For a couple of days now, we’ve been hearing rumors that the Yahoo layoffs included the entire Delicious team.  Now Former Yahoo employee and Upcoming founder Andy Baio has tweeted out the above Yahoo! product team meeting slide that seems to show that Yahoo! is either closing or merging the social bookmarking service as well as Upcoming, Fire Eagle, MyBlogLog and others.

I got two problems with this – or to be more precise three. Number one – I got my whole bookmark collection stored on your site. Number two – you don’t communicate. Number 3 – If you do kill delicious you will kill the trust in cloud computing. Storing data in the cloud is a nice idea as long as there is a cloud. If the cloud is gone -> no cloud computing anymore.

Question to my readers – is there a good alternative to delicious? Does Social Bookmarking actually still exist? Or is it something like a 2004 phenomenon? Where will you stuff your bookmarks when delicious is gone?

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Post tags: Brands, Business, cloud computing, delicious, PR, social bookmarking, yahoo

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This is a letter from 1964 written by overjoyed William McFarland, at that time product marketing manager at Campbell’s Soup to the young Andy Warhol. Some complimentary cans of soup soon followed. Two years prior to the letter Warhol had staged 32 of his now world famous Campbell Soup Can pictures.

Ah…multiplier outreach. You gotta love it. And as a letter almost as good as Mick Jagger’s letter to Andy Warhol five years later.

(thanks to A letter of note)

© Gerald for davaidavai.com, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Art, Cool, Funny, history, PR, World

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A week later I decided to really sign up for the waiting list via T-Mobile’s website in the Netherlands. I chose the desired model, click ‘bestellen’ (order) – and this is the result.

T-Mobile + Apple – wow, I am impressed. Well, in T-Mobile’s case I am at least happy they manage to keep up a consistent brand image no matter where you go.

© Gerald for davaidavai.com, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, Brands, disaster, iPhone, Iphone4, Mobile, Netherlands, PR

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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.

(...)
Read the rest of Audi’s Green Police. Didn’t They say Hitler? (819 words)

© fb610548435 for davaidavai.com, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ads, Audi, Brands, Fail, Germany, Ideas, Philosophy, PR, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy

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Lately (I have to admit) I more and more get sick of the keepers of the holy grail of Political Correctness whenever a brand launches some kind of ironical, stereotype-laden communication tool in the social space. But wait, it’s not that simple! Actually I am more hacked off by brands who bow down to these people and beg for forgiveness whenever a group of these people start mocking around on twitter.

Pepsi and the score advisor app
Probably you have heard about the so-called Pepsi AMP fail. Early in October Pepsi has launched an iPhone application for its AMP range of energy drinks. The idea of the app is simple and (more or less) funny. After downloading the tool the user may choose between 24 different stereotypical female characters, ranging from “athlete” to “cougar” to “punk girl”. The app will then support your nightly challenge at the bar with helpful tips, pickup lines and conversation snippets to spice up your ‘pre score’ conversation with the respective woman of your choice.

(...)
Read the rest of Dear Brands. Please learn to say I am not sorry. (648 words)

© fb610548435 for davaidavai.com, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ads, Brands, Fail, Ideas, Motrin, Pepsi, pepsifail, PR, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, World

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