Olympic madness hits London...

I was lucky enough to visit the Olympic park on Saturday to have a wander around, sit in the sun and soak up the atmosphere. I can honestly say that it was fantastic, the volunteers were engaging and friendly, the train service was on-time and not over crowded and the park looks stunning.

What did strike me though was the amount of branding scattered through out the park. I'm sure it wasn't only me that picked up on the fact that all drinks were supplied by Coca Cola, you could only pay with Visa and that their brand names, logos and colours were all over the place! I can appreciate that they have paid a lot of money to sponsor the event and this is their return but does that approach of blanket advertising really work?

Well, according to IAB, it appears that it does:

Report from @iabuk @iab @mojiva shows UK consumers more likely to respond to mobile ads from official Olympic sponsors bit.ly/QVSQFE
— IAB UK (@IABUK) August 1, 2012

A winning situation for the sponsors and a bonus for the visitors that the sponsorship money has delivered such an amazing Olympic Park. If you can get there then it's well worth a visit!

What are Delites?

In an attempt to take an interesting and new approach to marketing a product, 'Delites' have come out with a rather clever video about how far people will go for a free box.



Granted, it's a great video, my only question now is... "What are Delites?"

Long time since I posted...

Well, it's been a very, very long time since I posted a posting and that is mainly down to the fact that i've been caught up in a tendering process for a CMS supplier, the re-working and launch of a new Research section for the website (still pending) and the mapping out of a refresh of all 10,000 pages on the UH website.

It's fair to say that i've got my hands full! But, the good news is it looks as though the CMS supplier has been chosen and that I can make an announcement within the next few weeks. Exciting times ahead at UH and there'll be plenty to blog about as well!

Barclaycard PayTag is coming...

Always fancied the idea of using your mobile phone as a way to pay for your morning coffee? Well Barclays have announced that the PayTag is on it's way... not got an NFC enabled mobile? Not a problem, as they say on the site:

"PayTag can turn any mobile into a contactless way to pay, in seconds."

At the moment they are looking for people to register interest in using it and once you sign up to the interest form it's 6-8 weeks before you'd receive your tag. A really interesting move by Barclays and this could tie in very well with the Visa Olympic sponsorship deal.

The only issue would be that moment when you hold your phone over the contactless payment point and the cashier stares at you like you're mad... it's bad enough when you use a normal credit card!

If you fancy leading the pack in contactless then follow the link below to sign up:

• Barclaycard PayTag

Embed Spotify in your blog!

A new feature from Spotify, embeddable music! Obviously will appeal to a huge number of music fans and what a nice piece of functionality for Spotify to offer for free... Surely the fact that it links back to Spotify has nothing to do with it!

...and just to prove it works:

Instagram + Facebook = Facegram?

So Facebook has just picked up Instagram for $1billion... pretty high pricing for a product that doesn't appear to have any real revenue stream at the moment and was initially only valued at $500m.

So the question is, why have they done it and why did they pay so much?

Well, Facebook are looking to secure their position as the place to go for photo sharing. Although it may not be initially obvious Facebook contains a huge archive of peoples images, a big driver in staying engaged with the social network. If Facebook hadn't purchased Instagram it would be highly likely that Google (Picasa, Panoramio, Google+) or Yahoo! (Flickr) would have picked it up, putting them in a much stronger position to move forward. As Facebook continues to face competition from other social networking sites it will be keen to ensure that the competition can't simply purchase a superior product with a wide user base. The premium price paid by Facebook would have been to ensure that the deal was locked down early on.

A lot of people have expressed concern about the acquisition by Facebook and what the future plans of the app will now entail. Facebook has a reputation for swallowing start-ups whole and not necessarily keeping the functionality running. To try and help calm the storm Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom was keen to point out on the Instragram blog:

"It’s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. We’ll be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network. We’ll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience."

Moving forward though, will it prove to be money well spent by Facebook and will Instgram really survive intact!

Life as a newbie...

So, week two at the University of Hertfordshire and i'm already starting to see some very similar patterns that must run through all Universities. Similar issues around content maintenance, faculty demands and the oncoming deluge of paperwork! One huge plus point though is that fact that this project looks like it's going to be brilliant, lots of things I can bring to it from my previous role, a huge number of quick wins and some stability that I can put in place that should last us for a number of years.

Thankfully my new team appear to be exceptional and I have a great mix of technical support to throw into the mix as well. Interesting times ahead but for now it's down to shaking hands and putting my face about as much as possible! Luckily life as a newbie involves a lot of coffee...