Archive for February, 2010

Social media is ’sticking’ around

As an analyst for Attentio, I come across all kinds of topics that people are discussing online. Right now for example I am preparing a social media report on… glue!!
While doing some research on the topic, contrary to my first thoughts that such a topic is not very much discussed, I found tonnes of forums discussing glue related issues! Forum users are in need of advice on which type of glue is best for sticking paper to walls, metal to tiles, plastic to plastic, mirror to wall, broken glass, wooden parts, and so on. Hints on how to prepare a surface so that the glue works best, are all over the place.
People look for something solid and strong. It seems that the magic “pâte à fixe” is most popular for those who do not own a property but do rent one. Instead of hammering nails that can destroy a wall, apparently one can stick anything using this kind of glue.
The interesting insight here is that people are looking for two contrary glue’s properties at a time. They want it to be strong – so that the fixed object stays fixed for years, but also something easy to take off the wall when they move out. I wonder if this is not too much to ask…
PS – my research brings up very funny results as well:
“Votre mari n’est pas infidèle mais aime bien regarder les autres femmes? Alors utilisez la colle Loctite sur son alliance! Un print spécial St. Valentin”.
Approximate translation: “Is your faithful, loving husband always chekcing out the ladies? Then glue his wedding band on with Loctite!”

I refuse to grow up

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been paying rent and making budgets and studying stuff and thinking “career” for years now, but there are some things I simply won’t let go of.
 
I laugh giddily for no reason. I pull pranks on my colleagues here at the Attentio Brussels office regularly. I store snow balls in the freezer. I keep a ping pong ball and racket in my desk at all times just in case, and I religiously read Calvin and Hobbes. Those two give me great ideas as to what I should do on the weekend.
 
I also play video games. A lot. If I manage to stay away from the sauce on Friday nights, I’ll get up nice and early with my lady on Saturday morning, make her breakfast in bed. Then I’ll send her off to her weekend course and saunter on into my game room, complete with Wii, PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Über flatscreen TV and telephone. The phone is there to call my for pizza.On these days I will be joined by thousands of gamers around the world – albeit most of them are a decade or more younger than me – ready to sit prone on the couch for the next 10 hours and do ostensibly nothing else then wiggle my fingers around and stare attentively at a screen. Of course Nina will come home after her course and expect the same man that brought her coffee, boiled eggs and toast in bed, but instead she’ll find Sgt. Paul Jackson of the USMC shooting Al-Asad soldier after Al-Asad soldier, while quite possibly having used the tomato sauce from the half-mauled pizza as face paint.

Truth be told, I couldn’t be the only grown-up playing video games. The video gaming industry is booming at such an alarming rate, it’s actually surpassed the film industry. According to recent NPD insights, North Americans now spend 29% of their entertainment Dollars, compared to 24% on movies and TV shows combined. To this end, I thought it would be interesting to monitor some of the online buzz revolving around these video game developers’ upcoming titles:

• Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Electronic Arts’s Army of Two, 40th Day
• Ubisoft’s Avatar: The Game
• Bungie’s Halo: Reach
• Capcom’s Lost Planet 2
• LucasArts’s Star Wars Force Unleashed 2
• Sega’s Vancouver 2010
• Sony’s Bioshock 2
• Rockstar Games’s Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City
• BioWare’s Mass Effect 2

Now the beauty of the Attentio Brand Dashboard is how we can collect and categorise the data. The Dashboard is designed with a three-tier approach. First, we collect the bulk of your data about your product or brand (or whatever, it’s completely open-ended and restricts your choices in no way). Then we create vertical categories based on your needs (these can be topics, products over brands, product ranges, even cities). After that we tell you what language the data is coming in, or what country.

Now that we have the games we’re going to track, maybe you’d like to suggest relevant topics you’d like to find out about with regards to these games? Just let me know below or mail me at marc@attentio.com, and we’ll see the results next week :)

NikePlus, Social Media and a herd of elephants…

I am, for my sins, a ‘technoholic’. I love gadgets. I love iPhones, computers, TVs, HiFi and Wifi. And the first thing I do when I get home with my latest purchase (after the window shattering argument with my girlfriend of course) is throw the instructions in the bin!!! I don’t like being told what to do especially by some ink and a piece of paper. I will go out of my way to use technology to make my life easier (or complicated as is usually the case) and fun (or frustrating as is, again, usually the case).

It is for this reason that I find myself contemplating going for a run. Let me be clear; I HATE running. I find it monotonous, boring and on the few occasions that I have taken part in this punishing past-time, I come home feeling like I have been attacked by a herd of stampeding elephants. Don’t get me wrong, I have enormous respect for people who go running. Especially people (men in particular) who have the courage to walk out the door in spandex, put enormous energy into placing one foot in front of the other for an hour and a half only to end up back where they started.

Why then would I contemplate such drastic action? One word; technology. I had heard of Nike+ a while ago but only recently took time to research it and can safely admit that you can slap me silly and call me Mr Impressed! I want to be part of this. I really do!

If you want to know how it works, you simply place a small electronic sensory perceptive coagulating transcendiducer (note, may not be actual name of device) into your shoe and it communicates information about your run to your iPod/iPhone or Nike+ wrist band. Things like your speed, distance, calories burned, weight lost etc are then uploaded to the Internet for online humiliation (in my case anyway).

I went to the website and was shocked to learn that Nike+ runners have circled the globe a staggering 8,148 times, burned 2,756,587 kilos and have run a total of 325,995,368 no, 369, no, 370, no, 371 kilometres. WOW! Here, I could look at clear and funky looking charts telling me that I ran x number of kilometres (and still ended up back where I started), I can input the type of terrain I ran in and select the kind of weather I experienced (although, living in Belgium, it only needs 1 setting).

It can give me challenges, coach me to get up to the optimum fitness level and even prepare me for a marathon (an unlikely scenario but nice to know I can). Finally, and here’s the really interesting bit, I can share all of this with my fellow spandex wearing compatriots around the world. (“Take that Rupert Murdoch. You may have all my money but I ran 300 metres further than you today!!!”). Therein lies the beauty of social media mixed with technology.

Doing a search using Attentio’s Trenpedia, I can see that there are roughly 15 to 20 posts on average every day mentioning Nike Plus. I also turned on my Tweetdeck to search for NikePlus and the thing was bleeping at me more than the SS Enterprise.

Do a search for NikePlus on http://search.twitter.com and you will be inundated with times and distances that people foolishly ran in what is obstensibly a large circle.

Will I be taking part in this ingenious use of social media to get fit? I might… but that’s not the point. The point is that I’m THINKING about doing it and for every lazy, pub-going, techno freak like me, there will be at least one other person out there who will don skin tight shorts and almost see-through top in order to leave the house only to end up back there an hour later having accomplished little other than painful kneecaps and a loss of dignity. I just hope that it’s the 19 year old Brazilian supermodel I have in my imagination. All of this because of technology and social media. As for me, insanity subsided, I’m off to the pub!