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In a recent addition of Campaign, there was an article on the AAR’s latest report on the new-business market and agency performance . We are very very proud of the results, which you can check out below.

The Story, at Conway Hall, has quickly become one of the must attend events for the London thinker set. Everyone from planners to game designers to artists to programmers flock to hear planners, game designers, artists and programmers tell stories about how they tell stories. What is implicit here is that whatever our profession, thanks in part to digital technologies, we are all telling stories. And the better we can tell those stories the more people will play our games, buy our toothpaste, or use our service.

Unlike most conferences there wasn’t a duff presentation all day, which actually makes it quite difficult to round-up. So rather than fawning over every speaker, I thought I’d explain what I took away from the event and then point you in the direction of a bunch of other people that have done roughly the same.

At a fairly recent talk, at Google headquarters, Tony Hseigh CEO of Zappos asked ‘What is the story you want people to tell about your brand?’ and I think this question is at the heart of my thoughts from The Story.

What is the story you want people to tell about your brand?

It doesn’t matter whether it’s you that is the brand or the company you work for; the dynamics are roughly the same.  Too often we accept a given narrative as our own narrative. Self fulfilling prophecy is a powerful force for both individuals and brands, but it is not a given that we are what people say we are. Our stories are constructed of things we say and things we do and, for both brands and people, saying one thing and doing another will result in representing ourselves badly. However, just because we’ve said and done something in the past it doesn’t necessarily follow that we have to carry on the same in the future. We are all the masters of our own destinies and, as the old adage goes, actions speak louder than words. If you want people to think that your company is innovative, the easiest and most likely way is to achieve this is to actually be innovative. If you want to be a game changer, start changing the game.

It’s often difficult to think of ourselves apart from our category, industry or friend group but the reality is that we are not bound by these collective, associative narratives. We each have an individual narrative whose outcome we dictate through our actions. So the question is, what is the story you want people to tell about your brand and what are you going to do about it?

Further reading on The Story:

from attendees

Matt Edgar: Small pieces loosely joined

Rishi Dastidar: The Story 2011

Anne Holiday: The Story Takeaway

from speakers

Karl James: The Story

Mary Hamilton: What shape is a story?

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.