Second Life is for freaks

To most people, who've never explored one, Second Life, Entropia Universe and other virtual worlds are a freakshow. The weird and wonderful avatars are just weird and the people they represent are thought to be social lepers in real life.

The view is that Second Life detracts from your first life.

A parallel could be drawn with attitudes to gaming in the early nineties, when adults who played computer games were dismissed as geeks. Playstation's classic TV spot Double Life captured the subversive nature of gameplay. It's still one of my favourite ads ever.



Playstation: Double Life

Now mums around the world are the people most likely to play online casual games and Nintendo's Wii has made console gaming ubiquitous.

Virtual worlds will, I believe, also reach a 'tipping point' when they're seen to enhance your social life. Web users are already 'getting' social networks like Facebook - and virtual worlds have a strong social networking component. In time, people will get that virtual and real lives needn't be separate at all. In fact, kids are already demonstrating this.

Virtual worlds like Whyville, Habbo Hotel, Webkinz and Club Penguin have kids and teens in their thrall.

Webkinz screenshot

Real cuddly toys kids are given for Christmas come to life in the Webkinz world. Children set up home, take care of their pets, with the help of happy meters and hunger meters and chat and play with other owners.



Whyville screenshot

Whyville residents learn about science, the environment and money management and go round in Toyota's Scion cars. They can write for the town newspaper or take a helicopter tour of the world.

Needless to say, many kids, for whom the highlight of the week may be a trip to the skatepark, followed by pizza, excellent as both may be, find that virtual worlds offer a new level of freedom.




In the US, in 2007, nearly a quarter of Internet users aged 3 to 17 used virtual worlds at least once a month, eMarketer reports and strong growth is predicted.

Kids who've grown up using virtual worlds won't have the same prejudices older generations have towards these environments. The future of the Internet is entwined with virtual worlds. The semantic web will be something like a mix of a hypercharged Google Earth with all the information on the net in rich context.

Why not take a trip with Synthtravels, the virtual world travel agency and begin exploring? (It can be hard to find the action if you take a cursory look without a guide, as populations are still relatively small.) Whether you're interested in fashion, architecture, thrills, or you're just curious, there's a tour for you. Go on, hang down with the freaks and ghouls!

Hero Archetypes in Shag, Shoot or Marry?

I’ve worked at a number of London ad agencies and can confidently say that the one thing they’ve had in common is a dedication, in their downtime, to the forced choice game Shag, Shoot or Marry?. It needs little explanation: three people are presented to a player and they have to assign a fate to each.

As we’re in the throes of the silly season, it seems appropriately inappropriate to discuss the appeal of this peculiar obsession. Why it should be so popular (or rather, prevalent, being reviled as much as it's relished) in London, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's an outlet for the more reserved, understated types to unleash their inner sex god.

It’s a social game and Advertising is a social industry. It’s a mating game and Advertising has its fair share of flirting. It’s amenable to cultural adaptation, which is a prerequisite of any self-respecting entertainment property in a customisable world. For example, it’s also known as The Cliff Game to those who'd rather push than fire guns. Punch, Pash or Partner is the chosen vernacular on Australian Big Brother Friday Night Live.

In keeping with another media trend, the game is a transmedia property. It also exists as a board game (Marry, Date or Dump), a radio gameshow on Howard Stern in the US and now a Facebook widget (Bed, Wed or Dead), so you can torment your friends. Clearly, the caper is well adjusted to the digital ‘Noughties’, as this decade is known, apparently.

But, I suggest, the real reason behind the game’s popularity lies in its pandering to the tensions inherent in the optimal mating strategies of men and women. It delivers vicariously the highs and lows of the dating game, like a potted version of Gossip Girl, or Entourage. Short-term vs. long-term strategies are in evidence.

Darwin’s theory of sexual selection holds that, for men and women, the greater the ‘investment in offspring’, the choosier the subject is when selecting a partner. In contrast, casual sex is chosen to be more promiscuous and competitive, in other words, trophy dates.

In The Evolution of Desire, D. M. Buss outlines the theory that for short-term affairs, women should opt for fit, dominant men, or ‘cads’ (purveyors of good genes), whereas marriage candidates should include nurturing men, or ‘dads’ (purveyors of care and resources).

