It reveals the huge growth in popularity of branded content, be this digital, print or TV. It also shows how organisations at all levels are now embracing the statement that opens up our homepage – that ‘we are all publishers now’.

The key quote comes from Keith Grainger, CEO of Redwood who produce both the print and e-zine versions of the M&S magazines.

Regardless of the medium, Grainger argues the key is to create compelling content and not just promotional puff. “It only works for the brand and the reader if it’s authentic, valuable and relevant.” That means employing journalists who understand how to tell stories, he says, rather than copywriters who are used to creating advertising slogans.

As digital devices rapidly become more tactile and geared towards a true reading/viewing experience, we see digital disruption starting to come full circle.

We like to consider the work we do with clients akin to producing a traditional magazine, no mater what form that takes, and albeit one which takes full advantage of rich media content and distribution via Facebook, Twitter et al.

Exciting times for content creatives everywhere and a great opportunity for clients wondering how best to navigate the new communications landscape being carved out all around us.

The recent riots in England inevitably lead to plenty of comment on the ‘role’ of digital media. In fact every key news story of the year has been dominated by the pros and cons of modern communications technology – from mobile phone hacking and celeb super-injunctions to the Arab Spring.

But all the outrage and waffle only highlights that our society is still really not very good at understanding the tools we now have at our disposal.

Ignorance is Criminal

The news that 2 young men received 4-year prison sentences for a few moments of Facebook madness (unsuccessfully attempting to start local riots) generated plenty of such opinion.

Yet there wasn’t enough talk of Media Literacy in the debate for my liking, despite the boys’ ignorance being central to their crime. As we’ve said before, now EVERYONE is a publisher with a global platform at their disposal, an advanced set of media skills need to be learned.

The subject should be taught in schools. There is a misguided idea that kids are somehow media savvy because they are all ‘glued to their smartphones’. In fact the opposite is usually true. If some of the tabloid outrage at Facebook over the latest privacy settings, sexting drama or cyber bullying case was instead channelled into a call for media education then kids and their parents would all be better equipped to deal with these issues.

We Need Perspective

In an advertising/marketing/political agenda saturated world, we all desperately need to be able reflect on the information we receive and put it into correct perspective. This skill should be up there with knowing how to cook or learning to add up.

Tellingly, lack of Media Literacy is not confined to under-educated kids. The fact that David Cameron can even suggest an Iranian-style communications blackout as a solution to the role of social networks in the riots shows we have a very long way to go on this topic at even the highest level.

In fact, if the police we’re fully Media Literate they’d surely be the ones leading the cries for social media platforms to remain open as a vital source of realtime information (and therefore leads) on any public order situation.

Don’t Fear It, Teach It

These tools will seem a lot less frightening when we are all better at understanding them. Their power for good and bad is dominating our cultural agenda – so why are there not more cries for Media Literacy education?

New media is hardly new anymore. It may continue to develop rapidly, and human instinct resiliently fears the new (there are still plenty of stories about the evils of watching TV) but –even in Iran, Mr Cameron – it’s proved an unstoppable social force. We need to create a model to teach our children/parents/governments/police how to use it.

Related #MediaLiteracy & Links

• Sheffield Mind Labs Podcast on the importance of Media Literacy (We have them to thank for the image too.)
• London Riots and the Future of Social Media: Harvard Business Review Blog
• Medialiteracy.com
• The #MediaLiteracy Daily: Paper.Li

Here’s a video showing our integration of Facebook Places into the official Eristoff app guide to Volvo Snowbombing. Check out how to check in, so to speak.

Building on Alchemy Content’s content-driven iPhone app from Snowbombing in 2010, this year we’re breaking new ground by being the first festival to unlock the potential of the ‘checkin’ both as a way of locating friends quickly (always one of the most annoying festival problems) and also of entering realtime competitions for prizes and discounts.

Download V2.0 of the Eristoff App (a new update is due this week too).

Volvo Snowbombing takes place April 4-9 in Mayrhofen Austria with an almighty live/DJ line-up. Here’s the deal.

Previous generations may well have kept such things to themselves, but in an era where we are invited to rate, comment on, vote for and generally participate in almost every media item that comes our way, having ‘an opinion’ is now central to all our social experiences.

Polarisation & PR

The negative side of this can be seen in the frankly ridiculously polarised state of American politics, leading – it has fairly be argued – to the ultimate conclusion of events like the recent shootings in Tucson.

It also means that businesses, e.g. airlines, are having to fight a constant PR battle. The smallest event, often completely out of their control, can become a major incident in minutes if a celebrity Tweeter happens to fire off a disgruntled opinion.

