Ben Davis is part of Econsultancy's editorial team. He blogs, manages some social media, and keeps one eye on operations. You can contact him at ben.davis@econsultancy.com or follow at @herrhuld.
What do censorship and surveillance programmes look for? What can this tell us about internet usage in China?
Can we contrast with the perceived surveillance state of the West? What are the implications for a company in the Chinese market?
Unsurprisingly, there are lots of questions still to be answered about the state of the internet in China.
First Monday has this month published a very interesting paper, presenting an analysis of data from a year and a half tracking the censorship and surveillance keyword lists of two instant messaging (IM) programs used in China.
I thought it would be useful to sum up what Crandall et al. found, so you don’t have to read the whole thing. Although this study looks at IM clients, there are certainly findings that can be extrapolated across public services, such as Baidu and Sina Weibo.
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by Ben Davis
31 July 2013 11:15am
2 comments
Here on the Econsultancy blog, we’re going to start teasing you with details of the week-long siren of excellence and japes that is the Festival of Marketing (8-10th October in London).
One of the many components of the Festival is PUNCH, the event where marketing meets the new creative. To quote our website, ‘in today’s increasingly saturated media landscape, creative power matters more than ever’.
So, to celebrate this event, and to give you something pretty to look at while you let your mind wander, I’ve listed some of my favourites in the world of creative in marketing.
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by Ben Davis
30 July 2013 09:21am
8 comments
We get lots of request for examples of good B2B marketing, so here's a trio for you and all your family.
For this post, I've been taking a look back at our shortlisted B2B entries from The Digitals awards, which were handed out last month.
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by Ben Davis
29 July 2013 10:30am
7 comments
This week there's, of course, the royal baby's impact on web traffic, some Facebook ad commentary, following their Q2 results, and some global ad spend data from Nielsen.
Feast on these, and try not to speak with your mouth full.
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by Ben Davis
26 July 2013 12:57pm
5 comments
I love emails with clear creative and natty features. I did a post about my love. Now here’s another post.
As a Brucie bonus I’ve included many links to related arts. Get creative and maybe you, too, can yank some love from my inbox.
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by Ben Davis
25 July 2013 10:20am
7 comments
I’m always impressed just how much eloquence is there for the mining on Quora. I guess it makes sense, as good answers are upvoted and people answer questions that rev their engines.
Suddenly, there’s a clarity to most threads that is addictive in its intense scrollability.
So I searched for ‘customer experience’, to see what I could find to report back with, and to shape a proto-strategy for a transforming business. Most of the interesting stuff I found can be seen more as comment on customer service, and specifically its social dimension.
Here goes….
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by Ben Davis
24 July 2013 11:10am
1 comment
Microsoft recently announced its newly branded Lab of Things. It describes this as ‘a flexible platform for experimental research that uses connected devices in homes.’
I thought I’d use this opportunity to look again at the rise of the connected device, and the future of the so-called internet of things, or IoT. Below you’ll see 10 things that you, the consumer, should expect over the next few years.
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by Ben Davis
23 July 2013 10:47am
3 comments
I recently wrote about mobile NFC being dead in the water. Since then a few dissenting voices have piped up. Understandably, some working in this area.
One of the voices was Proxama’s. It runs TapPoint, which is a cloud-based SAAS. I spoke to the MD, Miles Quitmann, and he was refreshingly honest enough to turn my oil tanker of beef around and leave me excited about the possibilities of loyalty ‘on tap’.
So here’s a summary of emerging possibilities for marketers, using the growing number of NFC enabled smartphones in the market.
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by Ben Davis
22 July 2013 10:10am
2 comments
How does Econsultancy get people to come to its events? With the Festival of Marketing set to be an intense, fun, insightful....erm..fest, here's some of the stuff we've done to market events and to make them successful on the day.
I should add, there's a ton of stuff I've missed off, here (not least, effectively segmenting your audience), as I've concentrated on creative.
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by Ben Davis
19 July 2013 10:56am
5 comments
Last week at Econsultancy London we held a roundtable discussion with some HR and L&D folks. The topic was digital business…GO!
Of course, it was Chatham House rules, but I thought I’d sum up some discussion points and some potential glints of light at the end of the tunnel, for big orgs seeking that holy grail, ‘Digital Transformation’.
Each business has different challenges and needs, but some of the following issues struck a chord.
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by Ben Davis
16 July 2013 11:24am
1 comment
