InSites Blog

The Park Plaza, London was the setting for the 2010 MRS conference; “a festival of ideas, innovation, and inspiration”. There can be no doubt that all three of these were achieved through the clever mix of speakers from within and without the Research industry.

The first guest to take the chair was Academy Award nominee Armando Ianucci. Research magazine’s editor Marc Brenner successfully demonstrated his qual interview techniques, managing to persuade the “hardman of politicial satire” to admit that he did ask people what they thought of his work before finalising it; even if it was just family and friends. Armando, had you broadened the sample, you never know, you might have won that Oscar for the nevertheless excellent “In the loop”. Thus the scene was set for frequent, and frankly not unexpected, digressions to the upcoming UK election, including numerous references to the industry’s infamous blunder in 1992.

Social media and communities, of course, remained a central thread for the proceedings, with an array of job titles thrust forward, aimed at demonstrating an agency’s ability to tap into this exponentially growing data stream. Social Media Knowledge Leader was a personal favourite. Doron Meyassad (Promise Communities) presented a paper discussing the opportunity for communities to allow large companies to rejuvenate their innovation pipeline through iterative co-creation. This was inspiring for any researcher who shares the view that long-term agency-client partnerships are the future of research. A witty client-side presentation by Darren Cornish (Axa) followed, concerning his change of focus from a technically minded Operations Director to becoming a social media advocate. His vision helped develop an internal community that successfully raised employee satisfaction and improved products resulting in greater sales revenue. Case studies such as these provide clear justification for the swift move of social media research up the value chain. In these times of media revolution we have the opportunity to ensure market research is used beyond the marketing department; we must take it. On this very theme, InSites’ Annelies Verhaeghe presented a rousing limerick extolling the virtues of genuinely listening to customers using observational research.

Alongside such visions of the future of research and how we can harness the digital consumer, there were numerous opportunities for researchers of all levels to hone their craft by listening to the experiences of industry experts, as well as those with more diverse backgrounds. Valuably, not all skills discussions were related to the process of research. Aptly named ‘Hothouses’, held in a steaming, packed seminar room included a talk by Executive Coach Paul Vittles outlining the necessity to step back from one’s work and focus on wider issues such as colleague satisfaction.

One of the most insightful lessons reminded us researchers that we should practice more of what we preach – ironically provided by a journalist (Brian Cathcart), in collaboration with Neil Swann (SwanUpping). Five tenets of effective journalism were introduced, followed by their potential application to the market research environment. Despite ignoring 80% of them in this blog, I summarize the rules below and hope we can all learn from them in the future.

1. Get to the point: the punchline comes first and the background – why the man bit the dog – is woven in beneath
2. Humanise the message: think about people before policies – use case studies/typologies that allow the audience to relate
3. Hierarchy of information must be clear: Presentations must be client focused, not producer focused – each chart should do a small number of things very well, in a clear and logical order
4. Make every word count: The best words are plain words, short words – and few of them
5. Ration the numbers: where possible change numbers into pictures; 28% becomes just over one quarter

Last week I visited the MRS conference on children research in London. Apart from interesting chats with the legendary smart cabbies (‘you know what MTV should do to cope with the YouTube competition, mate …’), I was quite enthusiastic about the following three contributions.

Claudio Franco of Dubit and Julie Adair, director online operations of Disney Europe brought a story on trends in online entertainment for kids. On UK TV screens Disney channel is head on competition with cbbc and Nickelodeon for the age group 7-14. In this age group 62% watches videos on the internet, 60% plays games with their favorite TV characters and 40% went to websites after on-air calls for action. Where online gaming is the absolute killer entertainment application for 7-10 year olds (with around 90% actively fond of gaming on the web), the interest for games start to decline slightly when they get 11 in favor of online videos, chatting and social network sites. Especially at the age of 13 SNSs like Facebook and online chatting are the main online activities.

