Posts Tagged ‘Germany’
Audi’s Green Police. Didn’t They say Hitler?
Januar 30th, 2010 • Comments Ads, Brands
Tags: Ads, Audi, Brands, Fail, Germany, Ideas, Philosophy, PR, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy
Let’s start an intellectual experiment.
Think about e.g. an ex-spouse in your life and now think about any object in your appartment. Can you associate it with him or her somehow? You probably can. Take the old vase in your living room and you will probably find a connection to your ex who loved flowers so much. Most likely you will be able to link the TV set to her preferences for ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and so on…But why should you do that? Especially since you will be able to link pretty much anything to pretty much anything after thinking about it for a while. Plus, simply put, while you actually might not want to think about your ex-spouse anymore at all?
Well, that’s what self-proclaimed guardians of Political Correctness do on the web 24/7. They love to think about all kinds of connections because there is not one thing which makes them as happy as making up a good old PR disaster.
One information in advance: I am German and I work for a digital agency with Audi International on the client list (not PR, not Audi USA). This is just accidental and not the rationale behind this article. I am professionally not at all engaged in any Audi project even though I like the cars. I simply react on this article by Danny Brown, entitled “Audi and the Super Bowl Social Media Shit Storm“. This is the story: In an attempt to spearhead a social media intiative, Audi USA (keep that in mind, it is important) had invented the so-called ‘Green Police’. It comes with a Super-Bowl ad, a Youtube channel and the inevitable twitter account. This is the more or less entertaining ad:
Did you realize it? No? Audi has just committed a major act of Political Incorrectness, according to Danny.
Foursquare. Seven days in Frankfurt.
November 27th, 2009 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Android, Apps, Cool, Foursquare, Germany, Gowalla, GPS, Ideas, iPhone, Local, Location, Mobile, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Tool
Today’s topic may not be completely new for my American readers but probably for some of those from Germany. On November 19th the third wave of cities for Foursquare has launched. Among them now my hometown Frankfurt in Germany as well as about 50 new cities worldwide. It’s been around in a lot of bigger cities for quite some time. In Germany it’s now live in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Frankfurt. Zurich and Vienna are Foursquare cities in Switzerland and Austria.
So what is Foursquare? Basically it’s a local location based social network (I will use this word in the presence of my granny in the next couple of days). That means: You download a client to your iPhone or Android phone, connect with some friends and start your day in the city.
The big difference to…let’s say Facebook…is, it only works in specific cities (well…yet) and it’s all about exploring and recommending locations and events. Let’s say for example, you know this fantastic little bar around the corner and you think the White Russian there deserves a little more attention – then you simply locate your favourite nightly hangout via GPS (or start a new venue) and leave a shout to all other Foursquare users in the area to make them try the White Russian here.
Private Social Networks. A brief overview of the German situation.
November 24th, 2009 • Comments Social, Trends
Tags: Business, Future, Germany, Media, Predicitions, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends, World
This little overview about the status of Germany’s private social networks is a Point of View which me and Johannes Kleske were working on for our employer Neue Digitale / Razorfish. It is not an empirical study. It describes a rough status quo in a highly dynamic environment with just few reliable figures. Please understand it as a brief paper which tries to picture the current situation in the extremly unique and difficult market Germany. But it is also a paper which enables us to give a clear recommendation on which platforms are hot or not in our home country.
Germany was always tough terrain for social networks. According to a recent Forrester report on social network use in Europe, “Online Germans remain the hardest to engage with social media“. In terms of total membership, choice of service, international connectivity, etc Germany always lagged behind. There are several possible reasons for this effect: One of them may be a deep traditional concern about privacy issues. Germans tend to believe their personal data might be misused and are skeptical about institutions securing their data properly. Language barriers (in comparison to UK, US) and a slight skepticism towards new, individualized technology may contribute to the current situation.
Germany. Why this country really sucks once in a while.
