What the heck is going on in ad land? How come, that several creatives are touring from one end of the nation to another? (While documenting their pilgrimmage online on Facebook).

Santiago Cosme and Victor Blanco, two advertising students, are travelling from NY, where they landed, to the HQ of CPB in Colorado.

In Germany, there are two projects like this currently going on:

Philipp Bertisch und Marcel Günthel, again two Students, are walking across Germany taking up the tradition of craftsmen who travel the country to assist and learn different masters throughout the country. They have been travelling since July already.

And Marcus Brown, who walks for Dr. Peter Figge, with the objective to have a chat with Peter Figge, who recently became CEO of Jung von Matt. Why? Because he wants to work for him. On his way, he hopes to meet interesting people.

What is going on here? Why do these three cases all appear almost at once?

The “Old Spice” Campaign of “the man your man could smell like” has certainly caused a lot of buzz within the social media community lately, and I have bookmarked a fair share of links on my delicious account lately.
Now there is an official case study video by Wieden+Kennedy with the story of the  campaign, as well as some interesting facts and figures.

Fascinating stats, of course the sales figures all relative numbers, not actual figures:

• More people watched its videos in 24 hours than those who watched Obama’s presidential victory speech
• Total video views reached 40 million in a week.
• Campaign impressions: 1.4 billion.
• Since the campaign launched, Old Spice Bodywash sales are up 27%; in the last three months up 55%; and in the last month up 107%

(found here)

Simon Sinek has written a book about a brilliant idea: “Start with why“. Now he has written a semi-good blogpost about the ad industry titled “I hate you: a tale about the advertising industry“.  His main take out: agencies knowingly produce stuff people don’t want to see, so they look for ways to make people watch that stuff anyway. His proposal:

the ad industry should work to improve the quality of their product to a point where people want to watch it.

Well, isn’t that what creative agencies are trying to do anyway? It’s a problem of targeting. The best ad is wasted on someone who doesn’t care or even hate the brand. And once an ad is well targeted, it’s message should be relevant, and there should be no question about acceptance. A good creative targeted at the right audience should never fall into the trap of being annoying.

However, the world isn’t perfect, and in mass distributed media, there will always be a spillover – i.e. ads delivered to people who don’t care about the brand, the message, the offer. And it’s not only a question of entertainment, as Simon Sinek suggests:

The quality of advertising should always be measured based on how entertaining or engaging it is. They should stop measuring how many people are forced to watch (reach and frequency) and start measuring how many people choose to watch.

The main factor is not entertainment, it’s relevance. An ad can be highly successfull, if relevant, even if it’s not in the least entertaining. Given the right context, a fitting message and good targeting, you might also want to call advertising “information”.

Of course, if neither of that is true, you should call it “spam” or simply annoyance.

The main point of Sinek is, however, that ad agencies produce their creative having a different target audience in mind: the client. For that matter, we might even add another target audience that sometimes play an important role: jurys of advertising award shows. Much of what is created serves to satisfy individual client needs, or may be even simply client internal political structures.

So Sinek argues, that ad agencies should instead again focus on their main target audience: the end customer.

Producing a product for the consumers who are the ones actually consuming the product makes more business sense, too.  Clients would be able to spend less on media because the work would be more memorable.  Plus, if people CHOOSE to watch the ads, they are more likely to like the brands, products and companies featured in those ads. In other words, if advertising was made for consumers and not clients the ultimate benefactor would actually be the client…and isn’t that supposed to be the job of good advertising?

Good idea. Given what I notice in the industry, this is definitely the intention when creating new ideas. Within the realm of highly user-centric media such as social media, this thinking has already started to sink in. It just needs to permeate all the layers of “integrated” agencies, until even the most classically oriented teams are also familiar with this idea.

Here is a viral marketing ploy that I was sent (seeded?) from two different email addresses within  20 Minutes this morning. A couple of guyss purchase a McD burger and find an image of “the king” toasted into the bun.

One of the links they sent me leads to a page, where a guy speculates about this mystery, seemingly he always speculates about mysteries like that:

Listen I’m one of those guys who never believes shit like this.   Like when people see Jesus in their banana or they get a p*nis shaped cheeto I’m always like relax.   It’s just a fucking cheeto. But this one is different. I mean if that’s not the fucking King in this guy’s bun than I don’t know what is.

All of this reminds me, somehow, of the Lincoln Fry Mystery-Viral campaign in 2005, where a French fry in the shape of Lincolns silhouette caused some buzz; note: all of the links in my 2005 blogpost don’t work properly any longer, unfortunately. Luckily, the campaign made it into Wikipedia, so you can find some more details there. (The prop used in that campaign was sold for 75k on a yahoo auction. I wonder for how much the bun will sell…?)

I really enjoyed the presentation below published by Kai Platschke provocatively titled “Digital is dead”. It isn’t nonsense, of course, instead Kai argues that soon enough, everything is digital. So it won’t make sense any longer to differentiate between digital and non-digital. I strongly agree!

Well, see for yourself:

The world cup has finally started. Sorry for the long silence, I was quite busy with my new project, the vanille shop e-commerce site. (More about that some other time)

Whereas Twitter didn’t exist for regular users during the last worldcup (2006), it is now present – more than ever. And they have launched a website for the display of realtime updates.

All tweets with certain hashtags will be aggregated, writes mashable. You can also watch updates by country (or even by match) via the three letter country abbreviation.

I am sure there are more realtime services based on twitter out there, will keep you posted.

While I was at work today, a few colleagues watched a live stream via the public television channel ARD in Germany. Interesting to me was the facebook chat going on to the right of the video window. Unfortunately I didn’t take a screengrab of the site, but I will during the next game that is streamed with a facebook chat next to it.

