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.

(via adverlab)

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…

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…

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.

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…?)

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…

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.

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.

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

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.

Need a short URL for twitter? try http://url.so-smart.be/ instead of the typical tinyurl.com – this is a nice marketing idea by smart, the shortest car around.

• A rather cruel (viral) video, could be a little less gruesome, if you ask me. But then, some say, a good viral video needs violence, blood and disgustingness. However, they called it: “violence is no solution” – it’s an advert for a secure  e-commerce shop.

It functions like a mini-application that spreads in my own social network of contacts and friends, and I wonder: does it do that automatically, whenever I interact with it? Here is the description of Techcrunch:

WOMI campaigns present visitors with ads asking them for some kind of input either though a multiple choice question or using a text field. SocialMedia then uses this input to customize ads which are shown to the user’s friends on the same social network.

For example, if an ad for Star Wars had a call-to-action asking if I was on the Light Side or Dark Side of the Force, it could take my response and then present my friends with an ad that said “Jason is on the Light Side, how about you?”. In turn, their responses are passed on to all of their friends, making this among the first kind of advertising with a viral element.

This is spooky, unless they definitely ask users before they present their friends with the answers to the multiple choice questions. It’s like a facebook app that spreads as soon as you launch it, without even asking.

If however, the user stays in full control, it could turn out to be rather interesting. Especially if you get to see all your friends responses later on, too. People love to see how they compare in polls and questionnaires. This can be a huge playground for brands. More effective than regular applications/widgets in a sense, because of the “classical” advertising component: “pushing” these polls onto the profil pages of friends and contacts, instead of just mentioning in some news feed “XYZ installed application ABC”.

The main thing of this was probably the ways the video made it’s way through the web… a good viral campaign.

Well, here is what can happen if you let the Swedish Style take over the Oval Office:

Not sure about that

But starting in 4 days, people will have the chance to add their own suggestions. Apparently, an Oval Office planner will be up and running by then.

Don’t think, somehow, that Obama will react to that…

If you’re in need of social media case studies, there is a really extensive meta list as compiled by Robin of the Interactive Insights Group. Meaning: it’s a list of links to sites with lists of casestudies. Nothing you can read in one go, but definitely something for your bookmarks.

Secondly, there is a gigantic list of the best internet marketing posts of 2009, as compiled by Tamar Weinberg. Again, bring some time along – or just bookmark it for future reference, as I did

(both found at steve rubels lates links.)

1. Wassup anno 2008
Disclaimer: Budweiser’s parent company, Anheuser Busch, which originally licensed the concept for five years from Stone, was not involved in the production of the ad

2. SFW XXX Party Invitation
Diesel’s naughty montage of 1980s porn films using cartoon animation to cover up explicit scenes, just, for its 30th anniversary

3. Kobe Bryant jumps over an Aston Martin
Nike’s clever “did he or didn’t he” actually clear a car. Probably not, but it got people talking, and watching

4. Extreme Street Football
Electronic Arts trickery masterpiece featuring kids with football skills – and parkour and capoeira – using a football like you ain’t never seen

5. Take it to the next level
Guy Ritchie directs this shot-in-first-person tale of a teen footballer’s hardcore ups and downs from being discovered to losing teeth to playing for a national team

6. Tiger Woods 09 – Walk on Water
When a fan of EA’s golf game pointed out a flaw that Tiger Woods could play a “Jesus Shot” from on water, the game manufacturer’s response was this viral featuring the man himself

7. Bean Counter
One of those Mac vs PC ads where Apple prods Microsoft over spending loads on advertising Vista when it should be fixing it

8. Samsung Omnia i900 Unboxing
Samsung spoof of the tech-fan trend of filming opening the box of a new gadget for the first time

9. Fate – Leave Nothing
Emotive Nike fare of lifelong rivalry of two NFL players featuring version of sound track from the Good the Bad and the Ugly

10. Adam and Eve
Insurance company ad featuring a gay Adam and frustrated Eve that found life online after being banned from TV

Social networks may never find the ad dollars they’re hunting for because they don’t really have a right to them.

he continues. A provocative statement made to the Digital Non-Conference, a program by Cincinnati’s Digital Hub Initiative. His feeling is, that most social network activity is rather private in nature:

“I have a reaction to that as a consumer advocate and an advertiser,” he said. “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

These private conversations are, well, private. But these ads are just as obtrusive as all the advertising in the pub your spending your time with your friends at. We’re used to having social interactions in surroundings covered with advertising. We just don’t want to be interrupted or bothered by it. Most facebook advertising isn’t interrupting. It’s small banner ads on the side of the screen, which I, quite frankly, rarely notice.

And while we talk about moving into places that are largely made up of consumer generated media, he states:

Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

True, but I guess most marketers don’t want to buy regular adspace for the very reason that most people will not notice (nor click) it. So, if they could find more interesting, more effective ways to leverage these communities – e.g. by providing something of more added value, they would happily try it. Like the little ad supported postcards you get in most german pubs. They are widely accepted and people look forward to looking at them every time they pass by the little postcard rack on their way to the rest rooms.

These added value things could be, for example, small applications that enrich your social network profile:

He cited Facebook applications as a potentially valuable vehicle for advertisers, one in which they can create an environment that’s favorable for their brands and consumers alike.

Facebook Apps are just one things. Groups, product profiles, etc. are other possibilities. Imagination and social skills are key to finding these new value adders for social networks…

Teaming up with the neuromarketing firm NeuroFocus and the branding consultancy MediaVest, Google conducted a study in which it measured people’s nervous-system responses – through brain-scanning skull sensors, eye tracking, pupil dilation, and galvanic skin response – as they watched YouTube ads.

There were only 40 participants, whose score for overlay ads was apparently above average:

Specifically, after fielding a study among 40 participants last May, InVideo ads scored above average on a scale of one to 10 for measures like “attention” (8.5), “emotional engagement” (7.3) and “effectiveness” (6.6). According to officials, a 6.6 score is considered strong. (Source)

Yet they worked best when in combination with banners:

The combination of overlays with companion banners also grabbed users’ attention more than banner ads alone, scoring a 6.6 compared to a 6.3 for just banners. (Source)

I can see that getting in-video ads right will be a huge leverage for YouTube to achieve sufficient revenue. And it’s probably one of the best ways to quickly and substantially increase revenue options on the site.

Yet I would prefer more creative and user relevant options for displaying the messages of my clients…

Another interesting fact is the news about the advanced neuroscience approach Google has taken to evaluate their overlay ads. Only 40 participants, but probably much more data available than you would get from 100 traditional focus groups.