New Year Resolutions

Everyone makes them but apparently no one keeps them.   Studies suggest that failure to keep to New Year Resolutions is somewhere between 88 to 92%.  I was a bit shocked it was that high but then when I thought about it the reason might be that most of us are ever so slightly inebriated when we make them.  Loads of people declaring at 12.05 that they will cycle round Ireland on a tricycle, make a meaningful documentary on the urban poor or that other major whopper lose weight.

Research shows that the New Year Resolutions are much more likely to be kept if they are relatively, small, measurable and can be enjoyed with like minded people.  Here are a few examples which should allow people to keep their word and ensure they go through the year with a sense of achievement and steady resolve:

·         Endeavour to cut down on the number of e-mail addresses you have. 

·         Think of a password for all your systems other than password or your children’s names.

·         Promise to watch more exceptionally well written American TV Series while drinking wine and facebooking your friends.

·         Buy a nice set of nail clippers and promise to keep your finger nails in good trim.

·         Take up a new hobby, smoking perhaps.  It allows you to meet new friends on social occasions as you are stuck out in the cold together (fresh air) and has potential stickability as it is very 'morish'. 

·         Put on a few pounds and genuinely don’t give a monkeys because it is natural with age.

·         Resist the demonic forces that make us continually uptight about every single aspect of our lives and just relax a bit.

These aren’t dictates just a few ideas to give you a general framework to build on so we don't start a brand New Year with that nagging feeling of imminent failure.   By the way, I genuinely think there is a direct correlation with the need to constantly “self improve”, the unsettling effect of not achieving all we are told we must and increased consumerism.   But that is for another day.  Anyway, let’s not try and reinvent ourselves because most of us are fine the way we are and have a very Happy New Year.

Craig Wilson

An Addiction

There is a huge trial going on at the moment in the UK concerning phone hacking  principally by the News of the World and The Sun.  There is a lot of benefit of hindsight pious tut-tutting about how horrible these people all are. Now I think they are and they and their newspapers are disgusting immoral rags that have done more harm to the country (UK) than any other institution I can think of in the last 30 years. Incidentally, the race to the bottom has infected the Irish press as well. However, there is a great deal of hypocrisy going on.



The public, I feel, are directly culpable and the truth is they lapped up all the sensationalist nonsense for years. If the public didn't want this type of stuff they simply didn't have to buy the papers. If a paper is writing scurrilous stories about the family of a little girl who has been murdered, anybody with a shred of decency would surely say to themselves should I really be encouraging this by continuing to buy this stuff.  But they didn't, they perpetuated the invasive digging because the journalists knew that the public has an insatiable appetite for voyeuristic scandal.  So all this sanctimonious dismay comes across to me as rank hypocrisy and symptomatic of people trying to absolve themselves of guilt.  Scandal sold newspapers and satisfied a gossip addicted public.

Privacy invasion is the new pornography and its seemingly inexorable rise has been going on for years not only in newspapers but via reality TV.  Nothing is sacred and the race to titillate just keeps rocketing on. But people need to hold their hand up at some point and admit you get the media you deserve (also the politicians we deserve but that is for another day).

N.B. Confession time. I really do enjoy I'm a celebrity - it is the only one I watch but I am in there with everybody else laughing at the truly desperate.  Also by way of mitigation - Ant and Dec are a scream.

TO BE CONTINUED

Craig Wilson
18/11/2013

Minority Report - Already Here?

I distinctly remember watching Minority Report about ten years ago and thinking what a clever film (proviso - brilliant actor though he is, I thought Colin Farrell was just a tad too young to play the part he portrayed) and thinking all that stuff is far in the future.




Not so:-

I read the other day that technology is now in common use which records when you enter a store, how many people are in the store and tracks your movements and where you go in that store (you do need a mobile with bluetooth to allow this - but we all have them and wi-fi tracking is being developed). It even tracks whether and for how long you stood outside the store before entering.  Now this gives a wealth of information to retailers and they can tell which displays you went to, how long you spent there etc. Not too scary says you. Indeed, it will improve service - predict peak times so staff are there to cater for customers and provide us with what we actually want to see in that store.  Also the bricks and mortar stores are only doing what has been done by online retailers for years.  All of those cookies that we accept are tracking what we do and what we look at and once you look at a product it follows you around  on every site you go to like some dementedly determined stalker.

So what is the issue?  The way I see it is it is just another brick out of the wall that keeps chipping away at allowing a deluge of private information being made available to all and sundry.  This is tracking your physical movement, what you are looking at and recording where you are in time and place.  Admittedly, the information is masked at an individual level so it is not available to the shop. However, it is still there and individuals could be identifiable.  Are there circumstances where that information could be available to certain  parties or agencies? If you combine it with the mass of other data floating around it provides an unparalleled amount of information that could provide too tempting to resist to large public and private organisations. It begs the question do we have any right to privacy, does it matter or do we even care.  From my observation, a lot of people don't. Perhaps it is a generational thing but each step, even if deemed negligible in isolation, makes the next step easier and more inevitable.





Incidentally, with IOS 7 Apple introduced iBeacon which allows a store to interact with shoppers from the moment they enter the store.

Don't get me wrong, this may improve the shopping experience and we need to help the High Street but wiser heads than mine need to consider all of the aspects and the overall societal cost of not only this aspect but all the other incremental analytical products coming down the line very soon. If you have any comments or observations, even if you think I am a scaremongering Luddite, please feel free to add a comment below.