According to academics at the University of Michigan’s Institute of Social Research, the two kinds of men correspond to archetypes of heroes in romantic fiction. One is the daring, promiscuous ‘dark hero’, or outlaw; the other is the kindly ‘proper hero’.

In their study, which exposed female undergraduates to the characters via passages from romantic novels, women said they’d prefer the dark heroes for short relationships, but found the proper heroes more likeable - candidates for marriage. The shorter the relationship, the greater was their preference for dark heroes.

The Hero and the Outlaw are also Jungian Brand Archetypes. I wonder if the game would have the same appeal if applied to suitable brands? …I’ll go find that cliff.

No Sex Please, We're (Still) British

A poll, originally published in The Times (UK), perfectly captures a national trait for understatement, which, perhaps even more than the Union Jack, is a particle of ‘Britishness’. While the British are increasingly becoming known for binge drinking and, thanks to Little Britain, a lady (lay-dee) is more commonly thought to be a moustachioed transvestite, the old reserve is still in evidence.

According to the poll, the most shocking public behaviours in Britain are nudity (37%), wearing a hoodie (12%), displays of affection (11%), breast feeding (10%), having a bad ringtone (8%), arguing (8%), drinking alcohol (7%), dropping litter (3%) and smoking (2%) (Brainmail). Not being one for public displays of affection myself, I find this amusing.

While it probably wouldn’t be a good thing for us all to adopt the values of Viz’s Victorian Dad, or to clamp down on those pesky nursing mums, it’s interesting to note a resurgence in grace and deportment. This backlash against binge drinking culture is as much media driven as consumer led, but it's beginning to gain traction.

www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/littlebritain

In 2006, a ‘social experiment’ transformed Britain’s worst booze hounds into paragons of sophistication. The girls were spirited away to Eggleston Hall Finishing School for Young Ladies for the reality TV show Ladette to Lady.

For some participants, the experience was life changing. For young viewers, it highlighted the benefits of deportment where it really counts – their looks. Several of the female beer monsters reported losing considerable amounts of weight. Unsurprisingly, cutting back from the customary 20-pub-a-night pub crawl resulted in significant calorie reduction!

www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/abfab

Joanna Lumley, interviewed on Parkinson in October, has called on young ones in the UK to behave better, so as to be more successful in life. In a rather ironic way, she’s the ideal spokesperson, best known for her outrageous antics as Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous and poster child to several generations of female party animals.

The actress, who, in real life, is incredibly poised and articulate, has written a foreward to a reissued book called The Magic Key to Charm. It draws on old-fashioned values and furnishes binge-drinking lasses with the skills to become more ladylike.

And, given that throwing up in the gutter is not a good look, particularly when the photos are instantly plastered all over Bebo, or Facebook, this could be very good advice.

Life isn't 'real' without brands

Advertising has been regarded as a manipulative influence, a 'hidden persuader'. Some went so far as to say that advertising created a distorted reality in which people were forced to lead inauthentic lives. Now brands are part of the social fabric, part of our collective social memories. They belong as much to consumers as to marketers.

Branded properties have become social particles, which people use for communication and self-expression. Once oxymorons, 'authentic consumption' and even 'caring consumption' have become acceptable contradictions. In other words, 'I shop, therefore I am.'

The bad news for marketers is they no longer own their brands. But, on the upside, brands have more opportunities than ever to enter consumers’ lives, provided they're ‘real’, that is, in context. Instead of interrupting conversations, brands need to be interesting enough to be part of the conversation, which isn't easy if you're a FMCG product. But any brand can generate interest, it may just have to swallow its pride and take a bit part in the story it creates. The trick is to integrate in a relevant way, so you're not creating entertainment for entertainment's sake, but also selling product.


Get Real

Today, for the majority of youngish people, it’s almost inconceivable to have a world without brands, to the extent that when social media company Bebo, excluded brands from the online TV show Kate Modern, viewers voted that brands should be shown, provided they were in context and hence ‘real’.




Express Yourself

With or without corporate consent, consumers manipulate brands for their own self-expression. One instance of this is customisation. By allowing people to personalise their trainers in its origami-themed Mexico 66 online store, Onitsuka Tiger helps customers experiment with fashion design to develop their own take on the brand.

Companies are developing new products with consumers, not through traditional, stilted research methods, but more organic discussion. Chase Manhattan began a dialogue with US students on Facebook to find out how they would use a youth-targeted rewards-based credit card. Discovering that they gave their points to charity, the bank created a Facebook credit card, the Chase +1 Student MasterCard, which facilitates donating through ‘Karma points’.


