If you know me, I am obsessed with analytics … So I noticed today a massive spike in mobile traffic:

Interesting … I did change something this week, I finally added tracking to the iPhone template … but that was not it.

I checked top content people are browsing through mobile and I found a couple of curious facts …

1) iPad users had much longer sessions than web users … apparently their exploring the site and discovering new content, as opposed to web users who found the site through a link, read the article, and leave.

2) 90% of the iPad traffic went to post I wrote Wednesday about Adobe trying to get into the iPad. In fact, more people visited that post from an iPad than any other OS:

Wow, iPad at 37.81%, very impressive. What’s also impressive is that iPad + iPhone + Android = 46% and Mac + Windows = 52% … Mobile is almost surpassing all desktop traffic on this one.

So now I’m totally curious to see where is this traffic coming from. Is it that iPad users search to iPad content? Are they such Mac-heads? Or is it that Google has special algorithms based on device, and return iPad related content in iPad based searches? Or is it a community thing where someone found it and posted into an iPad blog or forum that’s only browser through iPads? I’m not making any sense, am I?

Let’s see, analytics should tell us:

The answer is: I have no idea … all this spike in traffic is coming from an iPad with direct traffic … and I also checked if it was a bot, but apparently they’re all unique users …

So question to you: do you see iPad traffic on iPad content? Is this a cult or a coincidence?

Does “tweeting” mean you’ve figured it out? Does knowing how to “friend” someone qualify you as a modern marketer of the new advertising age? Hardly. In fact, reaching that lofty goal is less about the tactics we employ, and more about our overall approach to the complexities of the modern consumer.

Our jobs are becoming more demanding. Big businesses now operate in a multi-market, multi-lingual, and frequently multi-brand world. A world filled with commercial and cultural nuances. The modern marketers I respect are finding ways to address these nuances by developing cross-market and cross-brand efficiencies. They’re fostering smarter collaboration across teams, agencies, and disciplines, producing big brand ideas that transcend tactical executions and work in markets of varying sophistication, and they’re leveraging their scale to lower costs while focusing their marketing dollars in the right growth areas. All while producing great work.

My personal fascination lies in the fact that digital marketing — and at a minimum Internet based technology — is helping to drive this evolution. Digital marketing is at different stages depending on which markets you are working in around the globe. But in almost all instances, it seems to function as the great connector that helps to bring cross-channel experiences to the consumer.

Digital, once deemed complex and expensive by the rest of the advertising world, actually offers the ability to produce re-usable libraries of common tools that can be shared across markets and brands, empowering them to focus their budgets on brilliant creative ideas instead of unnecessary technology that had been used multiples times in the last year by other agencies and brand teams.

Social media monitoring tools can be set up for enterprise businesses and deliver intelligence to multiple brands across multiple markets at reduced costs while facilitating a deeper understanding of the consumer. Web based collaboration tools are helping to produce better ideas, faster, with equal input from brand agencies, digital agencies, and media agencies.

I’m not discrediting the importance of innovation. I’m the world’s worst culprit for loving new exciting platforms in digital marketing. I just think we need to step back and reevaluate what makes us pat someone on the back for being in a “digital master class” that understands modern marketing. Some of the biggest companies in the world who frequently get accused of being laggards are realizing how scale and digital marketing play VERY well together, and could form the cement in their global marketing initiatives.

In the end, modern marketers are putting their money where there mouth is and, as a result, giving their agencies what amounts to a thinly veiled, but no less justifiable ultimatum: show us results, the analytics to support them, and develop creative in a cost effective way, or we’ll find someone who can. We should all heed the warning. Those who don’t? Well, then they don’t know “tweet” about modern marketing.

If you hadn’t heard: I lost my laptop and even more tragically my flight log book (seen here) in the back of a London cab about two weeks ago. I’ve only now caught up with the back log and started to re-assemble my life and you will start hearing from me again on a weekly basis.

I stumbled across a couple of brilliant interactive art pieces over the last couple of weeks (via some smart friends of mine – Damion Parsons and Colleen DeCourcy). The first one is not very digital at all – it’s the ultimate “Human Interface” titled Hi. Effectively it’s a guy in a box that looks like a Microsoft surface performing all the computer functions himself. Entertaining and awesome – it’s a must watch and share video.

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From Vimeo:

Concept, design and high-tech by multitouch-barcelona.com
Music: wake up, wake up by lullatone.com
Filmed at hangar.org
hi-res pics at flickr.com/photos/multitouchbarcelona

The interactive installation “I Want You To Want Me”, by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, for their “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibition.

I Want You To Want Me explores the search for love and self in the world of online dating. It chronicles the world’s long-term relationship with romance, across all ages, genders, and sexualities, using real data collected from Internet dating sites every few hours.

