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The Albion Society often asks questions about what will happen next in culture. But the rise and rise of mobile as the next transformative force in global business and culture is already happening.

In Mary Meeker’s recent presentation to Google’s thinkmobile conference, she revealed some jaw-dropping statistics that show just how quickly mobile is growing. For example in the fourth quarter of 2010, overall shipments of smartphones and tablets surpassed PC shipments for the first time. And global mobile data traffic is projected to grow 26 times over the next five years. If any further proof were needed, then look no further than the start-of-year declaration by Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt that “all of our 2011 strategic initiatives are mobile”.

On Tuesday 8th March the Albion Society will host a discussion between four entrepreneurs who got into mobile early, and are using it to drive business costs down and quality of customer relationships up. They’ll share lessons about what works and what doesn’t, and about the challenges of operating in an environment that’s changing on a weekly basis.
Interested?
Register here….

Mobile photo sharing is becoming pretty big business pretty quickly. Instagram, some five months after launching boast 2m users and have just received $7m funding while rival Path have just received $8m funding (and reportedly they turned down $100m offer from Google).  Fairly early on we at Albion sided with Instagram. Path seems like a great idea but the execution isn’t really there yet.  But what is it about Instagram that makes it so appealing? We asked a few of our people who are using it, and here’s what they said, in their own words.

Charles: I was describing Instagram to someone the other day and the best way I could explain its appeal was the saying ‘a picture tells a thousand words’. Because it’s photo orientated the whole experience is quieter, less obtrusive but also much more engaging. Observing people’s feeds over Christmas gave a much more nuanced window into who they are and how they live than any amount of tweets could.

Glyn: It was lovely to use Instagram over the Christmas holidays, its ‘sharing lovely moments/things’ proposition really came into its own in the season of goodwill.

Corinna: I like the ‘intimacy’ of it – I always thought Twitter was awesome at letting you get to know and giving you access to people (by reading what they read, by listening to what interests them, who they chat to and how they talk) but Instagram is giving a whole new angle to this experience by allowing you to sneak into peoples’ lives on a very emotional level, something very voyeuristic. What I have also watched it do with myself is that I start to discover new things over Instagram – like a book someone took a picture of that looks interesting (and because it was someone I follow that took the photo, it feels like a personal recommendation) or that little hidden and beautiful place in Italy that a girl I follow went to, which I looked up and might consider visiting this year.

Glyn: The people I follow on Instagram are a subset of the people I follow on Twitter. The ones who a) I genuinely like and b) are creative and positive. Interestingly some who Tweet little Instagram a lot, and vice versa. I like the self-forming etiquette too. For example there’s a movement gathering pace where it’s uncool to use filters; better to test your skills. And I like that it’s vague – you have to engage your imagination and empathy to think about why that photo is important to the people who posted it, even  to guess what they were doing (and why, and who with).

Charles: Actually I think the popular page is pretty interesting as it gives quite a good insight into who the users of Instagram are. Really early on it had a very international user base from Japan, Israel, South America and Russia. And it really is a balance of styles from super schlocky pictures of hearts and kittens to great photography (with a healthy dose of artsy photos of cute girls). I think this shows how mainstream the audience is.

Nick D: I use it on my iPad.  Sadly I don’t have an iPhone, but is one of the most compelling reasons yet to get an iPhone. As such I’m not fully down with the social functionality or the take photo functionality What I do like about it is similar to the difference between YouTube and Vimeo. Instagram feels creative, visual, surprising, two way and generous. Twitter is less creative, more one way, and self indulgent. Instagram pics are like little teleports – they take you straight into a moment. Not in a vicarious way, but in a shared experience way.

Mike R: I think simplicity is the key to its success, so I’m going to keep it simple too. It really is just more emotive and evocative than twitter. The social integration is seamless and it makes my old iPhone 3 camera look much better than it really is.

Glyn: Interestingly there’s an even newer kid on the block, Picplz, and it’s already got lots of features like a web interface, APIs, and an Android version. But it just doesn’t feel as nice. It’s got no charm and the brand’s much harder and techier.

Albionites Jon and Stephen, recently stumbled across the BBC comedy ‘Urgent Genius‘ competition. The aim of the game was to create a great piece of online comedy in just 48 hours (we’re told they managed to do this in just 24 though!) We love it when team members get creative in their spare time, so check out the boys’ side project here.

As some of you may know, we recently joined forces with The Marketing Academy as a faculty partner, which we are really excited about! The Marketing Academy is a fantastic scholarship program that aims to take today’s marketing talent and develop them into future business leaders. There are over 80 mentors and 26 coaches from all areas of marketing, communication and advertising on hand to help develop and coach these lucky scholars!

In order to secure a place on this free scheme, the applicant must be nominated by someone else (e.g – their manager). There are only 28 places available and the nomination deadline closes on the 1^st March 2011. Do you know someone who deserves a place? Then get voting here!

Our friends at The Guardian have put together a showcase page of the best advertising videos for 2010, called ‘Creative Lounge’…..guess who clocked in at number 5 with our Epson Video!

Check out our handy work below:

To check out the full article just click here.

What a way to end 2010!

Phew, that was quite some 2010. We can’t believe it’s nearly over already. But we end it with the warm glow of satisfaction.

(Nearly) Digital Agency of the Year

We were very proud to be announced as a runner up in Campaign’s Digital Agency of the Year. They said some very nice things about us:

“With its emphasis on innovation, entrepreneurialism and the power of social ideas, the agency is a strong indicator as to where the digital sector – and, it could be argued, the entire industry – is heading.”

