Martin, Sarah, Julian and Cornelia are cruising from on Ikea to the next all throughout Germany as part of an Ikea Midsommar Tour, in order to find the best Midsommar bargains in Germany.

The whole journey is being documented in many (partially live) video shows, blogs of each of the four and a Google map where you can check on their current position. Of course, the four travellers also have twitter profiles.

What I find puzzling is the fact that the blogs neither allow for comments, nor do they offer permalinks. Not really blog-like, if you ask me.

Quite well done is their strategy to reactivate people that were fans of a previous campaign they did almost a year ago: the main character of that campaign - Nils, who back then was “waiting for September” - started his Twitterfeed again, in order to point users who did not unfollow in the meantime (like yours truly) to the campaign.

The only thing that concerns me: it reminds me somehow of the Fake Walmart Blogger in 2006. Mind you, they do not conceil the fact that this is a campaign for Ikea, so you can’t really compare it…

While everyone in the world is (rightly so) concerned about the election and the questionable democracy in Iran, we have to acknowledge the fact that German politics is just about to make a small step towards censorship as well. It’s not as big a news as Iran, but it does concern quite a few people in Germany, so I wanted to let my English speaking readers know, what is actually happening in good ol’ Germany at the moment.

Here is the thing: What sounds like a very good idea for the digitally ignorant politician can actually turn into a very dangerous thing: The “Zugangserschwerungsgesetz” (law for restricting access) is aimed at reducing child pornography on the web by blocking access to sites with this kind of content. Taking action against this kind of content is a good idea, no one disputes that!

The reason for more then 130.000 people petitioning online against it (more than 50.000 in the first three days alone) is the fact that the law proposal was very badly designed. On the petitioning website it specifically says, that the objective of preventing this cruel thing is not questioned at all. Just the means of reaching that objective are raising eyebrows of many bloggers, twitterers, etc, but also some not so digitally savvy users. Why?

1. The way the government wants to set up the technical blocking of sites is highly ineffective. Anyone with some technical knowledge can alledgedly circumvent this effortlessly.
2. But the much more important point: Judging which sites should be blocked, as well as implementing that block, was put into the responsibility of one single government body (the federal office of criminal investigation - the BKA). There also wasn’t any plan for a body controlling the BKA. In the first draft the BKA was supposed to be pretty much free to judge and execute any way they felt fit. Impossible in a modern democracy, one would think.

Had it solely been for preventing child abuse, it would have been fine. But it doesn’t prevent child abuse at all. That content will still be produced and distributed. These people will always find other channels, even if the technical blocking will someday be effective.

The reason this scared everybody is the fact that the introduction of such a law opens the gates for a number of other interests, too. Alledgedly, other lobbies interested in shutting down first-person-shooter sites, poker sites, etc. are already waiting in line until it’s their turn to get their way. (As ignorant as German official bodies seem to be at the moment, and as efficient as Germans are, I have no doubt that 10 years down the line we’d have a perfectly censored and controlled German webspace.)

German site netzpolitik.org has some more info on this whole dilemma (in english). Other bloggers also write heavily about it, however in German.

By now, the law has been softened slightly. Which is an improvement - otherwise it would have been a complete desaster. Since the first draft, the following things have been adapted:

1. Delete instead of block: the proposal now states, that it should be the aim to try to delete those sites showing questionable content via the providers, before blocking them.
2. Monitoring the controls: the BKA will now have to report to a committee controlling their actions. (I just wonder who makes up that committee…currently the office of data privacy in Germany is being discussed for that post)
3. Prevention instead of collecting data: originally the user data of people (accidentally or intentially) accessing those sites would have been logged. This is no longer supposed to be the case.

The final vote in the German Bundestag is on Thursday. But it seems like everything is set now. And while the government tries to push this through within this legislature, the petition - the largest one sofar ever in Germany - will most likely only be administered by the petition committee after the summer break.

By that time the law might well have passed the majority vote in the Bundestag.

Samsung is on a roll with their viral videos. Here is another one that is fascinating to watch. It is based on the “unboxing” meme that many adopted on youtube:

14:00 audience session: context by Stefan Erschwendner

Some interesting questions arise after the kick off presentation: 

• Should agencies rather focus on context of the target audience? Will context drive marketing (communicationss) in the future?
• Which type of agency will be best suited for this in the future? PR or ad agencies?
• What happens when companies piggyback contexts without honestly solving the problems relevant to these contexts - when the branding effect is purely placebo.
• How can you focus on certain contexts, for chocolate bars, for example? You can’t with the current system of target audience definition.
• If the goal is managing relationships with consumers in different contexts, who will do that in the future? The brand, the agency? Probably the brand in the long term, agencies will turn in to coaches.
• Will the time frame for communications programms change? The model of having “quarterly” campaigns can probably not be sustained in the future.

