Today, as we work towards the stress filled final lap towards our beta launch of desiral.com, we’ve been catching a lil’ inspiration from the likes of Jason Silva and Joe Gebbia. Both of them speak about the magic and power of ideas made real. 

We wanted to pass on the feeling! Happy Tuesday Everyone :D 

Written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral is a new online platform helping people to broadcast what they really, really want. 

So word on the rumour mill is that Facebook are moving towards the launch of a new data capturing widget called the “want button”. According to Tech Crunch, via Tom Waddington, via an excavation of Facebook’s Open Graph code…

“The Want button would be useful for indicating purchasing intent, versus the more general “Like” button — and subsequently enabling more targeted ads against Wants — these newer details potentially give a clue as to what kinds of purchases Facebook could enable, and allow to share on your timeline”. 

There’s so many delicious points in the statement - it’s hard not to get excited and loose fingered on our thoughts about data privacy, data ownership & the data portability, but we’ll save those thoughts for another post, another time. 

Our first thought on Facebook’s move towards intent based data sets is ‘Damn Right’. Intention has been a valuable nugget of information transmitted from human to human since the dawn of time. It’s the way we know when someone wants to talk to us, wants to give us a job, wants to marry us and on. Of course, as human’s we’ve developed complex (if not often inaccurate) powers of deduction which allow us to pick up cues before intent is expressed, but it remains that the most reliable way to know for certain what a person wants is to have it explicitly transmitted to us (hopefully via them!). 

As marketers, businesses owners and sellers it has been attractive for a long time to think we know better and create better ways to deduce. So it’s widely acceptable to assume that a cough indicates interest, that smile indicates passion, one wink indicates true love…. and sometimes we’ve been right. On average (online at least), we’ve been right around 3-4% of the time. 

3 - 4 % of the time….

That means at least 96% of the time we’re dead wrong. The winker had fluff in his eye, the cougher has SARS. You get my point.

Assumptions are one of the easiest things in the world to come by. They’ve historically saved time, effort and the wild agony of actually understanding what everybody wants. So we’ve amassed so much data that it now has to be called ‘big’ under the premise that 3-4% of tragazzillion is quite a lot!

This doesn’t mean (because they’re easy and free) that assumptions should form the basis of what we believe the world to be. They should not be the basis of our actions, our opinions and most critically, they should not be guide to key decisions. 

So yes - as we see Facebook moving towards a more intent based approach to data gobbling, we have to smile. It’s a step in the right direction. 

However, when Doc Searls suggests in his book the Intention Economy that “shoppers online will eventually move beyond action buttons (e.g. “Like”) and exercise their consumer power by broadcasting their intent via a sort of online RFP (Request for Proposal)” I not sure this is exactly what he had in mind.

Reminiscent of that Huxley/Orwellian curse of seeing history made on the back of ideas and ideals that can swing both ways - a ‘want button’ is only a minute and minuscule fraction of what Searls discusses. In his intention economy, intent based data (and all data for that matter) cannot be owned by, gobbled by, closed in or ‘allowed’ by any entity other than the individual people who create it. 

There are many thoughts I have on this, but to avoid a lengthy diatribe and confusing the issue I’ll leave it here for now. It’s great to see refined forms of data on the agenda for companies and even the news. It means that we’re finally waking up to the fact that 3-4% of everything is just not good enough. 

Written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral is a new online platform that makes it easy for people to broadcast their purchase intentions to sellers. A powerful new way to find everything you’ve been looking for.

p.s. for those of you who haven’t read it you can download Doc Searls’ book here or if you’re old fashioned buy it here :D

A Quick Note On Intentions & Accuracy! 

Our Prediction: 

In this highly responsive marketplace, people will ultimately reject feeling like digits, units and just another number. 

Social shopping and mob mentality will be rife, but people will increasingly expect real personalisation that runs deeper than a tick box. The ability to easily hack up every element of a user journey and product offering will be seen as a hygienic necessity. 

Our Thoughts: 

For years now, the idea people are people (not just consumers, customers, users, targets or eyeballs) has been widely shared and agreed upon. We know we shouldn’t but we can’t helped it. When we spew out marketing, and newsletters and blogs (this one might also be guilty) we continuosly forget that there are people on the other end. 

Perhaps it’s something to do with the fact that ‘people’ plural (the mass marketers dream) is inherently suggestive of a crowd. 

Stats show that the way that people behave in and towards crowds are markedly different to when that mob is separated into individuals. With crowds riots can start, heckling can ensue, bottles can be thrown and water cannon used. None of the above tends to happen when a person is alone, when that person has a unique and definable identity.  

