Officially it was Day 1 of MWC today, but a flurry of big news hit yesterday, and even earlier last week, as brands looked to get a news cycle to themselves.
So if you missed it, here’s a quick recap of some of the bigger news. We’ll also cover off other interesting stories as the week rolls on.
HTC (supported by our wonderful team) took the show by storm with a strong trio of announcements, including the HTC One M9 and the HTC Grip.
But that wasn’t all, HTC then stunned the world with a partnership with Valve to release a top-tier Virtual Reality headset and platform, the HTC Vive.
Samsung redesigned the Galaxy S model, and introduced curved glass to the Galaxy S 6 edge
Smartwatches are actually attractive now, led by the Huawei Watch.
Google entered the arena with confirmation from Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai that the company plans to launch its own mobile network. Of course this news has riled the Skynet theorists…
Later in the week, we’ll post our thoughts on the various MWC announcement strategies.
Further announcements from the first wave of Mobile World Congress we liked:
Fujitsu unveiled a smartphone prototype with an inbuilt iris scanner, which can authenticate users in less than a second (even if you wear glasses or lenses). Using its miniaturised infrared LED light and camera, the device registers (by looking into a pair of animated circles) and stores your unique iris pattern. Another sign that mobile security is being taken more seriously these days.
Qualcomm continued the ID scanner theme, but remains within the tried-and-tested realms of the fingertip – the impressive news is that the biometric sensor uses ultrasonics and so can sense your fingerprint through a display. Using the new Snapdragon Sense ID 3D Fingerprint Technology, ridges and other distinguishing features of the fingerprint can be mapped, leading to greater accuracy (it can see through sweat, grease and hand lotion)– and implementation – in the future.
Intel has announced anti-virus for smartwatches, which will be bundled with LG’s new Watch Urbane LTE.
Blackphone unveiled its second phone and a tablet, once again in collaboration with encryption specialist Silent Circle. The devices have been dubbed the world’s most secure devices. Co-founder of Blackphone Jon Callas explained, “there is no bloatware, no hooks to carriers, and no leaky data… It puts privacy in the hands of you and your [business], without any sacrifices.”
A final security warning for those already sensing the theme that you need to be more careful these days: advances in technology, such as with wearables, means cars have now become eminently more hackable – 16 keyless thefts happen in London every day. Connected dashboards prove the greatest risk, as they are essentially onboard computer networks “sharing valuable information”.
While for some the focus of Burberry’s AW15 showcase at London Fashion Week (LFW) was quilted Indian prints and patchwork suedes, others have been grabbed by LFW’s use of digital and social media to engage consumers both in the show, and design process.
Of note, Burberry collaborated with Twitter to deliver personalised images from LFW. By using the hashtag #TweetCam, users triggered a camera to take a photograph from the best vantage point at the show as models walked down the runway.
Each picture was stamped with the user’s Twitter handle, as well as the time of the snap, which was then tweeted back to people. It was a great way to provide an exclusive, unique experience and use social media to spread the brand messages.
Other members of the fashion community are also beginning to try out innovative digital ideas. For example, Knyttan is a really interesting start-up which allows customers to look at a range of patterns by designers, customise them according to taste, and then print items within an hour. Thus satisfying the urge to choose and create by handing design back to the customer.
Martin Bostock, our founder and Chairman, set up the agency in 1987 with his business partner, Roger Nelson. Following the 2003 sale of the agency to our parent, Creston plc, and Roger’s retirement in 2007, Martin took on the role of Chairman and oversaw the appointment of the board of directors that runs Nelson Bostock Group Unlimited today.
Since then, the group has grown into a multi-faceted business with a stable of award-winning agencies, including; consumer agency, Fever; digital and social engagement agency, Things Unlimited, content creation agency MediaWorks, and B2B and corporate agency Nelson Bostock Unlimited.
In the recent past, Martin has gradually been reducing his workload within the group, becoming Non-Executive Chairman in 2013. This has allowed him to devote increasing amounts of time to other interests including a Non-Executive Directorship within the NHS and charitable work with the Citizenship Foundation which he chairs.
Martin now feels it is the right time for him to formally retire from the business and will step down at the end of this month to coincide with the completion of our current financial year.
Though it’s terrifically sad for us that Martin has chosen this year to retire, he steps down with our love, appreciation and admiration. He will be missed both professionally and personally, by clients and staff alike. He’s been a terrific coach, mentor and friend.
Even though he won’t be physically ‘inside’ the organisation any more, Martin’s spirit, personality and relentless command of great grammar will remain imprinted on our business forever. We wish Martin, his wife Sue and all the Bostock family much happiness in his retirement.
Martin himself wanted to add a few words to this note:
“When I look at our client list today, at the ground-breaking work the agencies produce, at the awards we’ve won and at the talent of the people within the group, I find it hard to reconcile with the memory of Roger and me setting up with an Amstrad word processor and a fax machine in an attic on the Portobello Road. I’m incredibly lucky to have been supported by a formidable leadership team. Without them I would never have had the luxury of pursuing the other interests which are important in my life. I feel very comfortable that the time is right – both for me and for the business – to make way for the next generation of management to continue to take the business forward to even greater heights.”
