Congratulations to my former colleagues at TBWA Brussels for their election as Agency of the year. I know them (obviously) and they deserve it. Kris, Bert, Sylvie, Jan, François but also all the accounts and creatives there ... you rock!
It's just a pity there's no online trace of this election at all (apart from the invitation to the event). So I have nothing to link to :-( ... sorry guys.
Good one:
By David Armano
I guess this qualifies as an excuse for my lack of posting. Spent the weekend removing a 22meter tree from our neighbour's garden. But at least I had a reason to test out my new Sony Cybershot DSC-W100, as my previous one proved beyond repair after a rainy motorcycle trip this summer. The good news is that I paid about 40% less in a Sony shop in the US then in Belgium.
See the faces of 2000 bloggers. Fun!
Life (especially health) has been a bit hard on me the last few days, but here I'm back with some great news.
We (ONE Agency) are taking care of the streaming in Second Life of the concert of Praga Khan at the occasion of the launch of Windows Vista. Work has been going on for some time and it's been an interesting collaboration with the PR Agency and Microsoft (more specifically the unbeatable Miel).
We now have screens ready in multiple locations (thanks to Miel's many inside contacts) and we're gearing up the technology to be able to host up to 2000 viewers in Second Life only. The ambition is to go over 300, but we want to make sure that whatever happens, we're ready to accommodate all interested viewers.
So, get your avatar ready and be there on Tuesday January 30th at one of the locations:
Strawberry Estate (including a real virtual atomium!)
and probably also on Crayonville Island.
For a full list of locations, check out the panels in Second Life.
Alan Schulman has a good view on what to do with the viral video's:
Viral video push is a big bonus to a well-conceived and executed media plan, but it's not in itself a substitute for a big brand Idea. And don't confuse trends with trendy. The trend is consumer as creator, not consumer as creative director. If we use it properly, as some consumer researchers and fan culture monitors are doing, the consumer as creator trend can provide lots of valuable insights into how people perceive and interact with brands, how much cultural currency those brands posses, and their real relevance to different segments. This is the trend to draft off of -- not the trendy.
Read the full article here.
Just arrived in Denver but not after our deal of airplane trouble. This is my annual US trip, a good occasion to really 'feel' America which is kinda different then reading blogs and listening to podcasts. Quite a temperature shock from 14°C in Brussels to -10°C here in Denver. And if somebody tags me with the '5 things you didn't know about me' thing, I'll tell what I'm doing here :)
About the plane trip, check this out:
1. Flight Brussels - London delayed due to heavy winds. At 10:30h I learn that we're stuck till at least 14:00h, so I decide to invest in 24 hours wireless access through Proximus in the airport for €20. And just as I complete the procedure ... we can board the plane. We'll at least this way we didn't miss the connection to Denver.
2. Bumpy ride to London, and we get stuck for 20 minutes at the gate waiting for the guys to bring up the stairs to the plane. Trouble with heavy winds again.
3. We want to check through to Denver, but we're told that due to the heavy rain luggage is not checked through. So we have to go through customs, pick up our bags and check in again.
4. Waiting for bags ... waiting ... belt stuck ... waiting ... belt stuck ... no bags. Seems that our bags had been checked through anyway. So we check in ourselves again.
5. And top it all up ... the flight to Denver was delayed with half an hour.
What I missed most is my yearly shopping session at Heathrow airport, no nifty gadgets this year and no time to check out the "World of Whiskeys".
One last thing about the trip. The Americans remain as 'plastic-friendly' as ever (good evening sir, how are you tonight, blablabla) but I was pleasantly surprised by the BA crew. Announcements were not the traditional 'I'm reading this off a paper because I have to', but it all sounded very genuine on both flights. Seems the BA staff got training in 'being real'. I like that.
Looks like some SL fan already posted yesterday evening's 'Koppen' about Second Life on YouTube:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDYrGbi8eWs]
"Koppen" the current affairs program on Belgian Television (één) came by last week to interview me on the business aspects of Second Life. Not an in-depth thing, but (probably) a good starter for those who never heard of Second Life. After all, één is a channel destined at the wide public.
I took the interviewer around a few places and we had a small Second Life interview at Crayonville Island, and we used the meeting facilities for a sales meeting (thanks CC). The team also interviewed Miel (Coolz0r) and Clo (and maybe more people).
So get of line and switch on the good old TV on Tuesday the 9th about 21:00h. I wonder how many seconds I will be visible :)
By the way, should you have more questions concerning Second Life and how to make it work in your business plan, just drop me a mail.
A few months ago "The Long Tail" became available in Dutch, but since then I haven't heard much about it in Belgium. Until this week an article appeared in De Morgen, better late then never (nothing on line, sorry).
Anyway, I thought this was a good moment to blog my view on how a company should integrate this new economic reality in its business model.