We replicate this a lot in business and as a marketer and business owner, I know how it feels. 

We strive to contact as many people as possible and in doing so we often take actions or say things that would never, ever fly if we were speaking one on one. Similarly, when we do have opportunities to converse one on one, we often don’t see it as such. Having one twitter follower is seen by most to be an embarrassing failure, but in reality it’s the ultimate opportunity to speak to a real person who expressed some real interest in our brand. Instead, we march valiantly on in search of that crowd at which we can throw our newsletters, messages and blogs. 

But I think it’s not our fault.

We are culturally predisposed to look for success in crowds, mass uptake and wild hysteria. We look at masses of aggregate stats and use marketing channels that help us to reach millions rather than stats and signals that relate to real individuals - even when these stats and signals could facilitate real and meaningful relationships (or at least interactions) with the one, two or fifty people who currently love us.

We hope that the future marketer will be able to see, value and interact with individual people (and their signals) within a crowd, in a way that takes in the whole person and not just their eyeballs. This will mean businesses, products and services that are responsive to individual nuances and that celebrate each individual relationship as well as the collective.

Thanks for reading. We’d love to hear your thoughts here, on twitter or even by email.

Hope you have a happy weekend! Next week we’ll be looking at what all these predictions mean in the real world and how businesses can start working towards this future. 

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Written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral is a new online platform that makes it easy for people to broadcast their purchase intentions, and for retailers to listen. This is a powerful and efficient new way to find everything you’ve been looking for!

Our Prediction:

In this renewed marketplace, people will start to close their eyes and open their mouths and expect that brands will listen and respond to them, as standard. 

Brands will (naturally) develop ways to automate this listening and responses, but it will be increasingly taboo for companies to use scattergun tailoring, spying, guesswork, generalisations and marketing assumptions.

Our Thoughts: 

We don’t know when it was decided. Perhaps it was around the time that Steve Jobs told Business Week ‘A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them’ in 1998, that we decided that under no circumstance should we ask people directly. When Jobs spoke of course, he was discussing product design, innovation and the creation of beautiful things and it is true that people often are unaware of what it is they’ve been looking for. A lot of the time. 

But a lot of times people know exactly what they are looking for. They know exactly what they want; the only problem is that often it’s hard for businesses and brands to ask. 

Purchase intent, we think, might be THE single most valuable unit of information known to business. That little shiny gem alerts us just before a person outlays their pounds or dollars, gives us that opportunity to win that piece of business over anyone else. 

Real life intent is the holy grail of marketing. 

Yet. Everywhere, and for a very long time, we appear happy to deduce, infer, assume and mine this information from muddy seas of data. 

This, it seems, is largely down to two things:

1. The difficulty of autonomously or even easily extrapolating, understanding and acting upon qualitative data.

2. The perceive linear relationship between the volume of quantitative data and it’s quality

In other words, businesses want to reach a mass audience, these businesses find it extremely hard to listen to that entire audience en masse, to solve this dilemma they often focus on the large volumes of low hanging data created by masses as a substitute to the harder to reach but arguably more meaningful fruit.  

We hope that in the future of marketing, the vital metric of real life intent (and even lack of intent and everything in-between) is as coveted as big data is today. In this world, businesses will prize data intentionally generated by people over and above any other kinds. Further, this intent based data will be easily coded into responsive business and marketing processes that will avoid waste for businesses and irritation for people. 

What do you think? Is real data on intent important and can it work in mass markets?

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Written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral is a brand new online platform that makes it easy for people to broadcast your intentions to friends, family and retailers. This is a powerful and efficient new way to find everything you’ve been looking for!

Our Prediction:

In a return to marketplace culture, now digitally supercharged and highly networked, people will increasingly initiate real conversations and interactions with brands on their terms. 

These conversations will not always occur on the brands home turf or mother tongue but will tend to occur in a way and language be that both parties can access and understand.  

Our Thoughts: 

When the world was young (or so we’re told), commerce existed in the market place. This was a space which did much more that encourage commerce, it was a space buyers and sellers would meet (usually at the buyers behest) to really chat, discuss and exchange. Theses conversations often had commercial no agenda and no commercial purpose but afforded the participants with huge and valuable social gains. Namely, friendship, community, trust and loyalty.  

Then along came the industrial age, which appeared to rip all viability (and importance) out of these types of real, small and often one-to-one conversations between buyers and sellers - leaving behind only scatter gun alternatives and a preference for shallow and big over small and deep.

