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@tt meetings in central london always throws up interesting grapevine info. Poor MySpace

@tt meetings in central london always throws up interesting grapevine info. Poor MySpace

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Critical Shift:
In thinking about what critical event has had the largest influence on my Industry I was drawn back into the debate of what a critical event actually was and indeed if this was relevant at all.

To be clear I believe that a critical event is something that attracts significant attention and debate. It also occurs over a relatively small time frame (relevant to how long the industry has been around) and causes a shift in attitudes or behaviour of the majority of practitioners of that industry.

I will not go into debating this definition, but for me there has not particularly been an event like this in the digital marketing field, as the events (as Deb reinforces in her topic) that have occurred in this field have been evolutionary. I will therefore refer to this as a “critical shift”. This obviously does not mean they have had any lesser an effect however and brings me to my critical shift.

The mass adoption and development of Flash:

To start things off this change is pertinent to me as Habbo is built in Flash and Shockwave, without which I would not have this job. 96% of browsers have Flash installed and this is the largest adoption of any web application.

The implications of Flash’s use on the Internet is that marketers have always strived to ‘break through clutter’ and ‘engage the audience’. Flash can facilitate this as it allows creatives to develop interactive Adverts as well as microsites and whole applications to communicate with their target audience.  Virtual worlds like Habbo and Taatu are written in Shockwave, but also require Flash functionality.

“As an industry, publishers, advertisers, and their agencies rely on the ongoing evolution and improvement in the tools and solutions we use every day to present compelling interactive advertising to consumers,”
- Greg Stuart, president and CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Not only that but Flash is arguably driving forward the development of the Internet itself as it can be used to create or enhance Web 2.0 sites with greater rich media than was possible before. e.g. http://turfwars.needforspeedcarbon.co.uk/.  This can never be more true today  with the rise of mobile Internet and the demand for Flash content on the move.  Indeed Flash Lite is already  being added as standard to Nokia mobile phones which account for a majority share of distribution.  The next version of Flash Lite in 2008 will have FLV file compatibility, which means that you can watch Flash videos from your mobile with its Internet connection.  This is more what WAP was designed for rather than static news and one way communication as was common in 2000.  Again this refers to the above definition that the rise of Flash has been more of a critical shift over time, which is now influencing two key technologies (computer and mobile Internet).  “Critical shift” is all relative, but I would say that for the Internet Industry and into the future Flash will provide the rich media desired by the market.

I think it is pretty good, although there is always the danger that when something becomes too prevalent that it ends up stifling creativity. There is an issue in the Open Source community (who create programs and languages that are free to use by anyone) that the mass use of proprietry software will mean that all websites (and thus the Internet) will be at the mercy of yet another corporation, where they will end up governing web standards and what is possible.

I don’t think this will happen though as Macromedia allows tools to be built on to their own development programs, which essentially is keeping it customisable (although granted I do not know too much about the technical side of the debate).  Certainly allowing people to create “plug-ins” or “add ons” has been of value in the Industry (look at the proliferation of AJAX in providing widgets) and an open internet where accessibility is the key has been of most appeal to the market throughout the Internet’s history (think of AOL’s attempt at a walled garden).  I know that Habbo has changed or re purposed the Flash coding slightly to their own needs and this has increased the stability for the product.

http://www.test.org.uk/archives/002852.html

I literally read this the day before last and I thought that it was interesting, but there are so many ways to categorise something and I don’t think Matt Lock, the author of this piece, has moved any closer than Bear Stearns suggestions. I do however acknowledge that categorisation is a difficult endeavour and that often a few are required to meet the end users requirements.

Lock has tried to apply need of the end user, but this is problematic since people use everything for very different reasons, especially online where there is greater, and increasing overlap between what services offer. MySpace for example started off as a “Group Space” where people could create their friends list and build their group network, however since MySpace allows HTML coding people’s pages take on a “Publishing Space” and people add various images they have made, show off their ‘arty’ pics of themselves etc. Now however everyone seems to hate MySpace in favour of Facebook, so for these people it is now a “secret space” where they just use it to email their friends who still use the service. As such it is not possible to use these categories to pigeonhole an online service since it would vary for everyone and this does not represent a useful categorisation from the web
service’s point of view.