OFFER
The Long Tail, or rather the evolution of technology that is driving it, enables companies to get rid of the 80/20 logic. So you can stop 'SKU reduction', 'Product pruning' and 'Focus on the major accounts'. That is, if you succeed in putting technology to work to become a lean & efficient enterprise. Automate your processes to the max, exploit available business intelligence and optimize customer relationships through the web.
By doing so, you can increase your offer and win more happy customers.
FILTER
A larger offer requires that you help customers to find what they want. There are basically two ways to build filters:
- Technology: Use state-of-the-art search technology or build the most intuitive navigation possible.
- People: Engage your customers to share their feelings and opinions about your products, thus helping others to find the product they need.
INVITE
In the Long Tail of communications, the amount of clutter is infinite. Therefore traditional advertising will not work. The answer is in inviting consumers to join you, rather then trying to yell at them as loud as your budget allows.
So make sure you search engine ranking is OK, offer on-demand information (RSS) and stimulate conversations.
ENGAGE
With a Long Tail of competitors, it gets increasingly difficult to bring in new customers. And with a large offering from your own side, every customer bears a bigger lifetime potential then before.
Reason the more to invest in the customer relationship. Take into account their preferences and do not bombard them with irrelevant messages. Be honest and respect the people you have a relationship with.
OK, time for some serious ranting!
Two year ago I spent a fortune one a Sony Ericsson P900. It served me well untill it fell on the kitchen floor after a year. The phone still worked, but the screen was broken, so I send it in for repair. About a week and a half later I got the message that the phone could not be repaired due to water damage. Stupid me accepted it although I knew there could not have been water damage (the phone worked perfectly except for the screen). Buy hey, I saw an excuse to buy a P910.
However, this time I took an insurance with the phone which means I get free repair or replacement. Again a year later (december 2006) my P910 fell into the kitchen sink (with water). But this time I think, no worries, I have insurance.
I bring back the phone to where I bought it (together with the insurance): Bel Company. The friendly people at the store take my phone and send it of to a repair center. And I get a replacement phone: some old, no longer existing Nokia model which has none of the features of my fancy P910. One month later ... no word back from the phone. And this is where it gets ugly. In the store they tell me that phones that are insured take longer to check or repair. Without insurance they take a quick look and send it back as 'impossible to repair', if you pay a monthly insurance they take all the time they need to check every possible way to repair it (which is probably cheaper then replacing it).
So, pay insurance and you will get:
- A crappy replacement phone that has none of the features of the insured phone.
- Extra long repair time.
The good news?
I was fed up with the crap Nokia, so I bought the cheapest bluetooth enabled phone in the store, a Sony Ericsson K750i. And guess what, it's a great phone. Syncs perfectly with my new Mac, operates smoothly with the TomTom, has perfect access to Gmail (through the mini-java-client), has a decent camera (2 megapixel) and it even works as a remote control for my MacBook. The one big disadvantage is the maximum of 500 contacts in the address book. I have plenty of memory on the memory stick but the phone only allows 500 cards. If anyone has a solution for that, I'd love to hear it.
This is what happens when you ask a group of over-enthousiastic employees to make a company song during a motivational seminar:
"Growing & Winning"
I actually was pointed to this column by Lucy Kellaway for the Financial Times by my new colleague Taunya (she's the one in the movie on the ONE Agency site). Really fun stuff, with some cool awards, e.g.:
- Ugliest Two-Word Title for Research Paper and the winner is the Federal Reserve Board for a paper called “Robustifying Learnability”.
- Gold Medal for Twaddle goes to the advertising agency BBDO Impact. It has come up with a new concept called Procrealligence.
Read all of it here.
Spotzer offers an online video library with which you can quickly produce video spots, at a low price. The system is integrated with a media distribution system allowing you to launch your spot on a number of sites.
It sounds like a "Long Tail" idea, allowing SME's to step into video advertising, but to me it sounds way too much like old markting on new media. But it guess there still a market for old skool advertising today.
Read about it on Emerce (in Dutch)
It seems 2007 will be the year of new everything for me. Here's the list, more details will follow per item:
1. New Job (www.one-agency.be) Today is my first day in the new office!
2. New laptop (Macbook, yippiee)
3. New car (Saab 9.5 estate, yeah)
4. With new GPS (TomTom 910, with 20gigs storage)
5. New phone (still waiting for the P910 to get repaired, so bought a K750i)
Talk to you later!
Interactive marketing rules a world of digital experiences.
The last few years we have been spoiled with all kinds of free online services. At first everybody wondered how long this model would stand. Because after the burst of the first Internet bubble, we all understood that a commercial activity is not sustainable unless there is a decent business model. My grandmother knew that already, if you want to spend money, there has to be an earnings side. Since the commercial success of Google's advertising platform however, everybody understands that if you have a real audience that is somewhat sizable, advertising can pay the bills.
