Oh Boy. I think Social Just Ate Itself.

Oktober 19th, 2010 • Allgemein
Tags: Lifestyle, Prediction, Trends, Truth, TV, visual, World

Sometimes I find digital marketing quite funny. No matter how much you talk about a world of free conversation, open brands etc – I am under the impression we are getting back to a more traditional usage of digital media. Lean back that is.

• The success of Apple’s iPad – a win for lean back marketing. The thing is not a machine for creators. It’s TV. Read Jeff Jarvis’ rationale to return his iPad.
• According to emarketer brand campaigns and ads generate most Fans on Facebook. Yes, we are talking about banners.
• Even Mashable calls the youtubized Old Spice TV campaign a Social Media campaign. What a surprising definition.
• Apple TV vs google TV. Hey, what’s on TV tonight, darling?

These are only a couple of examples that seem to form a new picture of what’s happening in marketer’s minds. No doubt, Earned Media is stressful, content heavy and soooo very different from what agencies and marketing departments feel comfortable with. But are we slowly getting passive again?

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Bryan Rieger. Rethinking the Mobile Web.

September 20th, 2010 • Mobile, People
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, iPhone, Mobile, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, Tools, Trends, Truth, World

The Mobile Web and our mental picture of it is neither accurate nor inclusive – that’s the conclusion of Bryan Rieger’s great deck ‘Rethinking the Mobile Web’. Bryan is owner of the small London-based mobile consultancy Yiibu and obviously a very smart guy.

Interface Design. A Day in 2014.

September 6th, 2010 • 5 comments Tech, Tools
Tags: Case Study, Cool, Creativity, Design, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Interfaces, Media, Mobile, Prediction, Presentation, Study, Tech, Tools, Touch, Usability, UX, visual, World

We all love interface design studies, don’t we? Notorious Swedish UX company TAT.SE has conducted an experiment in open innovation of User Interfaces. And the winner is this little case study staging a possible day in 2014. Nice one. I want the mirror (via).

Toxic Avenger. N’importe comment.

August 27th, 2010 • Allgemein
Tags: Music, Prediction, Social, Tech, Trends, visual, World

Toxic Avenger‘s new video ‘N’importe comment’ carries the social graph to the extreme. It’s an almost scary vision what you can see in the video below…but I think we are not so far away from it. Thanks to thestrategyweb for the video.

HTML5. A Great Intro to What is New.

August 23rd, 2010 • Tech
Tags: Agencies, Blast Radius, Cool, Development, flash, HTML5, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, Tools, Trends, visual

When you start a new job it is always extremely interesting to find out about your coworkers after a while. Who is this guy across the table actually? And what did he or she do before we actually started collaborating?
One of my new colleagues who really surprised me is Bobby van der Sluis.

Bobby is Technical Experience Director here at Blast Radius, Amsterdam and a veteran of Flash Development. He is author of UFO and co-author of SWFObject 2 (along with a lot of other projects), which are both well-known open source JavaScript libraries for detecting the Adobe Flash Player and embedding Flash content in web pages. In addition to that he does publish articles at A list apart quite often and speaks at conferences. Oooh….and he is also a very nice guy – a fact that should not go unnoticed here as well.

Anyway, last week Bobby held a very insightful presentation about Flash HTML5 and his personal perspectives on its progress. It is interesting to watch Flash veterans such as Bobby to reinvent their job profiles and start developing on a similar  different platform.

Here is Bobby’s presentation. Check out his blog as well and follow him on Slideshare.

OMFG. Brands and Social Media in China.

August 11th, 2010 • 5 comments Brands, Social, Underway
Tags: Brands, Business, China, Prediction, Presentation, Report, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends, Truth, We like, World

Sometimes when you do research on tech adaption worldwide you get the impression it is completely enough to look at figures from the U.S. Take for example the excellent ‘State of the Blogosphere 2009‘ report by technorati. It presents all the charts and diagrams you need if you research statistics on blog usage….but if you dig a little bit deeper you find out that it’s actually nothing but a study about the American blogosphere.

This is particularly interesting if you take a serious look at the figures. China for example has surpassed the U.S. in social media usage last year. According to Netpop almost every Chinese online user is part of a social network. There are three times more bloggers per online user in China compared to the U.S. No major study will explain an average European or American strategist what these people do, what they talk about and how to engage them. By the way, we are talking about 1.6 billion Chinese and billions of Asians that I did not even consider in this calculation.