On the positive side, this gives us all a voice, and our praise or complaints about customer service can provide hugely useful feedback for businesses and a level of interaction unheard of even a couple of years ago (if there is a strong online strategy in place, of course).

Blind Fury

Having just spent the best part of 4 hours trying to put up a blind, I think John Lewis need to know that their instructions were incomplete and misleading, plus didn’t even mention the helpful demonstration video that’s buried on the company’s website.

I certainly had ‘an opinion’ as I struggled on the stepladder. And it’s great that I can now get this across without having to embark on the thankless task of old fashioned letter writing. All too often online though, opinions end up as just an exaggerated spewing of vitriol. Those, or their opposite – the misleadingly positive, marketing driven spam posts, give this new people power a bad rep.

Strongly Undecided

I’m admittedly enjoying being able to highlight things I like or dislike to my friends, but just because the ability is now there, we could probably all do with keeping the majority of our daily opinions to ourselves.

Unusual as it may be currently, there’s a lot to be said for not voicing a strong opinion at all, or at least reserving judgement. Politics and our lives in general would be a lot nicer if everyone didn’t always feel the tribal need to shout whether they are ‘with us or against us’.

Now after all that, who’s going to ‘like’ this blog post on Facebook?

Today I was on the train to work when I discovered via Facebook that Josh Edmonds, a colleague of mine when we both worked at Ministry of Sound, was killed in a motorbike accident yesterday while travelling in Thailand.

It wasn’t long before my feed was full of shocked comments from friends we shared from that era. Grief aired publicly, immediately, emotively. Before it has even had a chance to sink in. Heartfelt words communicated via a platform so new our society hasn’t worked out what is and isn’t acceptable to post in such a tragic situation.

Having now witnessed this before, in those shocked first few minutes of grief people may leave what can appear to others as inappropriate posts. Using lots of exclamation marks or coming over as overly chatty, almost continuing the lighthearted text-speak banter they usually fire off. It doesn’t capture the gravity of the situation and some may feel it’s the ultimate indignity of our cult of the individual.

It’s fine testament to Josh that the posts today’s sad news generated were universally touching and deeply, thoughfully expressed.

I’m not sure that writing a blog post about the development of social media etiquette is even appropriate at this moment. But as my own tribute to such a talented young colleague, I’ll add this to the stream of online dedications that so many have been compelled to express today.

Many in society will take some convincing about this new way of dealing with death and grief, but this is how we communicate the minutiae of our lives today, so Facebook clearly IS the most appropriate place when it comes to expressing something really important to those that matter.

The number of people who changed their profile pictures to ones of themselves and Josh today was a silent but incredibly powerful statement. For all the scare stories about social networks eroding cultural values, they equally offer a very traditional form of support during difficult times. And if they make speaking about – and therefore coping with – death a little easier for us collectively then that is surely only a benefit to society, however we end up redrawing the lines of etiquette and media behaviour.

The saddest thing is that such an enthusiastic proponent of all today’s communications technologies will not now see them develop. RIP Josh.

After a week of exciting meetings about mobile projects for 2011, we thought this video neatly sums up just how far phones have come, particularly in the last few months.

The clip contains the usual crop of mind boggling statistics but behind all that gloss is the inescapable fact that mobile devices are about to have more impact on our lives and culture than PCs/laptops did before them.

With Apps World taking place in London next week it looks like there will be plenty more eye-popping stats, inspiring developments and a whole range of implications to report back on.

The package contains no less than 3 different remixes from X-Press 2 and has already been given full support by the trio in their sets and charts, plus picked up on by a wide range of international DJs since first emerging at Miami WMC back in March. For this key release, content assets include streams of the track, images and a doc containing interviews with Hakan and Rocky for press/bloggers to use for quotations or in their entirity. All supported across Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and beyond.

There’s plenty more to come from SOUNDZ and it’s legendary house music-focused sister label, Slip N Slide, over the coming months. As online streaming, Twitter and mobile all become increasingly central to the promotion of new tracks, the importance of a good content generation and management package becomes ever more obvious.

All this week we’re out in Mayrhofen, Austria, producing a real-time stream of news content for the official Snowbombing festival iPhone app by Eristoff – Vodka from the Land of the Wolf.

If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, download it for free while the event is taking place and let us know what you think. You’ll find news, gossip and interviews direct from the week-long festival, which sees artists like The Enemy, Editors, 2ManyDJs, De La Soul, Fatboy Slim, Vitalic, Doves and Friendly Fires playing to 6000 fancy dressed loons high up the Tyrolean alps.

Live Feeds

The app makes use of Alchemy Content’s specialist experience of developing and running mobile applications that go beyond the gimmicks; providing a useful, always up-to-date information service that’s constantly available in a user’s pocket.

