Posts Tagged ‘Strategy’
Man-Machine Interfaces. Learning From the Death of Air France 447.
Mai 10th, 2012 • Tech, Tools
Tags: Air France, Design, Flying, Interfaces, Planes, Strategy, Tech, Tools, UI, UX, World
I don’t like to fly. Being constantly quite anxious in planes I once started to try to understand plane crashes. The objective: to get to the roots of my fear. I was particularly moved by and interested in the horrific crash of Air France 447 in 2009 that cost 228 people’s lifes.
After recovering the lost flight recorder after months of desperate search from the depths of the Atlantic one thing became terribly clear: the series of flaws, mistakes, and misconceptions that lead to the disaster were connected (among other things) with the user interface design of the super modern Airbus Airbus A330-200.
At heart, the problem was one of feedback. In a world of flight dominated by computers, Airbus designs its planes with less tactile response (in the name of pilot comfort) and less potentially overwhelming information (in the name of clearer pilot decisions). In the case of Flight 447, some of the plane’s ducts froze up, removing the information of airspeed, and forcing the plane out of autopilot. In response, a pilot named Bonin pulled up on his stick, gaining a bit of altitude to, presumably, safely keep the plane in the sky. (via)
He didn’t.
The story of this fatal flight should make anyone interested in user interface design think.
Time to share four recent links on this topic – one of them is actually an interview with a friend of mine who is a pilot himself.
- Fastcodesign: How lousy cockpit design crashed an Airbus killing 228 people
- davaidavai.com: Hooked. Alex Wipf and his theory of flight.
- Worldhum: Malcolm Gladwell on Aviation Safety and Security
Just another chapter in the neverending story of how we expect technology to be fail-proof. Most of the time it is. Up to the point where technology and humans interact. Titanic anyone?
My Column. Now also featured in Adformatie.
April 27th, 2012 • News
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, adformatie, Amsterdam, Amsterdam Ad Blog, Column, Creativity, Listening, PR, Real time, Strategy
I am actually not a big fan of personal PR news flicks on my blog. But I was a bit proud of this one I have to admit: Adformatie – the biggest marketing/advertising/whatever magazine of the Netherlands has just published my column for Amsterdam Ad Blog for the first time.
It is just a short text and certainly not the reinvention of marketing. But hey: I am in adformatie. Thanks Amsterdam Ad Blog for the cooperation. Thanks Rindert for the scan.
My Column for Amsterdam Ad Blog: Strategy and Creatives still don’t listen – but they should.
April 12th, 2012 • 1 comment Columns, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Amsterdam Ad Blog, Column, Creativity, Listening, Real time, Strategy
Every now and then I have the pleasure (or the duty) to write my column for Amsterdam Ad Blog. If you don’t know it: The platform is one of the best sources for anything marketing-related in Amsterdam. And the guys published my comment on why strategists and creatives should start listening more yesterday here. This is the article:
There is not one article on adaptive digital marketing that doesn’t start by saying that we need to listen to the consumer. If the industry only did!
Social media has generated an important technological opportunity for marketers – as billions of people worldwide constantly interact via social networks we have the great oppor
tunity to learn what they find relevant and what not. With tools like Radian 6, Viralheat, Lithium or Alterian we could exactly know what people share on Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus. But there’s still a great amount of brands that don’t like to listen.
In Spring 2011 60% of all CMO’s in a global KPMG-survey responded they would expand social listening efforts in the near future. Only 43% had already had positive experiences in this field. This is a bit astonishing considering the fact that Social Listening is the most insightful and least ’dangerous’ (read: least visible) brand activity in the social web. What’s more, social listening can support brands holistically. No matter whether it’s about measuring buzz, optimizing customer service, or co-create a new product with fans, listening tools should be the weapon of choice.
Imagine how many creative concepts could benefit from integrating sophisticated listening reports early on in the process. How much better and relevant would creative ideas become if they’d be conceived based on the end-consumer’s interests. Take for example the genius approach by EA Games 4 years ago which resulted in one of the greatest viral hits of that time: Tiger Woods, Walk on Water. The story is simple and beautiful. And the result of social listening.
