Trends. 100 Things to Watch in 2012.

Dezember 30th, 2011 • Trends
Tags: 2012, Agencies, Future, jwt, Report, Reports, Study, Trends

JWT‘s PR department has – again – done a great job by creating this annual gallery of things to watch in 2012. Interesting (particularly from an American perspective): We definitely see more sustainable business concepts, travel and commuting models and there seems to be more focus on a more healthy lifestyle and your inner self. If we now even avoid nuking ourselves via Iran, North Korea or Pakistan then hey: This could be a good year.

Key trends according to this report:
- Navigation for cost-sensitive customers
- Food becomes the key eco-issue
- Screened interactions everywhere
- Physical objects get digital counterparts

Thanks to @jkleske for the link.

Insights. TNS Launches Largest Global Study on Digital Behaviour.

November 30th, 2011 • Reports, Strategy
Tags: 2011, Business, Insights, Lifestyle, Media, People, Planning, Presentation, Report, Reports, Research, Social Influence Marketing, Study, target group, TNS, Trends, World

Research company TNS has launched its 2011 version of TNS Digital Life. Based on conversations with over 72,000 people in 60 countries this is the world’s largest global study into people’s attitudes and behaviours online.

I particularly like how they underline the necessity to think (before yelling Facebook or iPad or Flashmob):

‘Digital waste’ pollutes the online world as brands fail to listen to what people want.

It [the study] found that 57 per cent of people*** in developed markets* do not want to engage with brands via
social media – rising to 60 per cent in the US and 61 per cent in the UK. Instead, misguided digital
strategies are generating mountains of digital waste, from friendless Facebook accounts to blogs no
one reads. This is being combined with ever-increasing content produced by consumers – the study
shows 47 per cent of digital consumers now comment about brands online.

The result is huge volumes of noise, which is polluting the digital world and making it harder for
brands to be heard.’

Of course: This study does not at all say brands shouldn’t be digital. The opposite is true. But it repeats the one thing that I never get tired of to repeat: People are not interested in a brand’s content. And they are not interested in brand experiences. They are interested in stuff that is relevant for them – and sometimes this is a brand.

Check out TNS Digital Life here .

Thanks to Rubbish Corp for the link.

Whoa! How Shit Infographics Explain the World (the wrong Way).

November 2nd, 2011 • 3 comments Blogs, Location, Reports
Tags: Apps, Burglars, crime, Foursquare, Location, People, PR, Report, Shit, Study, visual, World, Zeitgeist

So Mashable again explains us the world through an info graphic wallpaper. And every self-proclaimed social media expert retweets it. Usually this is just boring. Sometimes dangerously misleading and pretty embarassing. Such as this time.

Latest example of such pure and utter shit: A ‘study’ (actually a joke) that was published as an infographic on mashable, retweeted today by thousands of Lemmings who only seem to be interested to share the next bullshit-infographic as quickly as possible.

The claim sounds credible: “78% of burglars use Facebook, twitter, or Foursquare to target potential properties.”

Whoa! That’s a lot, isn’t it? And it sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? After all the gods punish those freaks who keep on checking in to any location they enter. If only it would not be all so wrong and only if this handy info graphic wouldn’t be a big PR stunt that everyone keeps on retweeting.

• The mashable article features the notorious info graphic by Credit Sesame, “a personal finance tool” claiming that 78% of all burglars use social media to gather intelligence about their next victim
• If you browse the article on Credit Sesame you will find out that the “study” was not at all conducted by Credit Sesame: they apparently just built an easy-to-consume info graphic. The actual “study” was conducted by UK’s security company Friedland: yes, a company that earns money with your fear of burglars.
• If you read the original “study” you stumble upon the following text: “An overwhelming 78% of ex-burglars interviewed said that they strongly believed social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Four Square are being used by current thieves when targeting properties.”

Planner Survey 2011. The State of Marketing-Strategy Worldwide.

September 18th, 2011 • 1 comment Strategy
Tags: Agencies, Jobs, Money, Planning, Report, Salary, Strategy, Study, Survey, Truth, World

I have to admit I am a bit late with this post. But I have been travelling so please forgive me if you know about the ‘Planner Survey 2011‘ already. Many of you know this survey which my colleague Heather LeFevre conducts annually. Heather is Head of Planning at Strawberry Frog Amsterdam and for the seventh time she has tried to shed some light on the state of Marketing-Strategy worldwide – a remarkable effort for such a niche ‘industry’ within a ‘niche industry’.

