We live in a digital age of high expectations and instant gratification. Disappointment in a service can be rapidly spread online, yet the same tools can be used to ensure customer satisfaction.

Radiohead understands this, Vodafone has no idea.

The last year has seen Vodafone Australia lurch from one PR disaster to the next. Their main selling advantage, low prices and cheap data bundles, has led to their biggest problem – too many customers for an under-serviced network. As a result data access can be unreliable or non-existent in areas where you’d expect to be able to have good data access.

Vodafone’s initial response was to ignore the problem and growing number of complaints with a “nothing to see here” PR approach. That was until 23 year old student Adam Limo decided to launch his crusade against Vodafone’s awful service with his now famous #Vodafail campaign. #Vodafail lit a fuse that the telecommunications giant could no longer ignore as the media coverage spiraled out of control. It led to Vodafone CEO Nigel Dews acknowledging they had let their customers down and they were working hard to address network coverage. They also began allowing customers to break their contracts without penalty if they complained hard enough.

Last weekend Vodafone’s latest PR distaster erupted when their SMS system failed, preventing customers to send messages at Easter, one of the biggest holidays of the year. Social media sites were flooded with anti-Vodafone messages.

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I strongly believe that we at a critical juncture for many businesses. It’s no longer acceptable to bury your head in the sand and ignore the massive changes that are happening in media and marketing due to rapid technological innovation. Those who do risk becoming dinosaurs. Only modern marketers will survive, adapt and thrive.

2011 is the year you must embrace change.

I have posted on this topic in more detail over at the Sticky website.

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A series of short posts with the latest facts about our digital economy and lives. Use them for your presentations, blogs, homework or trivia nights.

• Sales of music in the form of digital files grew by 9.2% to exceed a quarter of total sales during 2009. Source: The Economist.

• About 8 per cent of all Google queries are name searches. Source: Wired Magazine.

• There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. Source: Facebook.

• Apple recently announced that its App Store now offers over 300 000 apps which collectively have been downloaded more than 5 billion times. Source: Apple.

• It took Facebook 5 years to garner its first 150 million users but just 8 months to double that number. Source: The Economist.

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There is a lot of conjecture about Internet Television, how we will consume it and how it will affect us. This entertaining presentation was given at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco in November 2010 to debunk some of the myths (sorry, I have somehow forgotten who did this presentation).

Internet TV will change viewing habits forever

You know you’re old if…

• You think you’ll need a box to watch Internet TV
• You think you’ll need apps to watch Internet TV
• If you want to watch TV on your TV
• If you want to watch TV with other people
• If you watch more than 36 hours of TV per week (in which case it’s ambient, running in the background most of the time rather than being content that you elect to view when you wish)
• You think that Internet TV is “amateur hour” and that no web originals are professional

Viewing habits have changed remarkably in recent generations. Internet TV will result in an even more dramatic shift in media consumption.

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On 30 November in Newcastle, the Lunaticks Society are holding an event on cloud computing for business. It promises to be an interesting discussion on modern computing, security and the general benefits of “the cloud”.

As a business owner, I’m a big fan of cloud computing and host most office functions online.

But it’s while I am traveling that the benefits and ease of cloud computing are magnified. I can check-in, contribute, edit, chat, and generally work from almost anywhere via my laptop or, as is the case on my current trip to San Francisco, via my iPad or iPhone.

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A few years ago we all arrived at the office to discover it had been ransacked. Windows smashed and half the computers stolen. Fortunately all our work had been backed up and insurance covered the theft, but it was a major disruption to the business all the same. We had to order new equipment, reinstall programs and get back up to speed on the projects that were in play at the time. All-in-all I reckon we lost at least a week’s productivity.

One thing business owners must constantly ask themselves is “what would happen if…?”

What would happen if a key person left?

What would happen if a key client left?

What would happen if the office was broken into / burnt down / flooded?

At least these days I feel we have the last questions solved. Office disruption would be greatly reduced at Sticky due to the fact that we predominantly use applications and systems in the cloud.

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Generation Z are true digital natives

Two years ago I explained “Why my kids will be the death of traditional media” whilst I watched my sons effortlessly move between their armoury of digital playthings.

Two years later and they are even more web savvy and connected. My eight year-old now blogs from his Posterous site, displaying the latest videos he shot on a Flip Camera, edited himself on iMovie and posted to YouTube. He creates his own video games using Sploder and embeds them into his blog, which in less than a month has attracted thousands of views.

His friends are also digital natives who all chat online after school and rarely watch free-to-air TV. They download music and apps to their iPods and never turn on the radio.

Which brings me to a new study by Habbo Hotel, the world’s largest virtual community for teens, into Generation Z and their expectations for the future digital economy. The survey of more than 49,000 Australian children aged 11-18 found that the majority (55%) of respondents believe that the digital world will make traditional printed books, newspapers and magazines extinct, whilst, only 38% disagree.

Here are the major findings:

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Google TV is on the way and could be one of the biggest interruptions to traditional media ever. Its all about total media convergence. The best of the web, TV and social networking all through the dominant household screen. It’ll be interesting to see how Google TV catches on and whether the big players in Australian media will be able to thwart its growth.

This first video is an introduction to Google TV while the second video demonstrates apps for Google TV.

Game changer? Quite possibly.

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Is the television industry's glass half empty or half full?

The current state of the television industry can be compared to the idiom, “Is the glass half empty or half full? The pessimistic view is that the end is nigh and television is on a steady decline with internet technology as its biggest threat. But there are many who take the optimistic “glass half full” approach and are looking for opportunities for television online.

Television’s once unassailable mass media dominance has been significantly reduced in recent years as networks have been squeezed by falling rates and the fragmentation their once loyal audiences.

Viewers can now choose between a growing number of digital channels, subscription TV and internet downloads of their favourite programs. They can skip the ads using personal video recorders like FoxtelIQ and TiVo, or once gain by downloading the programs.

And that’s not to mention the multitude of other devices competing for viewers attention, especially as new generations are being raised glued to mobile devices and 2 minute videos on YouTube.

The sun has set on television’s glory years and many in the industry lament its steady demise. These are dire times.

Or are they?

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Australia needs to join the high speed broadband revolution

As usual, the current Australian government has done a poor job at explaining the benefits of one of their major initiatives and as a consequence it is being largely ignored and risks being totally abandoned if they lose power. I’m talking about the National Broadband Network.

Unfortunately, the cost of the Australian government’s planned $43 billion National Broadband Network has become the issue rather than the benefits of high speed broadband for the country. The Opposition has focused on the cost, perhaps with good reason, and claim that the project is a White Elephant, yet they haven’t offered any viable alternatives.

Meanwhile the Government has failed to sell the real benefits of the NBN to the public and potentially negate the argument against.

I’m no infrastructure expert and I don’t pretend to know the best way to deliver high speed broadband to the nation but I do believe we as a country must have a high speed broadband network as soon as possible.

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