Erik Qualman just released a “refresh” of the socialnomics video published a few months ago. Since the numbers in social media developments are so quickly evolving, this refresh seems about time.

If you just want to see the numbers and stats, you can visit Eriks blogpost here. If you’re from outside the US, chances are that you might not be able to see the youtube-video due to music rights regulations in Europe.

(Note to Erik: Next time also publish a video without the music, which is the only reason for Youtube blocking the video).

Here is the video embedded from vimeo:

Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) from Erik Qualman on Vimeo.

The new stats of Facebook in Germany are amazing. Growth during the last few months has been aroung 10% more or less steadily. With 9.1 million users, facebook is now the largest social network in Germany, having surpassed StudiVZ, which used to be the largest.

In terms of sociodemographic, it is still 50/50 between men and women, the largest group being within the age bracket of 18-34 years old. Representative enough for most social media marketing initiatives.

The implications for marketers are quite interesting. When thinking about social media activities, facebook is now the big pond in which to place the lure. It’s the place to go to when thinking about launching any involving apps or quizzes to reach the target audience.

Yet, it is still a place where most users just go to find out about the news from their network. Some (attractive) brands have achieved “likes” and made into the newsfeed of users. But I bet there are many more brands that have launched facebook activities which never made the news. Which will be the most successful German brands on Facebook at the end of 2010? I’ll keep you posted.

Germanwings and easyjet are two low budget airlines competing on the german market. German wings now came up with a peculiar idea of comparative advertising. It’s a novel idea, however I am not sure if I really like the execution, but judge for yourself:

Well, there is some truth to this, I must admit …

Now how is that: you just purchased new shoes from Zappos, books from Amazon or anything else from the mall nearby. Wouldn’t you just love to tell everyone about whatever you bought with your credit card? No? Yes? If so, here is the perfect social network for you: Blippy. Mindsproutmarketing explains the new kid on the block:

In a nutshell, Blippy is a service that lets members automatically share their credit card transactions as they make them. Not only will members see the amount of your purchase, but they’ll also be privy to the place of purchase and items included in the transaction.

I am just not sure, why anyone would want to do this? Nevermind data privacy or simply modesty about one’s purchases. How about data security?

According to a 2009 study conducted by Javelin Strategy and Research, there were 10 million victims of identity theft in 2008 in the United States. Nearly half, or 43 percent, of all identity theft observed was through stolen wallets and physical paperwork, whereas online methods had accounted for only 11 percent. However unsettling these figures are they haven’t stopped the thousands of people who are clammering to become members of Blippy. Founders insist that their state-of-the-art encryption will protect data from being stolen or reused.

So what is it good for?

Instead of gasping at prices or snickering at purchases, members are actually exchanging details about great finds and super bargains. Even more common, is discovering places to shop that are off the beaten path and alerting others to special discounts to be found. Blippy can really be described as something similar to a tweet-feed based on shopping.

Along these same lines, stores could alert shoppers about local deals and make recommendations based on items previously purchased. Marketing firms could review spending habits to understand consumers and deliver targeted products and services that would be more appealing to them.

In the meantime, trend experts predict that Blippy is the next big thing. Giving the world a sneak peek inside your wallet is definitely a way to channel discussion on spending habits and connect with other people with similar interests by way of spend pattern.

Somehow I am not convinced. Consumers in the US might be willing to share their purchase history. It is the nation of credit cards (and credit crisis for that matter), but I can’t see that kind of social network take off, at least not anywhere else. Not everything that can be done, should be done or is a good idea.

From a marketers perspective, it seems to be a fantastic idea. Many companies are very eager to get their hands on information on spending patterns well beyond their own product range. So I assume that the business idea of blippy is very much focused on reselling the data of the social network participants. But this is, of course, just my 2 cents.

2010 will be the year, in which (at least in Germany) companies will try to strategically integrate Social Media into their marketing mix. As opposed to previous years, when Social Media (often phrased as “viral” campaign elements) was already part of the briefing due to the glitter and glamour, but nobody could actually pinpoint the relevance and contribution of the tactics.

Jeremiah Owyang is now providing some guidance for the first and essential question for companies trying to look at the subject wholistically: is it a brand play, is it a product play, shall we enter with a lifestyle approach or separate activities by location?

His approach is a Matrix: How To Choose Social Media Programs by Brand, Lifestyle, Product or Location to avoid the following pitfalls:

Companies that choose poorly will have wasted internal efforts and resources, set up false expectations for customers and may struggle with trying to redact a program in public where customers are already assembling. [...] having no strategy means that product teams, regional teams, and individual regions will do whatever they want –causing clean up for corporate late.

As a first orientation I think this will serve companies quite well. Surely, each quadrant can be made more specific to each companies situation and needs, but that should be left for the individual Social Media consultant…

At the end there is short guidance on how to choose the right mix:

1. First, be customer focused.
2. For best results, use in combinations
3. Think long term –not just by campaign.

Foursquare and Gowalla are continously improving and updating their services. Latest news:

Foursquare is cracking down on cheaters. If your phone’s GPS determines that you’re not close to where you want to check in, you are not rewarded any points or mayorships.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work with my iPhone, it won’t let me check into my Office, even though I am sitting in it. Looking at Google Maps, though, it seems that my GPS does indeed place me correctly.

This is a good move nevertheless. In the last month during my trip to Thailand I could well check into locations here in Hamburg whenever I wanted, enabling me to keep up the battle for the mayorship of your office here…

Gowalla in the meantime adds realtime feeds and activity streams based on the PubSubHubbub protocoll. This should enbale much more interesting mashup opportunities (since it is apparently faster than the user-specific RSS feeds that Foursquare uses). If this is the case it could yield an important differentiator for Gowalla, which to me seems to desparatly need something to effectively compete with the larger competitor Foursquare.