Standard Class

Guy Kawasaki has an interesting 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. He claims that a poweroint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting. He does give some leeway on point size" If “thirty points,” is too dogmatic, the I offer you an algorithm: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s you’re optimal font size." He is certainly on the right track , far too many people use power point as a the presentation planning tool it is not. I suggest using a tool such as Mind manager if you want to plan on your computer or a simple flip chart. Remember, you are far too intelligent and your ideas are for too good to let power point take charge.

Martin Sorrell has called it "very strange" and "bizarre" that online newspapers offer their content for free. I agree with him, I am willing to pay for quality content that I value and trust. However this only represents perhaps 10 percent of the news that I consume. There is nothing more annoying then having to subscribe to a newspaper, even if the subscription is free, when you are just following a link from a blog. I visit hundreds of articles a month from an eclectic and unusual variety of publications that I have never head of before and will probably never visit again. I would be happy to pay an annual fee to an aggregator service that gave me access to articles from every newspaper in the world on one passport type ID - Get to work Google !

Had a good meat at the Rattlesnake Club, lots of large chunks of meat. Breakfast at Einstein Bagels and then back home.

Google has announced that it will launch an online video service "Google Video Store". This comes as a wave of alliances are made between internet firms and content producers. The sports, entertainment and news programmes will be available as pay per download. There will be shows from CBS, Music videos from Sony and news from ITN. Google are positioning it as the first “open digital content marketplace”. Fox have also announced that they will be partnering with DirecTV to make programming from it's FX cable network available two days before broadcast.
Everybody has arrived at the party with in weeks of each other, my money is on Google to be the first to take advantage of the long tail and offer consumer generated media on a pay per download basis. The niche advertising that this will generate will be a consumer and marketers dream.

Markets are driven by attention, marketers need to earn attention. On the web individuals pay attention, not only to the choices other people make but to the people who are making these choices. People pay attention to people that have earned their attention whether through reputation, online trust or real world relationships. I want to see what my friends are recommending, they want me to recommend things to them. This is what OPML will do for RSS. I will be able to see who my friends are listening to, automatically take their recommendations on new sources to pay attention to and old sources to ignore.

If you don't have a lens you need to go to Squidoo and get one, or lots. Lenses are the brainchild of the all round Guru Seth Godin. Lenses allow you to share your expertise. Everybody is an expert on something even if it is just themselves. The lenses are like online mood boards, you pin links to sources of information on the topic of the lens. So start with yourself, build a lens and share your knowledge, you might even earn some money on the way.

Consumers today have a vast amount of choices. To entice them into and keep them coming to your retail outlet, especially if they are under 20, you need to offer a reason to visit. The visit to the shop needs to be more exciting and fulfilling than the product itself. Why would you purchase something from a shop that you could get from the lowest priced vendor on the web? Every retailer needs to be asking themselves this question and ensuring that they are offering an experience and added value that the web shop cannot offer otherwise they will just become a commodity.

MTV are launching a community style music download service which is called Urge. It is being supported by Microsoft and will be bundled in future media players. MTV has retained their unique cool factor for many years and are perfectly placed to be the arbiter of taste and launch new artistes and genres. With the combination of consumer generated video this could be a great product and a very attractive channel for marketers

The OECD have reported that China has leapfrogged Europe, the USA and Japan in the last three years to become the leading exporter of information technology goods. Last year the Chinese exported $180 BN dollars worth of information and communication technology goods leaving the United States is second place exporting $149 BN dollars worth. Even the Americans cannot deny that China is steaming ahead. There are growing opportunities to turn these sometimes commodity products into global desirable brands.

With the good sales of HD televisions over Christmas and the Football World Cup being televised on HD it is interesting to see some feedback from producers who have been using HD. There have been some problems with the huge amount of detail that the camera reveals. It may be that Mr Beckham et al look a little less glamorous when you can see every pore. Halftime makeup touch up anybody?

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

87% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet, vs. two-thirds of adults, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In October 2005 20.6 million people clicked on MySpace. The world is changing, and changing very fast, people in their teens and early twenties use many different forms of communication and entertainment. They hardly pay attention to the television let alone the adverts. They are chatting on IM, posting their own blogs or commenting on others. They are sharing weblinks and comparing views, sometimes they even talk on the phone, but it is probably skype or a mobile. They can sniff out a marketer at 100 paces, you need to be relevant and interesting to earn the precious attention of these valuable consumers. If you can prove your usefulness to them however, they will reward you by telling their extended virtual network of contacts about you but beware, they are fickle and can turn on you as fast as they promoted you.

How will broadcasters deal with the unbundling of media? Consumers are becoming less keen on paying for content that they do not like or want. The old model of bundled subscription based content is being broken. Consumers are willing to pay more for advertising free content that they would like to watch but we are yet to see how much consumers are willing to pay per year for individual content on demand. I do not think it is a sustainable model to get individuals to pay for each programme at current levels of TV consumption. Either consumers will become more selective about the amount and quality of programming they consume or the models will need to change. I believe that consumers will pay more for less but higher quality material and diversify their entertainment media and channels. More time will be spent online, on hobbies and on other leisure pursuits. The tighter the niche the more relevant the content. The consumer of tomorrow will be downloading relevant podcasts and vidcasts about their hobby whilst sharing their progress, tips and problems with a wide virtual community online. Broadcasters need to recognise that these consumer are about, in small numbers, today and their number is growing rapidly.