Robert: Alright, we’re back for another year and another installment of 5 Minutes with Menz. How’s it going?
Michael: Well thanks.
RD: You managed to not come into the office for almost 7 days over the break – congratulations! – What was the best thing you did?
MM: Well I actually was in the office – prepping for a BIG year… I think it was you guys that were on holidays… No but, seriously, I did take a few days. Did some stand-up paddle boarding up the coast and just some family time to recharge the batteries.
RD: Nice one, What do you think we will see in 2018 in the world of digital – will this be the year that AR and VR take over? Will any of the social media streams move up or down in popularity?
MM: It is a very interesting question… And for the second time today I refer to porn [ed’s note: we recorded another piece check out MMOM episode 3]… I think VR/AR’s momentum will be primarily driven by the porn industry. It has been a fairly slow uptake and I don’t see that changing necessarily this year. But there is no doubt that both are on their way I just don’t think at this minute the experience is adding enough value to the users engagement.
As for social channels. Look… the Facebook changes of mentioned last week are going to have an impact for sure on that channel. Facebook are arguing this is returning the Facebook feed to its roots, more about the friends and content you want to see.
Ultimately, for the longest time companies have been using the platform to reach people at very little cost (from a comparative media perspective) and that loophole has perhaps closed to an extent.
It provides an interesting challenge, if you ask me
The audience want the content ultimately and Facebook want businesses to pay to get it to them.
The core question is will business be willing to pay for something they got for free?
The sheer numbers of the FB audience for me says ‘yes”.
But it will change the dynamic of Facebook and smaller businesses of which Facebook has been the champion social platform will perhaps go by the wayside, so we could see an increased push on other platforms such as Instagram…
Will one rise up to beat FB… probaaly not immediately. But there is evidence that millennials (the next generation user) are not as in love with Facebook as GEN Y or X – and that will inevitably mean another channel will rise.
RD: Interesting thoughts, The research does show that the younguns are leaving Facebook, speaking of people being in love with different platforms. I was recently thinking about a client we had a while back who wanted us to create a website like one they had seen but it was in my opinion a very ugly site. How do you deal with clients liking poor design especially without sounding like a design snob?
MM: Well regardless of my experience people, be it clients or otherwise, people will have their own appreciation of what is good, bad or ugly.
When you are dealing with larger organisations often there is a committee and a more rigid process to deliver the outcome so perhaps in those situations our expertise become more valued.
But for smaller companies it often comes down to one or two people or a family and ultimately, regardless of what we say, they tend to go down whatever path they feel works for them.
For us, I am not going to lie this can often lead to the selection or creation of something we would not necessarily recommend, but at the end of the day there is a fine line between delivering an outcome that the client is super happy with vs offending them by calling their decisions ‘unfashionable’ for example.
But yes, sometimes we wish they would listen to us.
RD: So, the customer’s not always right but that doesn’t mean they are wrong.
MM: Something like that, look, clearly we make a living in what we do. So with our cumulative experience, we feel pretty confident in providing both advice and direction to a client in relation to their project. But if someone buys and Apple computer and uses it as a bath toy, at the end of the day Apple can only go so far as to suggest that that may not be the ideal way to go!
It’s the same with us. The client can at the end of the day choose to accept our thinking or go in a different direction, but we will always try and ensure they walk out the door feeling they have got great service.
RD: True, I guess that is half the fun. It looks like that’s five minutes – till next time.
MM: Thank you
If you want to discuss anything we talked about feel free to drop us a line or give us a bell.