OMFG. Brands and Social Media in China.

August 11th, 2010 • View 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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Case Study. Old Spice Guy flexes his Muscles.

August 5th, 2010 • View Comments Ads, Strategy, We like
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Ads, Agencies, Brands, Case Study, Creativity, Funny, Ideas, Old Spice, Presentation, Social Influence Marketing, Truth, We like, wieden & kennedy

Yes, we all love Old Spice now. No, it was not at all unsuccessful. In fact Wieden + Kennedy did not only stage a highly entertaining stunt with ‘the man your man could smell like’ – obviously it had exactly the effect a great campaign is supposed to have. It sold stuff.

I admit, ad agency case studies should always be watched with a certain skepticism. But hey, the best social media first ad campaign of the 21st century rocks big time (via adweek).

Study. The 8 success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing.

Juli 28th, 2010 • View Comments Reports, Social, Strategy
Tags: Altimeter, Best Practice, Brands, Cases, Facebook, Reports, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy

Altimeter Group has just staged a new report that wants to define ‘The 8 success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing‘. Seriously – the report is not a revolution. Nevertheless it works with quite an interesting empirical model. And I like the conclusion and case studies in the end.

The report ‘gleaned input from 34 vendors, agencies, and experts, to determine success criteria and develop a roadmap for Facebook page best practices‘. And about half of the reviewed brands did not do too well in activating full scale Word of Mouth. Take a look at Altimeter’s report. I am happy to hear what you pull out of it.

Social Monitoring. Sorry, we do only speak English.

Juli 26th, 2010 • View Comments Social, Tools
Tags: Analytics, Business, Monitoring, Radian 6, Semantic, Social Influence Marketing, Tools, Truth, World

The other week I attended a presentation by a major social analytics vendor from the U.S. If you have ever attended a telephone presentation of one of the many social-related tools you know how shiny and well applicable these tools seem to be when they get presented to you.

During the presentation the sales representative highlighted how easy and simple it is for his tool to identify and validate social leads according to the brand’s needs. I asked how the tool does it. He pointed at the tool’s sophisticated semantical algorithms. I answered ‘Fine, so it’s only applicable in the U.S., right?’ I am German, working in a Canadian agency in the Netherlands. This tool does only speak English. It is neither prepared to cluster German, Dutch, Italian, Polish nor French conversations. He replied ‘Well, that’s the problem with any analytics tool’.

I think that’s kind of funny. Among the hundreds of social media monitoring solutions there is almost none which is polylingual. Rather simple solutions such as Viralheat or Radian 6 are able to add transparency based on keywords. But mostly every ‘semantic’ tool does fail once we are talking about all non-English places on earth. And there are countries which are not the U.S. – I am quite convinced of that.

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Bad News. Nobody is interested in your Social Platforms.

Juni 23rd, 2010 • View Comments 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.

Roger Wilco. The Tenets of Digital Strategy.

Juni 10th, 2010 • View Comments Strategy
Tags: Diagram, Ideas, Philosophy, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Truth, We like, World

After trying to define the difference between traditional and digital strategy (if there is any) I still have no perfect answer. This sketch by Mike takes us at least one step closer to a solution of the problem.

Thanks to Mike Arauz, Via We are Social.

Update. The ‘Social Media Revolution’ Strikes Back.

Mai 9th, 2010 • View Comments Social, Social Business, Trends
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Diagram, diagrams, Figures, Funny, Future, Media, Prediction, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Trends, visual, World

I love good info visualizations. But I hate social media info graphics. There are just too many of it. Nevertheless I like this little movie. It is called “Social Media Revolution 2″ and it is an update to its very successful predecessor which flooded twitter half a year ago. Now with updated statistics and images. Created by author Erik Qualman and based on the #1 Best Selling book Socialnomics. Enjoy.

Facebook. Killing them not so softly.

April 9th, 2010 • View Comments Social
Tags: Business, Diagram, Facebook, Future, Prediction, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends, World

Just a quick one. It’s absolutely no secret that Facebook is turning into the No 1 platform for interaction worldwide. But it is more than that. Facebook literally kills its competitors. This is Businessinsider’s Chart of the Day based on fresh comscore figures. And it is pretty obvious what is happening here…

Agencies. Thank God It’s Doomsday.

März 23rd, 2010 • View Comments Business, Trends
Tags: Ads, Agencies, Business, Funny, Future, Ideas, Philosophy, Prediction, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends, World

Nowaday’s challenges for ad agencies worldwide are closely connected with a grown up customer. Personally I am not a fan of agency bashing. I am convinced most agencies are not well prepared for today’s world. But I think most of them will reinvent themselves.

Nevertheless I found this little clip remarkable. It tells a good story as starting point to stress today’s Ad Agency’s Public Enemy #1 – substantial Change. It was produced for FITC, Toronto, a digital tech & storytelling conference. I want to go there – unfortunately I won’t be able to .

>Via Fischmarkt

Social Media. How we forgot about Fun.

März 13th, 2010 • View Comments Allgemein, Social
Tags: Creativity, Experiments, Facebook, Fun, Funny, Ideas, Social Influence Marketing

Everybody who works in digital marketing, especially in social, talks about fast little concepts. My team likes to call this ‘speedboat strategies’. And it’s based on the concept of unconventional or adaptive marketing – launch many cheap, engaging ideas and kill the ones which don’t work. Play with the ones which are fast enough and make them better. That’s basically the broad marketing approach for a time which does not believe in big ass TV commercials anymore.

Social Influence Marketing plays an important role here. Not understood as execution of tools but as the brand’s reaction to a user who acts and reacts 24/7. And in fact it’s not strategy creation in the first place that challenges us. It is its execution. Social effects cannot be properly planned. They can be initiated, they can be encouraged…but they cannot be put in conventional marketing plans and KPI’s. It’s dynamic, that’s the good and the bad thing about it.

But let’s be honest. There is one thing called strategy. And then there is another thing called Fun. I love to talk to clients how they might be able to open up one day, what they might be able to gain, etc. But just starting a social process and watching people have fun with it, is just glorious. This week I started two of these processes. And both were cool.

• Facebook Fanpage 1: Keine Sonderbriefmarke für Dr. Helmut Kohl (“A special stamp for Helmut Kohl”) – Yes, that’s a weird one. A colleague of mine got a Friend Request you get by one of these guys from first grade on Facebook. He accepted and got an invitation 5 minutes later to a public pledge to the German Parliament to print a special stamp for our former chancellor Helmut Kohl. This bizarre movement even made it to Facebook and Youtube in order to recruit 50,000 people signing up for this pledge (to make the parliament start the process). Personally I don’t like Helmut Kohl. But what’s even more important is, that there are unresolved claims of corruption and a very arrogant old chancellor who still believes he has unified Germany on his own. That’s why I started the Fanpage “No stamp for Helmut Kohl” with 340 Fans in 2 days and it is still growing. Not big but funny.

• Facebook Fanpage 2: Postfits. Two colleagues of mine had a good idea yesterday. They took Post-It notes, drew something on it and attached them to their heads. The result – they looked like Pirates, Piggies or whatever. Simple and stupid fun. So we created Postfits (Post-It + Outfit = Postfit) and asked for user pics. Just for the kicks of it. By now we have had a lot of fun, a lot of cool pics by many people and 200 Fans in 24 hours (and all of them had a good laugh). Check out Postfits here and join the party.

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