£1.10.7per litre and going down!

So back in May of this year whilst on the usual lunchtime stroll around the block with two of my colleagues I rather confidently, and with a reasonable degree of hope bet that the price of a litre of unleaded would be £1.10 by Spring 2015. Now I must admit the prediction was based upon very little expertise and primarily upon the observation of the rate to which the cost of a litre was decreasing at the time at our local Asda forecourt, which has long been the cheapest supplier for miles around.

Unbelievably, and to our joy costs have not only already hit £1.10.7 at the Asda Yeovil forecourt but there are also much more qualified predictions from the likes of

RAC that suggest the price may drop to below a £1 per litre of unleaded in the New Year, something we’ve not seen since October 2007.

This is very welcome news to say the least for those who have seen little or no increase in wages, and in real terms decreases over the period where fuel prices both at the forecourts and in household energy bills have seemed to endlessly increase.

Yipeee for cheap oil…

Of course its not just rural commuters in the west country that are benefiting from putting less of our hard earned cash straight into our fuel tanks. Consumers at large are benefitting from the remarkable fall in oil prices. Lower fuel costs for transportation of goods and services mean lower prices, as seen in the record levels of inflation as we come to close of 2014.

Ironically the result of all this is that consumers tend to spend the freed-up cash which in turn stimulates the economy and UK growth, pretty much what gorgeous George and the rest of his cronies have been trying to do for the last four years. If like me you’re somewhat sceptical of all this talk of wage rises recently, which from personal experience I think is a load of bullshit then the continuing decrease in fuel costs is what helps you and me right now. The falling costs have and continue to put vastly more money in our pockets than both the government and employers are ever likely to offer.

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Barclays to offer Skype-style video banking service

Barclays Bank continues its ‘digital revolution’ by announcing its intention to be the first UK bank to offer a new one-to-one video service to a selection of its customers as of the 8th December, enabling them to communicate securely with bank staff from their mobile phones, tablets or laptop computers at anytime of the day.

The ‘Skype-style’ service will initially be provided to Barclays premier account holder’s, those with more than £150,000 with the bank, and then rolled out to mortgage, business and investment customers from early 2015 - followed by all retail customers.

The new video banking service has been hailed as a ‘watershed moment’ in UK banking by Steven Cooper, CEO of personal banking at Barclays. Mr Cooper commented that “it would mean banks interact with customers completely on their terms, rather than ours”, he went on to add that “where possible, customers will be connected to a staff member they have already spoken to”.

Whilst Barclays hailed the benefits that video banking would provide, critics and campaigners warned the banks campaign to close branches in favour of continued development of new gadgets risked alienating many of its elderly customers.

Mr Cooper did refer to branch opening hours, suggesting that the video service itself would help to provide customers with a face-to-face experience, adding that “while many of our customers are increasingly using digital channels to complete routine transactions, for the important moments, you just can't beat face-to-face conversations, yet traditional branch opening hours don't always give customers that choice.”

On Monday 8th December Barclays’ wealthier ‘Premier’ customers will receive an email inviting them to use their new video banking service. With other banks set to follow suit and race firmly on to develop the next generation of super-fast mobile ‘5G’ networks video banking is set to become an instrumental tool for the banking sector.

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A treat for all those Star Wars fans out there

Watch Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens Official Teaser Trailer  J.J. Abrams Movie HD

for release December 2015

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Blendtec shows what online videos can really do

Video has come along way since it first made the leap from tape to pixels with animations from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s video shorts “The Spirt Of Christmas” back in the early to mid 90’s, but it wasn’t for another decade until YouTube put the marketing into ‘video marketing’ and brands, promoters, marketeers and technology giants raced to be the first to harness the value that video continues to provide.

With the launch of YouTube came the era of the viral video!

The earliest forms of video marketing itself were in fact the overlay and display ads positioned alongside popular YouTube videos - This revenue stream allowed creators who were previously making content for free to potentially make a living.

In the early days of YouTube very few brands and businesses had really figured out how to make good use of video in a meaningful way, one trailblazer of the time however was Tom Dickson, Founder of Blendtec.

Dickson created what’s considered to be one of the first and best viral marketing videos to promote their range of kitchen blenders. Each episode would see Dickson setup a scenario with all the enthusiasm as a high school science master, proclaiming “will it blend” as he stuffs a suitably unsuitable object into one of their ridiculously powerful $400 kitchen blenders.

It all sounds more like a comedy short than a piece of serious advertising, but over the following two years their ‘Will It Blend’ videos turned a brand with little mainstream recognition into one of the most recognised and talked about brands on the planet, attracting over 1.5 million views on Youtube and helping to increase sales of their Total Blenders by over 600%.

Keep yours eyes peeled for our next post on the history of video marketing!

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Online video - How did it all start?

Video on the internet’s come a hell of long way, in fact in recent years its pretty much shaped the world wide web as we know it. 

Driven primarily by super fast broadband combined with the proliferation of high definition smartphones and tablets the age of ‘video marketing’ has firmly taken hold. Big brands now make good use of the benefits that video provide, notably the huge volumes of traffic - Youtube itself receives more than a billion unique visits every month - that’s more than Yahoo, Bing and Ask combined.