Show you care

The Chase MasterCard illustrates ‘caring consumption’, which has become a convenient way to change the world, without compromising on your lifestyle. It’s the premise of JWT’s Change The World 9 to 5 campaign, which empowers people to make a difference, through making activism seem less daunting.

No matter how thoughtlessly you consume, you can still care thanks to a campaign for the Belgian League for the Blind www.ablindcall.be, which leverages the fact that we’re all prone to making accidental calls when our mobiles aren’t locked. Mobile users are being encouraged to add the 'A Blind Call' telephone number to their contacts list. Every time they make an accidental call on that number, a donation is given to the charity.


Branded entertainment

Advertising and entertainment have blurred to the point where people increasingly don’t distinguish between the two - it's all part of life. It’s not that they don’t know when they’re being marketed to, it’s that they often don’t care. Provided they’re being entertained or given something useful, they’re happy to take on board branded content, from advergames, such as adidas' OriginsFestival, a game that lets you create your own ideal music festival, to branded social applications, such as the Sprite SIPS character on Facebook.

OriginsFestival


While consumers may not distinguish between advertising and entertainment (when it's good), brands clearly need to maintain the distinction between entertaining and selling and they must get the balance right.

The branded microseries Sunsilk's Lovebites integrates the product into an ongoing drama. There are plenty of other opportunities to convey product information, e.g. via the website, or traditional advertising, but if you want to create engaging content, people's lives are usually more interesting than shampoo.

Burger King's upcoming Buger King, The Movie likewise creates drama around flatmates, who happen to live above a Burger King restaurant. Whether or not this will fly, after years of shoving flame grilled whoppers under our noses, has yet to be seen. The company's previous foray into entertainment - the leftfield Subservient Chicken, which web users could command to do their bidding - was undoubtedly popular and demonstrated the 'have it your way' strategy, but its effect on sales is less clear. Personally, any company that lets me take control of a guy in a chicken suit, is a winner in my book. But that's just me.

Subservient Chicken


When corporates use people powered media they tread a fine line, open to criticsm that they're hijacking an environment they don't understand. By engaging audiences in co-creation they can avoid such criticism. Nike’s Chain, part of the Joga Bonito campaign, had football fans film and post online footage of their own ball skills. The only condition was that the ball had to enter the screen on the left and exit on the right. When the clips were put together, they created a chain linking people across continents and cultures – a perfect instantiation of the beautiful game.

Joga Bonito


Social Particles

Brands and branded entertainment properties have become ‘social particles’. What consumers share with their friends, through their social, real-life and mobile networks says something about them. Branded material can enhance their social standing. Being the first to pick up on a new viral campaign or widget, or being the top scorer amongst your mates on a branded online game, confers status.

Brands have become integral to life, but this comes at a price. There's much more competition. If you’re an FMCG brand and you think your competitive set is FMCG, think again. It’s the universe of all things entertaining, useful, fun, or thought-provoking.

If you're a brand that doesn't lend itself to laugh-out-loud entertainment, or deep and meaningful self-expression, where do you fit in - above, below, within, or to the side of consumers' lives - and how and where do you create drama? Is your product really the most interesting thing? A relevant, supporting role in a good movie is better than the starring role in something no one watches or cares about.

Want it...need it

Have you ever observed that, when you try not to think about something, you can't help thinking about it even more?

Cravings are linked to restraint. Anything subject to societal, or personal, restraint, in other words anything good that's deemed 'bad for you', is a candidate for a craving. Chocolate springs to mind.

Well, research suggests that it's pointless to fight food cravings, particularly when it comes to chocolate.

A study conducted at Hertfordshire University found that women who were specifically asked not to think about chocolate ate 50% more than those who were encouraged to talk freely about their predilections.

134 students were asked to either suppress all thoughts about chocolate, or talk about how much they enjoyed it. They were then asked to select from two confectionery brands, believing that it was this choice the researchers were monitoring. But how much they ate was measured instead.

Women who'd tried not to think about chocolate ate, on average, eight chocolates, while those who had talked freely about it ate five. The research, which was led by Dr. James Erskine, was published online in Appetite journal in October 2007.

The findings tie in with other research, which indicates that when you try to suppress a thought, this often has quite the opposite effect.

