How True. It’s not about Digital, Stupid.

März 7th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Philosophy, Prediction, Trends, Truth, World

I found this convincing mission statement by Sidekick Studios UK on Neil Perkin’s (fantastic) blog. It’s just a well written piece of PR for a digital conference in the first place. But it is so right.

Survey. One in five U.S. Marketing Dollars will be social by 2015.

März 3rd, 2010 • Comments Business
Tags: Business, emarketer, Future, Prediction, Report, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Survey, Trends, World

If there is one survey result connected to social media which really surprised me, it is this. According to emarketer and a survey by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA), almost 18% of all marketing dollars will be parked in social media activities by 2015. This is one fifth of every U.S. all budgets  - not just digital or PR. Yes – wow!

Let’s call it reality. Why agencies will pretty likely stick around.

Februar 8th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Agencies, Brands, Business, Debate, Experimental, Future, Prediction, Strategy, Trends

Bud Caddell from NYC’s Undercurrent has published a great rant about the question on how the agency of the future looks like. As usual it is a great text to read but it ends with a plea to share our opinion. And that is what I do now.

Hi Bud.

I would like to share my opinion with you and I appreciate the time and effort it took to write such a long article about the agency of the future. First up, it’s a good perspective to start a discussion. But before we talk about the question what the agency of the future might look like, let’s begin with the essential question what an agency actually is. At this point we encounter the first logical problem. You won’t find a global definition of “Agency” on Wikipedia. But you will find a definition of “Advertising agency”.

An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients.

If you scroll down a little bit further you will find the chapter “Types of advertising agencies”. It separates different types of agencies – such as Inhouse, Interactive, Search Engine etc.

Simply stunning!!! This little chapter alone demonstrates the disadvantage of 99% of the world’s agency models. It is not at all focused on the core business needs of their clients but on the output the agency founder once planned to generate – SEO, Social…you name it. But do we still have a clear understanding about what we are supposed to produce? In a small poll on my blog last week I asked if there is still such a big line between traditional and new jobs in the industry. The answers ranged from ‘Absolutely. Traditional agencies haven’t got anything to do with digital ones’ to ‘Not at all. The future model is integrated’. Or, to put it another way, there is no average ad guy who has got a precise understanding about what he is supposed to produce anymore. Pure confusion, no matter where you look.

The problem

Agencies are just normal companies in the first place. And then there was the web, this fantastic engine that made all these fantastic concepts of crowdsourced products, E-Learning, brand fandom and LOLcats possible. But, the web is half as old as I am. And 7% as old as the Top 3 ad networks nowadays. Companies such as Ogilvy, JWT, or McCann have been around for decades. They produced innovation at a certain point in time. But unfortunately they cannibalized their own concept. Customers drowned in messages and meaningless awareness campaigns while more and more products hit the markets.

It may sound a little bit cheesy, but my dad told me about his childhood days in Germany last weekend. There was not too much choice when you were a kid in Frankfurt in 1960 – there were only a handful of products, few toys and most of the time you played soccer outside with your friends. According to a study from earlier this month modern kids spend enough time with screens of all kinds to make it a full-time job – 53 hours per week!

What I say is, the crisis of the agency business is the crisis of our society. We just have anything we could dream of. And it’s not a question of traditional versus ‘new’ agencies. It’s not a question whether I drown in traditional or digital messages. It’s just a problem that we possess anything and nothing seems special enough to us anymore. We are not not thrilled by brand campaigns anymore. We aren’t thrilled by anything anymore. We just struggle to stay alive in a sea of stuff.

Read more »

Apps. An Explosion is underway.

Februar 2nd, 2010 • Comments Mobile
Tags: Android, Apps, Business, Diagram, iPhone, Lifestyle, Mobile, Prediction, Smartphones, Strategy, Trends, visual, World

Ooooh! Aaaaaah! 2010 is the year of the mobile, social, social CRM, IPTV App. No matter how realistic that is, check out this lovely piece of info visualization from the Fast company. Because according to Gartner an app explosion is underway. A developement which is closely intertwined with smartphone sales. Word up!

Civilization. The evolution goes on.

