Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Regent Street fights back

    Regent Street fights back

    Main street shopping strips have had a hard time over the past forty years as supermarkets and big box stores have steadily drained customers away, however the new wave of retail, manufacturing and logistics technologies may be an opportunity to revitalise them.

    A good example of shopping strips using new technologies is London’s Regent Street with its smart shopping app that integrates with iBeacon location devices,  the website Contactless Intelligence reports how shopkeepers, landlords and the local authorites are rolling out an initiative as part of a £1 billion regeneration project.

    London’s Regent Street is a fairly unique mainstreet in that it’s extremely upmarket which gives it a lot of advantages over most neighbourhoods, but it does point the way for how other shopping strips can use new technologies to reinvent themselves.

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  • Apple goes for the wearable market

    Apple goes for the wearable market

    “You’re more powerful than you think” is the message of Apple’s current iPhone advertising campaign.

    Their latest advert in the campaign features joggers, gymnasts, swimmers and golfers all using iPhone apps to connect with their wearable technologies.

    It didn’t take long after Monday’s World Wide Developer Conference announcement of Apple’s Healthkit for the company to get its message out about wearable technology.

    Undoubtedly we can look forward to soon seeing the Homekit smarthome campaign showing how Apple’s products make life easy in the smarthome.

    What’s absolutely clear is Apple’s determination to be the hub of the domestic internet of things, whether the vendors of those fitness and smarthome devices want to be locked into the world of Apple remains to be seen.

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  • Is digital enough to save magazines and newspapers.

    Is digital enough to save magazines and newspapers.

    “Globally the newspaper industry’s revenue decline will end in 2015” declares PwC in their 2104 Global Media and Entertainment report released earlier this week.

    While PwC thinks the decline for print – both in newspapers and magazines – is over, however there’s little if any growth on the horizon with the company forecasting 0.1% growth per annum for newspapers and 0.2% for magazines over the next four years.

    The reason for the stabilisation in revenues is the move to paid apps and paywalls, which means advertising is less important to the print industry’s revenues.

    Circulation revenue will almost match advertising revenue by 2018. In 2013, while circulation revenue rose globally after years of decline, advertising revenue continued to fall. Circulation’s share of total revenue will rise from 47% in 2013 to 49% by 2018, meaning consumers may soon become publishers’ biggest source of revenue.

    PwC’s view is consistent with the advertising trends flagged by Mary Meeker in her State Of The Internet report last week and, if the forecasts are correct, it will show the magazine and newspaper industries are making the transition to a new business model.

    One of the strange points in the PwC report is the talk of ‘Digital First’.

    ‘Digital-first’ is becoming the norm for newspaper publishers. For many years, news publishers’ digital output was led by their print products. But increasingly, titles will be reorganised as ‘digital-first’ operations, publishing content that works best on connected devices.

    This is true, but newspaper managements have been proclaiming their ‘Digital First’ strategies for close to a decade; any media company that doesn’t put its digital channels first is doomed to extinction anyway.

    Which is one of the important points of the PwC survey; it’s about the global industry and while that might be flat-lining, individual outlets will still fail. That’s something which concentrate the minds of those managing some of the more poorly run media empires.

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  • Mixing brains, bravery and magic

    Mixing brains, bravery and magic

    A few weeks ago I interviewed Gadi Amit, principle of New Deal Design ahead of his visit to Sydney for the Vivid festival.

    Tonight his public talk for Vivid – Designing the Things We Love – didn’t disappoint, particularly his disdain for designing luxury goods.

    “I believe we should design things that help people live their lives; a $50,ooo watch doesn’t do that,” he told the audience.

    Through his presentation he showed his best known projects including the FitBit and Project Ara along with discussing some of his failures and why sometimes it’s best to part with a client should their philosophy differ with the designer.

    Gadi’s view is a refreshing take from the design and tech industries that are often fixated with celebrity and bling. The view also ties into the manifesto of New Deal Design – “We mix brains, bravery and magic.”

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  • Apple’s grab for the home internet of things

    Apple’s grab for the home internet of things

    As usual, Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco yesterday concentrated the attention of the tech world.

    This year’s was a little more subdued than usual with the key announcement being around Apple’s new Yosemite OSX operating system, iOS8 and the new developer Software Developer Kit (SDK).

    While a little underwhelming after all the speculation about smartwatches and fitness devices, these announcements mark a clear strategy for Apple to lock customers into their products through the cloud, smarthomes and wearable devices.

    Open, but closed

    Normally discussion about an SDK makes most people’s eyes glaze over, but Apple’s announcement marks a change in the company’s strategy in making over 4,000 APIs – Application Program Interfaces – open for developers to connect their programs into iOS8.

    This marks a change for the company in allowing programs to easily hook into Apple’s mobile operating system and while it looks like a move to openness, the ease of making fitness applications, home automation and smart car services actually helps lock users into the Apple ecosystem.

    Key to the ecosystem lock-in strategy are the Healthkit and Homekit services offering connections to health and home automation applications which are part of Apple’s Internet of things play, by offering easy access into the iPhone and iPad the company hopes to lock users of third party devices into the iOS world.

    Increasing vendor lock-in

    Similarly, the cloud services included with Yosemite and iOS8 increase that lock-in making it harder for users to step outside that ecosystem. It’s notable there’s no Android app version of the cloud service which indicates how Google is now Apple’s number one enemy.

    Apple’s announcement today shows how the company is positioning itself to lock users into their services as the internet of things rolls into businesses, cars and homes.

    It’s an indication the internet of things may well become a world of closed silos and it will be interesting to see how competitors react to Apple’s attempts to be the biggest walled garden.

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