The piece is presented on a 56″ high-resolution touch-screen, hanging vertically on the wall, and was installed at MoMA on February 14, 2008, Valentine’s Day.

Which one do you like better?

This week I had a friend make a digital copy of my log book that I’ve been keeping since I was a kid. It has every flight I’ve ever taken in it since I was just over 3 months old. I’ve accumulated over 700 flights and 150 trans Atlantic crossings and I still take it on every flight. When I board the plane I give the book to the captain (typically through a flight attendant) and have the book recorded and signed in their own hand writing.

It is truly my most prized possession in the world as it’s the only material possession I own that’s not replaceable.

I thought it was about time I did this for safety’s sake if nothing else.

Check it out here: http://takemetoyourleader.com/logbook/

I recommend jumping to the 20th page where all the flights start, but the comments the captains leave are really classic ranging from funny to sentimental and they get better and better as time goes on and the book becomes a rich piece of history. I’ve had captains tell me their father’s had signed it or that they signed it once before 10 years ago.

I’m going to add a permanent menu link to the site to access the book and will keep it updated. I’m doing about 80 flights a year right now so it changes pretty rapidly.

I was out with some friends having a drink tonight when the conversation sparked a memory of a big prediction I had a couple years back. Everyone thought it was a bit nuts, but in the interest of making it public record I’m going to share this prediction with you. Why do I need to make it public record? Well, according to my friends one or all of the following thing will happen if I’m right:

• They will immediately pay me $1,000,000
• Pigs will fly out of their asses and do some form of aerial acrobatic show.
• Hell will not only freeze over, but Satan will open some form of ice skating rink that also serves free heart shaped lollipops.es

Now that I’ve got that out of the way I’m going to share one of my most far out predictions for the future. Call me crazy, but I truly believe this will become reality in our lifetime.

Does anyone remember  BattleBots? It was a series of tournaments where remote controlled robots loaded with weapons and a healthy dose of armor kicked the snot out of each other in an arena. It reached it’s cultural peak in 2000 to 2002 when 5 tournaments were aired on Comedy Central.

The advancement of robotics over the coming ten years (and ongoing generations) will allow us to  build some fairly sophisticated robots. They’ll be bigger, faster, be able to handle bigger weapons and sustain more damage.

I predict that in ten years time robotic combat will become a more frequently viewed televised sport and in the coming decades will become a major spectator sport.

The reality is we love violence and competition. It’s evident in the sports we like from American football to Ultimate Fighting Championships. What boy wouldn’t love to watch four eight-foot robots rip each other to shreds with machine guns, flame throwers, and modified chain saws?

Apparently ESPN has just licensed them for another seasons that’s coming out in the spring of 2009. I’m interested to see how an updated version feels after 7 years off the air. Additionally it will be interesting to see how a sports network approaches it as opposed to a comedy channel.

Hopefully, you don’t mind my deviation from trend watching in marketing and simultaneously don’t think I’ve gone mad.

(I’ll have the last laugh though…. Oh you’ll see…. You’ll see…)

A friend sent me a great article at the Telegraph that apparently represents an angry customer writing to Sir Richard Branson. I intend to verify it’s true, but just for fun I feel compelled to post the letter as it might be the best customer complain letter ever.

For the record I’m a Virgin loyalist and only fly Virgin when possible, but a good egging on never hurt anyone. Read on for your chuckle of the day.

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in: [see image 2, above].

I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this: [see image 3, above].

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation: [see image 4, above].

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on: [see image 5, above].

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel: [see image 6, above].

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations: [see image 7, above].

Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincererly

XXXX

Paul Charles, Virgin’s Director of Corporate Communications, confirmed that Sir Richard Branson had telephoned the author of the letter and had thanked him for his “constructive if tongue-in-cheek” email. Mr Charles said that Virgin was sorry the passenger had not liked the in-flight meals which he said was “award-winning food which is very popular on our Indian routes.

Today I was reminded of why I love the internet so much.  Google Street View, arguably one of the most amazing mapping innovations to ever hit my computer (or now my iPhone), has inspired over the last couple years a mildly obsessive compulsive behavior that drives people to look for odd things captures as the Google car drives by with it’s omni-prescent lens.

Recently it caught two live action roll players (LARP’ers) engaged in a harrowing battle for domination of the remote control for that evenings Lord of the Rings marathon.

If you don’t believe this is real then I insist you click the link and check it out for yourself. Make sure to switch on streetview and look around if it doesn’t take you there directly.

