The new incarnation of EDF Energy’s Thank yous customer rewards programme features Zingy atop a Zoetrope (a 19th-century optical toy based on persistence of vision principles) featuring all the prizes that can be won by EDF Energy customers.

Olympic tickets, VIP rides at the EDF Energy London Eye, hot air balloon rides at the Eden Project, home energy efficiency makeovers, meeting athletes, etc are all depicted at the Zoetrope under the warming gaze of Zingy, the embodiment of Feel Better Energy.

Watch the video

The Thank yous Zoetrope is no 3D model, it’s an actual object -quite a large one in fact- and has the potential to go viral both online as well as in the real world. Who knows? It may be coming to a place near you soon! Zingy itself has not yet made an appearance as a real-life character. Its inspiration, MyKeepon, has meanwhile become a bit of a hit at Amazon and other Internet retailers.

The product has launched with a massive TV and Internet advertising campaign featuring a derivative of the My Keepon Dancing Robot. Initial reactions are great: people love the product and the character, Twitter is full of positive sentiment and the YouTube video is clocking up views faster than anything we’ve done before.

Haven’t seen the Dancing Robot advert yet? Here it is!

UPDATE: There is a new ad:

UPDATE 2: And a newer one!

• Social Media is very difficult
• Social Media doesn’t provide a clear ROI: you need soft measures and lots of investment and time in order to evaluate benefit
• Brands do not understand social media, they’re not used to being publishers, they need expert help

I have been around for long enough to recognise the flaws in all 3 arguments, because I’ve heard them before. Every time a new digital development goes mainstream, agencies and would-be experts jump at the bandwagon. During a short but critical time in the adoption curve, these players have relatively more experience and volume of information (anecdotal and spotty) than the majority of the digital industry. They are recognised as experts and market themselves as gurus of a new era. As time passes and real trends emerge -nothing like the proper passage of time to bring statistical significance to data- most will fade into oblivion, some will be identified as having damaged their clients and just a tiny few will be proven right.

It makes sense to take a step back and think about the adoption cycle. We are not far past the gap and still quite a way away from adoption peak. Even if everyone we know seems to be on Facebook, most people in the developed world are yet to adopt Social Media as part of their daily lives. Their doing so will dramatically impact Social Media itself, making the future of Social Media impossible to predict even in the shortest of time horizons.

I remember when the commercial Web was young. I attended a conference in L.A. where a lot of self-styled experts took to the stage in turn to make exactly the same arguments to an audience of business types eager to get online: brands will be publishers online, and as they are not publishers offline, they’ll need to step aside and pay a lot of money to the experts without demanding immediate returns. It’s the nature of new media. Of course it hasn’t turned out to be like that: the Web didn’t turn out to be an editorial medium but a transactional one, and brands have mastered the editorial aspects of merchandising, leaving most of the experts in the dust.

I look forward to looking back at Social Media from a few years into the future and reminisce at this moment when the snake oil merchants were pushing their wares and people were falling for it. And to feeling smug about not having gone for it, demanding commercial benefit from Social Media investments and having reaped the rewards. Time will tell I’m right.

I have published 9 roles so far, with a few more to come in the next few days. All roles are available by searching for Digital at the EDF Energy Careers site.

The first 9 roles are listed below. Please feel free to get in touch on Twitter (@rhortal) or by email with any questions, and to share this post with all your friends.

Good luck – and welcome to the team!

• eCommerce Manager
• eMarketing Manager
• Digital Propositions Manager
• Senior Search Executive (Manager)
• Senior Display and Affiliates Executive (Manager)
• Senior Social Media Executive (Manager)
• Senior Email Executive
• Web Front End Developer
• Digital Analyst

2012 will be a very different year in Digital

The browser wars may be over but 2011 saw an exponential explosion in the number and diversity of devices and locations in which people access eCommerce sites. Mobiles, tablets and computers, in and out of the house are used individually or combined by the same individual during a single research and purchasing process. Tracking cookies are both illegal and becoming largely irrelevant as people use more and more browsers. And as customer habits and expectations evolve ever quicker in a complex device and social ecosystem and a tight economic environment, the ability to generate and apply customer insight will be the key factor influencing an online business’ ability to succeed in 2012.

Social Media will continue to rapidly evolve

Facebook is evolving from a Destination Website to a Social Ecosystem. Facebook’s population is 13 times higher than that of the UK (only India and China are larger than Facebook) and people are spending most of their time on social networks. In 2012, Social Networking platforms start significantly encroaching into the role of other Internet services such as Search and Email, and with it the nature of the Internet itself may change – from loose a network of independent sites and services to a tightly vertically integrated Facebook Walled Garden, via the API-enabled Social Ecosystem it will be in 2012.

Mobile will become ever more ubiquitous

The pace of adoption of mobile devices will continue to increase, as may also do the refresh cycle (not necessarily driven by new hardware adoption but rather by software updates and associated device resets). The user experience will become fragmented and disjointed as user behaviour overtakes best UX Design practice -currently oriented to single-device scenarios. It will take a while, most likely beyond 2013, for design, technology and its application to catch up with the multi-device, always on users of 2012.

The Economy will prove ever more challenging

The impact of a further economic slowdown is very difficult to predict. So I won’t try to. But it is clear that any developments in the global economic landscape will have a great impact on our customers, and therefore on us.

As I think about next year’s demanding commercial and technical environment, these are some of the areas I think will determine who will win in Digital and who will not. What do you think? Please let me know in the comments, and Merry Christmas!