I am badly hooked on the series “lost“, as I wrote in my German Blog already. The sixth and supposedly last season started yesterday in the US (the parts are available in Germany always one day later), however in the last couple of days / weeks a few marketing gigs have already taken place. Such as this one: you can book a flight on Oceanic 815 from Sydney to L.A. on kayak.com – for a horrendous price, of course. Quite a nice idea!
This is a real challenge for ad experts. The following video is a huge collection of TV spots. It was made as part of the launch of the new identity of the Creative Circle awards in the UK. As adverblog writes, there are more than 78 spots referenced in this single video. Or, at least, that’s the highest number found so far. How is your score? (Mine is pretty bad)
There is a lot of talk about augmented reality. But the following stuff is way beyond anything I have seen sofar, it looks more like science fiction. Pranav Mistry about the thrilling potential of SixthSense Technology:
Let’s hope that technology makes it mainstream within this decade…
Steve Rubel has an embedde scribd in his lifestream, as well as a short video about 4 of the main points underlying the 10 ideas mentioned in the paper:
Global (technology, consumers, applications, etc.)
Mobile (mobile devices, use cases, etc.)
Companies (can’t stand on the sidelines any longer)
Data (driving everything, smarter decisions, data privacy).
Not quite digital marketing, but similar rules surely apply to creating well selling online web pages. The NY Times has a piece on how restaurants are trying to improving their menues. Things like highlighting the most profitable items on the menue via putting boxes around them, display prices without a dollar sign, etc. Some restaurants seem to be continously testing how to best design menues so that revenue and profitability increases.
“If admen had souls, many would probably trade them for an opportunity every restaurateur already has: the ability to place an advertisement in every customer’s hand before they part with their money.”
There has been a lot of talk about the end or decline of the destination sites. Mainly about the big portals as well as brands sites – the decline in daily visitors happens at the same time as visitors to social media sites are steadily increasing. Here is a blogpost that nicely visualizes this effect for a few famous brands and social media sites.
Coca-Cola and Unilever now announced that they’ll start shifting their online campaign activities from dedicated microsites to sites, profiles or channels on social media sites. Makes sense, considering the users are already there and they can tap into a ready community:
The FMCG giants are moving away from sites created on a campaign-by-campaign basis in favour of investment in existing communities.
Coca-Cola: “We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform,”
Unilever: “You’ll see fewer brands creating a site for one campaign and then throwing it away. Certainly we won’t do that at Unilever any more. It’s natural online to go to the place where people are already consuming media,” she added. “It’s less effort to ask people to leave an environment they’re already in.”
They won’t do that for all campaigns, and certainly not immediately, but given the current change in the media landscape it does make a whole lot of sense for some brands to move closer to where their customer are.
Happy new year (almost “belated”, since I haven’t posted anything in two weeks…). First post should hence be about new year resolutions. But not mine, which do in fact include the obvious (more sports, loose weight, etc.), but some listed by the viralblog:
1. Make Social Media marketing line budget item (so that it gets its proper place in the marketing mix)
2. Generate ROI using Social Media (prove the added value of social media tactics within the marketing mix)
3. Start listening to the audience (they are already talking about you, and they know what’s best for them).
4. Develop Social Media Strategy (don’t tinker from one tactic to another).
5. Always remember the 4 C’s (Content, Context, Connectivity, Continuity).
They are, obviously, not resolutions for me as an agency person, but they are nevertheless my resolutions when advising my clients this year. Let’s see how social media develops this year.
Every year around this time one can find many predictions about the new year in terms of tech & social media trends. So in order to get an overview myself, I have started this post with a collection and summary of the various predictions I could find:
Pete Blackshaw wrote in an Ad Age column that social media marketers will need to embrace three critical words in 2010: Serve, Shrink and Simplify. Since you need to log on to Ad Age, you can read some excerpts on Pete’s blog. The main idea: service is the new marketing, our screens are shrinking, make things easer/reduce complexity for your customers.
The groundswell team lists 6 predictions, but you get an excerpt. Nevertheless, you can read the topline predictions on the groundswell blog. Overarching theme is, according to the blog, that social technology will be a mainstram part of what marketers do.
eMarketer lists 12 predictions for 2010. The insights include “future monetization models, the effect of transparency on advertising, social and search, mobile, social commerce, public relations, social advertising, Twitter, video and mom/pop internet usage”.
Read/WriteWeb has two different kinds of lists: General predictions and social media predictions. The general predictions consists of the views of 9 contributors from rww and cover a wide variety of topics concerning social media, mobile, cloud computing, Google/Twitter/Facebook/bing, etc. The social media predictions list 10 ways social media will change in 2010, i.e. how it will become part of everyday life, being increasingly used on mobile devices, ROI will become more important (and will be measured), etc.
The NY Times “bits” blog writes about 2010 being the year of the tablet PC. Quite a few companies seem to be on the verge of presenting their versions, but everyone is, of course eager for Apple to release theirs!
Mashable has a post about 2010 being the year of the data. Data that should and will be used by every profession – journalism, marketing, SEO, Advertising, PR, etc. User data (static and behavioural data, I suppose) is becoming ever more important. Somehow I don’t think this is a trend just for 2010. It has been going on in 2009 already and will stay with us forever…
Pete Cashmore of Mashable wrote a special for CNN Tech about the 10 web trends to watch in 2010. the keywords are: Realtime, location, augmented reality, content curation, cloud computing, internet TV and Movies, convergence conundrum, social gaming, mobile payments, fame abundance and privacy scarcity.
As I find more predictions, I will add them (let me know if you know of any).
I suppose you all remember Jill and Kevin’s wedding video, in which the couple and a few of their friends were dancing to “forever” by Chris Brown?
