Problems. A Simple Flowchart to solve all of them.

September 6th, 2010 • View Comments Strategy, Tools
Tags: diagrams, flowchart, Funny, problems, Strategy, Truth, visual, World

Life can be so easy sometimes. As a quick intro to this week I would like to remind you of this simple flowchart that basically makes you get rid of all your problems at once (via Flowingdata).

Creative Briefs. Two Decks on making them evolve.

August 11th, 2010 • View Comments Jobs, Strategy
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Creative, creative briefs, Ideas, Jobs, Prediction, Presentation, Process, Strategy, Tools, World

As a strategist it is kind of a fixation to think about creative briefs. Creative brief? Yes, a piece paper which traditionally is created by a strategist/client directore to serve as a guideline for the creative process. There are literally hundreds of these templates out there. Some are good and some are bad.

In fact, most creative briefs circulating in agencies nowadays are pretty old school. That’s not surprising. Most agencies are pretty old school in the first place, secondly all too often the briefing context is the key problem and not the template. Finally, the ownership over the document is frequently not shared among the different stakeholders. Stupid process that is.

Jasmin Cheng has pulled together quite a nice deck that collects a lot of thoughts about this problem.

Case Study. Old Spice Guy flexes his Muscles.

August 5th, 2010 • View Comments Ads, Strategy, We like
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Ads, Agencies, Brands, Case Study, Creativity, Funny, Ideas, Old Spice, Presentation, Social Influence Marketing, Truth, We like, wieden & kennedy

Yes, we all love Old Spice now. No, it was not at all unsuccessful. In fact Wieden + Kennedy did not only stage a highly entertaining stunt with ‘the man your man could smell like’ – obviously it had exactly the effect a great campaign is supposed to have. It sold stuff.

I admit, ad agency case studies should always be watched with a certain skepticism. But hey, the best social media first ad campaign of the 21st century rocks big time (via adweek).

Study. The 8 success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing.

Juli 28th, 2010 • View Comments Reports, Social, Strategy
Tags: Altimeter, Best Practice, Brands, Cases, Facebook, Reports, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy

Altimeter Group has just staged a new report that wants to define ‘The 8 success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing‘. Seriously – the report is not a revolution. Nevertheless it works with quite an interesting empirical model. And I like the conclusion and case studies in the end.

The report ‘gleaned input from 34 vendors, agencies, and experts, to determine success criteria and develop a roadmap for Facebook page best practices‘. And about half of the reviewed brands did not do too well in activating full scale Word of Mouth. Take a look at Altimeter’s report. I am happy to hear what you pull out of it.

google Me. Or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love Privacy.

Juli 12th, 2010 • View Comments Business, Social, Strategy
Tags: Business, Facebook, google, google me, Prediction, Presentation, privacy, Reports, Social Networks, Strategy, World

Most of you may have heard about the so called Facebook killer ‘Google Me‘ that supposedly binds half of google’s resources currently. And as most of you know, google has not exactly been successful with social networking by now. Especially after google Buzz also failed as a platform that is able to compete with Facebook. google knows they need to get their hands on social. Why? Steve Rubel explains it quite well…

google will ‘continue to dominate “pull.” But Facebook will aggregate content, make it social and rule “push.” Using our social circle it will surface content that we care about just when we want it – and allow us to comment on it all. As more people use Facebook to connect, share and create, a network effect takes over – and the system get even smarter.’ And that is exactly what google needs to do to stay alive in the long term.

No matter how successful Facebook is with its social strategy – they need to conquer Planet Push asap or become Facebook’s junior partner. In the middle of all the buzz about google Me we have to read the deck embedded below as a first rationale for google’s new platform – not as the ‘designing social networks’ deck that it wants to be. It was created by one of google’s lead User Experience architects Paul Adams and it criticizes Facebook existing social networks and the way they make people interact with a clear focus on privacy. What a surprise!

Even beyond the google Me hype – definitely a deck worth to take a look at (even though it is looooong).

Big question: Do you think google might make it this time? Do you believe privacy will be an USP strong enough to differentiate google Me from Facebook? Leave a reply.

Read more »

Bad News. Nobody is interested in your Social Platforms.

Juni 23rd, 2010 • View Comments Social, Strategy, Tools
Tags: Brands, Prediction, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Truth, World

Actually I hate documents about social media. Honestly. I hate these decks almost as much as infographics about social media.

