I have just started reading Tim Flannery’s book ‘The Weather Makers’. For those of you who haven’t read it, as the title would suggest, the book is all about the history and future impact of climate change. For those of you that have…you probably think I’m pretty late to the party. Well…better late than never. An admittedly new reading topic for me, my knowledge around climate change is limited. I understand it on a very basic level, but I hope to get further entrenched in this issue and make some changes of my own after reading ‘The Weather Makers’.

My interest to read it was sparked a couple of weeks ago when I attended an Innovation Forum held by IF Talks. Several speakers including Matt Perry from the green and ethical advertising agency ‘Republic of Everyone,’ Melinda Tually from ‘I ran the wrong way’ and Blair Palese CEO of 350.org amongst others made stimulating and often opposing debates around the future of our planet and our responsibility within it.
Ben Rennie, founder of Innovation Forum will be hosting another panel discussion in September. To find out more go to

http://www.theweathermakers.org/

http://iftalks.com/IF_TALKS/IF_TALKS.html

We already know that there is an ongoing exponential increase in social media usage. Facebook is now used by over 500 million people worldwide. A third of worldwide Internet users log into Facebook to update their status and photos. That’s a lot.

From an advertising and marketing perspective though, it pays to understand just how in-depth this usage is. North American Technographics conducted an online survey to ascertain the depth of online usage. This was compared against results from a survey conducted in 2006 by the same organisation.

The population was divided into Creators, Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives. It revealed that 70% of the population identify themselves as ‘Spectators’, which includes reading blogs, listening to podcasts, watching videos and reading online forums. Only 24% identified as ‘Creators’ who were defined as people who’ publish blogs, publish web pages, upload videos and music and post articles or stories.’

At face value, this may all seem a little bit ‘captain obvious.’ It’s not exactly an astute observation to suggest that there are more people online who are ‘spectators’ as opposed to ‘creators.’

I do, however think it’s something to bear in mind when we are in the process of creating campaigns. It’s so easy to get carried away thinking of exciting ideas for consumers that involve content generation and sharing. ‘Why don’t we get them to upload a video to win something?’ is quite a common catch phrase. Next time though, consider the audience and how many of them are actually the type to create and share content.

theaustralian.com.au/news

forresters