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By Ryan Skinner (email)
Shipping would benefit immeasurably if two phenomena driven by technology collided: e-wholesaling and pop-up retail. The upshot would be a boom in container shipping - a boom driven not by collossal multinationals but rather a half-billion new merchants.
Continue reading "A happy convergence for box ships: Do-it-yourself globalisation?" »
By Ryan Skinner (email)
It's the kind of story every ad salesman and marketing director would press close to their heart. Hurtigruten, the operator of Norway's coastal ferries, announced better than expected results in the second quarter of 2009.
Market communications director Stein Lillebo credits the company's intensive advertising campaign in the home markets for the success. "What happened was that the campaign limited the negative effects of the financial crisis," said Lillebo.
It may not be the stuff of great hope for the international maritime media, in particular, but it shows that strategic use of the media, in general, can really pay off. [Note, however, that the newspaper who carried this story, Dagens Næringsliv, was one of the prime recipients of Hurtigruten's advertising bucks].
For those who read Norwegian, here's the link to the article: http://www.dn.no/forsiden/resultater/article1722283.ece
By Ryan Skinner (email)
All of our real-time ship map dreams have been realized! Well, that may be overstating things, but this is a nifty little app anyway. A huge number of Greek institutions and companies went together to put together this url that shows a fraction of the world's fleet based upon their AIS signals. (Don't bother looking for Arctic Sea - it's not there). Anyway, check it out: www.marinetraffic.com!
By Ryan Skinner (email)
I spoke this afternoon with the editor of ShippingPodcasts.com, James Tweed. He's behind a few of the great, new channels for shipping information and news that are branching out on the Internet. Just one example: They get over 100,000 downloads every quarter for the 3 to 7 minute updates on the wet and dry trades, and the currency market (all delivered by a silky smooth, radio-friendly voice).
It's not the only shipping podcast out there either, but almost. Maritime Executive is contributing material to podcasts, gcaptain has slowed its podcast production and Messing About in Ships and the icis chemical shipping podcasts have seemingly halted production.
Today people like James Tweed are speaking the language of shipping professionals, but advertisers are slow to get wise. He feels like many potential advertisers don't understand how this kind of media works. Getting your name in front of 100,000 targetted industry professionals is worth its weight in gold. As quality offerings like Tweed's grow, I know the advertising market will grow to meet it.
By Ryan Skinner (email)
In paradigm-changing shipping technologies, we swing from the ballistic (ballast water) to the futuristic. The idea of switching out steel with lighter stuff has been around for as long as ships have been built with steel. In the 90s and 00s, though, some ship design groups began making ground with unique composite materials.
Naturally, navies are leading the drive (what expense can the tax-payer not afford?). The US's latest destroyer class - Zumwalt - features a composite wheelhouse. Elsewhere, composite materials are being introduced wherever they are practical for cost and weight reasons. Some designs are more far-flung than others.
A leading Swedish research group has recently published final reports on composite materials in marine applications.
It's hard to beat steel in terms of price, flexibility and performance. It's pretty easy to beat in terms of weight, though, and this may matter in a world of peak-oil bunker prices.
By Ryan Skinner (email)
Some would say it's unglamourous. It looks like a pump, (often) smells like a chemical and feels like a quick route to the poor house. But the real money in ballast water management systems is the liability. Ballast water from shipping has wiped out entire industries, causing damage in the hundreds of millions. Take the zebra mussel, for example.
Continue reading "10 technologies to change shipping - #1 ballast water management systems" »
By Ryan Skinner (email)
It was called ego surfing, googling yourself, that is. Depending on your name and your habits, you were struck by the amount of data you found about yourself online and the odd interests of people with your name (that's not me, I swear). In today's information economy, both of these revelations apply to your company. You'd be shocked how much talking goes on, and how much touches your company directly, and your products.
With that said, I would advise anyone in marketing to establish a battery of Google Alerts today. Make an alert for your company name, for your key products and your product areas, with daily updates. Then, when any publisher, blogger, competitor, customer or netizen mentions you or your business, you'll know about it. (Just try to avoid being too broad, like getting an alert for every mention of "cables").
It's a few more emails a day, but it's worth it.
By Ryan Skinner (email)
Some of our beleaguered friends in the shipping press would gnash their teeth and cry foul at this title. They shouldn't.
First of all, the demise of print media is already being covered avidly by the media itself (see Paper Cuts for some of that particular morbid fun).
Secondly, the shipping press itself has been high-tailing it out of business models relying solely on print ads for years. Since when was Lloyd's List purely a newspaper?