Habbo for example has a social networking facility, which means it is a group space;

www.habbo.co.uk/home/ukchaseral

but you can make your own movie and share it with people on Habbo or export it to another website (like your MySpace page), which means Habbo is a publishing site…

http://www.habbo.co.uk/entertainment/habbowood

hang on there are also group spaces where people reinforce the identity of their group, so it is back to being a group space

http://www.habbo.co.uk/groups

We also have loads of fansites though, where lots of small individual groups achieve a common goal of producing a popular website that features Habbo content- it must be a participation space

http://www.habbo.co.uk/community/fansites/fansitesgeneral.html

Oh but I missed out that we are a virtual world

http://www.habbo.co.uk/client

and thus a performing space… even though in this space you can also watch celebs perform in Habbo via our ‘Habbovision’ feature where 1000 Habbos can (only) watch the room together at the same time. Does this also make Habbo a watching space?

My conclusion then must be that Habbo is everything, although I don’t think the user would perceive this. The audience use Habbo for what they want to use it for. We also have an IM feature but people are always asking for MSN details, because they IM better than we do. Users define what a web service is but often this is a very blurred and individual perspective that is not useful in generalising what a web service is as “a way of describing social media spaces in a way that can be shared by both traditional media indies and digital media agencies.”

Each social network that appears initially has a USP.  See http://www.myyearbook.com for the latest.  However what is seen time and time again is that when these services achieve a critical mass that they begin to offer ‘everything’ in order to meet all of the users needs simultaneously in order to keep them on the site for as long as possible.  This unravels the initial differentiation that they started with.  Facebook was a uni social network, but now just offers themselves to anyone.  MySpace has a slight differentiation in that it has a strong music focus, but you can now do this on Facebook anyway.  As people can use most of these sites, including Habbo, to do most of the same thing it does not make sense to focus categorisation on how it is used by the consumer.

Two key areas of development became apparent following the critique of my AI project.

1. Strategic Development:

As pointed out in the forum regarding the previous AI;

“…it [the previous AI] was missing some business-like data analysis. For example: an analysis of sales, incremental sales etc.”
(Jun 25, 2007 11:20 am; www.cemp.ac.uk/macmp/forum/viewtopic.php?t=342)

This is a fair point made for the past AI, but the intention was to set up the structure and tools to be able to begin data collection on a long-term basis and provide the data for such subsequent insight. As a result it is particularly apparent at this point in time that I need to start to look more closely at the sales data collected via the sales forms implemented in the last AI. The data collected needs to be deeply analysed to understand whether there are any underlying strategies that might help optimise each sales campaign to improve the ARPU metric employed. This is the most relevant development of the past project, which essentially facilitated this next step in developing our sales effectiveness at Habbo. Specifically this will allow me to begin to understand;

• Why the results occurred as they did
• The primary variables that influence Rare sales
• The optimum length of a sales release
• Any long-term trends that might result from an approach that was taken

Collectively these areas will allow future strategic development of our sales campaigns, and provide unique insight into the sales within and structure of a virtual economy, which is the primary feature of Habbo’s business.

As pointed out in the AI (www.cemp.ac.uk/macmp/forum/download.php?id=215), it is difficult to compare the sales effectiveness of individual items (e.g. comparing two sales campaign’s ‘performance’) as they are all inherently different to what they offer. However it is this comparison that will provide the insight and understanding for developing the sales strategy further. Sales campaigns differ in the nature of their release, as each need to be made relevant to the environment and context they are released into. For example the sales of the first item in a range (e.g. there are 10 dragons in different colours) has been largely seen to perform better than subsequent releases in the range as at that time it is unique. Similarly an item that has interactive functionality often performs better than a static item. The fact that there are numerous variables at work has been identified in previous cycles, but the extent that each has an impact and whether they can be manipulated using certain strategies needs to be investigated. As a result it may be necessary to make numerous comparisons on different bases in order to build a full picture. A future AI in this area should mobilise separate cycles that look at each of these variables, as well as combinations of different variables to look at whether and the degree they may interrelate.

A potential problem with this area of development however is that it is unknown how many sales forms are going to be needed before a comparison analysis can be undertaken. There may not be enough sales campaigns to make a useful comparison for the foreseeable future and so there is a level of uncertainty as to when this will be possible. Yet on a similar note the analysis may need to begin in order to establish whether more data is required.