11:05 second day just started, with some delay, as Roland points out explicitly

First panel: 

Trend Cocooning
Wie verändert die Krise das Verbraucherverhalten?

With Prof. Peter Wippermann and Roland Kühl v. Puttkammer (Organisator der remix09)

• First, Roland explains the trend cocooning. Prof. Wippermann expands on it. The trend was orifinally coined by Faith Popcorn, before the internet existed in it’s current version.
• Quote Wippermann: Freedom is being defined by technology…
• Prof. Wippermann about scouting the web via software for identifying trends and topics. Sounds reasonable.
• The below 20 year olds search for social connections preferrably online, instead of online. (?)
• Now the panel is extended by two people from the audience: a young guy living in London, and John Groves, one of the sponsors of the conference. They are now discussing their personal media usage.
• Especially younger people don’t have an internet presence such as a “homepage”, but rather facebook profiles, etc. Homepages are oldschool?
• Wippermann: “Die Mitte ist die neue Minderheit” (not sure how to translate that: the average German is a minority)
• People in gerneral are very slow in adopting new things. 34% still calculate prices in Deutsche Mark.
• Who has more knowledge about the consumer: the ad agency or the companies? Wippermann: the companies. Agencies are still busy being “creative”.
• it is an idea of the industrial age to separate everything: ad agencies from the companies. Originally, advertising was part of the companies. In the network age, everything will be connected (again). 
• The middlemen (media companies, agencies) will have to proof their added value. Companies can directly connect with their target audience and gain knowledge.
• Three Trends by Wipperman: freedom defined by technology, success defined by sharing, family as a “negative” trend, because people are afraid/don’t want it…

12:00 - next session is about Hinz&Kunzt, a street magazine sold by homeless people here in Hamburg.

Hinz & Kunzt
Ein gemeinnütziger Verlag im Überblick

• A monthly magazine, founded: 1993 by Dr. Reimers. A brand awareness of 94% The idea: helping people to help themselves. Financially and politically independent.
• Each homeless person is a single entrepreneur. They purchase the magazine in advance for 0,80€ and then sell it for 1,70€ When starting, each reseller gets 10 magazines for free. There are about 400 resellers in Hamburg.
• There also is a website, wich some of the magazine articles as a teaser. They even have a blog (because: you have to have one today…?)

17:33h - Ok, I skipped a session: quantitative vs qualitative viral marketing by viral seeding company elbkind. Very interesting session with a goood discussion about reach of campaigns in generell (i.e. millions of views) vs reach within a certain target group (wich might result in viewer, but qualitatively lesser views).

Now I am sitting in this (last) session:

Agenturgezwitscher: Twittern zwischen Tratsch 2.0 und echtem Mehrwert

Bastian Scherbeck and Nicole Simon about twitter for agencies.

• One opportunity: internal communication instead of mail and IMs: it can reduce mail but doesn’t offer all functionalities needed.
• External Communications for clients: it’s all about transparency and trust. The agency needs empowerment when doing this, clients need “courage”.
• (missed the third scenario, as I had to answer an email for work)
• Interesting question from the audience: why should companies twitter? Answer: It depends. And: you can, you don’t have to. 
• A further discussion with lots of questions from the audience arose about why should you twitter, personal accounts vs corporate accounts, etc. Temporarily it was stated that you can do customer service well (not cheaper) - in the future I believe that. Currently twitter has around 60-80.000 users in Germany. That’s a bit small to be a relevant channel for customer service…

14:00h - the first afternoon session started with:

XING und die Klassiker
wahlfreie Informationen und Networking statt einfach nur Werbung

Oliver Nickels of IBM starts the session explaining how IBM uses WoM and direct networking to sell their solutions to the German Mittelstand, because it works better than pure advertising.

• Networking is extremely important in German Mittelstand - when it is based on trust. Advertising is too expensive because it’s too broad for this B2B segment.
• IBM created and advertised a “mittelstands”-group in Xing. IBM employees actively posts articles and comments, even distributes flyers during events, etc.
• Speaker changed: now it’s Dirk Reimers of FAT IT Solutions, speaking about benefits of the IBM Xing group. 

In total, it appears to be completely logical to build awareness and consideration via networking - isn’t that how B2B usually works best? Only difference: with Xing these networks expand over time and space…

14:45h Next up is Wolfgang Hünnekens talking about crowdsourcing:

Crowdsourcing
Funktioniert die Kreativität der Massen für das Agenturgeschäft?

The session runs with Markus Roder and Oliver Nickels, but first Wolfgang Hünnekens speaks about crowdsourcing.