The video is essentially a TV commercial – save the fact that it was exclusively shown on YouTube. A high-budget concept for a major brand. But the insight that led to it was based on simply listening to consumers. It was the glitch in an EA game, discovered by a consumer, that was used as the creative springboard.
It is Happening. Stephen Colbert on Advertising.
Februar 26th, 2012 • Ads, Strategy
Tags: Advertising, Branding, Brands, Colbert, Funny, People, Strategy, Truth, TV
Stephen Colbert on advertising strategies. Take a minute to watch this. And let me quote Fresser: ‘This is real, this is happening. It happens every day, and somewhere in a midwestern cubicle, from nice people you might be friends with, it’s happening right now.’ (via Alt nytt er farlig)
Poets and Quants. How Brand People Can Learn to Love Big Data.
Februar 22nd, 2012 • 1 comment Brands, Data, Strategy
Tags: data, euro rscg, Ideas, Insights, Presentation, Strategy, Truth
Okay, I have seen a lot of bla bla on Slideshare. “Poets and Quants” is a great exception. Euro RSCG Chief Strategy Officer Tom Morton has created this extremely smart deck that tries to answer the question how Brand People Can Learn to Love Big Data. Thanks to Ben Malbon for the link.
“Big data is shifting the balance of power between the creative ’poets’ of the communications industry and the more analytical ’quants’. Yet there is still a big role for creative minded people in a Big Data world. A lateral, humanistic view on Big Data yields better, more insightful truths, and data can be fuel for creative development. Here’s how.”
Before you start: Slide 17 is officially the truest slide on the Planet.
Hooked. Alex Wipf: A Strategy of Flight.
Februar 1st, 2012 • Allgemein, Hooked, Interview
Tags: Agencies, Alex Wipf, Creativity, Hooked, Ideas, Interview, Leo Burnett, People, Strategy, Truth
Last year I started to conduct a series of interviews with some of the most interesting Marketing peeps I met so far.
I somehow wanted to take this concept one step further.My new series of interviews is called ‘Hooked’. Hooked is about leading Strategists and their hobby or a side-project. Hooked is about what people can learn for Strategy while they actually love to fly, cook, swim or whatever they do to become the interesting people that most of them are.
The first Person to be part of Hooked is Alexander Wipf – my long-time friend and all-round awesome guy. Alex is Head of Strategy at Leo Burnett, Frankfurt. And besides being one of the few truly digital Marketing Pioneers in Germany, besides being an awesome Photographer, young dad and many other things, he is in possession of a Private Pilot License. In other words: He is a passionate flier.
Irrelevant for his thinking as a Strategy Dude? I don’t think so. Get to know Mister Wipf.
You have a pilot license and you are Head of Strategy at Leo Burnett and started off as a user experience designer. I know you have an interesting theory about flying and UX. Tell me about it.
As machinery and technology get more and more complex, our susceptibility to allow technology or its interfaces to control us increases as well. As Günther Anders already noted in the 1950s (in “The Outdatedness of Human Beings 1. On the Soul in the Era of the Second Industrial Revolution,” 1956) at some point after WWII human technology had reached a tipping point when technologies weren’t just simple tools or extensions of ourselves, but rather complex systems that makes human capacity look outdated and miniscule. Being a thinker during the atomic age, his example for this was the invention of nuclear energy, which has a hazardous waste-product that has a half-life that will last longer than our species will be on this planet.
Trying to wrap your head around this fact is just mind-boggling. Essentially, we have created things that are simply bigger than ourselves and the consequences of which we aren’t really in control of anymore. Of course this is an extreme example, and it’s not a matter of us necessarily wanting to be controlled or hindered by the technology we create, but we implicitly accept it as necessary evil.
So, in order to cope with this, we create more technology that, in turn, controls the other technology we have. And we accept this largely because there is no way back.