But I have to admit, I started smiling while I read this deck by Bart De Waele. It is not an analysis, it does not stage new insights or come up with a new conclusion to what marketing is all about – it just says what needs to be said. “Nobody is interested in your social stuff, as long as you do not interact constantly, honestly and wholeheartedly. Marketing in the social sphere should not revolve around rollout plans but around conversations.” Period.

Thanks to ‘We are social‘ for sharing it.

Roger Wilco. The Tenets of Digital Strategy.

Juni 10th, 2010 • View Comments Strategy
Tags: Diagram, Ideas, Philosophy, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Truth, We like, World

After trying to define the difference between traditional and digital strategy (if there is any) I still have no perfect answer. This sketch by Mike takes us at least one step closer to a solution of the problem.

Thanks to Mike Arauz, Via We are Social.

Social Currency. Where Brands meet Dynamic Context.

Mai 2nd, 2010 • View Comments Brands, Social, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Brands, Business, Report, Reports, Research, Social, Social Business Design, Social Currency, Strategy, Study, Trends, Vivaldi, World

One of the really good studies about brands and their social environments has just been published jointly by NYC think tank Vivaldi Partners and Professor Johann Füller (University Innsbruck) in cooperation with Lightspeed Research.

The report ‘Social Currency’ asks what a brand’s social currency is, and what it takes to build and nurture it. And, the report indeed brings a couple of crucial things across – it defines the buzzy term Social Currency and attributes success metrics for brands here.

Defining Social Currency

So what is Social Currency and why is it important? From the report’s perspective it is the contextual sum of experiences users can have in relation and interaction with a brand. And a brand’s social currency is bound to a dynamic process that we call reality.

Social Currency is the extent to which people share the brand or information about the brand as part of their everyday social life at home or at work. (…) It is neither a product feature, nor a communications or PR campaign that is completely managed by any one company. From this perspective, social currency is a far more delicate asset to build, nurture and maintain than is brand equity.

Social currency represents a shared asset of consumers and company-owned brands. It originates from interaction between customers and consumers. And it is the material a brand’s success will be fundamentally influenced by…

1. Across categories and brands, 53% of consumers’ brand loyalty can be explained by social currency
2. Users of brands with high social currency show a significantly higher willingness to pay a price premium (correlation=0.73)

The study’s explanatory strength does not only lie in these results – it is remarkable as it tries to define what social currency is made of. Since the research assumes that social currency is crucial for brands to create customer loyalty it consequently also reveals its components. No, a brand does not necessarily have to access all levers – this varies in regard to which industry and brand is involved…

Read more »

Agencies. The Industry’s Family Tree 2010 is out.

April 26th, 2010 • View Comments Brands, Business, Strategy
Tags: 2010, Agencies, Brands, Business, Diagram, List, Strategy, Trends, visual, visualization, World

You are working for a network agency? You were part of one or the other merger? Time to zoom out and locate you on ad age’s annual agency family tree. The statistical compendium lists the big players, specialized agencies, compares winners and losers. And just like last year it offers a perfect overview about the state of the marketing industry worldwide. To help you locate your agency you can download the whole tree as pdf or get into it as navigatable map. The 2010 issue was just published. So go check it out.

By the way. Congratulations to my employer. Razorfish has just become the largest digital agency in the U.S. by revenues.

Big Ideal. Ogilvy’s Brand Platform Revisited.

März 30th, 2010 • View Comments Strategy
Tags: Agencies, Big Ideal, Cool, Ogilvy, Philosophy, Planning, Prediction, Presentation, Strategy, Tools, We like

On my way to explore the best of both worlds (traditional vs digital) I have – once again – come across Ogilvy’s ‘Big Ideals’ concept. And I think it’s a philosophy worth taking a look at, if you’re a (non-Ogilvy) Planner.

It is a planning platform defining an overarching aspirational thought. The objective is obvious – to provide consistency in brand positioning and tone by defining what a brand strives for. Basically in how it wants to make the world a better place. This is a meta objective which is pretty free for all concepts and ideas supporting the Big Ideal. And indeed it may be even a good planning platform to build upon in a more stressful, social, 24/7 marketing environment. Simply because it is free, even though it stages a clearly defined, hypothetical, final condition for a brand.

Thanks to Giles for the video link.