The Good Life. Or: Why I should have become Lifestyle Blogger.

Oktober 30th, 2011 • 4 comments Brands, Social
Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Brands, Lifestyle, Social Influence Marketing

It is actually a strange thing: while we all watch mainstream communication become democratic we can also witness new types of very marketing-focused relationships as they form. Especially at the intersection of mainstream lifestyle brands and the so-called multipliers: meet the lifestyle bloggers.

No major brand can nowadays live without an elaborated digital PR strategy. The path to successful blogger outreach is not simple. Today’s lifestyle bloggers do not just react on one of your emails. You really have to ask for their participation and offer them something really nice. Something they really, really want to blog about. Otherwise it wouldn’t be earned media, right?

Whudat.de for example is one of my favorite lifestyle blogs in Germany. I like MC Winkel‘s blend of music, art, web finds…and product recommendations. But I also know that lifestyle blogging has become a very convenient method to enjoy a bit more industry attention than Average Joe. Below MC Winkel’s post about his (apparently) great days at the Santorini Grace Hotel we can find a statement: ‘If you also want to get featured in one of Germany’s leading lifestyle blogs feel free to contact me…’

No disrespect. This is just how it works. MC Winkel enjoys Mercedes test-drives in Teneriffa, trips to Australia (sponsored by South Australia’s Tourism Board and Quantas) and does not get tired to comment that

• he is absolutely convinced of this product/car/hotel
• and if you also have a fantastic product/car/hotel you would like to get featured, contact him

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Great Ads. Sony PS3, Long Live Play.

Oktober 6th, 2011 • Ads, Games
Tags: Ads, Agencies, Brands, Cool, Creativity, Funny, Gaming, Ideas, Lifestyle, sony, visual, We like

Some campaigns are different. Sony’s “Long Live Play” PS3 Campaign may be one of them. Playstation brand’s ad agency Deutsch Inc. really did a great job. But just check it out…

Only Today. KLM tweets with a Living Alphabet.

September 20th, 2011 • 4 comments Brands, Twitter
Tags: Brands, Campaign, Cool, Funny, Ideas, KLM, Netherlands, Social Influence Marketing, social network, Twitter, visual

KLM tries hard to become the social web’s favorite attacker brand. After staging a bunch of interesting campaign micro-ideas they launched something more complicated today. As Social Times reported a tweet from KLM earlier today said…

The result: live customer service replies that are shaped by a living alaphabet made up of 140 KLM employees. Yes it is live and it reacts to customer tweets but only today (and only as as reaction to a few selected tweets).

Live Reply tweets are being uploaded to KLM’s Youtube Channel and shared on Twitter. So far they’ve sent video tweets to about ten people, but they’ve still got a lot of hours left in the campaign. The example below is one of them…

The whole campaign is funny but completely useless. Anyway, it’s again a great very short-term promotional stunt to spread the word about KLMs social platforms and to position KLM as a social-media-savvy brand. In this regard: Well done, KLM. I am looking forward to the next useless stunt.

Nintendo. Can you please fucking google it?

August 25th, 2011 • Advice
Tags: Advice, Brands, Funny, Games, Gaming, Nintendo, Service, Wii

So it seems as if Nintendo is not willing to answer certain game related questions at the hotline anymore. A good alternative: google it, you moron.

This is Art. Miracle Whip creates User-Gen Gold.

August 16th, 2011 • 2 comments Brands, Social
Tags: Brands, Competition, Funny, Miracle Whip, Social Media, special, User gen, WTF, youtube

Imagine a Brainstorming session in this media agency that runs the Kraft Food’s Miracle Whip account. So the big idea is defined as ‘Not for every Relationship’. And that’s probably because the TVC has already been shot.
Next somebody yells for Social Media. And here we go with the mother of all social marketing concepts:

Yes, you read correctly: Miracle Whip asks you to upload your video that tells the story how Miracle Whip affected your relationship. And potentially you can win $25,000. I may have cursed about this study a couple of days ago but I have to agree with IBM – Marketer and Consumer cannot possibly be further away from each other than here.

As you can imagine, the videos that were uploaded belong to the finest in User-gen that the world has seen so far.
Check out the following masterpiece (and all the other channel videos as well) and think twice next time if a couple of banners and a microsite wouldn’t have burned the pile of money as well. Check out the videos here.

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google Plus. Now for something completely different: Brands.

Juli 5th, 2011 • 1 comment Brands, Social, Tools
Tags: Brands, Business, Ford, google, google plus, Social, Social Networking, Starbucks, Strategy, Trends

High five Jeff Kwiatek. You asked the right question. But to be honest: Even though I want to be the first agency dude leveraging and embracing the hell out of g+ I still don’t know if it’s worth it. Well who knows?

