in an attempt to halt a slipping market share, Coke developed a new formula, one that product testing confirmed as far superior. Thus on 23 April 1985 ‘New Coke’ was unveiled as the product to save Coca Cola. What followed was a brand loyalty backlash that even the company that successfully branded Christmas in its corporate colours wasn’t prepared for. For consumers, removing a product that was not just a part of their lives, but a way of American life was unconscionable. By June 10th (covered by the national news no less), Classic Coke was back on the shelves.

It does seem a little odd but consumers have relationships with brands not products. The American relationship with Coca Cola goes way beyond preferring the product to that of competitors. Brands as deep seated and powerful as Coke aren’t about representing something consumers aspire to be, the choice of a new generation, they are much more precious and powerful than that. They represent comfort, safety and nostalgia. They are an imagined, innocent past that consumers don’t want to change.

The popular outcry of 1985 is particularly poignant for today’s marketers working in an age when social media is democratising marketing. The most successful brands are those that people feel they own. Releasing the control of your brand to its consumers is a key challenge for brand owners entering the digital space. After all, your brand is just a set of ideas in the minds of your consumers and they have the power to change that.
That’s not to say that product doesn’t matter. The nostalgia for SPAM and its threatened removal from our supermarket shelves in 1998 didn’t quite result in the Coke Classic effect. Product does matter, but so does brand.. Being first to the market doesn’t hurt either, as Pepsi will tell you.

Published by Reputation Online April 2011

The industry in which Public Creative works is driven by innovation. Our clients need us to constantly innovate and push the boundaries of what’s possible with online communications in order to get cut through in an increasingly noisy and fragmented media landscape. A client like innocent kids is no longer competing against Tropicana or own brand smoothies; they are competing against Cartoon Network and Disney for the attention of their audience. Where once they used media owners to reach their audience increasingly they are competing with them for that same audience.

It’s what makes digital advertising and design so exciting and inspiring. The pace at which social media is changing the way that our clients customers are living their lives presents us with both constant challenges and constant opportunities. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube all offer constantly evolving ways for people to share experiences whether brand related or not and the advent of location based services like Foursquare presents real opportunities for brands to connect with their audience in a meaningful way. So when I read about speculation that we are heading for a second dot com bubble burst despite the fact that these services are clearly working and useful it’s worrying.

The financial speculation on the potential future revenues of start ups is a major concern. It’s clearly what causes bubbles. Once you invest 100 million in a start up the pressure for it to turn profit will eventually come to bear. The problem with the digital economy is that it’s based on innovation with little research or evidence so large scale speculation is inevitably going to result in large scale losses more than profits. The market can’t tolerate losses so it panics and that’s when the bubble bursts.

I was in the digital sector for the first bubble burst and looking back now companies like Boo.com weren’t flawed in terms of concept, selling clothing online has turned out to be a huge success even designer clothing and designer clothing to men! (net-a-porter and MRPORTER) they just didn’t have time to develop because they were asked to grow too quickly and so fail at the same tempo.

It’s the blind greed of the investment sector that is forcing the bubble not digital innovation. Google is great, Facebook is a brilliant and well run company which is protecting itself well by not losing control to outside investment. It’s the thirst of investors hoping they’ll uncover another Facebook that is driving these sorts of crazy valuations and stupid investment. There may be lots of good ideas out there that are going to be pushed toward failure by over investment.

The investment cycle is too short and too fat. Companies like Facebook grow because the idea is brilliant and people genuinely want it. Their valuation makes sense. It’s the search for the next one and thinking that money can make it happen that is going to cause the problems. There are great ideas out there, many of which are being hatched within a mile of the Public offices in the Silicon roundabout, but bizarrely the investment in the sector is its own worst enemy.

Let’s hope this time some of the great British ideas have a chance to realise their potential.

Published in BA Business:life in April 2011