Some studies suggest that disrupting the mental imagery associated with cravings - visualising something else - can help. A study by Professor Marika Tiggemann and Dr Eva Kemps at Flinders University in Adelaide indicates that, instead of trying not to think about chocolate, people were more successful in reducing their cravings if they imagined a completely different object, such as a rose.

The research is published in the June 2007 edition of the Journal of Applied Psychology. It follows an earlier Flinders University study, published in Appetite (September 2005), which indicates that craving intensity relates to how vivid the food image is, with visual senses contributing more to cravings than any other sense, including smell.

Tiggemann and Kemps' work is geared to helping overweight people cope with cravings. Their research and the Hertfordshire University study have clear implications for people on diets. It doesn't pay to set unrealistic goals, such as resolving to cut out fattening foods altogether. For some people, eating a small quantity of the food they desire may help dispel the craving.


Cravings are individual and elicit different responses in different people

Cravings grip us all to some degree, but the cause and experience varies from person to person. It's a complex subject and a number of factors come into play, such as whether the suppressed thought has a high emotional content, how much it matters to people, whether the craving is physically based, caused by a nutrient deficiency, or depression related.



Differences have been observed between males and females. Women tend to crave sweet things, whereas men are more likely to desire savoury, usually salty or fatty, foods. These tendencies are also seen in 'comfort food', with men generally preferring hearty foods and women opting for quick, usually sweet, foods.

There are also differences in how men and women respond to cravings. In the Hertfordshire University study, men ate more chocolate if they spoke about it.

I wonder if perhaps this had something to do with the different level of craving experienced by men, compared to women. Perhaps, overall, their cravings weren't as strong, so restraint was less of an issue. By talking about it, it was more top-of-mind, so they ate more.

On the other hand, without reading too much into it, the findings may shed light on the different tendencies of men and women to talk through issues. In qualitative research, I've heard women admit that talking through problems is in itself cathartic, and helps reduce the problem. (In the Hertfordshire research, it seemed that talking about chocolate was the next best thing to eating it, and tended to reduce the cravings.) Anecdotally, men are more likely to want to fix the problem immediately, and if they can't, then talking about it stresses them out.

There you go. I'm off in search of chocolate. I've been trying not to think about it, and writing about wanting it is doing nothing to dispel the craving. Ultimately, though, I feel confident that a small indulgence now will pay off.

Touch

Our connection with the world is less direct than ever before because more of our information is mediated, usually via the TV or a computer screen. Visually overloaded, but sensorily deprived, we’re touch-hungry. The societal trend towards self-indulgence is partly a reaction to our biological need for touch. Increasingly, we spoil ourselves with luxury as a proxy for contact.

Our need for multi-sensory stimulation represents a big opportunity for brands. From the iPod Touch to a more tactile focus in interior design and bedlinen, brands are helping us re-connect with the world on a more visceral level. Branding is primarily about creating an emotional connection with consumers, and, touch, along with smell, is a highly emotional, immediate sense.

The way the brain processes information sheds light on the immediacy of touch. Touch stimulates us powerfully on an unconscious level: think of a tap on the shoulder, or the automatic response to withdraw your hand when you touch a hot stove. If the information that reaches our brain is based on physical senses, our reactions are much faster. This is the premise for Purdue University's experimental touch-based warning devices in steering wheels, designed to alert drivers to dangers, such as other vehicles in their blind spot.



Touch is the first sense humans develop in the womb. Babies need to be touched, otherwise their development is inhibited. Touch is fundamental to feeling comfortable, or distinctly uncomfortable. Some people like to greet their friends with a bear hug, while, for others, an air kiss is almost too much contact. A cosy, cashmere sweater can make all the difference to a winter day, not just in regulating temperature, but mood.

Research has demonstrated the positive benefits of touch in promoting animal health and human health. The Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami has conducted over 100 studies of subjects of all ages, which show the effects of touch therapy in alleviating depression, reducing pain and improving immune function, among other benefits.

Various scientific studies have shown that touch stimulates the release of endorphins (the body's natural pain killers). In other words, when a mum hugs her injured child, this can literally make it better.

But despite the demonstrable benefits, the sense of touch is being neglected. Dr Charles Spence of Oxford University, author of the ICI report on the Secrets of the Senses, warned that sensory deprivation in modern society is affecting people's health and wellbeing.

