I was recently staying in a hotel in Waterloo and wanted to find a local hairdresser to help sort my unruly locks. I put the hotel postcode into Google maps and searched for local places. It came up with about 8 suggestions. I looked at all the Google reviews for the nearest ones and clicked through to their websites to get some more info. There were some really good reviews for a nice looking place just near the hotel. So far so good.

So from a standing start I had spent a good 10 minutes looking at all my options and literally found this company based on Google alone. Must be a pretty cheap conversion and they didn’t even have to waste any other money on me to try and convince me to try their salon.

I then called them to make an appointment – the phone rang and rang and there wasn’t even an answer phone to take a message. I tried them again later that day and it just rang and rang. I tried a couple of times and eventually ran out of patience and just went with the number 2 option on my list.

Just goes to show, you can ...

There’s nothing us creative’s enjoy more than a glass of wine and a solid natter about what we’ve been up to and what direction we are heading. That’s exactly what the annual digital Podge lunch is all about. It’s about sharing ideas, experiences and finding some common ground to help the industry work better together in the future.

With the theme for the year just past being the Olympics, there was a strong focus on all fronts to give the nod to the games. London based agency, Precedent turned their hand for all the branding and online communications while a select group of creatives were tasked with spoofing the 12 Official London Olympics 2012 posters which were unveiled early November 2012. The side project for Podge was supported by The Drum who set out to see if digital agencies really understood graphic design.

With all that said, yours truly had the opportunity to put together one of the spoof posters. The poster I was given was that of Sarah Morris, an artist best known for her abstract paintings based on cityscapes and architecture. Sarah’s Paralympic tribute poster was an abstract representation of one of London’s most famous landmarks, Big Ben. My take ...

Our online social lives have moved in leaps and bounds over the past few years, some have savoured the opportunity to express themselves via social networks while others still struggle to understand it.  Whichever basket you fall into you’ll be sure to have an opinion about Facebook’s introduction of ‘Timeline’.  No doubt fuelled by the pressure of Google+, the first serious contender to its crown since it steamrollered over MySpace, Facebook is in the process of rolling out a huge suite of updates. The majority being centred around this new Timeline functionality, which is set to replace users traditional profile as soon as Zuckerberg can chat his way out of a tricky legal battle with timelines.com (another story all together).

Once we get past the expected frustration regarding our pure dislike for the way things look or the fact we can’t find that button we once overused, we’ll start to get closer to the core of what will run through the minds of Facebookers and we’ll realise very quickly that any sort of exodus from the network is going to require a much greater change than simply the way Facebook presents your data.

‘I’ll close my account’ is what you will say.  ...

Google+ is most definitely getting a few people excited at the moment, and so it should.  When one monster, free tool of the internet (Google) moves into the realm of another (Facebook) in an attempt to steal its social media crown you know it’s going to get interesting.  It’s potentially the digital Haye vs. Klitschko, except both parties are true heavyweights.

The biggest challenge to any new social network is, of course, the sheer size of Facebook’s user base.  A mind blowing 1 in 13 people on earth are now on Facebook.  Over half of the UK population has a user profile, and 50% of these are Liking or LOLing every day.

Despite the recent reports of decreasing users, the scale of Facebook’s reach gives it an enormous advantage over its competition.  The site is fast becoming the only tool consumers need online, and the only tool advertisers need to engage with their audience.  Effectively owning the communication channel between brand and consumer has placed Facebook in a very dominant position.

Of course, Google knows this all too well, as it managed to achieve exactly the same position in the search battle, much to the detriment of Yahoo and Microsoft.  Google’s pockets (and ...