I don’t want to say anything about her research. Just check out the 2011 document below. But I really want to thank Heather for her continuous curiosity in this topic. Great insights. I particularly the more localized character of this year’s survey compared with 2010′s data.

By the way: If you want to follow Heather on twitter, do it here.

Study. The World’s Top 100 Prestige and Luxury Brands on Facebook.

Juni 9th, 2011 • Brands, Strategy
Tags: Brands, Facebook, List, luxury, prestige, Reports, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Study

Prestige and Luxury brands used to have quite a hard time to deal with this phenomenon called social media. It seemed like a contradiction to what high value brands stood for. Being very exclusive simply did not seem to fit right into this new all connected world in which everyone is included.

Times are a changing and some of the planet’s really iconic (mainstream) brands are amongst the most successful players particularly on Facebook. L2 – a thinktank for luxury brands in New York – along with the guys from Buddy Media just published an extremely interesting piece of research: The L2 Prestige 100®: Facebook IQ measures the aptitude of 100 prestige brands from the Auto, Beauty, Fashion, Watches & Jewelry, and Spirits & Champagnes industries on the world’s fastest growing social media platform.

Key findings are:

• It is still not really about size: many of the brands that have been most effective at acquiring Facebook fans have fallen flat engaging them.
• Push only isn’t cool: Brands which allow their fans to post are more engaged Facebook brands than the 20% which don’t allow it
• Products are winning over promotions: Most engagement rates were achieved through product posts not promotions
• Facebook is still considered as an island: Too few brands integrate the social graph into their digital ecosystem
• F-Commerce? Nah! Only few brands are actively engaged in social commerce on Facebook

In short – if you deal with prestige and or luxury brands on Facebook this is the study to download. Get it here.

Facebook. The 100 Most Engaged Brand Pages.

März 17th, 2011 • 3 comments Brands, Social
Tags: Analytics, Engagement, Facebook, Measurement, Metrics, Report, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Study

One of the tougher elements of my job is to benchmark client metrics against competing digital ecosystems. This is because it’s not very easy to keep track of competitor data beyond pure community size (such as engagement metrics). Allfacebook along with Wired and NYC based monitoring company FanGager have just published a very interesting overview over the 15 most engaging pages on Facebook, based on Feb 2011 activity. Well, thanks to @mitsuo it is actually the 100 most engaged brands. You can find the full list here.

Engagement is defined here as ‘fans’ (likers sounds too stupid) who either post, comment or like over the course of a month. Or in other words, the people who actually do something in your community. The brand pages mentioned here are huge players on Facebook. But as you can also see there is more than just a gap between their community size and the top of the pyramid which actually is actively posting or responding. It is not very surprising – but it shows once more that aggregating likes simply doesn’t make the world go round alone.

What do you think? Are you surprised by this quota as well? Did you expect that? Leave a comment!

Blogging. Technorati releases State of the Blogosphere 2010.

November 4th, 2010 • 4 comments Blogs, Reports, Social, Trends
Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Report, Study, Technorati, Trends, Truth, World

Blog Search Engine Technorati has just launched its annual ‘State of the Blogosphere‘ report for 2010. Blogging is a discipline in steady change – constantly challenged by microblogging, general work overload and Farmville. According to Technorati’s study blogging has lately been influenced by a couple of key trends

• The advent of mobile blogging
• Women and mom bloggers gaining influence in the blogosphere
• a new interaction mode between the blogosphere and social networks

The study is as usual very insightful and it even stages deeper insights from around the world instead of just the U.S. Find Technorati’s feature article here.

State Of The Blogosphere Presentation 2010

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).

Survey. How much can you actually earn as a Planner?

August 18th, 2010 • 1 comment Work
Tags: Agencies, Jobs, Money, Planning, Report, Salary, Strategy, Study, Survey, Truth, World

Finally! An interesting analytical paper about the status quo of planning salaries in planning. My colleague Heather LeFevre from the colleagues at Strawberry Frog here in Amsterdam has just published her Planner Survey 2010. It tries to compare salaries of strategists worldwide to bring some light into the dark. The data was collected via an online survey with 1570+ participants from all over the world.

The effort definitely was worth it. You get a pretty good understanding about what you can expect to earn in NYC in comparison to London. But as usual – salaries don’t say much as long as you don’t integrate real costs of living. Earning and spending 100$ in Frankfurt is a very different thing to earning and spending 100$ in Amsterdam or London.

Anyway, great work, Heather. Thanks a lot.

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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