It bugs me...

...that too much of what we eat and drink these days seems to be wrapped in plastics.

...that I may need to try this soon if I can't find a few decent waves.

...that it's all too easy to get distracted and lose sight of core goals.

Booz&Co make the point that a strong focus on the development of core businesses and products often produces better results than flaky new products and line extensions.

Facebook's new Like button

The WSJ and other media reported today on the new Like tool that Facebook will propogate across the web so their users can tag content and products of interest and associate them with their Facebook profile. The tool offers a simple way for friends to share their interests and at the same time goes a step further in enabling people to 'define' themselves online via their interests, purchases and opinions.

Initially this additional data will facilitate deeper user profiling and more targeted advertising. However, by extension it will enable Facebook to map not only social networks but news, products and culture across the web and most importantly how content relates to and is valued by social networks and users (beyond Google's 'mechanical' link and content analysis).

Sites such as Yelp can provide product and service recommendations, Amazon offers product recomendations based on navigation and purchases and others such as Kosmix do a reasonable job of pulling together content around a topic. However, for the past year I have been wondering when Facebook or Google would make it easier to browse the web around a topic or interest to discover new brands, authors, bands etc.

Theoretically Google should be able to do this based on navigation data, link and content analysis but Facebook has stepped in to leverage personal recomendations and potentially encroach upon Google's role of connecting us to world's information.

Yahoo and other search engines started with reviewers attempting to classify the Internet; Facebook may be able to outsource this to 400m users worldwide and challenge Google on its own turf.

This blogging thing...February

Ah well, another tardy post...I know now that I am not cut out to be a full time blogger, we have too many other things going on.

This month has been an exciting one despite the dismal weather up here in northern Spain. We have been full steam ahead with several projects including our wine promotion program which is moving ahead despite the clients being a famously argumentative bunch. If only they'd compete with their competitors instead of themselves.

Last week we found ourselves in Alicante signing up a new client in the fashion sector. And we are in the process of establishing new offices in Santiago and Madrid with the Santiago office due to open this month.

Mid February saw us in Madrid for the Online Marketing Espana conference to see some of the presentations and workshops. It was encouraging to see most sessions packed to the rafters and that the general profile of the visitors was younger and more dynamic than is often the case in ageist Spain. Some of the better presentations came from the search marketing consultants and the big guys such as Google and Microsoft.

While benefiting from high broadband penetration, the local market lags a couple of years behind places like the UK and Australia in terms of overall development. Communication and entertainment use is advanced but ecommerce lags behind European leaders such as Germany, suffering from Spaniards' preferences for cash and face to face transactions.

Some speakers proposed that the next phase of Internet development in Spain would see increasing adoption and activity amongst older age groups, something that I see taking significantly longer here in largely conservative Spain. The development of each country reflects local cultures and habits, some of which are so strong as to overcome even the relentless advance of technology and the market.

Breaking destination stereotypes

In recent months India has been running a major tourism marketing campaign across a wide range of international media and with several themes. Some of these themes including wellbeing, spiritual and eco tourism all help to diversify their offer and fit it to recent tourism trends.

One of the most unique however is medical tourism - come visit us and you can have a cheap operation and a nice holiday while you recover - though they may be up against some pretty strong stereotypes. I'm not sure that most Westerners' mental imagery of Indian hospitals is particularly favourable - though logically in a country as diverse as India standards must range from excellent to, well...

A seemingly underground phenomenon, medical tourism apparently has quite a long history, as patients chase cheaper, better care. From New Yorkers jumping the pond to go to their London dentist, plastic surgery 'getaways', Portugese mums-to-be slipping across the border to superior Spanish hospitals, or the attractions of these same hospitals for the thousands of Europeans who retire to Spain each year. India is leading the way in taking medical tourism mainstream.

