Speaking Sensis

A brand new blog

Hi. We've opened up a shiny new blog so we won't be posting here anymore. If you'd like to read the latest from Sensis, check us out at the all new Speaking Sensis.

Wayne

1234: Sock it to me

We all have our skeletons. Those little secrets we keep in the darkest rescesses of our minds.

Some of us love to binge out on chocolates, pizzas or (in my case) Savoury Shapes when no-one's looking.

Many of us have even more 'exotic' tastes. Probably time to press the 'too much information' button about now.

Well, I'm going to stand up and proudly reveal one of my own deep dark mysteries to the world.

I love the 1234 sock puppet.

Seriously - and all the 'I work for Sensis' bias aside - I think he's (???) one of the most amusing advertising characters in years.

And here's his latest ad.

P.S. When's the series coming? If they could make a successful sitcom out of a fluffy alien called Alf, the sock puppet should be a cinch.

Whereis®: new directions in local search

If you’re like me (male, that is), you probably spend half your life looking for stuff.

Where’s the keys? Where’s my wallet? Where the hell’s my hair gone?

At least, thanks to mobile technology, the search for products, services and suppliers is getting easier. It seems the consumer clamour to high speed mobile services is being well and truly matched by the rush of innovation that’s occurring in the services they’re using.

Recent new innovations to Whereis® Mobile have added real muscle to the local search experience. Here’s a taste of what’s been added:

Whereis® Send to Mobile: Ever wished you could take your online experience on the road with you? With Whereis® Send to Mobile, you can easily send the details of a supplier you find at whereis.com.au to your mobile phone. While the ability to send online information to mobiles isn’t new, Whereis® takes the experience one step further. Instead of getting a simple SMS with contact details, Whereis® Send to Mobile gives you a link to the supplier’s Whereis® Mobile listing. This includes not just contact details but easy ways to help you take the next step, like a map, directions capability, contact options like click to call and so on. Of course, if you’re a Yellow™ user, the Send to Mobile feature is also available on yellow.com.au.

Yellow™ content in Whereis® Mobile: Now, all Yellow™ listings have been included in Whereis® Mobile. If you’re trying to find a local business, you’ll now get a more complete response to your search than ever before.

Save to my phone: As well as the ability to click to call a supplier, plot directions to their premises and share their details with another mobile user, you can now save a supplier’s details to your phone. With one click, from a Whereis® Mobile listing, the supplier’s details are downloaded to your phone’s address book. From what I can gather, this is an Australian first.

Getting started is simple: Locating the starting point for your search is easier than ever as well. Whereis® Mobile automatically works out where you are and, now, shows your current location right at the top of the home page. And the My Places feature has been beefed up as well. It now not only gives you fast access to locations you’ve saved, but will automatically let you access recent search locations as well – whether you saved them or not.

Optimised for iPhone: And, of course, the latest version of Whereis® Mobile has been built to run on the Apple iPhone.

Whereis® Mobile can be found on the home page of the Telstra BigPond Mobile network or at mobile.whereis.com. And it’s free to browse for Telstra users.

Now, if only I could use it to find my thinning locks.

Advertising: the next generation

So, you think the advertising industry is changing? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

There used to be two certainties in life – death and taxes. 

Now, thanks to technology, there’s a third – change. Sweeping, relentless, accelerating change.

A couple of years ago, I came across a New Scientist article that put today’s evolving advertising industry into sobering perspective.

In “Human 2.0”¹, the celebrated inventor and writer Ray Kurzweil² mapped the evolution of computer power against good ol’ grey matter. He found that, in the 110 years since the first electromechanical ‘computers’, all we’ve done is make your garden variety PC slightly faster than an insect’s brain³.

When you put it that way, it hardly seems inspiring stuff, with all due respect to the computer industry (and insects).

But it’s what Kurzweil points to in the future that really makes you stop and think.

“We won’t experience 100 years of technological advance in the 21st century; we will witness… about 1000 times that achieved in the 20th century.⁴”

Kurzweil’s point is that technology evolves exponentially. Computers are now advancing so rapidly that by 2020, US$1,000 will buy you processing power about as fast as a human’s brain.

And a few decades later, that US$1,000 will get you the same number of operations per second as every human brain on the planet.

So, what’s this got to do with advertising?

Everything.

In recent times, technology has driven unprecedented changes in advertising.

A decade ago, who would have picked that more than nine million Australians would be so reliant on the web that they now use it every day⁵?

And who (Dick Tracy aside) would have picked we’d be advertising on video-enabled mobile phones smaller than your palm and as powerful as a Pentium computer?

But these are just baby steps; taken on the back of computers as fast as insects, dial-up modems and an industry that’s still coming to grips with what is possible.

The upshot is this. In the next decade, consumers will begin doing things with media we couldn’t possibly conceive today.

Which means advertisers will too.

So, for now, a closing thought.

If you’re thinking of slowing down sometime soon, forget it.

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1. Ray Kurzweil, “Human 2.0”, New Scientist, 24 September 2005, pp 32
2. For more information, go to www.kurzweilai.net
3. Ray Kurzweil mapped the number of operations per second performed by US$1,000 of computing power (based on 1999 dollars).
4. Ray Kurzweil, “Human 2.0”, New Scientist, 24 September 2005, pp 37
5. Roy Morgan, Single Source Australia, April 2007 – March 2008. Base: Australians 14+.