November 18th, 2009 • Comments Social
Tags: Germany, HR, Rant, Recruiting
It’s never been easy to be German. Four months ago I published a post about why Germany struggles with Web 2.0 with exactly the same words. My thesis then was the same thesis today: Germans love to be whiny, are risk-averse and love big institutions which half-heartedly manage their personal responsibilites. Germans simply don’t like to be individually creative so much. We like to talk about it, but at the end of the day entrepreneurship isn’t our kind of thing. Big media corporations, the state or labour unions will do the job…they always did. And no, that German idea of lifestyle does not fit well with our decentralized concept of a digital world.
The reason for this quick rant is a report which I have watched on German TV yesterday. I don’t really watch TV too often, but I like Political reports. Yesterday’s report was, again, about Social Networking in Germany. We have two big state sponsored media institutions, ARD and ZDF, bound to deliver high-quality political and historical content dedicated to make us smart enough that we’re not becoming Nazis again. That works more or less. Unfortunately these channels seem to be run by editors who either don’t understand or don’t want to focus on the many positive aspects of the social web. The key message of most German TV reports about the social web is about
Heaven or Hell. That’s where you go when you live in Germany.
Oktober 21st, 2009 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Agencies, Funny, Germany, Leo Burnett, Study
It may be a little bit off topic but I found this experimental research pretty funny. My friends from Leo Burnett Frankfurt have tried to find out in which part of Germany you are most likely to go to hell. They tried to combine research data from institutions such as the Federal Police on theft and violent crimes in Germany and combined it with the concept which we call “The 7 deadly Sins”.
Red = Going to hell!
Yellow = Purgatory (Fegefeuer) at least!
Gray = Not sinning, but also not being angelic!
Green = Angelic behavior = Going to heaven!
It may look ugly and it’s not completely representative but it’s funny as hell.
Germany. Our Social Web visualized.
September 21st, 2009 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Conversation, Cool, Creativity, Diagram, Germany, Internet, Prism, Social Influence Marketing, visual, World
Germany’s a little bit different. And the German Web 2.0 is even more different. We’re pretty much the Galapagos Islands of the Internet. Thanks to ethority we have now a German version of the famous Conversation Prism by Brian Solis. Fresh input for social media Powerpoint slides in good old Krautonia. 
Check it out in its full beauty on ethority’s blog.
Germany. Why we struggle with 2.0.
Juli 25th, 2009 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Brands, Burda, Business, Germany, Media, Philosophy, Strategy, Vodafone, World
It’s never been easy to be German. Who would think that the people who were among the first to invent big machinery of any kind and…well…the Blitzkrieg (one more idea which doesn’t make it exactly easy to be German) might have certain issues with their ability to lead in innovation nowadays? But in fact we are stressed. Simply because we’re a bit slow. Why?
Because 19th century heavy machinery world was our kind of planet, the social web isn’t…Social Influence Marketing redefines pretty much everything. It redefines how brands relate to their consumers, what agencies have to deliver and it redefines how products become products. But this isn’t exactly a German sphere. It’s too fast for us, too beta…too non-institutional.
Germany – An Internet Tale
A couple of weeks ago, readwriteweb published an article entitled:
‘Social Media in Germany: 5 Years Behind – Still Lots to Learn‘. This article revolved around the status of the social sphere in Germany. Marcel Weiß, editor of the German blog netzwertig.com gets quoted:
Germany is at least five years behind the U.S. when it comes to social media and its adoption by a larger part of society. Blogs are still considered to be suspect by a large part of the German public and have very little influence, and social news sites and aggregators attract very little attention. With regards to Germany’s Internet startup scene, Weiß argues that, with very few exceptions, most companies are also years behind the U.S. and just aren’t innovative enough to compete.
Personally I don’t think we’re that far behind. But when it comes to Social Influence Marketing it’s at least 2-3 years. Germany is a rather corporatist state, which means:
We believe in a strong state run by parties, social welfare, car manufacturers and a more or less fixed order in which everyone and everything has its special place. Sounds 16th century? Well sometimes it is. The German spirit seems stressed with the liberal intention behind Web 2.0. No one there to tell us how the world’s supposed to be. No institutions. Just us and our personal creativity. And this difference between our ideal and the world’s reality makes us rather slow. We’re unsure how to behave in this individualistic world anymore. A world in which no overall truth seems to be right anymore. And this is why we don’t move at all.
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