So, you might not agree with me, but I am sick and tired of hearing about the word ‘Viral’. In a hectic world of advertising, brands continually want quick, simple, cheap solutions, that magically come out of no-where and become massive hits online, yet is this an unrealistic expectation?

In my eyes, yes! Viral campaigns can make consumers truly feel something, whether this is sadness, happiness, love or hate. This emotion leads to them actively viewing YouTube videos, liking Facebook pages and tweeting about brands. Hence the only way to achieve this is through meticulous planning, by providing real consumer insight, perfect timing and realistic budgets.

Before I rant anymore, maybe I should define what viral actually means. Well according to MarketingTerms.com it is a ‘Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message’.

The ultimate aim of a brand is to circulate its message within influential social groups; hence the right people become instant ambassadors. As a result, brands can send out particular messages to individuals, different networking groups and even their competitors, fast and effectively.

When it comes to content, this is purely defined by the brand’s short & long term aim. It could be something as simple as a photo or article, a revolutionary website, video or above the line campaign. What they all must contain is content that really inspires people to share; online & through face-to-face conversation. This is hard, really hard, especially if you are doing it properly. Some people and brands occasionally get lucky, but for the majority, you have to work at it. If a brand tries too hard, then it simply won’t work!  A classic example is Sony’s ‘All I want for Christmas is a PSP’.

‘Old Spice’ advertising on the other hand is one of the most inspirational campaigns to date. By simply understanding their consumers (70% women), P&G were able to take ‘Old Spice’ viral. The final execution might look low budget, but it actually took a large amount of effort and resources to produce it correctly. The same can be said for Evian’s Roller Babies ‘Live Young’ and Volkswagen’s Dark Vadar Super Bowl advert.

So what is my conclusion? Well, brands need to stop asking agencies to produce ‘viral’ campaigns and concentrate on the bigger pitch. Viral campaigns naturally develop, they cannot be moulded. It truly takes time, so in the meantime, concentrate on your customers, their needs, desires and opinions.

The internet, in all its myriad forms, has been touted as the ultimate measurable medium. However, the digital landscape and indeed the entire consumer-to-advertiser relationship has changed so dramatically over the last couple of years that it has made it difficult for marketers and their agencies to accurately measure return on investment (ROI).

As with all emerging technologies, the return on investment (ROI) is a key guideline when considering an investment in digital advertising, as it enables companies the chance to balance the benefits of an investment against the overall costs associated with it, reducing room for error. In the case of digital advertising, this will largely depend of the brand’s main goal; increasing public awareness, profit or brand value.

This academic paper will break down the cause & effect procedure, using up-to-date motion capture techniques to visually explore the success of existing mediums against new innovations; reviewing campaign reach, profit & accreditation. From a brand’s prospective; should they be spending their budgets on traditional, yet safe above the line campaigns or opt for riskier, potential more expensive digital executions? We are always asked this question by our brands!

Alongside three of Clusta’s most prestigious brands; BCU & ClustaLabs will create a reliable testing procedure to review exactly what success is (per medium) and state potential areas of investment in the future.

Make sure you check into our blog and twitter site (@ClustaLabs) on a regular basis to review our findings.

Where do you look when you are on a plane, a bus, in a car or even walking down a street? Do you even notice what is going on around you? New adverts, buildings and shops are constantly popping up everywhere, but do you care or even pay attention?

In a brief discussion with BCU University, it soon dawned on us that there is no clear way of accessing whether social media, online & offline advertising, actually affects the decision-making process. Hence, can pre-digital campaigns really affect future purchasing decisions? How can we prove this?

Over the next six months, ClustaLabs will be testing this notion, with the help of Birmingham City University. We will be presenting our findings online, to our brands and through academic sessions, which you are all welcome to attend. So keep checking in and feel free to email us, if there is anything else that you would like us to review.

When I say the words ‘deep thinker’, what springs to mind? Dolphins? Probably not, but these creatures can tell us a thing or two about how we might communicate with one another & with animals in the future, and when I say future, I mean within the next ten years. These clever things have developed an extensive communications system that doesn’t rely on technology; they don’t even use Facebook!

We are always talking about the possibility of living within a parallel universe, yet could this actually be with animals, rather than with ourselves. This might explain why we feel so close to our pets, I mean, take dolphins for example. Mothers look after their young before they are old enough to leave the nest; the same can be said for dolphins & even elephants. When we leave our parents, we stay in contact by telephone, whereas dolphins use signature whistles; we both even call each other by our names.

Hence, wildlife demonstrates that parallel communication can evolve in the unlikeliest of places, yet until recently, it has been confined per specie, compared to one another. Nevertheless, Louis Herman’s recent research from the University of Hawaii has highlighted that this might change within the next few years.

In 2010, Louis Herman realised that dolphins processed information in a similar way to human beings, resulting in strong memories that can differentiate between sounds and tone. Through a series of test, Louis found that 70% of Dolphins could correctly identify whether they had previously heard a sound track or not. Therefore if they could recognise sentences expressed within music, then what about in normal conversation? The results are still out, but this will not stop me getting excited about the prospect of having a civilised conversation with a dolphin, the next time I am lying on a beach in the Bahamas.

Currently, people are becoming increasingly tired of their mobile phones, as they are constantly looking out for something new. Recently, scientists have introduced gesture navigation into the mix, meaning that people no longer need to use their fingers to select buttons or send a text; they don’t even have to come into contact with the phone!

The University of Tokyo in 2010 proposed a vision-based interface for mobile devices, utilising a 3D motion tracking system that sensed human finger motion through a single camera. Since the fingerprints near the camera moved fastest in the image, a high frame-rate camera had to be implemented for stable tracking. The binarised 3D finger trip image could then be introduced using Luca-Kanade algorithm to estimate its 3D motion and posture, resulting in a contactless clicking method, similar to that of a computer mouse. Yet, strip this back and what you do you have? A micro-Kinect.

Patrick Baudisch, Professor of Computer Science at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Postdam, Germany and his research student, Sean Gustafson also seemed to come to a similar conclusion when they took this concept one step further, developing a series of mobile prototypes that removed the use of touch screens and keyboards altogether. Simply by attaching a video recorder and microprocessor to their clothes, hand gestures could then be recognised and converted into mobile actions, such as making a telephone call or scrolling through the internet.

With these in mind, will future mobile phone developments rely heavily on such products as the Microsoft Kinect or could it be that one day we actually get bored of gesture navigation altogether and refer back to the days of touch?