These figures are also reflected in the most popular games in the UK. Under 11 cbbc, Cartoon Network, and Disney’s Club Penguin are the most popular game sites, above 11 Facebook and SNS games (like FarmVille, CaféWorld, Stardoll) and Miniclip (casual games) are more popular than virtual worlds like Club Penguin. Disney is active in different gaming types. In casual games they offer up to 250 games in the Disney website catalogue (adding 50 new ones a year) including top titles such as Cars, Up, Bolt and Mickey. They also own ToonTown, The World of Cars, Club Penguin and (bright new, for girls and related to Tinkerbell) Pixie Hollow. Almost 11% of all kids are paying for monthly gaming subscriptions (Club Penguin for instance has a monthly price of €4.95), 13% buys virtual goods (add-ons like furniture, clothes, …). Those who pay, spend up to £5 per month. The biggest spenders in both categories are 11-12 year olds.

An interesting topic that is heavily under researched in kids marketing is dad’s role in the family. Pete Maginn, head of child & youth at Illuminas shared his work on this subject (a combination of in-home qualitative interviews with dads as well as online quantitative) in his cheerful presentation. Most dads have a multi-faceted role in the household. They are an economic platform for family life (the breadwinner), they bring fun and a rough and tumble element in kids’ lives, help to care for kids (e.g. bedtime stories) and at the same time represent the strong, male role model. Dads see themselves as instillers of morals and also as a rational, calming presence (Mr. Peacekeeper). One dad’s citation referring to this role was quite striking: “Don’t get me wrong, I would lay down my life for my children but unlike my wife I might consider if there was another option first…”

The product categories in which dad’s role in purchase decision making is higher than mum’s are still explained by traditional gender roles: financial products, family cars, electronics and mobile phones compared to clothes & shoes, the area where mum’s opinion and choice is dominant. On the other hand today dad’s involvement has increased in certain areas leading to joint decision making in family holidays, entertainment, eating out, nurseries and schools, toys and games and food and groceries.

Carrick James (CJMR) and Marie Laver (formerly insight and strategy manager of Children’s and Licensing BBC) told a story about the evolution of licensed characters. The UK market of licensed toys has been booming in the last 10 years. Today more than £1 of every £3 is spent on licensed toys (compared to less than £1 in every 5£ 10 years ago). License lifecycles vary heavily, with typical “flash in the pan” characters such as Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, Teletubbies which were highly successful for single year sales figures compared to slowly growing features such as Thomas and friends or the regularly rebirth of evergreen characters such as Winnie The Pooh and Bob The Builder. Interesting elements of the ones that have survived illustrate what is required to build a longer lasting character.

Both Thomas (the blue train) and Bob the Builder were acquired by HIT in 2004 and underwent a re-birth treatment including new CGI animations, digital formats, direct to video features, and new themes/music. Moreover the brand immersion was expanded to theme parks for Thomas in the UK and the US and 4D movies of Bob the Builder at Legoland. Next to this, HIT initialized branded events such as Bob’s educational programmes in schools and a railway ‘Day Out with Thomas’. The latter is quite important since James & Laver demonstrated that children today access an average number of around 3 touchpoints (TV, DVD, magazines, cinema, toys, clothes, food & drinks, online games, …) when engaging with their favorite characters. Future trends in licensing ended the presentation. Reverse vertical integration: e.g. toy brands such as Transformers now producing movies. Secondly, a decrease in second party licensing especially in food as a result of governmental and parental pressures e.g. McDonald’s moving from using licenses as Happy Meal toys to creating their own Fairies & Dragons characters of which they own total control. And thirdly an increase in third party collaborations between two equally strong brands, e.g. Star Wars and Lego.

Yesterday evening MRS celebrated the best in the research industry at the Research Awards 2009 in London. InSites Consulting was nominated for 2 awards

• IJMR Collaborative Research Award for Join the research: participant-led open-ended questions by Annelies Verhaeghe, Niels Schillewaert & Tom De Ruyck
• Best Conference Presentation for the Pecha Kucha session of Niels Schillewaert.