Businesses are overwhelmed by the pressure of conversing with such a large number of people and people oftentimes have no way to initate these traditional interactions with brands. We may be cynical in this, but we find that today (despite or perhaps because of massive advances in technology) it remains hard to find real honest (so authentic that even the works authentic seems spurious) interactions with brands and businesses that we initiate. It often take longer to find a customer service number than it does to solve the problem with friends or switch to another supplier. In fact often it seems that most attempts to engage in good, honest relationships with companies we love,  are shunned and almost feared. 

Typically, today, interactions between buyers and sellers are at the sellers behest - not the buyers, and further limited to functional transactions deemed relevant to the business or brand. A click, a like, a purchase. It’s hard to find companies who are able to listen to signals and information that they aren’t looking for, but often they’re the signals or data sets that can mean the most. 

At desiral we think the real losers in the digression from market culture are businesses (especially small ones) as they miss out on tonnes of vibrant, important, lovely and relevant feedback/information all because they’re not hanging around the market to talk. 

We’d love to hear your thoughts! 

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Written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral is a brand new online platform that makes it easy for people to broadcast your intentions to friends, family and retailers. This is a powerful and efficient new way to to find everything you’ve been looking for!

As we get closer and closer to launch - the desiral team have been exploring some of the most challenging questions about retail marketing, advertising, big data and business. 

We have a suspicion that no one actually loves advertising. Or rather - that everyone could live without it. Yet, everyday millions pour onto shopping sites, and search engines and social networks, looking for things and talking about that they want and need. This latent intent exists everywhere. Some say it’s fuelled by advertising (and that’s probably true) but it’s definitely true that humans want things regardless of whether they’re chased by banner ads or promotional spin.

So the last few months of build have been a chance for us to reflect on our ideas, ideals, opinions and hopes about what marketing and advertising might be like for our children’s children. Our thoughts so far haven’t been full of techie innovations and wizardry (through we believe technology will be vital) but rather about the ethos of retail marketers and how they will treat and interact with the people they aim to engage.  

It might all sound a little heavy for a casual Tuesday afternoon blog - and you’re probably right. But we think these questions are worth a little discussion so here’s a small(er) whittled down version of our three top thoughts so far. We’ll publish more thoughts every day this week - and we’d really love to hear yours!

We hope you enjoy!

Prediction One: The Market That Love Built

Our Prediction:

In a return to marketplace culture, which will be digitally supercharged and highly networked, people will increasingly initiate real conversations  and interactions with brands (not just comments, retweets, clicks or likes) on their terms. 

These conversations will not always occur on the brands home turf or mother tongue but will tend to occur in a way and language be that both parties can access and understand.  

Tune in on Wednesday 13th June @ 2pm GMT for more thoughts

Prediction Two: Intent on Asking

Our Prediction:

In this renewed marketplace, people will start to close their eyes and open their mouths and expect that brands will listen and respond to them, as standard. 

Brands will (naturally) develop ways to automate this listening and responses, but it will be increasingly taboo for companies to use scattergun tailoring, spying, guess work and marketing assumptions.

Tune in on Thursday 14th June @ 2pm GMT for more thoughts

Prediction Three: There Are People Around Those Eyeballs

Our Prediction:

In this highly responsive marketplace people will ultimately reject feeling like digits, units and just another number. 

Social shopping and mob mentality will still be rife but people will increasingly expect real personalisation that runs deeper than a tick box. The ability to easily hack up every element of a user journey and product offering will be seen as a hygienic necessity. 

Tune in on Friday 15th June @ 2pm GMT for more thoughts

We’ll be back with more thoughts during the week. In the meantime, we’d love if you’d share your thoughts, challenges, ideas, predictions and your hopes for the future of retail marketing.

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Written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral is a new online platform that makes it easy for people to broadcast your intentions to friends, family and retailers. This is a powerful and efficient new way to to find everything you’ve been looking for!  Visit us at http://www.desiral.com

First of a series of visuals we’re testing out - inspired by the Big Data debate!

Hey everyone, hope you’re still enjoying the stunning weather and are geared up for a fab week. 

Here’s a quick video presentation, as promised, describing desiral’s new model in demand powered selling designed to champion and support the growth of an effective (and much more efficient) Intention Economy. If you have 6 and a half minutes to spare have a quick listen, we’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback! If you don’t have the time but you like the sound of what we’re cooking, you can request your July 2012 beta invite here: http://getinvited.desiral.com/

Written and Recorded by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral is a brand new online platform that makes it easy for people to broadcast your intentions to friends, family and retailers who care to listen. This is a powerful and efficient new way to to find everything you’ve been looking for!  Visit us at http://www.desiral.com

Hey everyone!