'We have moved away from an outdoor physical lifestyle to one in which we spend 90% of our time indoors, often watching TV or using computers. Although this makes life easier, it doesn't satisfy our basic need for a balanced multi-sensory diet.

‘18% of our body is skin, and if we don't stimulate it appropriately it can lead to stress and higher blood pressure,' said Dr. Spence.


Tactile brands


Vaseline Intensive Care

Brands have based entire advertising campaigns on touch. Vaseline Intensive Care is a deeply sensual brand, with a campaign that highlights the amazing properties of human skin and how it responds to touch.

The temptation to touch or fiddle is sometimes overwhelming, even when we're not conscious of it. Maltesers’ long-running international campaign is based on the chocolate’s physical attributes: the light spheres bring out consumers’ playful sides.

Retail environments present perhaps the most obvious opportunity for brands to engage in tactile marketing.

Touch in interior and retail design can be used to accentuate the personality of a place, or brand. It can convey a sense of comfort, or malaise. Furry, animal-print wallpaper in nightclubs speaks volumes - ‘Run!’. Hardness can convey solidity and supportiveness, but equally, it can feel rejecting. Softness confers comfort and friendliness, but can also suggest decadence.

Timberland, Tokyo

Timberland’s new touch-friendly stores evoke the natural world, through wooden tree-like sculptures, and reinforce the brand's credentials as being environmentally in-touch.


Touch as a discriminator of quality

A far cry from the old model of ‘Do not touch’, some new stores encourage nothing but touch, because this is one of the most important ways to gauge the quality and authenticity of goods. Now that many goods are comoditised, everything seems equal to our visual senses, so touch is more important as a discriminator.

You can’t buy anything at Tokyo’s Sample Lab , which opened in July 2007; all members can do is handle and sample new products – and, of course, review them to generate word of mouth.

In Room 414 at the Westin Philadelphia, developed to showcase the work of local designers, everything you touch is for sale.

Room 414


Marketing mashups

Marketers have borrowed from other disciplines, including tactile trends in art and design. Artists have branched out into vinyl toys, as another outlet for expression, and brands, such as shoe company Onitsuka Tiger, have followed suit.

Recently, fans couldn’t get enough of special edition platinum Adios and Ciao Ciao toys, which celebrate a new collaboration between Onitsuka Tiger and Japanese-inspired lifestyle brand tokidoki, purveyors of ultra-desirable T-shirts, toys, bags and iPod skins.

Tokidoki Adios toy


Brands can learn from the haptic tools used by theme parks and console games, whose whole business is experience. Walt Disney Imagineering uses experiential storytelling to create worlds that people can enter and touch. In theme park attractions, a ‘molecular manipulation’ technique can deliver a computer-regulated puff of air to spook visitors into thinking there’s something right behind them.

Porsche has licensed production of a Porsche 911 Turbo wireless wheel for Playstation 3 and PC games. The steering wheel, designed to Porsche quality specifications, is top-grade leather and hand-stitched, for an authentic feel.


Touchy feely tech

Although technology and touch have not had close associations in the past, touchy feely technology is the way of the future.

Nokia, for example, is committed to tactile technology. The company has just developed a Haptikos ‘touch feedback’ touchscreen. This means when you press a key on the screen, it clicks under your finger with exactly the same sort of fingertip feedback as if you’d pressed a conventional keyboard key.

‘So what?’ you may ask, but there is some satisfaction to be gained from typing and getting a tactile response. Sometimes, it’s the details that matter. Apple are also interested in this technology, and they have always been sticklers for design details, to their credit and fortune.

In December 2007, Apple filed a patent for a multitasking touchscreen that would enable a new device that integrates both games and a media player, Engadget reports. Depending on whether they tap the device or exert more prolonged pressure, users could be directed to different applications. The hybrid device doesn’t exist yet, but the patent suggests there's hope for a gaming iPod Touch in the near future.

The University of Geneva’s HAPTEX research project is investigating ways to let people ‘touch’ virtual textiles through a haptic interface. Users can ‘manipulate’ virtual textiles and see and feel the effects of the changes. What they actually touch is a computer model of the fabric, but the sensation of actually feeling material is said to be realistic.

Shinsegae Department Store in South Korea is already trialing a groundbreaking online store, which allows shoppers to actually try on clothes for size. Using data from a 3-D body scan, each shopper has an avatar which reflects his or her actual body shape. Combine scanning technology with HAPTEX technology, and shoppers could experience a new level of verisimilitude and even feel the fabric!