For those living outside Germany, here it is (YouTube is blocking music videos in Germany):
I really liked that video and copied it into my German Blogs. I enjoyed the story of how this idea came about (here is some background info about the wedding). I liked the idea of the couple wanting to celebrat their most important day in a special way. And I am sure quite a few of the many million who have watched this video thought alike.
Hard to believe, I have to admit. Highly disappointing if it’s true.
So what was it marketing for? In that article it says that it was a campaign for the music of Chris Brown, who had popularity challenges and low record sales after having hit his girlfriend Rihanna.
Which is apparently the reason why you could not only purchase the song “Forever” via Jill and Kevin’s website, but also donate for the Sheila-Wellstone-Institut, which is a foundation against domestic violence.
I am not sure whether this story is true, since I haven’t heard anywhere else about it. But if it is, then I am heavily disappointed:
People (including myself of course) believed this story to be true – only to find out the they have been tricked by a marketing campaign. Working in advertising myself, I know about the current challenges to get the attention of the target audience. But lying and cheating should never be an option for any marketer.
So I wonder: is it true, was it really just a marketing campaign? Does anyone know?
Something which I am currently thinking about is the relationship between Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing. There surely is a direct relationship, and this short post about SEO and Social Media Marketing mentions it, too:
When it comes to social media, millions of links are shared every day on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and blogs. As more people share a link to a website, the ranking of the webpage will increase. So the more your links are shared via social media, the more search engines pick up on this and increase your website’s overall rank.
But it doesn’t only work in one direction – it also works the other way around:
It’s also important to note SEO’s impact on social media. Primarily, if a link is easier to find on a search engine, then people are more likely to share it.
So far, SMM and SEO experts don’t seem to be working together much. Social Media Marketers might think about a presence on Youtube, or conducting a “blogger outreach” programm, some crowdsouring, etc.
But when selecting platforms or target audiences, Social Media Marketers tend to only think about “social value” of the respective platform or person. This Social Value is determined by the potential influence of that platform or person on the opinion or actions of other users.
The SEO tends to only think in “Link Value” of a platform. When doing offsite optimization, SEOs try to place links on other sites that have a high link value in the “eyes” of Google, so that it helps to improve the ranking of the SEOs site.
So SEOs don’t necessarily care about the Social Value of a site, and SMMs don’t care about the Link Value of a site.
Quite often this might correlate, since the Google Algorithm is based on social dynamics (sofar, most links are still published by human beings), but not always. And as far as I know, SEOs and SMMs don’t yet plan their activities together, trying to increase the intersection between the two online marketing approaches. It could prove to be interesting to unite these two approaches the next time activities are planned!
Coming up for an original idea for a rather ordinary product like the cereal wheetabix isn’t always easy.
In this case, it’s a play on the fact that wheetabix as a breakfast gives you energy for the whole day. So they came up with a questions that is interesting for all of us: “What makes the worlds largest search engine work?”
The answer: a library lady who assembles all the information within 0.12 seconds (or so), you can take a peak behind the Google screen over here.
When you’re not typing search queries yourself, it seems like you can see queries of other people as live search. But somehow I don’t believe that…
Not sure, how new this site is, but poptent.net looks rather interesting. It’s a site for connecting brands with freelance videographers:
Poptent is the best place for independent and freelance videographers to build their portfolios, connect with companies and brands for commercial work. Here you will find the best and brightest up and coming creative minds in the business. Hire them. Collaborate with them. Join them. We’re building a crowdsourcing revolution and we want you to be a part of it. Become part of our community by clicking the JOIN NOW button.
It looks like some form of agency 2.0, and at the same time it raises the same debate that comes up when brands ask for creative submissions without guaranteeing a reward for every submission. Videocreators get the chance of having their video selected by a well known brand, yet they risk loosing their initial investment (time&money) if their video isn’t selected. And the brand gets a range of creations to choose from without having to pay for every single one.
Here is an example of a current project, asking for video content for snickers:
You know Snickers®, that unique, delicious, and substantial combination of peanuts, chocolate, caramel and nougat.
This assignment is to develop video content starring Snickers®. They are looking for either traditional ‘commercials’ or pass-along (viral) videos — original, authentic and entertaining Snickers® content which consumers will pass along, and use as inspiration for their own content creation.
Your challenge is to be creative, so don’t just follow the approach of previous Snickers® campaigns. You can either:
• Produce a fun, engaging traditional :30 second commercial
• Or produce a pass-along (viral) video of about :30 seconds in length …you choose
Your creative ‘bulls eye’ is males age 18-34. Snickers® has played a memorable role in ‘guy culture,’ with a long and celebrated history as the ‘go-to-bar’ for satisfying hunger.
You could earn $5,000 for each video they purchase or one of the $2000in guaranteed awards. Register below and read the Creative Brief for all the details and some more delicious inspiration.
$5.000 doesn’t sound like much to me, but I guess it depends on what they want to do with it.
You know it’s getting closer to a years end, when people start forecasting trends for the following year. This time it’s really early. It’s only the beginning of November and the first selection of six trends is already online.
David Armano writes about these 6 trends:
Social Media begins to look less social: as more people contribute ever more content on social networks, updates-fatigue sets in and people filter out other users for reduction of clutter. I agree, and I would like to add: social media will have less farmville and mafia wars…
Corporations look to scale: companies leveraging social technology to better serve customers, e.g. Best Buys Twelpforce
Social Business becomes social play: playful social (mobile) applications with a competitive component for users are used for (local) marketing.
Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced): the title says it all.
Mobile becomes a social media lifeline: Due to the IT departments locking down social sites, people will increasingly turn to their smartphones during (or instead of) coffee breaks.
Sharing no longer means e-mail: Well, that is kind of obvious in times of facebook and twitter…