Just for you - here’s a link to the Angel’s Den presentation we did earlier today.

Link to PDF here: http://db.tt/slSEFyRm

It’s currently without any annotation so please forgive any slides that don’t actually make any sense. We’ll take some time out from coding and tinkering next week, to create a short podcast or video for those of you interested enough to sit through a 5 minute overview of the awesomeness we’re building at Desiral HQ :D. 

We hope you enjoy the slides! Feedback is always welcome and of course, if you are even a little bit intrigued, please feel free to sign up to our private beta by visiting: http://getinvited.desiral.com/

Have a great weekend all! See you on the other side. 

Written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral is a brand new online platform that makes it easy for you to tell your favourite independent businesses and retailers exactly what you want. Visit us at http://www.desiral.com or request an invitation for our early beta 

Hi All, hope you’re all ready for a great week. We sure are.

So for the last month or two, the desiral team has been busy thinking about what really matters to our community, so we can develop the leanest and most effective minimum viable product know to man.  After speaking with a heap of independent businesses and the people who love them most, an interesting and consistent theme has begun to emerge….the critical need for simplicity. 

Initially we considered simplicity as merely a functional issue, requiring the scaling back of features for launch and building front end processes that allowed for minimal friction. However, as we explored this theme more deeply it became blindingly obvious that there was something missing from all of our discussions: USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN!

As a trained (but nonetheless amateur) graphic designer, I had taken it upon myself to develop all the designs for desiral’s current interface. The progression and evolution of which you can squint at in the thumbnails below:

Despite this, what desiral was missing (as our talented developers Stu and Saral brutally pointed out over drinks) was a significant lack of experience in designing for interactive digital experiences. My ability to render a competent visual mock-up did not match the skills we really needed, namely an understanding of how people interact with digital designs. 

So this week (after swallowing my pride and inner design diva) I had the pleasure of meeting up with a few of London’s most talented user interface (UX) designers, including Matthias Link, who designs for the startup NearNote and various other projects between San Fran and the UK.

I asked Matthias a few questions about the importance of UX design for startups and here’s what he had to say:

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@desiralHQ: Some advocates of the lean startup movement suggest that design is secondary to the speed of shipping a product. Do you agree?

@link_m: I do. The design process can be a limiting factor, but does not have to be secondary. Designing a digital product can occur synchronously with the iterations of lean development without causing any delays in release time. I personally believe that keeping the design lightweight and flexible in the flow of quick shipments is the right approach to integrate design into the process of lean development and prevent expensive failure.

@desiralHQ: Do you think that startups are showing more focus on strong, clever and intuitive design?

@link_m: Intuitive design is always subjective, with many people fearful of doing something new and different. The risk of failure with some edgy or clever design is simply too risky for most start-ups, as there is a fine line between being misperceived and creating real value to the user. Therefore, great attention has to be paid to bold branding in early stages to have control over on the visual reputation in the long-term.

@desiralHQ: Is there an example of a startup that you think have gotten their user interface design absolutely right the first time?

@link_m: As simple as it sounds, Pinterest has done an admirable job in presenting mass visual information in the fashionable way of a grid. They have been clearly disrupting the traditional feed design by displaying findings on a bulletin board design. Alongside it gives you the feeling of having your own personal collections rather than just a grid of images.

@desiralHQ: How long have you been designing for startups?

@link_m: I’ve been accelerating start-ups in their design and development stages since 2008, when I started to work as a front-end developer and designer for a travel platform, which was bought 6 months later by a German media house. Now I am involved more in responsive web design for a couple of start-ups in London, two have moved already to Silicon Valley. Therefore, I hope to follow their roots.

@desiralHQ: What do you think the most important part of the interactive design process is?

@link_m: Understanding the objectives of your client, as well as the needs of the target audience. As a result, design reflects your understanding of the client and will be crucial for the valuation of the website.

@desiralHQ: Desiral is designed for independent retailers and their fans. Is there anything you think we should watch out for design wise?

@link_m: Focus extremely on simplicity and find the right spot of uniqueness in this area. Consumers of independent retailers admire new and hip ways to present offers, therefore not be scared to try out new concepts and transform existing ways of presenting products like of shopping windows to the web.

@desiralHQ: any last words of wisdom?

@link_m: read this > http://startupsthisishowdesignworks.com/ a comprehensive guide to design for startups

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Thanks for tuning in! To find out more about Matthias Link, desiral or anything in between feel free to give us a shout. 

