Awarding Innovation

Some of guys from Mantra attended The Economist's Seventh Annual Innovation Awards last night. Held at the Science Museum in London, the ceremony recognises the interface between innovation and business and its impact on economic growth.

This years awards recognised some exciting people -

Jimmy Wales - the King of Wikipedia. Wales founded the online encyclopaedia in 2001 and it has since grown to become a site offering nearly 2.4 million articles to 55.8 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. alone. Advocating the power of public collaboration to generate content quickly and accurately, Wales was handed the innovation award for Business Process.

Matti Makkonen - the Finnish engineering and mobile telephony pioneer widely credited with inventing Short Message Service (SMS). Makkonen's invention has become ingrained in our daily lives as a simple to use communication tool, yet interestingly he never received financial payback for his pioneering work as it never occurred to him to document his efforts or apply for a patent, however he did go on to become the Vice President of Nokia Networks amongst other things - plus he now has an Economist Innovation Award for Computing and Telecommunications!

Steve Chen and Chad Hurley - along with Jared Karim, this duo founded the cultural phenomenon that is YouTube. Thanks to these guys, many an hour is wasted watching the weird and the wonderful, but beyond this, they also helped redefine digital multimedia content. Enjoying market dominance, YouTube accounts for 73% of all visits to video sites and holds partnerships with the biggest name content providers. Chen and Hurley picked up the award for innovation in Consumer Products and Services.

Other winners included Arthur Rosenfeld for being 'the founding father of the energy efficiency movement' and Bill and Melinda Gates for their foundation's work with immunization in the developing world.

Following on from last nights event, a handful of Mantra bods can be found at the Economist Innovation Summit today - discussing innovation strategy, the effectiveness of collaborative platforms such as Web 2.0 and understanding how start-ups can best utilise collaboration.
Check out some pics from the event on Flickr http://tinyurl.com/6nukzs

The world according to Sorrell

So – last night the Mantralites marched through the hail down to the Cavendish Conference centre to see Sir Martin Sorrell speak about (broadly speaking) ‘the world’. After half an hour or so thawing out amongst the crowds of suits (RTS events – very few women – lots of men in suits bellowing at each other), we were escorted in to the main room and took our seats in front of Sir Martin and the host for the evening, Hugh Pym – Acting Economics Editor for the BBC. Sir Martin started off by stating that unlike most agency people, he was actually going to answer the brief - a list of questions asking his opinion about the current and future state of the UK and global economy and the impact on the media markets. Key take-aways:

- If you focus on one media, in one market, you are a bit buggered (cue plentiful references to ITV)
- The BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the next 11 (or discounting Iran, 10) are the markets to watch and embrace – their growth is significant
- China has the equivalent to two times the population of the US on mobile phones, half of which are on one network
- The areas to focus on are PCs, mobile and video
- The potential of mobile will be realised when the operators are forced through threat to their business to sit together in one room

In addition, Sir Martin talked specifically about WPP. The TNS transaction which is expected to be formalised today takes them back to the no. 1 spot. His aim is to have WPP’s business as follows – 1/3 digital and new media, 1/3 BRICs and emerging markets and 1/3 market research, insight and services (NB – his predictions for PR are positive – phew!). One point that provoked an audience chuckle was his ‘dad-like’ observation of the digital industry. He believes the language digital people use is exclusive and confusing – “twitter, Flickr – what do all these words mean?”

When asked about the suggestion that Google was a parasite, his response was that if Google was a parasite – he would like to be one. The reason other business leaders talk in such a derogatory fashion is because they are jealous. But regulators should look a little closer at the monopolistic position that Google is taking.

One has to wonder how Sir Martin has time to do anything other than travel; “When I was in Sao Paolo / Brazil / Bejing / Germany last week…” but his international and multi-market knowledge is awe inspiring. We were captivated the entire evening and post-event chatter in the office has kept us occupied while the server decides whether it is going to wake up this morning.

Thanks Sir Martin (and RTS) - was a great evening.

Brand extension is pants?

With the doom and gloom of the current economic climate largely dominating the news at the moment, it is always refreshing to read something which manages to bring a smile to the face…. Which is exactly what happened when I read about ITV's attempts at 'brand extension', for it was reported today that they are launching a range of Coronation Street spin off products including, wait for it…underwear.

Yes, ITV who have recently announced job cuts and are suffering at the hands of the credit crunch, are aiming to build the Coronation Street brand beyond the cobbles by selling 'underworld' knickers (apparently that is the name of the knicker factory on the show and not some questionable new niche).

There is undoubtedly huge potential in terms of extending a brand to new arenas, take the empire of Mary-Kate and Ashley for example, but is the world ready for underwear, 'tea sets' and Corrie themed restaurants? Hmmmm….

Go forth and be social

The quest to set up a customised social website (think Metrotwin) has become a whole lot easier as SocialGO today announced that it is now in OpenBETA.

This much anticipated bespoke social network maker is free to use and allows people to create a customised social website for any group, topic, business or theme. With a simple, easy to use design and a load of useful features you can have a network set up within a few minutes.

Having been in intense development for twelve months and having reached over 1,000 social networks already, SocialGO seems set to make a refreshing impact on the social networking scene.