2010. The Mobile Year in Review.

Dezember 21st, 2010 • Mobile, Trends
Tags: 2010, Business, Diagram, Media, Mobile, predictions, Tech, Trends, visual, World

One thing that hopefully stops in 2011 – info visuals that explain digital media. To finally celebrate this marketing meme of 2010 I’d like to post mobilefuture‘s Mobile Year 2010 in Review. Enjoy.

Convergence. Why talking about Social Media bores me to death.

Dezember 19th, 2010 • Allgemein
Tags: 2010, 2011, Advertising, Agencies, Future, Industry, Social Media, Trends

As 2010 ends it’s time for new year’s resolutions once again. I should stop smoking but it would be kind of dumb to initiate my new healthy lifestyle on new year’s eve. So my professional resolution is this – I try to avoid the use of the term ‘Social Media’ once and for all.

I feel kind of estranged nowadays when I stumble upon one of the many, many social media presentations that we keep on quoting over and over again. Or to put it more precise – I get sick of them. I cannot flip through these decks anymore that try to teach the industry about the ethics and mechanisms of Social. I simply think we’re past that point.

2010 has taught me that the focus on customer interactions and conversations simply must be part of any piece of marketing that you come up with. No matter if you are talking about e-retail, a Facebook page or a classic microsite – if you still don’t listen, if you still don’t enable users to share or talk about your brand you will soon have a problem. The crucial element here – to understand the distinction between earned and owned assets. Your client’s Facebook page is NOT earned media. Earned media is what this platform can initiate. But the platform can be a trigger, while brand-user interaction (hopefully) is the result. We simply cannot produce social interaction. But we can lower access barriers, invite and give reasons to interact on our behalf. This is our task. It is not our task to build platforms in the first place.

Doubtlessly the campaign of the year was Wieden’s Old Spice guy. And while I engaged in debates about whether this campaign was a Social Media campaign or not (and whether social media campaigns exist at all), I now have to admit that my position at that time was wrong. The strength of this campaign was that it added a conversational layer to a traditional advertising campaign. It built upon a traditional ad campaign and made it dynamic. But it turned a traditional piece of marketing into something relevant and real time. Something that turned a TV ad into something that was fun to talk about and to share. And that’s what made it both successful and trendsetting.

By now most agencies struggled with integrating traditional and digital marketing concepts. Wieden’s Old Spice campaign may not have been deep-digital. But it tried to bridge the gap between traditional advertising and customer conversations. My respect to the team around W+K’s Ian Tait to bring this risky concept to live.

In 2011 I hope, both digital and traditional agencies are intelligent enough to stop talking about isolated marketing concepts that almost always lack real sustainability. As a customer I want to print ads that makes me want to start a conversation with or about a brand. I want to get invited to an online store through a TV ad and I want to get a discount if I make my friends buy there as well. And here we are not talking about just driving to a campaign site – I think about integrated marketing models that truly deliver added value when it comes to interaction. Value exchange that is. And this is not just an agency challenge.

One of the best articles about this topic comes from my former colleague at Razorfish, Shiv Singh, who is now responsible for digital at Pepsi Co. In his article ‘From the other side‘ he has summarized his experiences as an ex agency guy who is now on the client side. Shiv’s advice to agencies is simple – stop telling your clients stories about how special you are, start understanding and managing the complexity of nowaday’s marketing.

In the digital space, digital agencies don’t like that the fact that they’re at a significant relationship disadvantage. Brands don’t like the fact that they’re sometimes kept at arms length from consumers (agencies and publishers are in the middle). Digital agencies feel traditional agencies don’t get it and traditional agencies can’t understand why brands don’t completely appreciate their digital chops. In a sense, everyone is unhappy. That’s not good. It has to change and probably only will when truly a new form of an agency rises (yes, I know there have been lots of false starts!).

It would be a blessing if the industry began to realize that concept convergence would help all of us – to make marketing more engaging, interesting and fun to interact with. If agencies found a way not just to promote themselves and their isolated view of the world and if marketers finally understood that it is not about communication but about integrated business models. Talking about social media simply bores me to death…

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

April 26th, 2010 • 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.

New Year. What I am going to do by year’s end.

Januar 19th, 2010 • 3 comments Allgemein
Tags: 2010, Ideas

I have to admit, I posted quite a bunch of articles about 2010. And in fact, this is my first one which does actually really take place in my new year.

Since mid-December I was busily engaged in a pitch presentation for my agency. My 2009 christmas did not deserve the name holidays. But since Wednesday things go back to normal. And that’s good. As these are in fact my first couple of (Gerald) days 2010, here go my more or less professional new year’s resolutions:

• Stop smoking (yeah, I know)
• Get rid of 30% of the feeds I subscribed to
• Use the time before the bus arrives to stare at people instead of my iPhone
• Throw away the word social media, finally integrate it into digital strategy
• Keep on keeping away from quoting pseudo-critical prosaicness by digital juggernauts
• Use digital magic more often for political purposes which I support
• Draw at least three pseudointellectual diagrams which explain everything and get at least 5K retweets each
• Invent one huge viral hoax which does not harm anybody
• Convince a lifestyle brand that neither clubs nor partys nor DJs nor nighlife will differentiate them
• Still not pay a dime for this hot new Apple product simply because it’s by Apple

Oh, and of course I would like to tripple my average readers by year’s end. But as I am simultaneously trying to tripple my engagement in sport as well as quality time with friends I should stay a little bit realistic. Anybody got a cigarette?

2010. The year of realistic self-assessment.

Januar 5th, 2010 • 1 comment Allgemein
Tags: 2010, Business, Future, predictions, Trends, World

2010. Another year which will be the year of mobile, of social media ROI, social media CRM , social TV, social commerce, the year of tablets and a lot of other technologies my sister or my dad don’t know anything about. In fact, I believe if it will be the year of anything special at all then it will be another year of failed prophecies.

No doubt, the advance of smartphones and the invention of mobile apps paves the way for the use of the mobile web. The progress made in social technologies opens new possibilities to explore new services in this sector. And hey, that’s great. But let’s please do one thing in 2010: Let’s turn it into the year of realism.

Just because we are in control of the air superiority in our self-invented communities, does not mean it’s relevant for anybody else than the usual suspects. Yes, I love Foursquare. But in my hometown Frankfurt maybe 200 players have registered…in a city of 600K. That’s not exactly what I call reach. Plus, the realities in the use of digital technologies vary to enormous degree even among the U.S., Japan and Europe…and we are not even talking about the 75% which we call ‘the rest of the world’ (like India and stuff).

If I have one professional wish for 2010 it is this. Keep on playing, keep on dreaming…but stop using superlatives when ever you like a certain smartphone or social service. One of the happiest tech moments in my life was when my family had a Skype video call with my step brother’s family in Australia during christmas. They waved, they laughed and they were happy to see each other over such a big distance. And hey, that’s cool, isn’t it? When I saw this scenery, I had the feeling that this (almost old-school piece of tech) had a sense – it simply made people smile and connect – in a very simple way. What a great invention: Skype.

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