This post was written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral.com makes it easier to demand the things you want. Visit us at http://www.desiral.com or request an invitation for our early beta 

Hey All, this week we’ve been busy building, speaking to the community and working on a new blog post called Designing Desiral that we’ll be posting on Friday. Before then, we wanted to give you a sneak peak of the design evolution of the  Desiral interface (so far).

On Friday we’ll discuss why design is so important to the Desiral team, why we’re not quite there yet and why we believe that great interface design is not only skin deep. 

See you there!

Written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Desiral is a brand new online platform that makes it easy for you to tell your favourite independent businesses and retailers exactly what you want. Visit us at http://www.desiral.com or request an invitation for our early beta 

The weather this week hasn’t been great, and the economy hasn’t been either - but neither of these facts have squashed our spirits. Londoners are more determined than ever to make their weekends thrifty and fabulous. So if you’re anything like the team at desiral, by now you’ve spoken with friends, shared plans and settled on just the thing to ensure minimum cost for maximum fun. However, I’m going to hazard a guess that there’s something you haven’t done…worked on your haggle.

Am I losing you here? Don’t worry, you’re not alone - according to experts, most Londoners still find haggling a dirty art and are much more inclined to politely take what’s on offer than to demand the things they really want. Don’t be fooled: the haggle is not only the remit of market stalls and second hand shops. By employing the haggle everyday you can be saving your self hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds per year… but lets start at the beginning.

In this post, we’re going to walk you through three quick, simple and appropriately polite tactics that you can start using this weekend. To get a free drink at a bar, happy hour prices 90 minutes after happy hour, discounted entry and more…

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One: The Counter Offer

The counter offer sits at the very heart of the haggle - that little short question that hardly a Londoner ever dared to mutter, that question that could be the difference between getting that thing you really want and not. When going in for the kill, remember three simple rules: Be confident, be fair and be prepared to fail.  

Presenting a counter offer isn’t a guaranteed way to get exactly what you want, but not countering ensures that you definitely won’t. 

This little gem works best when paired with The Exchange or The Mob (both explained below) and is proven to make a massive impact on savings when used on big-ticket items. This weekend, make sure to use it while vintage shopping or booking that VIP booth. 

Don’t forget: Countering doesn’t always mean chasing the price down. If this is something you’re willing to pay above the odds for, let it be known. This cheeky trick has the ability to make extra stock and sold out tickets magically reappear.  

Two: The Exchange

For most of us, expecting people to fall at our feet and lay rose petals before our every step just because we ask them to will all too often end in disappointment. (If this tends to works for you please let us know - we’d love to hire you). 

Most often, whenever you ask someone for something - the first thing they think is: ‘What’s in it for me?’

Have that answer prepared before you counter. Whether you’re with a group of friends (see below) or it’s just little old you - why would a brand, a bar or a company do this? Are you a loyal customer? Do you have a blog? Do you have something they need? 

Remember: Be relevant, be open, be helpful, be honest. Don’t offer things they couldn’t care less about, don’t be shady, don’t make it hard to say yes by making them jump through a thousand hoops and most of all don’t lie - we promise you’ll soon be rumbled (if it even works).

Three: The Friends

A great deal loves a crowd. When it comes to getting what you want - the herd definitely rules. Brands don’t salivate over the chance to give 20% off to a lone ranger, but when that lone ranger comes with a massive following, group or clout they’ll soon start to attract attention. This weekend, if you’re not blessed with a Twitter following the size of Stephen Fry’s; gather, make or steal some friends to bolster your crowd. You’ll find that your counter offers become much more effective and that the doors that didn’t open are suddenly ajar. 

Warning: Crowds that don’t ask shall not receive. So come strong and come loud. However! Coming loud with a crowd doesn’t mean standing in front of the manager and shouting all at once. Your friends are there for reference only (oh and perhaps some moral support). One voice will do!

Optional: The Good Old Fashioned Flirt

If all else fails we say get your flirt on! Ego boosting eye contact, smiles and the whole shebang. It might not work but you’ll certainly have some fun. 

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Happy haggling London! Let us know how you get on. I’ll be trying these tactics around Brick Lane this weekend. If you’re about be sure to say “Hey”. I’ll be the girl in that group working their way through a free bucket of Red Stripe!

Written by Tayo for @desiralHQ

Not having any luck? Desiral.com makes it easier to demand the things you want. Visit us at http://www.desiral.com or request an invitation for our early beta 

P.S. if you’re interested in reading more about getting what you want we recommend some words of wisdom by Mr. Carnegie and this interesting piece by @jmacdoanld

We’d love your feedback on this strap line. Yay or Nay?

Final Logo! What do you think?