As we have moved from the industrial (and atomic) age to the information age, the same forces are at play, only that the context is no longer the industrial and physical realm, but rather the informational and virtual.
Due to digital technologies, we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, and, again, we are unable to deal with it all, so, again, after a few decades of information technologies being created to create, disseminate and store information, we are now inventing technologies to filter this information. The question is, are our interfaces designed with us in mind?
Facebook’s 1 Billion. Right Before the Mayan Apocalypse.
Januar 13th, 2012 • Trends
Tags: chart, Facebook, Social Networks, Strategy, World
Silicon Alley Insider’s Chart of the Day. iCrossings says Facebook will probably reach 1 billion users sometime in August 2012. Hardcore.
Read more at http://ghen.sl/yz6v84
New L2 Report. The Mobile Side of Luxury & Prestige Brands.
Januar 12th, 2012 • Brands, Reports, Strategy
Tags: Brands, l2, luxury, prestige, Report, Reports, Strategy
I think I can admit I am quite jealous of L2′s business idea. Providing digital business insights for the luxury and prestige industries is a good idea. But adding a sophisticated benchmarking that highlights the different facets of digital marketing, that adds specific (and needed) industry knowledge, and that’s probably even very very very well paid? High five.
I spotted L2 for the first time about a year ago when they first published their Digital IQ report on the most successful luxury and prestige brands in the digital space – the first compendium that I am aware of. And now they took the next step by publishing another extremely well founded report: The L2 Mobile IQ 100. A report on the mobile expenses, aspirations, and capabilities of the top 100 luxury brands worldwide. Well done L2 – you guys really understand your business.
Key insights
- Luxury & Prestige retail brands by far outperform luxury & retail brands mobile
- M-Commerce is nascent in the industry
- The majority of brands & retailers has no specific mobile strategy
- But: Per-capita revenues and searches in the industry by far outweigh more traditional means
L2 Prestige 100®: Mobile IQ — The Video from L2 Think Tank on Vimeo.
Social Media Management Software. Check Out Altimeter’s New Buyer’s Guide.
Januar 9th, 2012 • 2 comments Reports, Social, Tech, Tools
Tags: Altimeter, altimetergroup, Business, Facebook, Presentation, Reports, Social Business Design, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Tech, Tools, we are social
So once you have given all the presentations about the value of Social Media and explained that a fan is not worth $2.38 (or something) you will – at some point – face the challenge of managing real time interaction with your customer. Here SMMS, a type of software especially designed to support the management of complex social interaction platforms, are usually your weapons of choice. Especially in a world in which any major enterprise has to be able to manage its 178 social media accounts in average.
A Social Media Management System (SMMS) is a software tool that uses business rules and approved employees and partners to manage multiple social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This system contains features such as governance, workflow, intelligence, and integration capabilities across the enterprise. The success of these tools is dependent upon a business-led strategy, defined processes, trained staff, and ability to measure efforts.
SMMS are there to reduce the complexity of large real time social media platforms. And there are many, many different vendors on the market. From Hootsuite to BuddyMedia, from Wildfire to Spredfast, no two vendors are alike and there is no one-fit-for-all SMMS-solution. Altimeter’s new “Strategy to Manage Social Media Proliferation” serves as a great overview over the SMMS-scene and offers metrics to support the choice for specific vendors based on the social objectives of your organisation.
If you have ever tried to give your customer a founded recommendation on which SMMS to choose you will know how important the following report is. In a market as cluttered and dynamic as this we need more top-level reports like the following one instead of infographics on Mashable.
Agencies and Briefs. And here, Ladies and Gentlemen, you can see: The Problem.
Januar 6th, 2012 • Advice, Strategy
Tags: Agencies, creative briefs, Funny, Strategy, Truth, World
I cannot really figure out whether I am disgusted or fascinated. Clearly this fictional Creative Brief is a great example on why so many Creatives think these documents are useless.
via ibelieveinadv
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