Flickr photo of the month - August 2008

Gyoza Girls

Originally uploaded by Sakurako Kitsa

 

 

I have been a Flickr addict for the last couple of years but interestingly my interaction with other Flickr users has been very limited.

I really enjoy posting pictures on the site, discovering new amazing photographers, but I never find the time to leave comments or interact with other members… this should hopefully change as soon as acquire my Nikon D40 and start snapping away at the week-end!

As a result, I have decided to feature some of my fav photographers each month and will blog using the ‘blog this photo’ feature on Flickr.

This month, my favourite Flickr photographer is Sakurako Kitsa, who takes some pretty cool photos of Bento amongst other things.

Just a little comment for the Flickr folks though… and I am kind of hoping they’ll get back to me regarding this

Would it be possible to add a text editor option on the Flickr site so that I don’t have to go into my WordPress editor to edit whatever needs to be edited! I would also love to be able to add my category tags directly from the Flickr site… Is that feasible?

 

Have a good week-end everyone!

Mobile Phones - Tool or Lifestyle?

Back in March, I blogged about the relationship consumers have with their mobile phones in the UK, and Chris Brown kindly covered the American market on her blog. 

It was our understanding that while consumers in the UK have an emotional ‘relationship’ with their mobile phones (rather than the actual provider), cell phones are seen as a functional tool in the US, and American consumers pay more attention to the provider itself.  

But is it really the case? Do British consumers really have a ‘relationship’ with their phones? The only way to find out was to conduct a little market research of my own. 

My research objective was to understand how consumers feel about their mobile phones and mobile phone supplier, and I carried out a mini-depth (micro-depth?) interview with a friend of mine who kindly agreed to be filmed.  Here are a few key findings:

• Pay as you go vs. contract: ‘I am on pay as you go because it is flexible and it is in line with my way of living. I don’t like any sort of commitment so pay as you go is exactly what I need‘

•  Mobile phone suppliers: I guess I am pretty faithful. People in my age group are more faithful than people may believe. I haven’t changed my operator since I have been in the UK because I don‘t have any specific complaints. You know what to expect from a pay as you go - the more you phone, the more you pay. It‘s pretty simple‘

• Texting vs. calling: ‘The main feature about my phone is to make phone calls but I do text a lot as well. It’s very useful when you want to send an address for example to someone.’

• Relationship with mobile phone: ‘My mobile phone is somewhere in between my best friend and a secretary because it contains useful information about my life such as my calendar, my phone numbers and things like that which I don‘t know by heart. My mobile phone is a bit like my keys - if I don’t have it, I have the feeling something could happen to me - if you have your keys, your wallet and mobile phone, you feel very safe. My mobile phone is like my keys - something I always have.’

In the ‘real world’, I would have conducted 10-15 hour long depth interviews or 4 mini-groups with a mixture of pay as go vs. contract users, followed by a quantitative study to segment the UK market. Enjoy!   

Further reading here

Going Underground

The caricature of a typical London commuter is the aspiring but cynical male. He is a middle class, middle aged, suburban, lemming like creature, walking the same path, standing at the same spot, at the same time, with the same newspaper, on the same station each morning, catching the same train, bus or tube, noticing very little between house and workplace. Pretty accurate, isn’t it?

An average Londoner sees roughly 350 ads everyday! While in theory, commuters are a captive audience, they are also creatures of habit and the ads they see on their way to and from work run the risk of becoming a nondescript part of the urban landscape.

Love them or hate them, advertisements are an integral part of the London Underground and unless you go around with your eyes shut (not advised!) you will definitely be exposed to some major ads on your journey. And the advertising people know that they have to show a lot of them to grab your attention. 

The marketing manager of a company responsible for selling all of the advertising sites on the London Underground - Viacom Outdoor, observed: “The commuter has become much more sophisticated in distilling the information he takes in on his way to work and so the advertiser has had to become more ingenious at targeting him. Ads targeting the commuter need to be either extremely repetitive (continually punctuating his journey) or be extremely creative in order to catch his attention”. That’s why you see so many of the same ads taking up the whole of escalator sites!  

Armed with my digital camera, I decided to go underground… Enjoy!  

PS: I hope the theme tune will not offend anyone! I just felt this hilarious song would make you smile    

The London Underground Song - Dr Suman Biswas & Dr Adam Kay

 

Highly recommended reading: The London Underground Tube Blog

Merry Christmas!

Sorry about the light blogging in the last month or so - I have been totally snowed under with work-related commitments!

Here’s a little something I put together

 

 If you are unable to watch this video, click here.

Enjoy!