Finally vacation! The first long holiday since September 2008, when I travelled along the west coast of the US. This time I am going to visit Asia – Thailand to be precise. In the same way I kept a travel diary during our trip in 2008, I will again update www.urlaubsnotizen.de (in german) on an almost daily basis, depending on internet availability on all those islands I visit.

Have fun reading!

The Superbowl has yet again been a large show off for TV ads. Even though some argue that the quality of ads has been lower than the previous years, one thing stuck out again: the spots not produced by a typical “Madison Avenue Agency”. Two Doritos spots, allegedly created by consumers, a Google ad produced internally,

NY Times hence wrote an article with the catchy title “Do-it-yourself super ads“, subtitle: “be afraid, Madison Avenue. Very afraid”. The article mentions the user generated spots and their “ranking” on hulu.com and twitter, deducting that consumer know best what consumers want to see.

Well, that’s only one part of the story. And shall we say: the badly researched part of the story.

AdLab busts that story by stating a few facts that the NY Times should, in fact, have researched.

The first Doritos spot “Underdog” was created by Joshua Svoboda a 24 year old, who works as a creative director. The second spot “House Rules” was created by a writer/director from Hollywood.

Even the other Doritos commercials from the previous years plus other “UGC” clips were apparently created by people already working in film related businesses, states the above mentioned article.

So it wasn’t brand fans or advocates who put in their efforts to create a brand message for the brand they like. It was creative people, producers, writers, who were probably more interested in promoting their own “brand” through the PR associated with the clip.

It’s not really that surprising. However, the fact that this has not been picked up by the media correctly is suprising. In a way, I also fell for what might be the reason for the whole ignorance: the story of consumers creating ads with only a few hundred Dollars production costs, that are shown during the Superbowl with a mediabudget of more than $2.5 million, reaching more than 100 million viewers – it’s too good.

I work in an ad agency, so I shouldn’t like the idea of consumer generated ads. Yet due to my interest in social media marketing I did in fact like the idea. (And with everything connected to the setup of the contest, there would still be enough scope for agency work…) So it is rather disappointing to find out about the truth behind these famous examples.

In a blobpost by Leander I was linked to some statistics published by emarketer.com about the growth of Second Life in the last 3 years. It’s amazing to see how their user base has grown round about 30% since their “hype” in 2007, and time spent within the world increased by ca. 20% during the last year.

In terms of money: the economy of Second Life has also greatly increased. The amount of money changing hands has increased to $567 Million!

That sounds like Second Life is slowly gaining ground, however this time without the hype that diluted their numbers. Now that all the hype seeking geeks, journalists and other curious cats have left “the building”, Second Life grows their natural user base, who ever that might be. It would be interesting to get some stats on their user base, anyone have a hint where to get that?

So Google has launched “buzz”, which is a social network simulating extension to GMail, if you ask me. You can share photos, videos, status messages – and people can follow your profile, see what you share and comment on it in real time. Apparently. I haven’t found anyone yet to “buzz” with.

It’s supposed to be an attack on sites like facebook or tools like twitter. I just wonder, if it is strong enough to get people of these two other services. They are quite sticky already, especially facebook, since they’re offering lots of functions, games, content upload options, etc. – and quite many people have established their network on facebook, it will take some persuading luring these network-settled people over to a new network.

Anyway, how does that align with Google Wave? Will they integrate the two at some point? Or will Buzz just be for sharing, chatting and connecting while Wave will be more about real collaboration? We’ll see… And see this video here, it explains the main points in less than 2 minutes:

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(UPDATE: here is another good take on the whole launch, including the relation to Wave.)

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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!

(via adverlab)

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…

Continuing on blogging about trends for the upcoming year/decade I just stumbled upon a paper by Edelman about ten ideas for the new 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.”

Very true. An inspiring read: Using menue psychology to entice diners.

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:

• Jackie Huba predicts that Social Media will get boring and offers an amusing “in” and “out” list. Background fact: Social Media will become a regular part of daily business (and hence boring).
• 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”.
• TrendsSpotting Blog has compiled a list of trends from several social media experts who send their input in 140 characts, hat tipping to twitter.
  TrendsSpotting’s 2010 Social Media Influencers – Trend Predictions in 140 Characters

  View more documents from Taly Weiss.
• 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.
• Mitch Joel predicts, that 2010 will be the year that we shift from the advertising age to the marketing age. Strictly speaking, he writes, it’s not a prediction, it is something that is happening right now.
• 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.

However, just a few days ago, I found an article in the Swiss Newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” that states that Jill and Kevin’s video hasn’t only gone viral, instead it was part of a viral markting campaign! Even the website they put up is a landing page for the campaign.

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!

Lots of praise and good&relevant facts about social media return on investment: