The full video on his site looks at a case study from Lenovo on the Beijing Olympics which I wish I had built, but picking out just parts referring to how Ogilvy works with digital shows how much things have progressed since I was there.

• Digital is not a silo – Digital, as well as social and mobile (and new ones to come) are all cross discipline.  This was well underway when I was at OgilvyOne and makes sense when there are over 150 digital professionals spread across 14+ companies (in the UK alone).

• Discipline Heads, Digital Hearts and Multi-Disciplinary Muscles – this is a nice way of putting it since clients often want to engage with a specific discipline, even to buy integrated solutions and digital is not a silo.  The question back to Ogilvy — since OgilvyInteractive isn't called out — is who takes the call when the client wants a Digital discipline lead?
• Brainz – looking to fundementally revisit how work is created by having a social network that allows crowd sourcing solutions
• Blackbook of Suppliers
• 80/20 – From Mckinsey – 80% what works well and 20% innovation and testing

It is true that digital is pervading all of the traditional disciplines of marketing (advertising, direct marketing, PR, promotion) and that teams across all of these disciplines need to be able to understand and respond to digital questions.  If the speading around doesn't dillute the skillset — and using good technology can help avoid this — then it looks like a good approach.
 

Recombu does a nice piece of analysis on why it is possible.  And even why it would be a very Apple thing to do.

Apple has historically adapted niche input methods and popularised them for a mainstream audience. It did it with the computer mouse in 1984, and then again with the touchscreen in 2007. Both technologies had languished in esoteric devices, or in the case of the mouse, in the labs of Xerox Parc. To imagine today’s PC without a mouse is unthinkable. The inclusion of eye-tracking tech in the company’s forthcoming tablet would be Job’s magnum opus. What better flourish to a career that began with the popularisation of windows, icons, mouse and pointer than to usurp them all?

And there is a bit of substance in the a patent application in place and reported purchase of eye tracking units from Swedish technology company Tobii. 
Overall to me I'd be surprised if the iSlate launches with real eye tracking.  I'm still waiting for decent voice recognition before I buy into an electroencephalographic headset to finish my powerpoint presentation.

  Interesting Eye Tracking Links:
 

http://www.simpleusability.com/services/usability/eye-tracking/demo – interesting video of eye tracking controlling a mouse
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2006/06/13/eyetracking-worth-the-expense/ – some of the learning of eye tracking research / heat mapping on website usage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw&feature=player_embedded – classic video of headtracking's impact on the Wii experience

And a quick collection of interesting books.  I can see this will have to make it's way to a library page when I get the time.  For now it is simply amazing that one can add a functioning affiliate widget … in less then 10 minutes.

If you haven't read them, want to read them or or going to buy on of them anyway, click through from here!"

Their first campaign launch, the Lynx Effect, was called an “agenda setting event” by Clare Beale herself.  She called out the planning and striking design in an editorial, and in her column in the Independent made it sound as if the growth of the digital agency was done.

21 January 2008, The Independent

So the new site – www.lynxeffect.com
– is crammed with clever chat-up tools, such as a “fit girl finder” that you can download on to your mobile, and advice like, “Alcohol and chocolate make for a lady-wowing combination”, so click for cocoa cocktail recipes. And yes, there are plenty of sexy pics and the whole thing is beautifully crisp and user-friendly.

But sod what the punters might think of it. The big question in adland is: “Can the non-specialist agencies do digital?” On the basis of BBH’s Lynx work, the answer’s a big, agenda-setting “yes”.

Claire Beale is editor of Campaign

I’m not sure at the time the digital specialists out there were as impressed by the site.  Other work like BBH’s launch of an Audi site was pretty heavily critiqued.  With a brand like Lynx it is usually easy to make great viral, and interactive campaign sites like Dare’s Feather show it.  This site, aside from a great early use of video, is interactive, has send to a friend features and is original.

Brands doing their own video sharing sites like the Linx Effect are dismal and really were only proposed because teams new to digital could say “a YouTube for <insert brand here>.”  Or maybe it is the opportunity for junior ad agency art directors to try out their directing skills for the seeding videos.  Unfortunately they rarely catch on with the public as Coke found out in a big way.  As did Hellmann’s.  And countless others.

Of course the bigger question is what happened to BBH’s digital team?  Was the big digital build out just a pr exercise?  There was a very tight campaign with the reporting on hires like Michelle Stanhope from Glue. And the Linx win just afterwards.  Had BBH truly turned the from its break up with Dare?  In that case a group of digital experts decided they couldn’t work with the big famous ad agency — even despite BBH owning 37% and having John Bartle himself as non-executive chairman.

I think the answer is that “learning digital” and integration is harder then people expect.  This article from the Times gives a nice view — and has a great quote that explains it.

Consider BBH’s Executive Creative Director’s quote here:

The Times – 13 May 2007

John O’Keeffe, executive creative director at BBH, is sceptical that there is anything unique about digital marketing skills. “There is a very, very simple truth to all this,” said O’Keeffe. “Nothing is more important than the idea. The people who espouse the view that [digital specialists] have some kind of technological advantage are diminishing in number. It’s just not the case.”

He added: “The technology is functionally very simple. It’s not difficult to find people who can press the right buttons. What’s difficult, and what’s always been difficult, is getting people who can have a great creative idea.”

I can’t say I know John O’Keeffe but I think I’ve met a number of people like him.  Ideas are very important — but unlike a print ad, in the digital world the idea is only the beginning.  And in the same Times article, the journalist hits the real point.  The client’s point of view.

Unilever’s Alan Rutherford sounds less certain that the technical skills are easily acquired. He said: “We’ve given BBH the Lynx account to see if
they can get up to speed on digital.”

Unilever awards Lynx digital account to TMW

by Fiona Ramsay,

marketingmagazine.co.uk

03-Feb-09, 11:45

LONDON
- Unilever has appointed digital and direct agency TMW to work on the
digital marketing account for the Lynx brand following a pitch.

more

We had a good run and built out the brand, did a couple tradeshows and built up the clients from the original partner to 5 others.

My brother is still keeping it working for the key partners and just did a homepage redesign.

Like Google. 

Or more approachably like animoto or this wordie.

I dropped in a recent speach I made at the iris UK forum in December and made a tag cloud.  I must work in a Digital Marketing Agency.

What is more amazing is that as the number of digital outdoor sites grows — we aren't being more creative about how we use them. In most places (like the London tube) we've gone for video using the same 30 second ads formats that are being ignored or skipped on TV. Or as this Thompson video shows, we're using smart, internet-connected displays to cycle through static print!

Just a little bit of imagination and a motion sensor to make the signs at least a little bit interesting and — a key word that has been losing favour of late — interactive.

Taken to an extreme and by adding a touchscreen you have an kiosk or outdoor website or video wall as they are commonly called. Nice thing is — like using video assets in the Tube — you can repurpose web assets. And there are some great case studies of these being put in airports and trainstations where people have time and appreciate a brand giving them information or entertainment.

But in many of these examples we are still in brochureware. Where is the live feed of relevant data? The personalisation of information that is relevant to the viewer who has been identified by RFID or their mobile phone? The tying together of a set of signs into an application that is both useful for the customer and reinforces the brands point of view? Something to look forward to.

While it is difficult to reach 2 million people with a festival, Innocent managed to get 120,000 people to attend its 2006 event in Regents Park, and if you consider only 10:1 people seeing press articles, interacting with online sites or simply hearing about it through friends you are quickly 1.2 million without counting any media used to promote the event.

Clearly the goal is to leverage the event and maximize the buzz or amount people talk about them.

One great technique is to use technology and there are a host of great new tools being made available. Microsoft Surface has gotten a lot of attention but it is only the beginning. Consider what HP have done for the WSJ D5 conference or what the entrepreneurs at i-bar are proposing.

It doesn't take much extrapolation to see every festival, airport and trainstation having a line of interactive walls for people to play with — and in the process learn about a new product or service.

How will they work? Gesture computing and intuitive interfaces … we hope.

Take a look at Perceptive Pixels vision on YouTube below.

It was a great full day and amazing how a little controversy and case studies go together well. Bob Garfield appropriately stressed the degree of change happening in the industry and credit to Ogilvy and particularly Ogilvy Advertising for asking him to speak.

We say all the time that if you want to get someone's attention, host a debate. It is good to see we are walking the talk.

At anyrate, here's my opening remarks which were slightly less inspired but fun to give.

INTRODUCTION – VERGE ENGAGE SECTION – 13 September 2007

Listen, Experiment and Engage.

As the anchor team of the day we're going to now shift our focus to Engage. How to take seriously engaging with our customers using digital channels. How to embrace the new world of Interactive Marketing. How to stop worrying about the potential impacts the Internet MAY have on our business, and instead talk about some companies that have made real decisions that change how they DO business.

It is interesting; having worked in interactive since 1995, there has been an expression that has been bandied around since the early days: "Do they get it?" I've never really liked the expression because it reminds me of a teenager talking about a complex social situation. "She just doesn't get it." Or it sounds as if understanding the impact of digital media were like understanding some of the more esoteric Turner Prize entries. It's a white room with a light turning on and off. "Don't you get it?"