My guess: Nice platform, it is not Facebook. But it’s a too little too late. And the worst thing: They don’t even offer the right tools to enable brands to give consumers the love that they need. Let me quote Jeff Huber, google’s VP of Local and Commerce (via Mike Blumenthal)

And pre-emptively answering a question — yes, we will have (smb) business profile pages on Google+. I can’t announce a launch date yet, but we want to make them *great*, and we’re coding as fast as we can.

Thanks god a couple of people are a bit more visionary. They know what the consumer wants and that is brands of course. Sean Percival has sketched a concept of how future brand pages might look like (exactly like Facebook but a bit uglier). And indeed one brand has already started to build a presence on google Plus: Ford and Ford Europe. Congratulations Scott Monty. First!

As most of us haven’t even got an invite to g+. And the rest of us still tries to figure out why they would need g+ it is highly speculative to talk about the future of brands there. I wonder what google will come up with to convince brands that building a presence there is a good alternative to Facebook other platforms.

Anyway, I am more than interested which brands are going to start experimenting with g+. If you know of some, please leave a comment.

Genius. Diesel launches Excelbook.

Juni 18th, 2011 • 1 comment Brands, Ideas, We like
Tags: Apps, Brands, Campaign, Cool, Creativity, Diesel, Experimental, Facebook, Fashion, Funny, Ideas, Lifestyle, Media, Tech, Tools, We like

I just stumbled upon this wonderful concept gem: the Diesel Excelbook. Even though its branding value as an application is close to zero it is just one more amendment to the great platform that Diesel created with its Be Stupid philosophy. Simple, fun, stupid…well done Diesel. Check out the video…it is pretty selfexplanatory.

via Digial Buzz Blog

Sweet. Sagres sculptures a Chocolate Website.

Juni 15th, 2011 • Experimental, We like
Tags: Beer, Brands, Cool, Creativity, Design, Funny, Ideas, Interface, Sagres, visual, We like, Website

I am not entirely sure how I should feel about a chocolate-flavored stout. But at least it’s a novelty – both as a product as well as an interactive experience. Portugese brewer Sagres has just launched a website made of real chocolate to promote its new “Sagres preta chocolate”. To make the interactive experience become as choco as possible the whole website was designed and sculptured by chocolatier Victor Nunes before it was photographed to become components for the online venue. (via adweek)

Here is the making of

Here is the beautiful result.

Study. The World’s Top 100 Prestige and Luxury Brands on Facebook.

Juni 9th, 2011 • Brands, Strategy
Tags: Brands, Facebook, List, luxury, prestige, Reports, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Study

Prestige and Luxury brands used to have quite a hard time to deal with this phenomenon called social media. It seemed like a contradiction to what high value brands stood for. Being very exclusive simply did not seem to fit right into this new all connected world in which everyone is included.

Times are a changing and some of the planet’s really iconic (mainstream) brands are amongst the most successful players particularly on Facebook. L2 – a thinktank for luxury brands in New York – along with the guys from Buddy Media just published an extremely interesting piece of research: The L2 Prestige 100®: Facebook IQ measures the aptitude of 100 prestige brands from the Auto, Beauty, Fashion, Watches & Jewelry, and Spirits & Champagnes industries on the world’s fastest growing social media platform.

Key findings are:

• It is still not really about size: many of the brands that have been most effective at acquiring Facebook fans have fallen flat engaging them.
• Push only isn’t cool: Brands which allow their fans to post are more engaged Facebook brands than the 20% which don’t allow it
• Products are winning over promotions: Most engagement rates were achieved through product posts not promotions
• Facebook is still considered as an island: Too few brands integrate the social graph into their digital ecosystem
• F-Commerce? Nah! Only few brands are actively engaged in social commerce on Facebook

In short – if you deal with prestige and or luxury brands on Facebook this is the study to download. Get it here.

Gaming. EA’s Call of Duty Elite explained by TheLegendofKarl.

Juni 3rd, 2011 • Games
Tags: Black Ops, Brands, Cool, Creativity, EA, Funny, Gaming, People, Social Gaming, Social Networks, Strategy, Tech, Tools, We like

For me as a digital market guy the gaming industry is in many ways a blueprint for what is happening later on social networks, mobile phones and on websites. Gamification? I think the concept of social networks itself was invented by the game industry years before anybody ever heard of Facebook. For years many games had more social network elements embedded than many social campaigns today. Do for example check out the new Call of Duty Elite trailer which is all about EAs new multiplayer service. It’s not a campaign, it’s not a mobile app – it’s a pretty comprehensive social product which will now become organic part for some of the most popular entertainment products ever.

Thanks to creativity online for the link.