Happy Monday!

Aoife

The popular RTE programme Operation Transformation  returned this month once again. With coverage on the John Murray show as well as a mobile website giving the chance to track your own weight loss, Operation Transformation is not just a TV programme but a multi-platform solution to those needing a bit of support to meet their weight loss goals (the recipes on the website are great too, if anyone is looking for a bit of inspiration).

With all of these great resources, it should be easy to stick to our new years goals. Shouldn’t it? Plenty of people would say no. According to Oliver Burkeman, Guardian columnist on self-help, happiness and other matters related to transformation, the very idea of new year resolutions is wrong. The ‘focusing illusion’ often takes place, which means that when we don’t meet our own high expectations of the shiny new person we picture ourselves becoming, we then feel worse about ourselves. Burkeman suggests instead that we set one modest goal, and give it a 30 day trial . This way it’s more likely to become a habit as opposed to an unsustainable grand change in our lives.

If it feels like this advice is coming too late, think of how much easier it will be to set a goal when the weather’s milder, the days are longer and the hellish cash strapped days of January are over. And making a resolution in February means the pressures off – half of people who’ve set new year resolutions have broken them within a month.

Good luck!

-Carly

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show has, as usual, thrown up some amazing advances in technology from some of the world’s biggest technology manufacturers.    

One big trend this year was Ultrabooks. These ultra-thin full-powered laptops were on show from Toshiba, Samsung, Lenovo, LG, HP and others. These are competing not only with other laptops, especially the already successful MacBook Air, but also with Tablet computers, and their incredibly quick start-up time. These Ultrabooks all aim to match that start up time, while offering full computing capabilities, all in a body only 20mm thick.  

Environmentally friendly technology seems to have been another buzzword at the show as ‘Ecotech’ products sprung up all around. There was even a human-sized hamster wheel from NRG, which showed people exactly what goes into producing electricity, using a medium they could readily understand; their own bodies. Rohan Marley presented a set of environmentally friendly headphones which are made using as much recycled and natural material as possible; insisting that there doesn’t need to be a sacrifice in quality in order to produce sustainable products.

Another big trend was for OLED TVs with Samsung and LG leading the charge. These televisions boast self-illuminating technology which gives a super efficient high quality images and incredibly thin design.

Samsung and Lenovo used the show to introduce TVs that recognize you and others in the room, automatically logging you into Facebook and pulling up your favorite channels or websites. We talk about ‘big brother’ technologies, but I don’t think we have had such a literal example as this before; a TV, in the corner of your room which knows your face, understands your preferences and reacts accordingly. Telescreen anyone?

 In fact, it amazes me how often I see technologies that look familiar because I’ve seen them imagined in films and on TV in the past.

Minority Report came to mind when I saw one of Samsung’s other products, the Smart Window, which is an amazing transparent LED screen or ‘window’ which is fully touchscreen. Has to be seen to be believed!

Tablets were also common at the show, as the second generation kicks in, we see more compatibility, better hardware and screen resolution. ASUS in particular seem to have done very well with the Transformer 700 series, which includes a laptop dock that improves both functionality and battery life. Still, any time I see anyone using a tablet, this image springs to mind:

With all the amazing treats we’ve seen at CES 2012, commentators are already speculating that CES 2013 will be Google’s show. Time will tell, but in the meantime we’ll be keeping an eye on which of 2012’s products actually appear on the market and which ones disappear altogether.

Claire

Happy Monday!

Aoife

Yesterday, saw the launch of Netflix into the UK and Irish market, whilst it may not be a new development, it is certainly another advancement in our market into the world of digital. Netflix is an on demand online streaming provider of TV and DVDs. The arrival of the service in Ireland has been much anticipated since the company started its digital distribution service in 1999 in the U.S.  In just 10 years it had a collection of over 100,000 titles on DVD and had surpassed 10 million subscribers.

No doubt Netflix will set the cat amongst the pigeons in an online streaming market that is becoming increasingly more competitive and cluttered by the day. We already have the established Lovefilm, Tesco’s Blinkbox, BSkyB’s streaming service and YouTube’s new ”Streaming Dreams”, which will see more than a 100 channels debut in the next 6 months. Surely this must be bad news for the country’s largest rental chain Xtravision, who currently has a variety of deals available in store, one of the best ones being 2 movies for 2 nights including soft drinks and popcorn for €10. However, with Netflix coming into the market with one month’s free trial and thereafter unlimited streaming for €6.99 a month, this could signal the end is nigh for the rental giant.

Everyone  on my Twitter account and Facebook timeline has been talking about Netflix since its launch yesterday morning. So with its infancy in the market, what has the initial reaction been over the last 24hours?

Whilst many are extremely excited about its arrival and have signed up immediately, laying claim to never leave the house again, there are others who are not so impressed.