Januar 24th, 2010 • Comments Games
Tags: Brands, Business, Civilization, Cool, Creativity, Future, Games, Gaming, Prediction, Social Gaming, Strategy

One of the most succesful computer games ever is about to reinvent itself completely. Sid Meier’s civilization is not only a brilliant computer game, it is also very flexible as it has found the way to consoles, iPhones and soon to Facebook. This is more than just an adaption. CIV is a highly complex strategy game, not necessarily dedicated to be played with simple interfaces. But it mastered this challenge and might soon redefine social gaming – in an unpredicted evolution in UX, marketing and gameplay.

I love Civilization. Chances are high that you played it. It can easily be labeled as one of the most addicitive pieces of entertainment ever. The rules:  you become the leader of a primitive tribe on a fictional continent (or real scenarios). Your job is to make this tribe flourish and to turn it from cavemen in 4000 B.C. into an advanced civilization ready for space conquest.

CIV has a 12% share of my teenage days as it made me play for days. Once you have built the Pyramids or declared War on this other tribe you could not stop anymore. And…the simple gaming principle did not rely on superior visual effects but on an outstanding and highly intelligent game. No two Civ matches were the same as the complex combination of environment, your people’s properties and your neighbours mixed up to a time-eating complex which you simply wanted to be the best in.

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2010. What’s going to happen in 140 characters or less.

Dezember 23rd, 2009 • Comments Business, Reports, Strategy, Twitter
Tags: Brands, Business, Cool, Diagram, Experimental, Ideas, Prediction, Presentation, Reports, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends, Truth, Twitter, World

As the year ends it’s time to think of the next big…year. 2010 is coming closer and while the Mayan Calendar seems to save us from the rapture for two more years, it is still time to think about next year’s trends. Okay…we get drown in trend predictions lately, but I liked this one – Trendspotting’s third annual prediction report following major trends in six categories. This time with trend predictions by the industry’s rock stars in 140 characters or less. Good to go?

Digital Magazines. Another future for print.

Dezember 18th, 2009 • Comments Ideas, Tech
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Prediction, Presentation, Print, Tech, Trends, UX, visual, We like, World

Is print dead? If you read my own headlines you will find out that I am undecided as well. I am sure that the majority of mainstream print media nowadays is doomed. But, I think that some traditional print media products might reinvent themselves. Lately Outsider Magazine and Esquire came up with remarkable experiments in this sector.

Publishing thinktank Bonnier plus its partner Berg London have come up with this cool vision of how magazine UX might evolve. It’s a concept video and does not exist yet. But the concept convincingly uses digital media to create a rich and meaningful experience, while maintaining the relaxed and curated features of printed magazines. It illustrates one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future.

Trends. Most Contagious 2009 is live…and kicking.

Dezember 17th, 2009 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Business, Contagious, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Prediction, Presentation, Reports, Strategy, Trends, visual, We like, World

Contagious Magazine is one of the really good providers of quality content about global trends in marketing (do also check out trendwatching.com and PSFK among zillions of others). Apart from the magazine and DVD, Contagious also provides a pretty cool online resource, weekly newsletter, events & consultancy service, in-depth media reports and intelligence ‘Feeds’ for advertisers and agencies.

Now they have published their annual review for Global trends in Marketing last year, Most Contagious 2009.  It contains quite a pile of more or less known trends from design, technology, and real time media, summarized in a more than nicely designed document. A great compendium of everything that’s dynamic nowadays in our business.

They asked their readers to share the link to the PDF. So here it is – the link to Most Contagious 2009.

SixthSense. Redefining Man-Machine-Interaction.

November 18th, 2009 • Comments Experimental, Tech, Tools
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Gesture, innovation, Interfaces, Interview, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, TED, Touch, Trends, World

The latest series of Ted takes us to India. Pranav Mistry is a student at the notorious innovation factory M.I.T and inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data. In this demo he explains this new type of men-machine interaction – including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all. Fantastic stuff.

Time. Much more than the Present.

November 15th, 2009 • Comments Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Agencies, Bud Caddell, Business, Cool, Creativity, Fast, Future, Philosophy, Prediction, Presentation, Strategy, Time, Trends, Undercurrent, World

Bud CaddelI is a strategist the awesomest strategist ever at Undercurrent NYC and I read his blog for quite some time. This deck by Bud is about time. Basically about the question how we design experiences around how humans perceive time. I am not quite sure if you gave an answer to this question, Bud, but I love the way you tell your story (especially the Austronaut Allen part). By the way, I found this deck on Griffin Farley’s blog which I hereby recommend to my readers as well.