Our Creative Partner Nick Darken was also mentioned as one of the top ten digital creatives. All the more excuse to sink a few Cuervos during the festive season (did we mention that we won the global Jose Cuervo tequila account this year?)

Fantastic work for fantastic clients

What we’re most proud of though is the work we’ve made this year. Here are a few highlights:

Air New Zealand ‘Forget Everything You Know About Flying’

Outdoor and digital campaign to launch their innovative new product (e.g. flat beds in economy) across Europe.

giffgaff ‘The Man’

Launch campaign for this O2-owned mobile network that we took from beta to top 5 contender for Marketing Society ‘Brand of the Year’.

Betfair ‘Front Room’

Social TV campaign to move Betfair into mainstream football betting. We made 3 new TV spots every week of the football season.

Epson ‘Engineered for Speed’

Online film and integrated campaign demonstrating the 38ppm speed of Epson’s inkjet to microbusiness owners, in 22 markets worldwide.

Creating our own products

We think the agency of the future will create its own products as a way to road-test new ideas. And we had a few successes in 2010.

Slapometer allowed people to ‘vote with the back of their hand’ in the UK General Election. It received over 90 million slaps, and press coverage around the world.

We’ve just launched the follow-up, TweetJockey. It’s a Twitter-powered popularity poll that allows players to ‘race’ Twitter trends, turning the nation’s obsession with Twitter into an easy-to-watch horse race.

In 2010 we also backed a real fan’s quest to help the British basketball team qualify for the 2012 Olympics against the odds. Back British Basketball was co-funded by Albion and produced in-house.

The Albion Society

Our programme of provocative talks went from strength to strength in 2010.

In February Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian and Justine Roberts of Mumsnet debated ‘digital democracy’. And in September young entrepreneurs Eliza Robeiro and Emi Gal discussed ‘Gen Y activism’ with Mike Butcher of Techcrunch and investor Robin Klein.

We’re planning the next talk in early 2011 with Seedcamp on hot startups and entrepreneurs. Watch your inbox for an invitation.

Merry F**king Christmas

And finally if you’re over-18 and very open-minded about swearing and industry in-jokes, have a look at our Christmas ‘card’. It’s a pastiche of the classic internet meme What The F**k Should I Make For Dinner, and is very sweary. You were warned.

We wish you a fantastic Christmas, and all the best for 2011.

Jason, Liz, Nick, Glyn, and the Team at Albion.

Here at Albion HQ we are delighted to announce that we will be working with not one, but two fantastic new clients in 2011 (Christmas has come early….)

First up we have BookaTable, Europe’s largest online restaurant-booking service (They are currently working with approximately 8000 restaurants worldwide!) We are helping them develop their brand strategy and early next year we will be helping them launch a campaign to raise greater awareness about the company and service they provide.

Secondly we have Charities Aid Foundation, a market leading organization that provides financial services to a huge amount of charities worldwide. We are delighted to be working with CAF (we’ve been doing this secretly for some months but its great to be finally talking about it) and are involved in a variety of areas from brand strategy right through to website design. The new CAF website is due to hit your screens in the New Year. Watch this space…..

Congratulations to AKQA who deservedly won Campaign’s Digital Agency of the Year for 2010. But we’re really chuffed to be mentioned in their write-up, and really chuffed with what they said about us. Thanks to all the team at Albion, and all  of our clients for a brilliant 2010.

We were at the Marketing Society annual dinner last night, where they announced their ‘brand of the year’ award.

Brands were nominated by anybody, long-listed by a panel of experts, and then online voting decided the shortlist. The final award was decided by an audience vote (by ARS) on the night. Brands on the long-list included Facebook, Twitter and Apple.

Our big news is that giffgaff made the top 5! Seriously, a brand we launched in beta just under a year ago, and that publicly declares ‘we don’t do big glossy ad campaigns’ was a top 5 contender for the Marketing Society’s brand of the year.

Here’s the film we made to show at the event:

On the night we were up against British Gas, Aviva, Innocent and John Lewis. In a room full of 1000 senior and mostly traditional marketers, many of whom had never heard of giffgaff until that night, we never stood a chance. (We considered stealing handsets from other tables to cheat the vote. They would have gone well with our smuggled-in bottles of Cuervo.)

John Lewis took the prize. We’re glad – they’re a genuinely different and interesting business. It would be a pity if Aviva or British Gas won just for spending a lot of money on advertising. (* See note below.)

But we’re incredibly proud that giffgaff got that far, and had that platform to get in front of that audience, who we’re sure will now sit up and take notice.

And this on the same day giffgaff won a Forrester Groundswell award.

* Update: We made this comment about Aviva back when they seemed mainly to be to be doing very consistent yellow advertising that was unmissable but, you know, not unmissable. However since they’ve made this TV spot featuring Paul Whitehouse as (spoiler alert) a dead dad, which is really quite brave, so we might have to take our words back.

We are pleased to announce that our promo for Five’s Don’t Stop Believing won a Promax award for Best Use of Music at a glittering awards ceremony held last Friday. If we’d have been there our acceptance speech would have gone something a little like this…

“Firstly I’d like to thank Academy, Soundtree and everyone at Albion for all their hard work and dedication, secondly I’d like to thank my mum, dad, brother, cat, iguana, next door neigbour’s cousin’s aunt who’s been like a sister to me….”