There is some frustration re the sign-up, there is a mis-conception that the only way to sign up is if you have a Facebook account, some consumers seem to think that the fault lies in that only certain devices seem to only support the Facebook registration, however, after some investigating I discovered that email subscription is in fact available but in very small print.

There seems to be initial disappointment with the selection of movies, many claiming that they are quite dated and have already been shown on TV. When I checked last night, not one of the top ten DVD rentals was available on site. There is frustration over the categorisation of movies; it seems Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a Sci Fi Movie.

One way or another, it seems we have just got one step closer to internet TV, click, select & watch at the touch of a button. Watch this space.

Oilbhe

Enjoy!

Aoife

I’m also convinced that there’s nothing we can do about it.  So, really, questioning the rights and wrongs and moralities of it, whilst it might be interesting (or not?) is kind of an irrelevance.  It rains a lot in Ireland.  In some ways I wish it didn’t, it’s pretty annoying.  In other ways I’m glad that it does, the green landscape is really beautiful.  But I’d never sit around debating whether or not it should rain so much here or not.  What’s the point?  There’s no ‘should’ about it – it just does.  Rainfall is up to God, Superman, ComReg, the BAI, ClearCast or whoever it is that regulates our weather.

Back to Google.  They’re on the cusp of being the single biggest ‘media’ vendor in this market and beyond.  As I asked at the beginning, when the hell did that happen?  It doesn’t matter when it happened.  How did it happen?  Doesn’t really matter either, it just did.  So what are we going to do about?  Well, nothing we can do about it.  They went straight to the client on this one – that is the consumer, the public, the people using the world wide web.  They voted with their traffic and that’s the way it is. 

As long as they have a monopoly on the audience, we haven’t a leg to stand on.  Imagine a world in which the biggest media vendor doesn’t give you a percentage of discount, a percentage of media commission.  No volume deal, no share deal, no early payment deal, no annualised incentive.  Even talking to them is on their terms.  Depending on which of their client categories you fit into, you get to speak with a specific layer of their sales organisation.  Thanks for your business.  Paulie in Goodfellas had a similar service ethos.

And yet, and yet, and yet…  Flip this on its’ head and is this not the best thing to ever happen to a media agency?  We don’t want to be commoditised, we don’t want a race to the bottom, we want to add value and be rewarded for more than just bulk buying media space as if it were paper clips or ink cartridges, right? We said that, didn’t we?  Alright then, let’s get on with it.  Google is a level playing field for every agency, every client, everyone who wants to do business with them.  The only differentiator is how well you use their products and services.  In other words, the only differentiator is you, the agency, through your people.  Which is what we said we wanted all along. 

So get out there and start differentiating, get a competitive advantage and leave the moral navel-gazing to someone else.

John Clancy.

Happy Christmas!

Aoife

It’s that time of year where my mind meanders towards lists. I’m not alone in this pursuit, although I suspect somewhere closer to the domestique end of list writers rather than the maillot jeune end of the spectrum, to use a cycling analogy. As most productivity style courses will tell you, there is a power to list writing, in particular in the achievement of goals. They bring with them a sense of purpose; the opportunity to refine and hone, to reflect a true ambition that doesn’t exist as a vague thought bouncing around one’s mind; and can act as a reminder and catalyst for impetus when revisited at a later time if focus has been found to be waning.

A related enabler of action is the much-maligned meeting. We’ve all been in good ones and bad ones, but invariably little gets done without having gone through a series of filters, over coffee and croissants in the meeting rooms of the land.

There is an event coming to Ireland next year that will use both of these techniques, the list and the meeting, to act as a catalyst for long-term social change. The Change Nation Summit in Dublin aims to gather 50 of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs to address Ireland’s most pressing social challenges (effectively the list, albeit a far more grandiose one than my usual new year’s resolutions), and at the same time facilitate for each of them building a team of the best placed people to implement their solutions (the meetings).

Thinking of all this led me to compose my first list for next year. My desert island, all-time, top-five most memorable meetings that could/should/would happen next year were the world to be a better place:

1. Enda Kenny meets Sheikh Mansour, owner of Manchester City, who decides that winning the Premier League, is no longer a sufficient display of his financial prowess, and that he wants to take on a small under performing country and lead them to European domination, eradicating all debt along the way.
2. The NNI, the OMA, who knows even the odd TV station, getting together and espousing their respective media.
3. Our legislators get together with our industry and understand the benefits that a strong advertising industry brings to our country.
4. Media owners’ cross media sales teams, actually meeting each other in advance of presenting client solutions
5. Robbie Keane shaking hands with John Terry in Kiev on 1^st July, to commiserate with the Englishman as Ireland triumph in Euro 2012

Who knows, 2012 maybe looking better already

Enjoy!

Aoife