So where did it all start?… 

… Well for starters it began a little earlier than we may realise, in the early to mid 90’s two particular videos “The Spirit Of Christmas” made by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone made major steps in paving the way for today’s industry - the videos were shared among colleagues at LucasArts and FOX Broadcasting initially on VHS tape and later by email having been converted, they were then, and most notably posted online, gaining the attention of Comedy Central and becoming the precursors to the hit series… Enjoy…

Look out for our next post on the history of video marketing on YouTube.

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4 Pre Christmas considerations for online retailers

Now I totally appreciate that August is far too early to be talking about Christmas, however that said it is vital that online retailers forward plan for what is for most, their busiest time of year and a period that can provide upwards of 40% of their annual sales.

This year of course you’ll not only have the traditional Christmas opening hours but you’ll also need to consider taking advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, both tradition’s cynically adopted from across the pond to celebrate the Friday and first Monday following the Thanksgiving holiday.

Here are five of the more important aspects of online retailing that you need to plan ahead for in good time, in order for you maximise your Christmas bonus…

1. Delivery & Shipping

Like most people I like my Christmas purchases to appear well before the 25th December. This being a priority for seasonal shoppers do make sure that you clearly display your delivery and shipping information, in particular your last shipping dates. 

Ensure that you manage expectations, in recent years bad weather has resulted in late deliveries, so guaranteeing next day delivery up until the 23rd of December may not be a wise move.

Top Tip: Free delivery still remains a strong attraction for consumers, if not an illogical one at times considering the cost involved in traveling to a high street store to pick an item up. Nevertheless providing free delivery either on all your items or perhaps over a particular threshold, such as £30 is proven to increase sales, even if the item is more expensive as a result of incorporating the delivery cost into the price.

2. Christmas Makeover
For the many thousands of sales assistants, cashiers, security guards and shelf stackers there’s few thrills in life that compare to donning a Santa hat through most of November and December, or perhaps being forced to dress up as one of his vertically challenged helpers. So just as you’d garnish your staff or perhaps dress a window display, ensure that you dress your online store.

Plan for a seasonal makeover of your website including promotional banners and key messages. In turn make sure that whatever you do on your website is reflected within your email marketing, social media profiles and preferably in store merchandising if you’re really organised.

Top Tip: If your website company is likely to be involved with any of the above do make sure you notify them in good time, they may not work the seasonal opening hours that you do.

3. Best Sellers & Gifts
Now is the time to be looking at this years best sellers as well as what did well last year. Ensure that the product pages for these items are as good as you can make them - with engaging and informative descriptions, high quality images and video if applicable, and complemented by related products and accessories aimed at maximising basket values. 

Best sellers ought to be given prominence upon your website and within marketing material such as email campaigns.

If you haven’t already got ‘gift categories’ or ‘gift guides’ on your website consider making use of these. Essentially these are categories where you can feature items that are suitable as gifts for say men and women, or perhaps “gifs for granny”. This technique is widely used among department stores and helps customers find the products they’re looking for more easily.

Top Tip: If you offer gift vouchers Christmas is the time to shout about them as they’ll be a popular choice for many of us who haven’t got a clue what to buy anyone. 

4. January Sales & Follow-up Marketing

Put in place a strong post-Christmas marketing plan. If someone buys from you this Christmas then target them in your January sales. Perhaps consider particular offers such as voucher codes that can be emailed to those that bought from you over the festive period.

Top Tip: Publicise the dates of any sales and offers in good time on your website and within your marketing so your customer know when to visit your website to take advantage of them.

As much as it feels odd to do in the August sun, its well worth beginning to plan for Christmas now so that you can quickly and effectively deliver your marketing campaigns.

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Ecommerce turns 10 years old

Despite common perceptions that Amazon invented online shopping its widely acknowledged that a group of college grads (founders of NetMarket) in Nashua, New Hampshire conducted the very first ‘secure’ retail transaction on the web, exactly ten years to the day.

It’s the secure nature of this transaction, a CD, “Ten Summoner’s Tales” by Sting which makes it relevant and historically notable. A classmate of former NetMarket founder Daniel Khon purchased the CD with his credit card for $12.48 plus delivery by way of commercially

available data encryption technology, paving the way for an industry that now makes up a significant chunk of our economy with UK shoppers having spent £91 billion online last year.

Ten years ago eager entrepreneurs in the U.S. faced a number of obstacles in selling online, not least that the government itself still controlled some of the internet’s infrastructure, and that under National Science Foundation rules, commercial activity on the internet was technically forbidden.

It was online security that was to restrict initial development. Despite NetMarket and The Home Shopping Network both capable of making secure transactions during 1994, they both conceded it was clunky due to users having to download software that would allow them to transmit credit card details securely over the web.

It was the following year in 1995 when online retailing began to flourish. Netsacpe’s latest edition of its web browser incorporated the Secure Sockets Layer or SSL security protocol that we know of and use today. In simple terms SSL creates a secure connection between a client, being a users desktop computer, laptop or internet enabled device and a server, over which secure data can be transmitted, such as credit card numbers. We recognise SSL connections at work by web addresses or domains that begin with “https:”

Following Netscape down the SSL route was Microsoft who adopted the encryption standard within its Internet Explorer web browser, further establishing it’s place as the standard for protecting the transmission of confidential information across the internet. The same year a small Seattle based company called Amazon.com set up a book shop online. The rest as they say is history.

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