Arrrrr Bisto, you patronising bastard

So the new Bisto advert wants us all to get together for one night a week, all sit at the table and eat 'proper' food, with a 'proper' gravy. Take a look below if you haven't seen it already.

Well guess what? Most people I know do that already, when they can, and Bisto is not 'proper' gravy, I've seen Karen make proper gravy, it's it's way too much effort, to bother with.

What really annoys me about this advert is its misguided attempt to make 'Britain better', by striking a simple concept into the homes of broken Britain. An idea so utterly inane it could only have come from a advertising executive, a concept so pointless and patronising that it comes out of nowhere, based on nothing but a whimsical notion of how much better life used to be, the idea that we'd all be happier if dad came home from work early and had dinner at the table.

Well fucking guess what, dad would dicking love to come home early and eat with his family, but he's busy earning the money for the morally engrossed gravy they're all busy eating. So don't make him feel bad for putting your shitty product on his own table, and not being there to enjoy it.

You know what Bisto, most people are sitting at the tables and eating 'proper' dinners, but if they're not, it probably, is because they've got something more important to do, it's because it's 2012, times are hard, people have to work when the work is and sometimes that's at tea time, so get off your high horse and stop preaching to England like you're some kind of moral compass for all families. Your a corporation that makes gravy, we don't need you to tell us what to do, we just need you to make some fucking gravy granules we can pour over our shitty teas.

Speak to Citizen about, not being patronising, gravy and swearing in blogs. Call to action of the year?

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

The Ignorables

I've heard Pixar are making a new animation next year called 'The Ignorables', it's about a bunch of SMB's who have failed to grasp the basic concepts of Social Media, and who keep pumping out content so bland it makes them totally ignorable to their market.

It sounds really great, there's one company that doesn't even know that they're being ignored and continue to hammer their pointless message into the same pool of oblivious people, without ever recording how effective this is. It's like watching a bee smashing its face into the window over and over again as it tries to escape your house.

OK, assuming that you have 1000 followers on Twitter, this does not mean 1000 people are reading your message, it's just nothing like the case, although having said that my wife does treat her Twitter Stream like it's her email, and read everything that's on it every evening. (I've tried to tell her). It's impossible to say how many people are ignoring your messages but it's likely to be more than the people actually reading it. 

The same goes for Facebook, your Like count could be massive, but you don't know how many of those people have Unsubscribed to your posts. Let's be honest here, we've all followed a friends company, and then hid their feed once it started to get too busy. I know people have hidden the Citizen feed, once I posted a blog that mentioned a load of my friends, and none of them commented, but hey, I don't mind. There's not even a tear in my eye, it's just a bloody eye lash...

The big message of the Pixar movie is not to rest on your numbers, Social Media is no longer (it probably never was) a land grabbing numbers game. Nobody cares if you've got 10,000 Likes, you bought off FiveSquids, and out of the 20 real people in there, they all hid you, it means nothing to have 500 Followers on Twitter that ignore your Tweets. What you're looking for is small numbers of interested and relevant followers, focussed clusters of Likes from people relevant to your service that together give you a pool of real relevant contacts.

The Ignorables are making it harder for the rest of us, if they understood the importance of focus, there'd be more time, more focus and more clicks to go round for those who need and deserve them, and the people with really creative energy wouldn't have to shout to loud to get heard.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Signature 'Penis Style'

Draw Something has breathed new life into what was a rapidly dying art form, that of the hand drawn penis.

Over the years we've all scribbled them into text books, scratched them into desks and drawn them on one another's foreheads, but in this new internet age, it's becoming increasingly hard to find a school boy with a decent signature 'Penis Style', and that's very sad.

Draw Something has over 10 million players generating 3000 drawings a second, and not all of them have cocks in them, (although I estimate 1 in every 3 has). The company behind the app are said to be making around $250k a day from the numerous revenue streams built into the game, and there's even a rumour it might be turned into a game show.

So how did Draw Something go from a standing start to a company that just sold for $200m? Yeah like I'm going to answer that, of course I have no idea, it's a combination of a brilliant idea and an excellent piece of design execution, but one of the unsung factors in it's success is it's Social Integration, in particular it's Facebook Log In.

Logging in via Facebook is a simple and effective way for new start ups to hit 1000's of potential users, it's being used increasingly and to magnificent effect, look at Pinterest, things can happen so quickly now that brands can tap in to new markets and the friends of those new markets, just by offering them the convenience of using their Facebook log in. It's great for both sides, the user doesn't have to bother inputting their details all over again, and the Brand gets instant exposure via your timeline.

Draw Something takes this one step further, and purposely misses out on key applications within the app, for example there's no function to chat to players, so I've played games where messages about the drawings have been sent through Facebook, as you're already logged in, it's no hassle. Brilliant thinking, and positively viral in the buzz that creates. There's plans to take this one step further, and with the next update you'll be able to share drawings onto your wall, so you can expect a swath of obscene drawings on your wall within the next few months.

The pace of the online industry is now so ferocious there's a new phenomenon every month, and keeping up is becoming as difficult as trying to figure out how to fit Pinterest into your life. Ideas will come and go, but don't lose sight of what's making all of this happen, and that's Facebook, it's becoming a launch pad for anything that's hip, and embedding itself in everyone's lives and the keystone to every new start up's launch strategy, it's turning itself into the Internet, and without it we might never have given our children a second chance to develop their own signature 'Penis Style'.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614