Recently in Demographics Category

I'm speaking at a seminar at Fox Williams tomorrow, partly covering the subject of tracking techniques in online advertising.

A new study by a marketing professor at Harvard Business School casts doubt on one of the sacred texts of new media - Chris Anderson's book 'The Long Tail'.

Anita Elberse looked at data for online purchases of music and video rentals and then compared the data with offline purchase data.  In spite of the vast back catalogue of options available online, it seems that online consumers are pretty much like their offline equivalent.  Purchases hugely favour a few 'hit' titles - and if anything people online are more likely to focus their spending on popular choices than offline shoppers.

It seems that what we really value is not choice, but the social aspects of consuming the same media as everyone else. 

Can't say I'm sorry to see the back of this particular theory - it seemed to me that the same two businesses were always trotted out in support of it (eBay and Amazon) which didn't seem to me to be a conclusive sample.

On the other hand, if the Long Tail is a lie, the online world is a somewhat bleaker place where almost all the micro-publishers, bloggers, video artists and musicians are doomed to a life of obscurity - including me!!!

Even on a (very) rainy day in London, there is a crowd of people trying out the giant green furniture outside the National Theatre on the South Bank.

Is this Alice-In-Wonderland-Syndrome - the desire to shrink down to child's size in a grown up world? Or perhaps everyone is just a bit worn out by the Banksy show round the corner?

Another day, another map!

We've already done our first campaign aimed at Polish immigrants to the UK, so I was interested to see a recent report 'Floodgates or Turnstiles' by the Institute of Public Policy Research.  (See also http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7370955.stm for more interactive maps from the report.)

The map below shows the distribution across the UK of registered migrants from the "Accession 8" countries which joined the EU in May 2004: Poland, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The picture seems to be more one of the Lithuanian Fish Farmer or the Slovakian Fruit Picker than the stereotypical Polish Plumber so beloved of the tabloid press.  It's astonishing how the hot spots of immigration are generally not the major cities, but agricultural areas like the Highlands of Scotland, Norfolk and Herefordshire.

That's quite different to other waves of immigration in the past. And as the IPPR points out, another major difference is that it is very easy for migrants from Eastern Europe to return home on the same cheap flights that brought them to the UK.  In fact half of all migrants may already have returned.

With free mobility across the EU, we can't take it for granted that the UK will always be the most popular destination for migrants. With parts of the rural economy now very dependent on migrant workers (not just agriculture, but tourism as well) we could well see the marketing challenge of the future being to persuade workers to stay a wee while longer in the Scottish Highlands.