It would seem that the medium, more than the actual message, of a fairly innocuous piece of DM could, in theory, destroy a brand.

A recent study of drivers, who had a tendency to decorate their vehicles with stickers (bumper and other) were found to have a greater likelihood of road rage and aggressive behaviour. It is just one more thing to think about when building a campaign. Do you really want aggressive, short tempered brand advocates running amok like a scene from Mad Max?

(photo credit)

Once upon a time, there were 100 Books to Read Before You Die (according to Penguin Classics). This year, a professor from Sussex University encouraged 105 critics, editors and academics to up the ante to 1001.

With all of that meaningful literature yet to be pondered, plus my own unlisted backlog of wanna-reads, must I, or anyone in B2B marketing, read Wikinomics?

Let's take a quick tour of the pros and cons. You can even download a free sneak peek of Wikinomics (the 33-pg intro) first.

I have never written a blog before. In fact, it scares me somewhat. I am a blog virgin. I just have to "get writing", they tell me. Once you have written one then you will get the hang of it. But I am way behind the rest of the world AND (as it appears) some of the professional "bloggers" that have come out of the woodworks from our agency. So here it goes, time to catch up and become a blogger...

Because I find it so hard, I have been thinking a lot about the purpose of blogs and where they fit into the business world.

Cost and timescale are usually the main reasons given for leaving usability out of a web project. It's true that testing a site is going to take time, and therefore money, but if anything is scalable, it's usability.

Plus, it is vital to deal with any usability issues before you're too far through a web project. Address them too late and you're definitely looking at much more of a time/cost implication than a little usability attention would have incurred.

Let me show you how it is possible to have your web usability cake and eat it, too...

Let's start with usability testing. Whilst more testing generally equals more results, a new site can be effectively tested during the design phase by just a handful of participants. If you're clear on what you need to achieve with your site, then it's easy to ask the right questions or set the right task to flag up any potential issues, regardless of the number of test participants you have.

You can also scale back by using a heuristic approach: have a single usability expert examine your site against a list of accepted principles and standards. The discussions started by a heuristic approach can help the whole team to focus on the primary goals of the site and reduce the barriers that stop users from eaching those goals. A web project often has a KPI of increased conversions and each barrier removed helps you get closer to achieving that.

However the real sticking point is often the perception that focusing on standards and conventions (a key part of web usability) impacts negatively on design: that a usable site is an ugly site. Standards and conventions are boundaries that we all have to work within when trying to complete any task, online or offline. And when it comes down to it a website is a tool to help the user complete one or more tasks. But how you apply those standards and conventions is not fixed and that's where good design comes in. A great design which goes against usability principles isn't going to get the audience it deserves.

So with all this in mind, usability should be a essential part of your web project making sure nothing gets between you and your users. Not a tough sell at all...

Fact: It takes 14 hours and 40 minutes to fly from Dubai to Sao Paolo.

Fact: The longest commercial is 14 hours and 40 minutes.

This is not really surprising as the commercial in question promotes the Emirates new route, and is a monologue by chatterbox Brazilian Fernando Ferreira about his homeland, its culture and whatever else takes his fancy. Creative directions like this are perfect for the online message, and for creating a stir.

I've also heard rumours of non-stop flights between London and Sydney soon. Although listening to an Ozzy go on about how much better they are at cricket, rugby and just about everything else might just be a bit too much for anyone to bear.

This month's lead article in my very favourite magazine Wired posits that we are now in the petabyte age. This heralds 'The End of Science' as we know it. 

The central theory proffered is that with the massive amount of data that we now have, we no longer need to use the centuries-old 'hypotheses->experiment->prove/disprove' empirical approach to make new discoveries, we simply need to analyse and understand what this data is telling us to make advances in the future.

Hmm, at first glance for the B2B marketer of a digital persuasion this sounds very nice indeed. All we need to do is glean this information then give them to the data geeks, then voilà, the answer! Pass me those log files...

But here lies the issue. How do get the answers from all this data? Google may be the undisputed #1 as it worked out to be the most efficient way of organising the web, and even it can't claim to be definitive (e.g. see Knol - an attempt by Google's head of search to fill the gaps in information he says exist on the web). The analysis seems to lag way behind the gathering. We still find that we need to use - shock horror - real people to get the most insightful information when researching. Data gives you statistics, results, validation, but can it give you insight? Can it tell you how people behave and interact with your products?  

If Wired are right, the answer is probably yes, but we just aren't very good at doing it yet. In the near future perhaps those that can create tools to visually interpret data, but in a meaningful way that relates back to actual people and their behaviours, will be very powerful.  Watch this to be inspired.

They always say that it's the pioneers that end up with the arrows in their back. So why be on the leading edge?

A case in point occurred to us the other day when talking about using QR codes as a response mechanism. For those who don't know (and where have you been for the last two years?) they are two-dimensional barcodes, that can be scanned with a mobile phone to provide a URL which then delivers the user to a given website.

A typical use might be to provide a QR code for a new album, which directs the user to a site where they can download a sample of the music on offer. A bridge from the physical world to the online world - and a whole lot easier than remembering a long and confusing URL. In certain consumer markets - especially in more technical ones - they're reasonably well-known and well-used.

So - it's great technology, but what about QR codes as a response mechanism for B2B campaigns? There are lots of questions. Is it appropriate? Do enough people know how to do it? Are their phones able to do it? Maybe the answer is 'no'. But with every month that passes, the answer gets closer and closer to 'maybe'.

You could argue (and you'd be right) that most people are unable to deal with QR codes at the moment (whether through lack of knowledge or because it's beyond the capabilities of their phone). Which makes it a pretty damned poor response mechanism. But using new techniques like this makes a great statement. And at some point, one of the major B2B brands will start doing it regularly. And surely it's worth a few arrows to steal a march on your rivals?