Niels Schillewaert, Managing Partner at InSites Consulting was the lucky one to bring home the Best Conference Presentation Award 2009 for his Pecha Kuch session at the Research 2009 Conference.

What the judges said:

A riveting, bravura performance. Seamlessly supported by 20 brilliant slides, Niels took only 6 minutes 40 seconds to communicate his cogently argued view of ‘creative destruction’ as an inevitable, but exciting, future for Market Research. His presentation neatly encapsulated all the main themes of the 2009 Conference, including (quite masterly) storytelling.

I attended the IJMR Research Methods Forum ‘Stop asking questions, start listening’. The venue was promising: ‘The Royal Society’. I felt honored to see Isaac Newton’s original manuscript and be at the very place where Darwin introduced his theory of evolution. But quite frankly if I transfer it to observational research as I observed it at the research forum, Darwin’s theory might not hold for observational research!

I somewhat expected to see more state of the art observational and ethnographical studies and methods. Not necessarily much about social media, but how about illustrations of how we can empower participants to provide us with insights we could not get 10-20 years ago. What happens if you give people a camera, if you ask them to record a movie of their behaviors and tag the content or ask a different crowd to interpret the observational reports of other participants or even ethnographers? As Darwin might say, things have evolved. Yet the forum placed a great deal of importance on relatively traditional, old-school techniques. My expectations were not completely met in terms of real contemporary observational research.

Still, as always there was some interesting food for thought. Here are the main take-aways:

Phyllis Macfarlane rightfully pointed out that nowadays more data are available than ever before and that clients review their spending like never before due to the economic downturn. These two ingredients could be a lethal combination for us market researchers.

‘Yes’, there is still a sexy job for the statisticians among us – in the end who is going to analyze all these data – and ‘No’ it is not because there is a lot of data on social media that it is accurate!

Phyllis illustrated a web mining experiment which led her to conclude that:

• opinion leaders are the ones who post more regularly on the web, but they are not necessarily more critical or negative …
• a lot of the sentiment that is expressed online was neutral, so the question remains: what we can do with it?
• the coding needs a lot of human input and it is time consuming and expensive

I would have loved to hear more about it, but Phyllis was right when she said we need more triangulation in the research that we do!

Roy Langmaid gave a traditional but inspiring view on listening for the future in terms of co-creation. We need to work at “relational depth” with participants and therefore need the following core conditions:

• empathy
• an unconditional positive regard for the folks we are working with
• be dependably real or authentic

Due to the myth of the open mind researchers are often hampered in what they should actually observe. Too often we listen to the opinions “about” the participant, not “to” the real opinions as such. We also want ‘the toplines’ right away so we can get to closure and confirmation quickly. But co-creation is not about short term problem solving, it is about “creating possibility”. No one seems to hear the creation in co-creation, actually. The magic of co-creation is not about getting a lot of people together, but about changing the normal and interrupting the existing culture. If we can achieve that, then we have possibility.

“When we want to get real observations we need to observe actual consumers, when they do the things they do at their normal time and place”, said Philly Desai. We should not extract them from their natural and normal context. According to Philly Desai there are 5 areas where ethnography is of interest:

I. Retail navigation
II. Product development
III. Life styles and culture
IV. Urban ethnography
V. Habitual action

Michelle Harrison illustrated that we can use deliberate listening when we have to deal with issues:

• which are characterized by complexity & uncertainty
• that tackle justice or ethics
• which relate to difficult tradeoffs which have to be made
• where true deliberation is needed and a decision has not been made yet

It was hard to find the figurative gorilla and black swan in what Paul Edwards presented. A couple great and appropriate quotes: “Thinking is more interesting than knowing but less interesting than looking” (Goethe); “In the long history of mankind those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed” (Darwin); “Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream” (Muggeridge).
And the future will tell, Paul, if Twitter will last … .

According to Ed Keller’s word of mouth research 76% of it happens offline, 2/3 is positive and it is does have impact! When advertising influences word of mouth than there is 20% more chance that it includes a strong recommendation to buy.