By the way I revisited the new technologies in the film just to see what has actually transpired.  When planning the movie and the screenplay Steven Spielberg got 15 global experts (futurologists if you like) together for 3 days to come up with the technological ideas and these formed the framework for the plot of the movie.





I have listed the current situation with the main ideas the movie introduced.

• Multi touch interfaces introduced in 2007
• Retina scanners introduced in 2010 
• Insect robots being developed by US military
• Facial recognition advertising billboards to recognise and deliver personalised ads are in development
• Crime prediction software based on an alogrithm which supposedly predicts those most likely to offend proposed for trialling in Washington DC
• Electronic paper developed by various companies over the last few years but not yet finalised.

The really interesting thing is the film was made in 2002 but was set in 2050's.  Even people in the know underestimate how fast technology is moving.

By the way if you haven't already, watch the movie it is really good.  If for nothing else to see if you agree with my comment on Colin Farrell.



To be Continued

Big Data Good or Bad?

Loads of things fascinate me on a personal level about this course:- 

• Marketing as a discipline to be studied is very new to me but it is all around us every day;
• Skills for Success has helped me identify what type of person I am and will, hopefully, identify where I lack and address it;
• Creativity and innovation will provide a method and a framework to develop and enhance ideas;
• Digital marketing is a relatively new field that is harnessing all the new technologies and is the new launching pad for the latter day Henry Fords and Carnegies.

But in a broader sense the issue that has grabbed my attention more than anything is what on earth is happening to all the little bits of information that we are as individuals putting out there and how is it going to be used.  So I started to look into it via the web which given the subject matter is slightly ironic. 

In the past few years we have produced a virtual tsunami of information via Google, Bing, e-mail, Amazon, Facebook etc. This has given companies and government a wealth of information on our habits, likes, dislikes and movements.

Data has always been there and has always been used by companies and government (think censuses).  However, the sheer scale since 2000 is exponential and is accelerating.  Let me bore you with some stats: Google handles 24 petabytes a day (2 petabytes could contain all the information in all the American academic research libraries), Facebook has around 680 million active users, Twitter has in excess of 500 million tweets per day according to their CEO as at October 2012.  I would think since this course has started this figure would have increased dramatically (you know who you are).[note to Niamh - approach them for some corporate sponsorship or at least explain to them why their stats spike every October]



The coming revolution of computer science is data analytics or Big Data.  Basically, we can now crunch an amazing amount of information which is providng insights which we have never had access to before.  For example Google can, using commonly used search terms for flu symptoms coupled with logging IP addresses to establish location, predict flu pandemics and prepare local areas to deal with outbreaks.  These methods are real time and are a huge improvement on previous recording methods which by nature were always a couple of weeks behind.  Car manufacturers can input sensors which predict why and when your car is likely to break down in real time.  It being used by Police to predict crime hot spots and divert their resources more effectively. It is being used to highlight climate change, identify catastrophic weather events more quickly, highlight the outbreak of infectious diseases etc.  

There are a myriad of ways this is being used and this should benefit society as a whole. Indeed, you could say say that data has always been used but the game changer is the sheer scale of the information and the ability to mine this and seek correlations in the data to use it in a predictive way. 

A question of concern is what else could it be used for.  Forget surveillance cameras - our location, habits and behaviour are readily available to companies and governments.  There is the commonly cited example of the 14 year old that was sent the baby vouchers before her parents knew she was pregnant. Barclays has recently announced that it will sell data on it's customers spending habits. It also mentioned that this could be passed to government and MPs.  Although this is done in an aggregated way the information is available at an individual level.  

This information can be used intelligently to better society and for profit.  Both of which are fantastic outcomes.  However, this provokes the whole question of the level of privacy that people are willing to sacrifice.  Benign governments will use the information wisely for the greater good but the temptation is always there to use it in a 'stasi' like way when push comes to shove.  

 


This is a huge area and, as I said at the start, I blogged on it as it is one that interests me.  It is one of those issues that whether or not you agree with the concept it is happening and is going to continue to happen. There is no point in being a luddite or the old man at the disco (you know who you are).  There is a wealth of debate to be had around this issue and one which, as I said at the start, I blogged on as it really piqued my interest.

TO BE CONTINUED!


Craig Wilson
21/10/2013

#mg119
#DCUBIP

Well we are a fortnight in on the BIP and what have I learned ?

I've learned there is a lot to learn and not a lot of time to learn it.  The initial sense of panic will probably not subside until we get through the first few presentations and exercises (or maybe it won't). 




I've learned a lot of new terms, For example - SOSTAC, the marketing mix, digital platforms etc.  

I am becoming aware of the growing  importance of digital media and the need for businesses to adapt to it and maximise it's use to their benefit.  I am aware that any business that does not embrace social enterprise to connect with everyone who touches their brand does not have the correct business model (paraphrased quote from Angela Ahrendts, Burberry CEO - as of today Apple!).

One of the most striking things for me on a personal level is that where previously the smartest guys in the room used to be the people who sat and designed phenomenally complicated financial models (and where did that lead us) are now the people who try to get us to click on a button.  

The other thing that has struck me about the course is how the design is structured so that each subject complements one another to produce a rounded knowledge of marketing and innovation but also to highlight who we are as people and identify how we can address the gaps. 




So wherever this course leads we will come out of it different people.  We will have a knowledge of a really interesting field that with the advent of digital marketing is at the start of a huge business shift that is also changing society.  But also with an analysis of ourselves and the chance to identify and, go some way, to address perceived gaps.  

Anyway this is my first attempt at a blog and I will witter some more sometime soon.  



Craig Wilson
16/10/2013