This development is particularly significant in the context of change management, since it requires relatively little time and resource to achieve in itself. Certainly it requires less effort and resource than the previous AI and has few elements to organise/ manage. Scheduled meetings will need to be arranged for the sole purpose of analysing numerous sales forms. Initially this would have to take a wide look at the information and then scrutinise points of interest as they arise.

These will require members of the team to bounce ideas off and to maintain different perspectives from different functions in the business. However the emphasis is taken away from collaboration here since it ultimately requires a business analysis, which for Habbo comes under the remit of the marketing manager, who is also the author of the project and instigator of the change in the first place. Thus, issues of ownership and power will not be a problem and means that as a future project, this development will be relatively un-complicated to manage and run.

2. Metric Development:

Another area that warrants further investigation is the implication of using ARPU as a metric and whether this is of value when comparing our sales campaigns and their relative effectiveness.

“Are you going to use ARPU as a sales target in the future? This would allow you to compare and contrast campaign effectiveness.”
(see Jun 25, 2007 11:42 am www.cemp.ac.uk/macmp/forum/viewtopic.php?t=342)

Currently the adoption of the ARPU metric has not been tested fully in its ability to provide a useful comparison between the sales campaigns we have run. Whether it is of use or the most useful metric for all those in the company who need to refer to such data or be able to understand the impact the project is having on our bottom line will only become fully apparent when analysing data with this metric. This metric also needs to be valid in its measurement of our sales performance and would need to monitored for any follow up AI to ensure it is a useful metric. It is problematic if it is discovered later that ARPU is weaker than anticipated at meeting these needs and different data is needed for such an analysis. Yet this situation would have been unavoidable in adopting a new metric as there was nothing to compare the newly generated results with at the time of conception and so a risk needed taking. However as sales volumes and revenue information are being collected for both paying customers and in relation to the entire population, it is more likely that a different metric can be generated with this existing data. So, to an extent the first development (of the actual strategy) should perhaps be embarked upon in order to understand whether further development is required in this area. Otherwise there are methods for assessing metric reliability/validity, but this is not the practical approach that is most useful for AI.

As sales data is being captured as well as ARPU information it would also be interesting to begin to look at these two metrics objectively and individually to see whether the ARPU is a specific improvement on the sales volume metric. If sufficient evidence is found for this a case will need to be made to present these findings to the rest of the company and to attempt a wider degree of change within the organisation. A proposal would be put forward to adopt this metric as the default metric for future sales campaigns or at least to use it in addition to sales volume as is used currently.

“The beauty (!) of AR is that you can just go again and try tweaking something else…”
(see Mon Jul 09 2007 7:13pm; www.cemp.ac.uk/macmp/forum/viewtopic.php?t=342)

If the above scope of investigation was attempted, another full AI project would be necessary in order to effectively manage the workload. If this area did not warrant a full AI, in line with the values of AI (continuous development and analysis of all elements of the AI cycle) it is still important to be aware of the issue surrounding ARPU and its adoption in this context. It is important to be aware of whether another more transparent or useful metric might be identified and to test its integrity as it is being used. This might make up a smaller cycle within a larger project, particularly the one identified above, since both of these areas are interlinked with the same ultimate aim of improving our sales effectiveness. Essentially ARPU would need monitoring if this project were to moved forward top the next phase, but what level of inquiry it warrants would need to be considered in line with the resource and time available.

However the resource required to execute such a project development again is minimal compared to the implementation of the last project and would require less personnel and more reflective thought to work through the data. Again, it is important to include other colleagues to obtain a fresh perspective and validate assumptions that might be made. The time scale of conducting an investigation into ARPU is not particularly sensitive, since waiting for some time will only provide more data to analyse. Although granted if it was subsequently identified that the ARPU metric is poor, then this prolonging would translate to a waste of time and resource.

To conclude both of the above proposed developments are relevant and natural extensions of the previous AI, as well as being based on the same premise of; What to do (investigate how to improve sales strategy), What to measure (investigate usefulness of ARPU), How to do it. Yet as there is an overlap between the two, a combination might be attempted if the resource and time warranted. This might also be the case since the time consuming and complexity of introducing the structure and tools for the previous AI has been complete and provides the structure for these AI developments.