The Free Hugs Movement adjures people to get closer to one another. The fact that it has gained traction worldwide shows that people are actually receptive to physical contact from random strangers! Now, that's a worry.

Facebook's Beacon: The perils of social advertising on the people-powered web

Given the size of the social media audience (373 million, globally, in 2007 and projected to rise to over a billion by 2012 - Strategy Analytics) it's no surprise that advertisers are keen to leverage the opportunity. Relative to the audience size, social media are underexploited, but they present unique challenges, which even the gurus of the genre find perplexing.

Facebook recently launched its new social advertising programme, Social Ads. One part of the system, Beacon, got off to a bumpy start. Within a few weeks of its introduction in November, users had clubbed together to create an online petition lambasting the social network for betraying their trust.

Beacon enabled Facebook's 40-or-so commercial partners to track purchases made by Facebook members. These purchases were then highlighted in marketing feeds to the buyers' friends. Surprise Christmas presents were revealed by Overstock.com and users' actual movie viewing habits were disclosed through Fandango.com and Blockbuster.com.

Facebook soon issued an apology to users, quickly realising that it would have to introduce an opt-in for Beacon, as opposed to the opt-out system, which members said was unclear. The trouble with opt-in for companies is that it tends to reduce participation, but better to forgo some dollars than risk a mass exodus from the community. The changes were announced on 29 November.

I'm glad Facebook salvaged the situation, just about in time. Social Ads is not a bad idea at all. It's based on observation of how how Facebook members share information with each other, how they use and respond to news feeds on the site. As such, it was intended not to be too much of an imposition, but to complement existing consumer behaviour, which is a good thing.

Lots of people have been talking about the privacy issue. Clearly this is a factor, but privacy is not as big a deal to social network users as it's made out to be. If Facebook members were that concerned about privacy, they wouldn't post quite so much information in the public domain, and they might just have made the effort to check what was going on with the Social Ads programme. There was an opt-out option. They didn't see it. Most young people wouldn't even have looked.

The main issue, I believe, was that, while it may seem that Facebook friends like to share just about everything, from which Heroes character they are to their Top Friends, or ideal partner, they don't, in fact, like to share EVERYTHING.

What's so good about the online environment is that you can control your 'appearance'. You can present yourself exactly as you like. That means you pick a good-looking photo for your social profiles (or get an OK one touched up to look human on one of the many new online photo manipulation sites e.g. pixoo). You create an attractive avatar, or some symbol that unleashes the 'real' you inside. You challenge your friends to Scrabulous, as a way to demonstrate your hidden talent. Everything that's shared is a social particle that says something about you and enables you to vie for popularity within your peer group. You don't necessarily want your friends to know that you watched some sappy film last night, when you pride yourself on being a film buff. You almost certainly don't want to disclose 'surprise' gifts in advance.



The Beacon debacle also highlighted just how powerful a force people power on the web is. Owners of social networks and online worlds can't be too controlling, or the residents will unite! MoveOn.org, which organised the Facebook petition, rapidly achieved its objectives. It's not the first mass movement. Free Ryzom was a campaign by residents of the online virtual world Ryzom to buy their world, when the owners got into financial trouble. Though they didn't succeed in the purchase, they raised a hell of a lot of money. The spirit of the movement lives on as the Virtual Citizenship Association, which looks out for the interests of citizens across the web.

Search

Online search is huge. Gargantuan. It's the jumping off point for the Internet's millions of users. Google is the biggest brand on the planet, within 10 years of its launch.

A lot of people using search aren't looking for something new. They're trying to find their way back to places they've already been. According to online ad company Atlas, 71% of paid search clicks are of this nature. People are navigating, as opposed to exploring. Search is becoming a giant, visual, interactive map, helping us navigate our lives and the body of human knowledge.

Google has blazed a trail with Universal Search, recently introduced in Australia. The system combines listings from video, images, news and book searches, along with traditional search. If you haven't already found your way to the old vertical search options in Google (search Images, News, Maps, Groups, Scholar etc. - right above the search field, start here, then expand your horizons!)

Google has also just released an integrated application for the iPhone and iPod touch. The webapp allows users to access to Google search, Gmail, Calendar and Reader applications in one place. Google remembers where you are and gives relevant, localised search results - all formatted for your iPhone.