I am still trying to figure out what opinion polls have with observation …

Adam Philips shed some good light on the ethical challenges for observational research. The bottom line is we need to treat people with respect, avoid dubious technology and not use technologies that also serve a marketing purpose. Things have changed! It would not be that easy to take and publish a photo of peeing kids nowadays as it was the case in the mass observation social research in the UK back in 1937. Several people would consider it as inappropriate to picture kids this way …

I am just wondering how far we take this? Are we also not allowed to look at people’s public Facebook page and make some kind of interpretation of it?

All in all, I got some inspiration but my feedback to MRS / IJMR would be simple. As animals and humans are evolving quickly, market research needs to adapt to remain meaningful and prevail. By focusing on that evolution and using it towards our own as well as our clients’ advantage, we can all come out ahead.

A few months ago Niels Schillewaert, Managing Partner InSites Consulting received the nomination ‘Best Conference Presentation‘ for his Pecha Kucha session at Research 2009. We are delighted to inform you that our paper Join the research: participant-led-open-ended questions has now been selected by the IJMR (International Journal of Market Research) Executive Editorial Board as one of this year’s finalists for the IJMR Collaborative Research Award. Congratulations to the entire team involved in the development of this project!

The winners will be announced on Monday 14 December 2009 at the MRS Research Awards in London.

http://www.research-live.com/multimedia/video/when-i-run-the-research-industry/4000751.article

Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the Best Presentation award!

Our poster submission has been chosen and we will be presented at the MRS Conference on Online Research Methods – Making online research even better (Wednesday 03 June 2009 – London). Niels Schillewaert, one of our Managing Partners, will be presenting one great idea for improving online research, during the Poster Session.
Four thought provoking posters (next to Niels there are 3 other presenters) produced by market researchers will be on display during the day, allowing the delegates to look at and discuss the ideas represented. During the last session of the day, the creators will have 5 minutes each to present the ideas in their poster which will be followed by a chance for question and answer.
Of course we will share our great idea after the conference. More info on the conference on research-live.com/research

Joeri Van den Bergh, Director of InSites Consulting ON SNEAKERS, which is the research agency’s children and youth department, attended the MRS Youth Research 2009 conference in London. Even though Joeri caught an unspeakably early Eurostar train that morning, there were three contributions that managed to keep him awake.

The conference was given the theme “Get Closer, Engage and Communicate” and the setting – a few round tables – was considerably more intimate than at many other conferences, although that was probably due to the poor turnout.

Douglas Dunn, Managing Director at Tuned In Research, a recently established agency focusing on young people and electronic sectors, immediately dispelled a number of popular myths about youngsters:

- “Young people want everything for free”:
This is definitely true on the internet, says Dunn, but in the real world, people pay for things. Young people still spend a lot of money on experiences and activities, such as adventure trips or beach and party holidays. Other examples are material things that are an integrated part of their looks (clothing) or allow physical connections with their peers (festivals and concerts). Young people also put their hands in their pockets for “technology enablers” (MP3 players, mobile phones, games consoles, …) that allow them to lead their online lives.

- “It is very difficult for brands to communicate with young people”:
According to Douglas Dunn, advertisers have to make an extra effort in order to connect with the young people of today, but it is possible. Young people become ‘friends’ in their social network with the brands that appeal to them. If you offer innovative brand experiences as an advertiser, you get commitment and therefore loyalty in exchange. Dunn mentions the example of Orange Rockcorps, an initiative launched by telecom provider Orange. It is currently only operational in London, but there are plans for a further rollout following its success. In exchange for 4 hours of community service, youngsters receive an Orange SIM card and some other goodies and they are also invited to music events that are exclusive to Rockcorps participants. As well as offering new experiences, presenting content that appeals to youngsters is also very important. Gilette M3 Power developed an online jet ski game that was very much appreciated by young people in the UK.

Pimm’s, a drinks brand belonging to the Diageo group, created “It’s Sunshine O’Clock”, a website where youngsters can enter a postcode to find out local pubs with a beer garden and an estimate of the number of hours of sunshine you can enjoy there on that particular day.