With that issue solved, we can look at the future again. And it's full of opportunities.
Take a look at Microsoft, still the biggest consumer brand in the technology arena. They split there offering in four parts: Office, Xbox, Live and MSN. MSN gets all it's income through advertising, just like most other portals or news sites. On Windows Live there are no banners, but the search part uses a system similar to Google's to generate income through text adds. There are no plans to make Windows Live paying so here too the only source of income will be advertising. Xbox and office still live of traditional sales of hard- and software. But with in-game advertising we'll probably see the price of games going down in the future or maybe even become free. Sony Playstation will sell the PS3 at a loss and make profits from the games, the so-called loss leader principle. When the revenue from games comes partially (or completely) from games we may even get the hardware for free.
The same logic can be applied to applications like Word and Excel. Microsoft has no other choice if they want to win the battle against Google. Already today I'm preparing this post in Google Doc, a free online word processor and spreadsheet that offers enough features to replace about 90% of what I did with Word and Excel in the past.
And who pays the bill? I do ,with my loyal visits to Google where I give away a piece of my attention to advertisers on Google Search and Gmail, and in return I get a series of use full applications. This means that every online move ('digital experiences' I tend to call that nowadays) we make can be sponsored by one or the other organisation. And knowing that everything we do seems to be using Internet technology more and more, it is clear what today is called interactive advertising (a division of 'Real Advertising Inc.'), will be the only form of advertising tomorrow.
Our whole world with consist of digital experiences, from making a phone call to producing spreadsheets, from gaming to watching TV and from buying music to studying. Most of those activities will be free, in exchange for a piece of our attention for advertising. But it will be a very different form of advertising. Cool TV spots will be replaced by relevant experiences, intrusive mailings (on paper or electronically) will disappear in favor of honest and direct communication with brands and opt-in will become on-demand. The creativity with which a medium is used becomes as important as the creativity of the idea itself.
And all those digital experiences will also be the playing field of the advertising crowd, they will generate the revenues. So the future look complex but incredibly fascinating, and immensely big for anything digital.
Want to know more about Second Life or discuss about marketing possibilities? Come to Gent ... for the secondlifedemo.
Here are some pictures from the party in second life, and a great piece of photoshop work for my goodbye gift ...
Berat at Cannes:
The party:
As you already could read, I'm moving to a new job at ONE Agency as of January 1st. But not without a great party!
On Wednesday (20/12) I'm thanking my colleagues with a drink, and you can be there too. The party simultaneously takes place in Second Life. So as of 18:00 (CET) you definitely must drop by at "The Black Sun".
Get into the atmosphere with some pics, and by the way, check out the shirt I made especially for the occasion:
I love it!
Update:
If you navigate to the page about person of the year on the TIME site, you have to got through a splash page ("pre-roll" in the US) for Chrysler that says "You might not be Time Person of the Year. But you can drive like you are." ... I didn't even notice myself, but David at Learfield Interaction Blog apparently has the courage to read banners :).
A dutch journalist recently complained that a CEO had announced his resignation on his own blog. This leaves no more room for journalists to do their job ... Kind of a strange reasoning if you ask me. Clearly journalism is changing profoundly. Blogs create an unprecedented openness, and that is more of a challange to companies then to journalists. When it's the aforementionned CEO blogging one can expect him to know what he can and can not write on his blog. But things are different for huge corporations like Microsof where more then 1500 employees have their own blogs.
But to the surprise of many, including myself, this has not lead to major problems. Responsible bloggers apparently feel spontaneously what's acceptable and what is not. At Microsoft there are no official policy on what and how employees can blog. And rightly so, because before you know it, the corporate legal department stands at your desk and then open and honest communication is replaced by overcomplacted press releases that say nothing.
But counting on the common sense of your employees of course does cary a number of risks. There's always someone who does not agree with the direction the company takes, of has a different vision what can and can not be said. But how big is that problem? In fact, there is no problem, if you have nothing to hide.
And that is what it's all about. If you work for an authentic company, if your brand has a true vision and identity that is not just a shiny layer of varnish, then you can be transparent without a worry. Then you don't need to be afraid that someone may publish an internal document online.
All of this is of course not very new. Honest is a value that we were raised with by mom and dad. But untill the rise of the internet as a means of communication, companies could comfortably hide behind glossy advertising campaigns. Apparently the basic values of a healthy society were foregotten by many of these communcations specialists. No wonder advertising people score worse then lawyers when it comes to trustfullness. Todays campaigns only work if they are a reflection of the true values of the company behind it. And if that is not the case, there's always a consumer that will find it out and tell it to the world.
So it's high time to align our companies' vision with what society and consumers want, and then communicate authentically and transparently. The future is to the open and honest brands and marketeers!