• Hünnekens starts way at the beginning and tells the old tale of how crowdsourcing was first noticed and researched…
• The cases mentioned are the usual suspects: Tchibo, Dell, Fiat500… And now that he wants to show a clip, there are technical difficulties.
• The discussion starts with the question: what is creativity? That was a discussion during the last ADC awards.
• Markus Roder doesn’t believe in crowdsourcing, because even if a single person gets to estimate things several times in a row, his aggregated estimates are more on target than each individual estimate. Also: people quite often don’t know what they want from a brand. Cites Henry Ford: if he had asked people what they want, they would have said: faster horses.
• Oliver Nickels: the examples for advertising crowdsourcing were all “risk-free”. Crowdsourcing in product development is always possible. A brand should not be handed over to the “crowd”.
• Interesting question being debated: for which brands could crowdsourcing be relevant? Some brands need to uphold an illusion, a placebo effect to keep up their brand values (Markus Roder).
• Next question is: how do you manage consumer perception of a brand - how does crowdsourcing contribute, if a brand needs to be lived?
• Another fact: brands have to face an increasing lack of control.

10:55 at the Museum for Hamburgische Geschichte, and the show will start any minute.

The speakers of the first panel are already sitting on stage. First topic: 

Share Economy, Collaborative Marketing, Radical Individualism 
Markenführung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Klassik und Online, Stabilität und Individualisierung, Kontrolle und Partizipation

The first panel is with Bernd M. Michael, Gregor Stemmle and Dr. Stefan Tweraser, moderated by Mark Pohlmann.

• Adwords makes up 95% of Google’s revenue… after a small calculation Mark deducts that Google in Germany makes about 2 billion Euros.
• Question posted to the audience sparks the first discussion: can you separate between off- and online.
• Bernd Michael states: there are many experts in this room, but not much knowledge about the effectiveness of what we’re doing in terms of revenue. We are not able to give a 100% media recommendation for ROI.
• Dr. Tweraser:  The seach box mediates between attention and brand promise.
• Michael: The average German knows 3.000 words - how should they memorize 50k+ brands?
• Stemmle: there are examples of successful brands in this digital world - but not built on traditional principles. 
• Zara was mentioned as an example for brands that are successful without any advertising whatsoever. Instead it gew by WoM because of the subjective brand qualty. (Triggered a discussion about subjective vs objective benefits of brands)
• Good advice by Michael: collect casestudies of companies that were successful during the last crisis (2000-2003 or thereabouts). Show these to your clients when talking about facts.
• Stemmle: Use free content online to build your brand - then use the brand power to sell paid content offline.
• Michael: does not agree… calls it a huge strategic blunder, what happened a couple of years ago. Traditional media was to fat, to saturated, they didn’t take the internet serious enough.
• Stemmle: the business of the future for media: prioritization and weighting of content. Defining what’s “talk of the town”…
• Discussion is going back to the original topic: branding today. Tweraser: brand marketing is already a dialogue, some brands already admit that the brand has partially been taken out of their hands.
• Michael: the apple store in NY has a simple way of adding value for R&D: every question that the staff gets and has never heard before, they write down and send it to Cupertino… (Great, that’s what every company with direct customer interaction should do!)
• Markus Roder (in the audience): Viral Marketing can work, when brands give promises and then overdeliver: that triggers excitement and hence word of mouth. 
• Last question by Pohlmann: what’s in it for the future. Stemmle: network, interact. Tweraser: use the information available on the web (Google was able to predict the winner of the eurovision song contest, for esample). advertising is no longer art, it’s a science. Michael: We need experts. It’s still difficult to get experts. Offer more opportunities for knowledge gaining. 

This marks the end of the first session.

Tomorrow is the first remix conference: classic meets online (advertising). To recap what it will be all about:

Fachleute aus dem klassischen Marketing-Umfeld treffen die Aktiven des Web 2.0 für einen professionellen und persönlichen interdisziplinären Austausch.
Feste Konferenzelemente treffen auf die adhoc-Strukturen von BarCamp und Open Space – Beim remix09 mischen sich Unternehmerinnen und Unternehmer, Vorstände, Freelancer und Angestellte. Von U-30 bis Ü-60. Eine breite Wissens- und Erfahrungsbasis aus klassischem Marketing und Web 2.0 – ganz ohne Peergroups, Selbstreferenzialität und Tunnelblick.

The agenda is up with a few fixed keynotes and speaches. The rest of the conference will be organised barcamp-style. Looking very much forward to this experiment, which also happens to take place in a really nice surrounding: the Museum of Hamburg History. Even the party in the evening will take place in those surroundings!