"Getting digital" actually comes from the early days when the basics — using the Yahoo directory, buying a book online, having a digital camera — represented bizaar evangelical activity. The thought that someone would prefer to check their bank balance online or would prefer to learn about a new business application through e-mail was shocking. People would say "oh, those people. They're geeks."

Today we are all "geeks" — and it's a very real compliment. It is the reason we are here today. The question is no longer "if" digital channels will impact our business, it is "how" and what we should we do about it.

We are here because real businesses are making real profits through digital channels and real businesses are using interactive marketing to influence their customers.

In the US, retail web sales were $136 billion in 2006. What is interesting is that 41% of this is done by traditional retail chains. (Internet Retailer, Top 500 e-Retailers, 2007). Back in 1997 we did some work for the Gap and we had a big celebration when the ecommerce site did as much sales as one Manhatten store. Today The Gap does 5% of all its sales online – and that represents about 300 stores. Traditional retailers are engaged.

Here in the UK, Alliance & Lester has reported in its annual report that over 38% of their new sales on its 4 core retail banking products come over the Internet (2006, Annual report). It isn't a surprise that in 2004 they were spending over £10m on internet advertising and nearly half of all online advertising is for financial services. These are very direct marketing organisations. They measure and evaluate. They are working online because it works.

At Lego, they recognised the internet is a good way to reach its customers and has encouraged its best customers to participate in product development because they can do that cost effectively now. They run the LEGO Factory which allows customers to design, share and buy their own models. They've created product community sites where people can show off ideas and participate in promotions. They even have Lego Engineering, an online community dedicated solely to educators teaching engineering through Lego. Over 1.2 million people visit this site monthly and spend on average 18 minutes. Lego sees the benefits.

Without giving away what our speakers will be covering, I can say the simple theme that drives good interactive marketing is quite simple. It is commitment.

Having a digital agenda doesn't mean you personally understand the difference between java and .Net — it is simply that you recognise digital channels are important, and you don't let them drop off the agenda.

SPEAKER INTRODUCTIONS

Our first speaker is from a company that has proven again and again how much they understand digital marketing. The BBC. Unless you've had the bad luck to have been living under a small rock in rural France, you've seen what the BBC has done leveraging their content on digital channels. They have embraced the web, mobile, iTV and Freeview, as well as YouTube, MySpace, MySpace News, MySpace TV, and the list goes on. Sam Smith is Head of Future Media Audiences and, amongst other things, has been nominated for an award from the Marketing Research Society for her paper on "Fragvergence."

Making up our panel we have 3 additonal speakers that will take you through a quick 10 minute case study. To start we have Rufus Olins, Managing Director of Haymarket Brand Media. Haymarket is of course best known for its wonderful online site, Brand Republic, but also for a stable of top quality industry magazines such as Campaign, Revolution, Marketing and Marketing Direct. Rufus knows publishing — he has been at Haymarket for over 8 years, at one time he was a senior journalist at The Sunday Times and was voted best business magazine editor of the year by two of his industry's associations.

Our next speaker is Clive Peoples Head of Customer Communications for Expedia.co.uk. Clive has been a speaker at numerous industry events and recently was quoted for the correlation of the impact our mixed summer weather has had on airline sales. He will be speaking on the importance of user-generated content in his business.

Finally Aaron Coldiron the Senior Marketing Manager for Microsoft Vista is dedicated to managing Vista's early adopters — a critical segment for a software product. He has worked at Disney and studied in the UK as a University student. He will speak on a why Microsoft committed to an online / offline 360 campaign, Vanishing Point, as a central part of the launch of Windows Vista.

QUESTIONS

Sam —

–The BBC has clearly committed to delivering great content even if the distribution is fragmented. The same challenge exists for 360 advertising campaigns. Do your production meetings address the different channels up front, or do you find you are editing and reformationg existing content for different channels?

–Given all of the media choices, how do you decide where to focus?

Rufus —

–Shifting your business from one of primarily weekly publications to constant publishing and community management is a significant shift. What prompted you and Haymarket to make the investment and commit to digital channels?

Clive –

–Back in the early days of ecommerce, we used to talk about having as simple a shopping process as possible to keep down the customers time on site. Do you find you have to make a case for User Generated Content internally? How do you measure the business impact?

Aaron –

–I understand as part of the campaign you gave away Ferrari's to your top technology bloggers. Is this a good representation how seriously Microsoft takes its digital customers?

–As a complex, multi-channel project, Vanish Point could not have been measured on reach and frequency. How did you measure the impact of the campaign?