Mars was looking for a co-presenter for the Mars Planet MySpace Radio, a weekly radio hour on MySpace with DJ and TV presenter Alex Zane. Mars recognises the Millenials’ need to achieve something in life, even if it is just their fifteen minutes of fame. O2, the mobile phone brand, unleashed a battle for the UK’s Favourite University on Facebook, fostering the team spirit of young people studying at the same university. It is still possible to get the commitment of the current generation of young people, Dunn concluded, as long as brands respond to the needs and drives of this generation and present relevant activities. To the ‘me, myself & I’ generation, relevance has everything to do with finding common ground with their personal and direct environment.

Nadia Zohhadi, Global & European CMI Manager for the Axe/Lynx brand at Unilever, made a nice presentation on the brand’s co-creation strategy. Each year, Axe/Lynx markets a new variant. Last summer, they brought together 16 leading edge and creative students, brand managers, CMI managers and creative teams from the agencies and Fragrance Houses in Alicante in order to generate new ideas and arrive at some new products for Axe/Lynx. The students received advance training from the Fragrance House on how scents work and then put their creativity to work in several rounds. Under the slogan “A fresh start in a rotten world”, they created the foundation for the new Axe variant for 2010. After an online validation of the concept by a larger group of influencers, it was decided what Axe/Lynx will be marketing next year in a co-creation process of only 8 weeks. The students also thought of the below-the-line campaign ideas for the launch of the Axe Dark Temptation, better known as the chocolate variant. That is how “chocolate man” emerged as the clear leading hero of the campaign. The students contributed several activation ideas, which the brand is currently rolling out in Europe.

Nick Gadsby, Associate Director at Lawes Consulting, brand advisors specialised in semiotics and cultural analysis, presented a story on the social gaming phenomenon. Social gaming refers to games that young people play together (or against each other). The generic term includes many different types of games:

• MMOGs, such as World of Warcraft (with no less than 11.5 million users, who on average game 17 hours a week), Runescape, Age of Conan, LOTR Online, but also Habbo and Club Penguin
• FPS, such as Halo 3, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead,
• Family games, including the very popular Wii range,
• Music games, with titles such as Rock Band, Sing Star and Guitar Hero, and
• Sports games, such as Fifa 09 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2009.

According to Gadsby, the main motive of gamers is simply escapism. In this context it is important for brands to know that the daily amount of attention paid by solo gamers to a game falls fairly rapidly and drastically following the game’s purchase. For a very extensive game such as GTA4, gamers’ attention falls impressively only 3 months after purchasing it. However, for social games, such as Call of Duty IV – which is essentially much more superficial as far as game options are concerned – gamers’ interest fades much less rapidly, even after 6 months. So social escapism commits gamers for longer, so they stay interested more intensely for longer. Like Dunn before him, Nick Gadsby reiterates that a high commitment level is a basic condition for word-of-mouth communication. Research shows that 16 to 19-year-olds are the most important gamers population as well as the largest social gamers group.

Then Gadsby asked the audience to complete the Bartle Test. The Bartle Test was developed by Dr. Richard Bartle, who co-invented the Massively Multiplayer Online Game in 1978, known at the time as MUD. He developed the test to classify players of online multiplayer games according to playing style, motivations and objectives. I turned out to predominantly match the Explorer profile, like most of the other people in the room, which was crammed with researchers. This immediately proved that the Bartle test works, because Explorers are gamers who get a kick out of knowledge and learning and always want to discover new and interesting things. They go for games with much content and adventure. I failed to mention that I was only 1 point away from matching the Killer Gamer profile, because as a Belgian, I didn’t exactly want to be associated with crèche killer Kim De Gelder abroad. Then Nadia Zohhadi raised her hand and asked Gadsby whether it is possible to be two profile types at the same time: she was an Explorer as well as a Killer… For Killers, games can be compared to a sport: the other gamers are their prey. They obviously want to make the game hard for the other players and kill them. Explorers and Killers are the two most important groups of social gamers according to Bartle’s classification. They make up 75% of the population. Achievers and Socialisers roughly contribute equally to make up the remaining 25% of the group. Achievers want to get most points and earn the best items, so they tend to spend many hours gaming. To them, a game stands for success and reputation. Top scores are therefore extremely important. In the lifestyle segmentation we created for MTV Networks Netherlands they can be recognised as “Nerds”. Socialisers simply see gaming as a form of entertainment similar to watching television, listening to music or going to the cinema. To them it is all about hanging out together with friends, chatting and interacting with others. The basic classification can be represented in the following diagram:

As a brand, Gadsby says, you mainly have to understand the gamers and their world and then respond to it. As an example of how not to go about it, Gadsby mentioned the BBC making a Robin Hood character appear in World of Warcraft for the video release of Robin Hood. Coca Cola, however, released World of Warcraft packaging in China, which it supported with POS material making up a real life copy of the MMORPG access gate. Gadsby also provided an excellent example of product placement: Philips integrated an exact copy of the 1940s Philips factory as a realistic, historic location in Brothers in Arms – Hell’s Highway, which is set in World War II. So the same rule also applies here: authenticity for young people is the key to success.

Niels Schillewaert, managing partner of InSites Consulting, was one of the Pecha Kucha presenters at the Annual Conference of the Market Research Society (MRS) in Londen. They really liked his performance! His presentation has been shortlisted for the Best Conference Presentation Award. We still have to be patient until Monday 14 December, when the winners will be announced.

Joeri van den Bergh, director of ON SNEAKERS, InSites Consulting’s Kids and Youth research centre, visited the ‘Children: seen and heard’ conference organised by MRS (the British market research federation) in London last Thursday. Five speakers at this conference on researching next generation family, kids and youth left an impression on him.

James Thickett, Director of Market Research of Ofcom, updated a number of figures regarding the use of new media used by children and youngsters in the UK. It provided interesting benchmarking material for the ON SCREEN_study, which InSites will publish towards the end of February about the Belgian situation. Only 16% in the 8-11 age category uses social network sites in the UK, and 52% in the 12-15 age category. In the oldest group, Bebo is the most popular social website (69% of social network site users), making it more popular than Facebook (37%), MySpace (36%) and Piczo (12%). In the 8-11 age category, Club Penguin (37%) of the British publishing group has just pipped Bebo at the post (36%). Girls seem to worry more about privacy issues than boys. 49% of girls aged between 12 and 15 are afraid that strangers will find personal details about them on the Internet compared to only 27% of boys. 40% of boys does not protect their profile on a social network at all, whereas for girls this percentage is only 25%. All research data is available for free on Ofcom’s website.

For researchers it is always great to see that a multinational such as Unilever uses consumer research to create an emotional bond with its brands in product categories with a low involvement. Dove’s “Campaign for Beauty” is a good example of this. However, Unilever’s “Dirt is Good” campaign for Omo/Persil has also reached the target group of mothers with children between 0 and 12. International research involving 2400 mothers with children in this age category in 16 countries showed Unilever that mothers feel that children are no longer allowed to be children and have less opportunities to play outside and learn by experiment. Through the “Dirt is good” campaign, Unilever wanted to encourage parents to let their children be children again. In addition to the scientific white papers, the research and the Roboboy TV campaign and printed advertising, a CSR programme was developed in Asia which according to research has the biggest lack of outdoor play areas.

Together with the government, Unilever sponsored 500 play areas in Vietnam and 100 in Pakistan. However, apart from the cultural impact, the campaign also achieved the necessary business results: the market share of Unilever washing powders jumped in the principal countries and the target group of mothers with children aged 0 to 12 was more willing to pay a price supplement. Both the brand loyalty and the recognition of Unilever washing powder brands went up everywhere.