I shall be live blogging tomorrow. Well, as live as I can manage during the conference anyway

The year the media died… This video is great. almost 10 minutes long, like the original song by Don Mclean, and in bits seemingly redundant, but fun to watch and listen to nevertheless - well done!

In Germany, bloggers receive presents from time to time, from companies who are probably hoping to stir up conversation about their product.

I have received some presents in the past already, however the most interesting one I got last week: a voucher for a “dinner in the sky” for one person from mydays.de.

Very nice idea, I have to say. Unfortunately, it’s a little bit useless for me, since I am afraid of heights. Hence I have decided to give it away, via a sweepstake on my German Blog. Since the voucher can only be redeemed in 5 German cities, I assume this really is only interesting for my German readeres. You can find out more about what to do and until what date to enter my own little private sweepstake on my German blog.

For those thinking about it, here are the dates for which you can redeem the voucher (no guarantees given):

21.05 - 24.05.2009 Köln
12.06 - 14.06.2009 Frankfurt am Main
26.06 - 28.06.2009 München
17.07 - 19.07.2009 Berlin
07.08 - 09.08.2009 Hamburg

Mark Lazen is bold on the idea that facebook might soon be on death watch. One of the main points is that Facebook is trying to be all things to all people. (Sort of like AOL a few years ago.) Which is supposedly the first step of being nothing to nobody, resulting in comparative irrelevance.

I am of a more cynical mindset. I believe that when you’re everything, you are actually nothing.

Right - and not, at the same time. Yes, there will always be more specialized sites for everything FB offers. Flickr is better for photos (in quality, not quantity!), twitter is better for realtime status updates. Many community sites are more topically focused, gaming sites offer better games,… the list can go on and on.

But yet: Spreading your digital acitivities and personas over x-many sites is tedious. Especially if you have different IDs (ok, there will be solutions) and different social networks everywhere. Trying out the top-notch applications everywhere is only fun for the digitally inspired early adopters. For everyone else, a good solution will just do. And believe me: the majority is “everyone else”.

In my own personal circle of friends, facebook is still growing, gaining new fans everyday. (And watching the newsfeed has only become interesting in the last couple of months, as my own network of friends grew.)

I am convinced that the digitally inspired (native or immigrant) underestimate the size and power of the late majority. These people (most of my friends amongst these) will praise those sites, that make a digital whatever easy with a one-stop-shop solution. Of course the quality of the applications and offers can’t be sub-optimal. And for certain topics of interest people might migrate to a specialised competitor. But the rest of their digital activities they might still keep at places like facebook or other sites like it.

The key factor is relevance: as long as facebook offers sufficient relevance, aggregated across all service offers, applications and the individual social network, it will stay top of mind with a large audience. The problem only arises, if facebook becomes second rate at everything they offer. Here I assume: the personal social network is the last resort of stickiness. As soon as your own social network has mostly migrated to other sites, you don’t care to stay either.

What do you think?

Some of you might have noticed the event tip/ad in the righthand column. This is something particularly interesting for my German readers: the remix09 conference is happening on the 12th and 13th of June here in Hamburg. Title: “online meets classic”. The setup of the event is a mixture of barcamp and a regular conference:

Fachleute aus dem klassischen Marketing-Umfeld treffen die Aktiven des Web 2.0 für einen professionellen und persönlichen interdisziplinären Austausch.

Feste Konferenzelemente treffen auf die adhoc-Strukturen von BarCamp und Open Space – Beim remix09 mischen sich Unternehmerinnen und Unternehmer, Vorstände, Freelancer und Angestellte. Von U-30 bis Ü-60. Eine breite Wissens- und Erfahrungsbasis aus klassischem Marketing und Web 2.0 – ganz ohne Peergroups, Selbstreferenzialität und Tunnelblick.

A few days ago, the agenda has been published. There will be two tracks. The first track is mostly with fixed slots and offers speaches and discussions by quite a few well-known people such as Bernd M. Michael (ex-CEO of Grey Germany), and Prof. Peter Wippermann of  Trendbüro.

Some of the other slots in track 1 plus most slots in track 2 can be filled by participants, in true barcamp style, I suppose.

Working in an advertising agency that offers both classic and online, I am particularly interested to see how the discussion between the two disciplines will develop. We’ll see. I shall be updating this blog shortly before and during the conference with more news on the ongoing discussions.

I just noticed, that first few of the most interesting next09 videos seem to be online now, so here they are:
Umair Haque about capitalism 2.0:

 
Andrew Keen about the digital vertigo:

OK, some more Jeff Jarvis Content. The video of his great keynote speach during the next09 conference is online now (forward to 07:00, before that is a welcome note to the conference):