Check out this deck by Ogilvy One Shanghai (via Giles) about the connected Chinese digital landscape which is absolutely stunning. And afterwards do me a favor and answer one question: Is it actually possible to understand and lead the complexity of this world from a desk in Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam or London and to make the right decisions? How can we build cross cultural knowledge which is so important to get away from our subjective western perspective?

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Creative Briefs. Two Decks on making them evolve.

August 11th, 2010 • 1 comment Jobs, Strategy
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Creative, creative briefs, Ideas, Jobs, Prediction, Presentation, Process, Strategy, Tools, World

As a strategist it is kind of a fixation to think about creative briefs. Creative brief? Yes, a piece paper which traditionally is created by a strategist/client directore to serve as a guideline for the creative process. There are literally hundreds of these templates out there. Some are good and some are bad.

In fact, most creative briefs circulating in agencies nowadays are pretty old school. That’s not surprising. Most agencies are pretty old school in the first place, secondly all too often the briefing context is the key problem and not the template. Finally, the ownership over the document is frequently not shared among the different stakeholders. Stupid process that is.

Jasmin Cheng has pulled together quite a nice deck that collects a lot of thoughts about this problem.

google Me. Or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love Privacy.

Juli 12th, 2010 • Business, Social, Strategy
Tags: Business, Facebook, google, google me, Prediction, Presentation, privacy, Reports, Social Networks, Strategy, World

Most of you may have heard about the so called Facebook killer ‘Google Me‘ that supposedly binds half of google’s resources currently. And as most of you know, google has not exactly been successful with social networking by now. Especially after google Buzz also failed as a platform that is able to compete with Facebook. google knows they need to get their hands on social. Why? Steve Rubel explains it quite well…

google will ‘continue to dominate “pull.” But Facebook will aggregate content, make it social and rule “push.” Using our social circle it will surface content that we care about just when we want it – and allow us to comment on it all. As more people use Facebook to connect, share and create, a network effect takes over – and the system get even smarter.’ And that is exactly what google needs to do to stay alive in the long term.

No matter how successful Facebook is with its social strategy – they need to conquer Planet Push asap or become Facebook’s junior partner. In the middle of all the buzz about google Me we have to read the deck embedded below as a first rationale for google’s new platform – not as the ‘designing social networks’ deck that it wants to be. It was created by one of google’s lead User Experience architects Paul Adams and it criticizes Facebook existing social networks and the way they make people interact with a clear focus on privacy. What a surprise!

Even beyond the google Me hype – definitely a deck worth to take a look at (even though it is looooong).

Big question: Do you think google might make it this time? Do you believe privacy will be an USP strong enough to differentiate google Me from Facebook? Leave a reply.

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Bad News. Nobody is interested in your Social Platforms.

Juni 23rd, 2010 • Social, Strategy, Tools
Tags: Brands, Prediction, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Truth, World

Actually I hate documents about social media. Honestly. I hate these decks almost as much as infographics about social media.

But I have to admit, I started smiling while I read this deck by Bart De Waele. It is not an analysis, it does not stage new insights or come up with a new conclusion to what marketing is all about – it just says what needs to be said. “Nobody is interested in your social stuff, as long as you do not interact constantly, honestly and wholeheartedly. Marketing in the social sphere should not revolve around rollout plans but around conversations.” Period.

Thanks to ‘We are social‘ for sharing it.

PSFK. The Future of Retail.

Juni 3rd, 2010 • Retail, Social Business, Tech, Trends
Tags: Business, Creativity, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Prediction, PSFK, Report, Retail, Social Business Design, Strategy, Trends, World

As the world intertwines the web and reality, retail becomes one of the most crucial sectors to stage new marketing experiences for customers. Notorious PSFK has just staged its deck about ‘The future of Retail‘. The free 80 page analysis highlights how new technologies and senses play a crucial role in shaping shopping experiences. The trends identified within this document and the examples used to bring them to life are inspired by innovation from around the globe. And as usual it comes with a handy guide what is going to be hot in tomorrow’s retail experiences. PSFK, I love your decks.