TECHNOLOGY AND ELECTRONIC MEDIA: How techno friendly are you?

Are agencies and clients in the superhighway’s fast lane? Steve

Shipside’s quiz finds out who knows what about the Net

‘Our suspicion is that with regard to the Internet, clients are ahead of

the game, rather than agencies,’ Mike Cobbe, the managing director of

Cobbe Smith Terris, asserts.

This is an opinion frequently put forward by new-media developers, and

just as frequently denied by agencies. What distinguishes Cobbe’s

comment is that he is offering research to back up his beliefs.

CST is a Website developer, with sites including Nationwide, Weetabix,

Lego and Ross Young in its portfolio. As such it’s a less than

uninterested observer, but its research was not so much intended to have

a dig at agencies, as gauge the awareness of their clients. CST

contacted 150 managing directors or heads of marketing, of which

slightly under half responded. A small sample, but one that reveals a

surprising amount of Internet usage.

‘The thing that interested us most,’ Cobbe says, ‘is that in answer to

the question ‘do other members of the family access the Net?’, 83 per

cent said ‘yes’. We feel it’s like the early days of TV when friends and

neighbours without a set came round to watch programmes. We feel Net

usage is underestimated.’

It’s also noticeable that a high proportion of respondents could put a

figure on what their Websites cost. What CST doesn’t mention, but which

should catch the eye of an agency, is that of those who didn’t have a

site of their own, a massive 83 per cent were confident it would cost

less than pounds 25 to have one constructed. You get what you pay for

and this doesn’t necessarily bode well for the medium if potential

buyers are plumping for the cheap end of the scale.

The good news is the high number of clients who have access to the Net

at home, allowing CST to claim that clients are ahead of the game.

Which is where we come in. With a certain disregard for notions of

fairness, thoroughness, or methodology, Campaign pounced on the first

agency managing directors, and their clients, who were unlucky enough to

answer their phones. We also took in a couple of media heads for good

measure.

The results were actually reassuring, but the high scores of our

respondents were only matched by the high number of people disinclined

to return calls or answer questions.

Questions

1. Off the top of your head, do you know your e-mail address?

2. Do you have Net access in the office? Who is your Internet provider?

3. What’s the address of the Playboy site?

4. How would you find out if you needed to know (would you know how to

use a search engine)?

5. What’s the difference between the Net and the Web?

6. You’ve been asked to produce a computer presentation or CD-Rom in

both an 8-bit and a 16-bit version. What will be the difference between

the two?

7. What is bandwidth?

8. What is MPEG?

9. What is Java?

Name: David Atter

Position: Marketing manager, Tango

Company: Britvic

Answers

1. Yep, dia1.msn.com and several others

2. No access in office but MSN (Microsoft Network) at home and

Compuserve

3. I don’t know but I guess it’s playboy.com

4. Yes, with Yahoo

5. The Web is a graphical front-end to the Net

6. Better quality graphics in 16-bit version due to the number of

colours

7. The amount of data that can be sent or processed simultaneously

8. A video format

9. It’s a new language from Sun Microsystems that pundits are touting as

the operating system of the Internet

Rating: A bit of a star, a client to be reckoned with

Name: Trista Grant

Position: Managing director

Agency: Universal McCann

Answers

1. I don’t know it off the top of my head but I could find it in a

second

2. I don’t have access from my office but we do from various points in

McCanns. I couldn’t name the provider

3. I suspect there is one, but I wouldn’t know where it was. I am a

woman you know

4. Yes

5. Colloquially they’re the same, I believe the Web refers to a

technical aspect of how the Net works

6. I’m used to 16-bit thanks to having Sega as a client

7. The amount of communication you can cram down a wire; the wider the

better

8. We use the term in presentations as an example of jargon that no-one

understands. I couldn’t explain how it works

9. No idea, but things change fast and I’ve been on holiday all week

Rating: Not exactly a hands-on user

Name: Mandy Pooler

Position: Managing director

Company: The Network

Answers

1. Yes

2. Yes we have it, from Supernet

3. I don’t know, but I know a man who does

4. See above

5. I think the Net is the physical system and the Web is what people

appear on

6. No idea

7. I would understand it to mean how many bits you can transmit

8. Don’t know

9. A piece of programming that allows unlimited graphics on the Net

Rating: Good, claims that her five-year-old is better

Name: Pete Mill

Position: Business development director

Agency: The Leith agency

Answers

1. I have two, Compuserve and a Net address

2. Compuserve at the moment but not that happy

3. No

4. Yes

5. Yes, the WWW is a commercial end of the Net

6. It would run faster in 16-bit, and you’d get many more thousands of

colours

7. Basically the amount of info you can send down a cable or radio

8. We have a laptop machine with MPEG, it’s a video compression

technique for full-screen video

9. A new Web browser plug-in from Sun giving animation and graphics

Rating: Impressive, possible closet nerd

Name: Steve Henry

Position: Creative partner

Agency: Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury

Answers

1. Yes

2. I have used it, but not for a while

3. There is one, but I don’t know where

4. Yes, I could find it if needed

5. Don’t know

6. Not sure, quality?

7. Capacity linked with speed

8. I woudn’t know

9. I’ve read about it, it’s a new software program

Rating: A game effort, and not as bad as he thought he would be, even

after looking around for someone to help him cheat

Answers

What’s the address of the Playboy site? www.playboy.com

How would you find out if you needed to know (would you know how to use

a search engine)? Any search engine - Yahoo, Alta vista, Webcrawler,

Lycos - would do

What’s the difference between the Net and the Web?

The Internet is the network of networks, linking computers worldwide,

the Web, while part of the Internet, is distinguished by being a

graphical publishing medium supporting documents and pictures. For most

people they are synonymous, but having Internet e-mail access does not

necessarily mean you can view Web pages.

You’ve been asked to produce a computer presentation or CD-Rom in both

an 8-bit and a 16-bit version. What will be the difference between the

two?

For Mac and PC work, the term normally refers to graphic and sound

quality. An 8-bit limits the number of colours to 256 and normally

precludes CD-audio quality sound. A 16-bit gives thousands of colours

and CD quality sound, but requires a more powerful computer for

playback.

What is bandwidth?

The amount of data that can be transmitted by a medium. The more

bandwidth, the more data you can send at the same time.

What is MPEG?

From Motion Picture Experts Group - a collection of standards defining

video compression. Most important are MPEG 1 for full-screen full-motion

video on a computer, and MPEG 2 for digital broadcasting.

What is Java?

A programming language from Sun Microsystems, originally intended as a

means of controlling anything from video recorders to toasters, now

hailed as the next big thing in Internet applications. It is currently

used mainly to add animation and interactivity to Websites.

This article was first published on Campaign