Galicia is attempting to doctor their tourism marketing in a different way. In discussing tourism destination marketing last year with one of the regional tourism authorities they expressed their dismay at the consistently negative portrayal of Galicia in the Spanish media. This sad situation reflects several factors including stereotyping of the region, the media's thirst for negative news and some of the climatic and social challenges faced by Galicia. In recent years Galicia has been assaulted by oil spills, fires, floods and the decline of traditional agricultural industries. Attracting less attention has been success in fields as diverse as fashion, pharmaceuticals, tourism and cultural industries.

One suggested response has been to latch onto every national and international event possible that portrays Galicia positively, though unfortunately most often the Galicia link gets lost in the reporting and publicity these events attract. People are more interested in this season's collection than where the designer came from. This approach adds a few drops of differentiation here and there but the destination marketing campaign continues to portray traditional Galicia, and the crucial state tourism website remains 'average' at best.

The strongly held stereotype of Galicia as the wild and somewhat backward north can only be shifted by communication and events that break away from the traditional and cut through. Or focus on developing European markets newly accessible by low cost flights and whose travellers know little of the region and represent an opportunity to build a more positive image of Galicia.

Rebirthed Lladro

My impression of Lladro was formed by family collections of little porcelain birds, clowns and willowy dancing girls, all in a sweet, soft focus style a grandma could love and appreciate. One of the great 20th century cultural exports of Spain and a proud example of Valencian industriousness, things of undoubted quality but as bland, boring and predictable as...well, Lladro.

Flip to 2006 and now they have launched new ranges that feature contemporary designs (admittedly influenced by traditional styles but that's not unusual) at design fairs such as Valencia design week. This renewal is being led by one of Spain's young designers of the moment, Jaime Hayon. He seems to be everywhere at the moment.

Apart from the expected vases and figurines they have branched out in other directions such as room dividers. Unfortunately they are nowhere to be seem on www.lladro.com ...

For the history books...

For the history books and our own benefit we though it best to fill the gap between now and when we arrived back in Spain after our travels, so here's the abridged version of what we got up to in the first half of 2006...

Late January we got down to FITUR in Madrid, Spain´s main tourism trade fair, to see the local industry in action and participated in an online tourism seminar put on by the World Tourism Organisation. Given Spain is one of the most popular destinations globally it was no surprise to find ourselves confronted with acres of stands. A vertitable paradise for anyone who can't resist collecting lots of brightly coloured brochures at these sorts of events.

We enjoyed chatting to some of the local tourism authorities about their current plans and priorities, though I’m not quite sure what function the azafatas (hostesses) perform apart from beautifying the stands, most didn’t seem to know much about the product they were representing.


February saw us kick off the legal process of starting up the company here with registration of business names, tax registration and similar arrangements, most of which was wrapped in a thick bundle of bureaucratic red tape. Most steps we took over the next couple of months seemed to involve getting official stamps and waiting a couple of weeks for a variety of different pieces of paper.

Good news was that we were accepted by the local Chamber of Commerce into their Business Incubator program and were soon able to hang a sign on the door, shop for stationery and most importantly acquire a white board (an essential accessory to brainstorm and workshop in any start-up).

The opening of our first office here in Spain (and those of the other companies with which we share the building) was also accompanied by a press conference with various politicians and local business leaders. This gave Catalina her first chance to meet the press and spread the news about Roadmap and after a crash course in media relations she achieved some excellent coverage with the regional TV, radio and newspapers. From the regional press, Catalina below with Rosa who manages the business centre for the Chamber of Commerce.

February also saw me head to Dubai for a brief consulting engagement with the Middle East office of UK based research firm, YouGov. Office the world over look much the same...

The view from the window is usually more interesting...

Dubai is an interesting place with a sharp contrast between the desert, traditional Arabic culture and Islam; and booming business, trade and construction sectors. Apparently it has a large proportion of the world’s construction cranes and large swathes of town are construction sites. The food was great and the warm weather a relief from the cold and rain in Europe at this time of year.