By far the most inspiring presentation at the conference was by Bryan Urbick, CEO of Consumer Knowledge Center, and the unsurpassed Magnus Scheving, the Icelandic father of LazyTown and one of the most energetic and charismatic people I have ever met in my life. Magnus not only thought up LazyTown, he also plays the leading part of Sportacus who can do everything and helps children in difficulties thanks to the energy in a sporty sweet (fruit or vegetables). But first Bryan Urbick touched on the very interesting concept of “Neophobia”, i.e. the fear of everything new (brands, people, experience, …), which according to Urbick has important consequences for children research. He does not believe in short research sessions with children, because they would never get beyond the initial unfamiliarity with new products, concepts, campaigns, etc. After all, for children familiarity and liking are synonyms. In other words, Urbick advocates long half day sessions with children and he is one of the few children research experts who is not afraid to do research sessions with children from 18 months. He also gave an example of a visual scale for product research with children aged barely three: a mummy cuddly toy stands for too soft, a daddy cuddly toy for too hard and a baby cuddly toy for too small.

And then Magnus Scheving took the floor and he had everyone’s attention. In the space of less than 9 months Magnus managed to get Lazytown on television in 109 countries. According to him it is the only children’s brand that is directly associated with sports and health. With his energy points system (a savings system with tokens which is very similar to the Supernanny parenting systems) he was responsible for a 22% hike in the sale of fruit and vegetables by mothers with children. Magnus tells it all with a flair and charisma which only the greats such as Richard Branson possess. “I spoke to 160 writers to write scenarios for LazyTown, none of them had children, only dogs”. That is why 16 years ago he wrote the book Go, Go Lazytown which is at the basis of the successful children’s series for 4 to 7 year olds. Magnus was an athlete and fitness expert and in his speeches all over the world he discovered there were no health role models for children. “The only role model was Popeye but he smokes and hates people”. He accepted the challenge to convey a healthy lifestyle in an entertaining way to children through two classic children’s story elements, i.e. reconciling emotional elements and the battle between heroes and baddies in one concept. “Parents and children are practically the same all over the world: children seek excitement, movement and respect (not be treated as a child), parents want safety and education, a healthy lifestyle for their children, they want their children to follow rules and not to hurt other children, they want their children to share and not lie or cheat. LazyTown meets these demands and, apart from a TV series, has also become a merchandising brand in various fields with live shows which has already sold more than 1 million tickets. Magnus is most proud of the letter he received from the Icelandic president in which he thanked him for tackling the obesity problem of children in Iceland. He ended in true Sportacus style with a push up demonstration using 1 arm and a number of rotations leaving a perplexed audience…

Slightly more serious but therefore not less interesting was the presentation by Obi Felten, head of consumer marketing at Google. Something is happening in British secondary schools. 15 years from now they will be completely differently. Instead of the classic row of school desks, classrooms will be landscape office environments where every student has his own island with his/her own computer. Many classes already have interactive whiteboards with a direct link to the Internet. All schools must also have a VLE, a Virtual Learning Environment, which allows teachers to share sources and equipment with their colleagues, students are able to post homework online and are able to co-operate online on projects and assignments. In other words, over the coming years teachers will have to develop new skills. Google’s ambitious company mission is: “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” In this context Google wanted to study how its products such as search, maps, earth and sketchup (a 3D sketching tool) could play a relevant role in schools. In a study among teachers Google discovered that in spite of the fact that all teachers use Google search intensively, they don’t know the other Google products and had a relatively low level of knowledge and trust in Google. They believe that students who use Google are encouraged to “cut & paste” their homework. Moreover they can work much faster with Google search than the teachers themselves which is a reason for concern. In response to this study Google launched a specific site in the UK for teachers, i.e. google.co.uk/schools with ideas and handy teaching lesson plans for history, geography lessons, etc. They also printed classroom posters with tips for faster and more efficient use of the search engine. And finally they supported the idea of a teacher and Google Earth fan who is travelling around the country to teach geography teachers how they can use Google Earth and Google Maps in their lessons. (cf. Digital explorer – bringing the World to the classroom-).