This gut-wrenching PSA used a children’s song to depict the ravages of ALS. [Read more]

This PSA conveyed the experience of an asthma attack on a shockingly visceral level. [Read more]

Another disturbing PSA: this one from Amnesty, depicting the waterboarding torture technique. [Read more]

These anatomically jarring PSAs from Singapore made the case that verbal abuse can be just as horrific as physical abuse. [Read more]

What can you say to your chicken dinner when he asks you to hook him up with a girl just as you’re marinating him? [Read more]

After dreaming of hash browns filled with cheese, the hero of this BK spot woke up with a nasty case of “morning tongue.” [Read more]

This gross print campaign made you wonder if you’re actually feeding your dog—or the worms inside him. [Read more]

The rotting undead, doomed by high cholesterol, livened up this Colombian health campaign. [Read more]

Ross taught many a lonely Web surfer how to kiss, with gusto, on his very own Converse-branded Web site. [Read more]

A trip to the tanning booth did not end well for this young woman. [Read more]

When you die, said this non-profit, donate your organs to your fellow humans, not to insect larvae. [Read more]

A wayward spicy tongue ruined a young couple’s date in this Doritos commercial. [Read more]

This ultra-creepy German ad depicted the lingering trauma of sexual abuse. [Read more]

What’s that? You want to see a nude 86-year-old woman criticizing Holland’s homecare policy? OK, you got it. [Read more]

The troubled singer stripped down for this British magazine’s breast-cancer awareness campaign. [Read more]

This promo encouraged viewers to attend the musical, but maybe not linger beneath the marquee. [Read more]

A woman figured that licking everything in sight was the best way to check a room’s cleanliness in this spot for the motel chain. [Read more]

The very insane Gary Busey offered manic, nonsensical business tips in this collection of 40 spots. [Read more]

This Web site urged you to upload photos of yourself and a special friend, so all three of you could sleaze out in the hot tub. [Read more]

Hunting for berries to make Sweden’s Jokk juices is extremely dangerous, but worth it. [Read more]

The Japanese company turned to a creepy, fake-smiling fembot to promote its sunscreen. [Read more]

New Zealand tackled the issue of drivers falling asleep at the wheel with all the subtlety of a splattered skull. [Read more]

The automaker Lotus decried the loss of individuality with ads (and street marketing) starring faceless people. [Read more]

This nightmarish Swedish commercial for McDonald’s coffee might keep you up at night. [Read more]

Misplaced mouths cried for help in this campaign for a Novartis throat lozenge. [Read more]

The too-often-marginalized man-horse hybrid got a chance to shine in this Old Spice spot. [Read more]

A human piñata recovered from a beating at the hands of a Skittles-seeking colleague in this off-kilter spot. [Read more]

This ad for an Israeli bookstore ridiculed non-readers for their shrunken, intellectually impoverished heads. [Read more]

This spot characterized the employees at rival airlines as two-faced freak-show monsters. [Read more]

The Texas shop’s intra-agency YouTube challenge featured a shocking admission from Masters of the Universe character Jitsu. [Read more]

Women with migraines literally lose their heads in this OTC pharmaceutical spot. [Read more]

This unnerving viral for a Dutch travel agency showed an airplane crash-landing into the Mediterranean. [Read more]

9 out of 10 ads feature westerners.

I just spent the weekend in Singapore. It took 31 hours to get there. Thankfully I’m taking a pit stop in London on the way back to Miami.

I can honestly say that I love Singapore and could imagine myself living there. It has all the western amenities that I’m familiar with but with a heavy dose Asia. The reason I say a heavy dose – is because the western influence was really surprising to me.

Everything is in English (with Mandarin subtitles in some places) – even the road signs have the same design style as US road signs (green with a white ring – same font). The first day I got there I walked out the front door of my hotel and I didn’t stop walking for about 3 hours. I walked all the way to Orchard Road: the primary shopping district for the city-state. Along the way I made a point of walking down all kinds of side alleys with rows of asian food stalls. The authentic local food smelled great, looked great (aside from one shop advertising “Pig Organ Soup” as the name of the place), and made me feel for a moment that I was truly abroad.

Once I got back onto any main thoroughfare things started to change. I started to notice a patern in their advertising. All the ads that featured photography typically featured westerners. This really perplexed me.

I considered all kinds of alternatives. Is it because the culture here holds western culture in high regard? Was it just because they love western celebrities or was it that brands just were not investing in local celebrities for budget reasons?

I ended up asking as many locals as I could. They varied in descent from Chinese, Malay, to Indonesian. I was surprised by their response. Some claimed they just thought westerners “looked better”, other said they loved the western celebrities, but when I pressed the issue further they agreed that they would like to see more of their own celebrities, athletes, and actors in these ads.

I think there is a missed opportunity there for marketers. Why is no one there catching on to this? Am I missing something – if anyone has any insight please post a comment.

-Freddie