Live feeds of high-quality custom content give people a reason to refer to the branded application repeatedly throughout their time at the event. For Snowbombing, we’ve devised an additional Eristoff Secrets feed, offering exclusive calls to action on things like VIP party access, ticket competitions and insider tips for getting the most from the resort.

Intense Usage

Mobile apps based around intense periods of usage, like major events or holiday locations work particularly well, so the Eristoff Snowbombing app is an ideal use of the technology and Alchemy Content’s editorial and project management services. See our Clubber’s Guide to Ibiza app for more.

GPS maps pinpointing and recommending local businesses, a fully searchable events schedule including artist profiles, plus user generated community feeds from YouTube, Flickr and Twitter all add to the application being an essential download for anyone – whether out at Snowbombing or not – with an interest in the artists or wanting an interactive guide to the best of Mayrhofen’s après ski.

Download the Eristoff Snowbombing app for iPhone or iPod Touch.

Forget the latest social media trends, communications fads and all those lofty opinions on the future of Twitter. The one thing that has emerged as a modern essential (one I believe we will soon consider on a par with having a phone number, or a listed postal or email address), is the status update.

It makes perfect sense in an age dominated by information, that we all provide a short ‘headline’ about what we are up to as part of our contemporary suite of work and social tools. We’re fast approaching a time when not to have a status update of some sort will feel as socially awkward as not having a mobile became in the late 1990s. And for businesses, it will be unthinkable.

It’s interesting to see the mobile operators and device manufacturers rushing into this space now (see the Vodaphone video below). The range of options they offer shows that this isn’t exclusively about Twitter, Facebook or any other brand. It’s also not about celebrity, or society’s obsession with self-importance, or an invasion of privacy, or a time consuming distraction. It’s a maturing of how we all use real-time social media in a way that isn’t overwhelming. It’s a practical method of communicating now we are all so instantly, permanently connected. An inevitable evolution of communication, no less. Ok, so it’s one that hasn’t featured in much sci-fi so makes us feel odd about our ideas of the future, but is ultimately very human.

Train Your Brain

The headline feed, whether this be news, marketing messages, blog posts or a public SMS from a friend’s mobile are the ultimate way to cope with and condense a torrent of real time information. Excellent free tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite help us to make sense of this as the feeds themselves become a flood. The mobile app and the personal website become important again as aggregators of particular feeds.

Our brains need to get to grips with this new way of receiving information, and its rapid advance is causing plenty of friction and resistance… of course. But the technology is guiding the way. Limiting the text characters (originally down to the basic restrictions of SMS) forces us to be brief and trains our minds to express ourselves in the concise way necessary today.

As society becomes more comfortable with sending and consuming information in this way, as yet unthought-of possibilities become apparent, both good and bad. Witness last week’s #trafigura and #janmoir outrage incidents (Twitter mobs could become a real problem, even if they can be mobilized for good), or the innovative #beatcancer charity drive. The best advice can only be that we all embrace the coming of the status update and train ourselves to be savvy as its cultural importance grows. What’s clear is that the pace of change isn’t going to stop, so those who remain resistant put themselves at an increasing disadvantage.

Such topics are to be discussed from a brand perspective at Media140 London on 26th October, a one-day conference on the impact of real-time media. Alchemy Content will be there, and we have a discount code for £40 off the ticket price for the first five people to buy a Media140 ticket using our exclusive promo code: E8NZAHJH. That makes it a very affordable £95.

Video for Vodaphone’s new 360 service, that is heavily geared towards the importance of status updates…

The recent change in standing of our once world-leading postal service is largely down to the same technology that continues to reshape the media and many other industries. Seeing as many skilled media people still don’t have a grasp of this digital stuff, I doubt that the postal union reps are thinking ‘digitally’ about the consequences of trying to protect an outdated status quo.

Even with Lord Mandelson stressing that a strike would be “a suicidal act”, they seem intent on pressing on with action supposed to improve the deal for their members. The pace of technological change has caught most industries off guard, but Mandy isn’t just issuing idle statements about the potential demise of the Queen’s very own posties.

It’s not just the fact that banks and utilities are moving their billing (and junk mail) online, but the broadband-equipped population demands efficiency and above all immediacy in every area these days. We hear daily stories about companies planning on leaving the Royal Mail, and they really have no option. The majority of these are businesses that are successful online, including the home delivery daddy, Amazon. Trying to argue for better pay deals for an analogue workforce in a streamlined digital era is as ridiculous and futile as trying to copy-protect digital music files. Far better to accept the reality of how we live today and work out how to provide a relevant service around that.

There will be job losses, but we’re in the middle of another social revolution here. Next week may go down in its history as the moment a great institution was steam-rollered by progress, but it need not end that way.