In a brilliant and somewhat unexpected move, SpaceX has released over 100 pictures on Flickr, documenting its pursuit of soaring in the constellations. Whether your passion is for snazzy artistic shots of air force bases in the twilight, or artist depictions of the Crew Dragon spacecraft floating in the blackness of space, it’s all available at the click of a button.
What’s even more remarkable, is that SpaceX has released the pictures without any conditions on usage. In an age where many people and brands are increasingly careful about what they do and don’t allow into the public domain, it’s a refreshing change to see this kind of imagery free-to-use, especially on the back of a tweet!
It’s the latest in a string of impressive moves from SpaceX. Elon Musk’s approach has always been pretty open and public-facing about what his company does – from detailed Reddit AMAs, to engaging in public debate on Twitter. Even better was just how blasé Musk was about the announcement, that the pictures were now full public domain, as if it was no big deal – remarkably smooth.
It’s no surprise that fans (including our Space Club) are impressed, and watching SpaceX closely!
So we’re still a little puzzled over this one. We were fairly certain that the Amazon Dash Button was a mildly gimmicky, light-hearted April Fools, but it isn’t.
Looks-wise, it’s not the most spectacular? However, what it lacks in design it more than makes up for in potential. It’s an early viable example of the internet integrating itself almost organically into the home. It’s not quite champagne on tap, as at Bob Bob Ricard, but we can’t deny that being able to order more coffee with all the effort of pressing a doorbell is an attractive proposition!
There are, of course, reservations – such a simple interface removes any chance of consumers checking prices (great for Amazon!), and many customers are unlikely to be quite so dedicated to a single brand as to want it stuck to their appliances. However, for things like Nespresso refill capsules or brand-specific printer ink refills, we can see how the Dash button could be a useful convenience.
The scheme is currently by invitation only, but we’ll keep an eye out for when they hit the mainstream.
We’re a bit behind on this one, admittedly, but it was too good not to write about.
Whiskas, well-known purveyors of the cat food that 8 out of 10 cats prefer, has branched out.
No, not into cat treats. Not even into cat toys. Whiskas has instead devoted time to creating Catsacam, a collar mounted cat-camera that automatically uploads photos to the internet.
The Catsacam takes photos six times a minute. Then, when the device connects to WiFi, it uploads the photos directly to an Instagram account owned by, you guessed it, your feline friend.
Now, we love cat pictures just as much as the next person… arguably, a bit too much, actually. There are a lot of cat owners in the office, and the consensus is that it’s a nice idea, but fatally flawed. What do cats love more than lasagne? SLEEPING. So a camera would only end up capturing unexciting pictures of chair legs or curtains.
Luckily, the clever folks over at Whiskas have thought of this and have made it so the camera only activates on movement. This makes it great for more adventurous cats, whose escapades might actually make very entertaining viewing from the comfort of your laptop.
It’s unclear at present whether Whiskas ever intend to sell Catascam to the public, or if this is just a nice PR stunt. Is it possible that wearables will catch on faster with our pets than with us?
There’s an interesting piece over on Holmes Report you should read – “The Resurgence Of PR Generalists?”
Our MD, Nick Clark, had some thoughts on it:
As is often the case, a trend quickly becomes fact and tends to get slightly blown out of proportion. That’s certainly the case with the shift away from generalists towards specialists in the PR industry. Of course there’s more diversification in the industry than ever and a rise in specialists, but you need generalists as they are the gatekeepers managing key ongoing client relationships, keeping clients happy and revenues stable – both particularly important during a period of potential transition.
The reality is that it’s really hard to predict what the future holds but one thing that the whole industry agrees on is that PR needs to continue to evolve. In order to do this we need different skills and this means investing in talent and potentially specialists from other disciplines – but you can’t throw away years of work building an agency just because someone says you need re-think your operating model.
PR agencies have traditionally been more agile than other creative agencies as we work in smaller teams and don’t outsource elements of the planning or creative process to separate teams. It’s important we don’t lose this agility in a more specialist world but there’s certainly things that we can learn from how other marketing agencies operate and tapping into deep specialism in certain areas can only improve our offering to clients.
Right now, we feel that we have the balance just right – we’re doing the most exciting work for clients that we’ve ever done and much of this is the brave new world of ‘content’. We have also created a number of specialist roles and will continue to do so but many of our clients still want traditional PR, meaning great media relations and reputation management. If you’re talking about specialisms, they are areas where the PR industry really holds its own and represent fundamental pillars on which everything else we do can be built on.
We’ll share our thoughts on Google’s Project Fi later, but also interesting was how Google announced the news.
That blog post we’ve linked to… was it. From what we’ve seen, there were no pre-briefs, no exclusives, no big fanfare. Simply post the blog and let the media do the work.
Maybe Google was trying to keep the announcement low-key as Project Fi is a new experiment? The company knew that people would naturally be interested in the news anyway. That’s something it will be able to argue in the future if this ends up going the way of Google Wave – that *it* didn’t push the news hard, media simply latched on.
But given the scale of Google and the companies it’s working with, there was never any chance this would be on the down-low. Which suggests this is part of the media strategy – a departure from Google’s previous approach of in-depth exclusive access for the top consumer tech blogs.
It’s the latest example of how PR is evolving, and it’s definitely one to keep an eye on.