As the out and out market leader, commanding around 80% of the paid search market, Google can afford to commit time to growing the search market. As such, it comes across as being rather philanthropic (particularly in countries where it's not subject to the pressures of controlling governments) because it's constantly conducting experiments, with the help of users, to improve the experience of search. From contextual search to short cuts, Google is always looking for new ways to solve problems. If you want to participate in Google's various experiments to improve search, check out Google Experimental

But Google isn't alone in its desire to improve. New visual tools, meta-searches and vertical search engines are making navigation much more intuitive. Search Crystal, which allows users to compare multiple engines, including images, video, social news and RSS feeds, is a clever tool, which can be embedded as a widget on your website, or on Facebook. Again, it's in beta mode right now, so get using it and tell them how to make it better!


Search Advertising

Unsurprisingly, search + directories, worth around $600m in 2007, is the largest category of online advertising. Search + directories accounted for 45% of all online adspend in quarter 2 2007 (IAB). Banners and rich media were 28% of spend and classifieds, 27%. Search adspend has risen considerably in the past five years, accounting for just 20% of expenditure in 2002. Strong growth is predicted, with Google estimating market growth at around 30-40% next year (SMH 15.11.07), which is conservative compared to some projections.

Within paid search, Google's user-friendly AdWords is the dominant player. Advertisers assign keywords to their ads and when one of those words is used in a search, the ad may appear next to the results. The positioning of ads is determined by a number of factors, governed by a 'quality score'. This factors in how relevant the ad's copy is to the content on the advertiser's website, and, the click-through rate from the ad. Advertisers pay when people click through to their ads.

Such is the influence of Google AdWords that both Facebook and Yahoo! have used the system to promote their own advertising platforms. Yahoo's sponsored search Panama has recently undergone a facelift, with the introduction of a quality score. It seems they're keen to address gripes about user-unfriendliness. 'Easy' and 'simple' are duly stressed, with a promise to get your campaign online in minutes in 5 easy steps.

Online success - Big brands get it

It's not just teccy brands that know how to leverage the online environment. The brands reaping the benefits of online marketing are the very same world-famous names we're all familiar with, such as Toyota and Lynx/Axe.

To some extent, the reason for this is that success is autocatalytic, in other words, 'success begets success'. Big, prominent brands that have become part of the social fabric are more likely to succeed in whatever they do, including forays into online marketing. But it's not an automatic rite of passage.

Another thing these brands have in common is that they are committed to integrated, multi-media campaigns. This is true, but somewhat misleading if we're looking to the reasons behind online success. In practice, 'integration' often means that online is the last medium on a marketer's list of campaign mandatories, which somehow complements the TV ad and ticks off the 'let's do some digital' requirement that someone within the organisation is pushing, for their own inscrutable, geeky reasons.

The fundamental principle that guides successful brands online is that the digital space is an integral part of people's lives, complementing real-world relationships and interactions. Social networks have become as ubiquitous as e-mail.

The online environment sets the context for many of the most important conversations in life and for the daily exchanges, which may seem trivial, but help keep us grounded. Brands need to be part of these conversations, or be interesting enough to be the topic of conversation.

Toyota has made its Scion car the hottest virtual wheels in tween online world Whyville. An advergame, Book of Deviants, also promotes the youth-targeted car. Players mobilise midget Deviants (who go round in Scions) to bludgeon Sheeple. The neon green Sheeple blood accumulated goes to fuel a Scion xD factory. Naturally.

Book of Deviants

Toyota has engaged in branded storytelling, in partnership with DC Comics, with Smallville Legends: Justice and Doom. To promote the Yaris, the company created additional Smallville content that ran in place of adbreaks during the TV show, which chronicles the adventures of the teenage Superman. Viewers were also invited to immerse themselves in the Smallville world through an online game, promoted in the idents, which invited them to solve puzzles for the chance to win a 2007 Yaris.

Lynx's Gamekillers is a totally on-brand advergame that's entertaining in its own right. Not only is there the option to play the standard version, but players can customise the characters, choosing to cast hapless friends, or rivals, from real life, as 'Gamekillers' (the people who stop them realising their virtual love interests in the online game).

These brands get it. They offer consumers personalisation, fun and new ways to socialise and improve their social standing. They do it seamlessly, offline and online.