Morgan Stanley. State of the Web 2010.

November 18th, 2010 • Reports
Tags: Business, Lifestyle, Mobile, Prediction, Presentation, Reports, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Tools, Trends, Truth, World

Every year anew Morgan Stanley’s state of the web presentations provide a lot of food for new thoughts in digital marketing. You can find the deck below. And I guess you’ll also be amazed by the dynamics that are reshaping our world. (via BBH)

Funny Crap? How things go Nuclear on the Web.

November 10th, 2010 • People
Tags: Funny, People, Philosophy, Social, Social Networking, Truth, Viral, World

The mysterious code how things go ‘viral’ is not going to be discovered…ever still uncracked. Amplifiers such as 4Chan, Reddit or Boing Boing may not really have a marketing value when it comes to viral effects but they promote a lot of funny crap. Do follow the story of how one piece of funny crap becomes even bigger funny crap. Presented by Tom Scott as part of Ignite London‘s Pechakucha-style presentations. Or isn’t it funny at all? Isn’t it actually pretty insane? The lines are blurry.

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.

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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Update. The ‘Social Media Revolution’ Strikes Back.

Mai 9th, 2010 • 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.

Social Currency. Where Brands meet Dynamic Context.

Mai 2nd, 2010 • 1 comment Brands, Social, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Brands, Business, Report, Reports, Research, Social, Social Business Design, Social Currency, Strategy, Study, Trends, Vivaldi, World

One of the really good studies about brands and their social environments has just been published jointly by NYC think tank Vivaldi Partners and Professor Johann Füller (University Innsbruck) in cooperation with Lightspeed Research.

The report ‘Social Currency’ asks what a brand’s social currency is, and what it takes to build and nurture it. And, the report indeed brings a couple of crucial things across – it defines the buzzy term Social Currency and attributes success metrics for brands here.

Defining Social Currency

So what is Social Currency and why is it important? From the report’s perspective it is the contextual sum of experiences users can have in relation and interaction with a brand. And a brand’s social currency is bound to a dynamic process that we call reality.

Social Currency is the extent to which people share the brand or information about the brand as part of their everyday social life at home or at work. (…) It is neither a product feature, nor a communications or PR campaign that is completely managed by any one company. From this perspective, social currency is a far more delicate asset to build, nurture and maintain than is brand equity.

Social currency represents a shared asset of consumers and company-owned brands. It originates from interaction between customers and consumers. And it is the material a brand’s success will be fundamentally influenced by…

1. Across categories and brands, 53% of consumers’ brand loyalty can be explained by social currency
2. Users of brands with high social currency show a significantly higher willingness to pay a price premium (correlation=0.73)

The study’s explanatory strength does not only lie in these results – it is remarkable as it tries to define what social currency is made of. Since the research assumes that social currency is crucial for brands to create customer loyalty it consequently also reveals its components. No, a brand does not necessarily have to access all levers – this varies in regard to which industry and brand is involved…

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Facebook. Killing them not so softly.

April 9th, 2010 • 1 comment 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…

My Perspective. The New Rules of Relationship Management.

März 7th, 2010 • 2 comments Allgemein
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Altimeter, Brands, Business, Monitoring, Reports, Social, Social Business Design, Social CRM, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Tools, World

Altimeter Group has just published its new report entitled ‘Social CRM. The New Rules of Relationship Management.’ It assumes that companies are simply overwhelmed with social interactions. They need tools, but they need tools to deliver on certain, clearly defined objectives. This report tries to give an overview on the tech-related maturity of SCRM tools and their relation to company objectives. Most of you will find it f*****ing boring. I don’t.

About half a year ago I posted an article entitled ‘Social CRM. Ready for action?‘. I tried to give a rough overview on the relevance of a new approach to brand-customer-relations in an era shaped by interactions among users via social software.

Of course I am not the first one to reflect the outcome of a world gone social for CRM. People like Esteban Kolsky (read his articles ‘The Roadmap to SCRM‘), Wim Rampen, and a few more CRM guys try to define the role of SCRM for today’s marketing. And now there is a new report by Altimeter’s notorious Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang – Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management.

What’s it SCRM?

Social CRM extends the classic definition of Customer Relationship Management. According to Paul Greenberg…

CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.

SCRM accepts the fact that there are millions of people virtually interacting . They are chatting about your brand, recommending your sneakers, or rate your restaurant online. This is where SCRM starts off…

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Social Networks. Age is definitely more than just a number.

Februar 28th, 2010 • Reports, Social
Tags: age, Cool, Diagram, pingdom, Presentation, Reports, Social, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends, visual, World

First of all follow Pingdom on twitter. Seriously.

Secondly, it is not common for me to quote the research results of one thinktank for the second time in two days. Here I will make an exception. Simply because Pingdom respects the golden rule of being quoted on the social webs in perfect harmony with the four key elements of social nerd buzz:

• do the research/poll/well argumented guess about Planet Earth
• follow up with number crunching (if there are numbers)
• draw a great looking diagram
• tweet the hell out of it

Today we talk about age distribution and social networks. It’s neither a secret nor surprising that there is an age gap between LinkedIn and Twitter. But as long as you don’t nail down this fact into a diagram you don’t make a point on the intertubes. Right? Right.

Here we go…

Fact: Age distribution in social networks varies among social networks

High five! We are number one. If you are a 36 year old tech savvy, male, digital nerd the following diagram enlightens you with one key information – you will meet the ones you like (and who are like you) over and over again. Your mom probably isn’t yet a registered member of Facebook and your teenage cousin probably isn’t as well. But be prepared for the next generation to be 150% part of the game. Unfortunately they are not really relevant yet marketing wise (but they will follow….muahahahahahahahahahahahaha).

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Making it Move. How Content gets Social.

Februar 25th, 2010 • 1 comment Social
Tags: Content, Diagram, Process, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, visual

The following diagram may look a little confusing in the first place. And it does not even answer most questions you might have. But it’s a good overview about one of many different social media processes (if done correctly). Unfortunately the figures in this diagram are without connection to a certain project. I simply found no additional information added to the visualization by its creators Social Reflexion. Anyway it’s a good overview about a huge archetypical (U.S.) social seeding process.