How True. It’s not about Digital, Stupid.

März 7th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Philosophy, Prediction, Trends, Truth, World

I found this convincing mission statement by Sidekick Studios UK on Neil Perkin’s (fantastic) blog. It’s just a well written piece of PR for a digital conference in the first place. But it is so right.

Survey. One in five U.S. Marketing Dollars will be social by 2015.

März 3rd, 2010 • Comments Business
Tags: Business, emarketer, Future, Prediction, Report, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Survey, Trends, World

If there is one survey result connected to social media which really surprised me, it is this. According to emarketer and a survey by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA), almost 18% of all marketing dollars will be parked in social media activities by 2015. This is one fifth of every U.S. all budgets  - not just digital or PR. Yes – wow!

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

Februar 28th, 2010 • Comments 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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Wired. Ready to go iPad.

Februar 17th, 2010 • Comments Media
Tags: Apple, Brands, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, iPad, Media, Print, Strategy, Tech, Trends

Wired Magazine has just launched its video preview for its iPad application. And yes it looks yummy! In fact it is very logical for Wired to be among the first to take this step. I think the iPad will be a piece of hardware to make print publisher’s wet dreams come true and offer a digital platform to buy and consume print media.

As a commenter explained: This visual demo is very likely an Adobe Air demo…which does not work on the iPad yet.

Coke. Let Fans Be First.

Februar 16th, 2010 • Comments Brands, Social, Strategy
Tags: Brands, coke, Experimental, Fans, Lifestyle, Presentation, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends, visual

As my everyday work revolves around modelling a brand’s reaction to the social revolution it’s particularly interesting to watch big established companies opening up. It’s simple to socialize threadless or Zappos (well they are social from the start) but how about the big players? How about Coke – the stereotype of a modern brand. How do they react on the active user after having spent zillions of ad dollars for more than 100 years.

This deck describes Coke’s approach to social. ‘Fans first’ is a deck by Coke’s Group Director of Interactive Marketing Michael Donnelly – a man who is well known for trying out new things. Even though I do not agree with Culture Buzz’ claim “this deck tells all“, it at least defines a new, broad social ecosystem for Coke. An ecosystem in which a brand has to follow its users instead of the other way around. Personally that’s my key takeway from these slides.

And here is the deck – Coke. ‘Fans First’

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Trends. The Info Snob Lifecycle.

Februar 15th, 2010 • Comments Trends, Twitter
Tags: Diagram, Trends, Truth, Twitter, visual, World

Getting the latest news can be a fetish thing when you’re well connected. Thanks to twitter or (maybe) google Buzz you have the choice: Being at the top of the information pyramid or the idiot who retweets breaking news two weeks after it happened. Here is a completely not data driven, but nevertheless pretty accurate visualization of a twitter trend lifecycle. Thanks to Meg Pickard for the wonderful diagram (and Dustin for the link) even though it’s a little bit older. Yeah, I am the idiot this time…

In Stores Now. Nerd Barbie is here.

Februar 13th, 2010 • Comments Brands
Tags: Barbie, Brands, Lifestyle, Mattel, Toys, Trends, World

Times are a changing. This morning Mattel announced the arrival of Barbie’s 126th career which is Nerd Barbie (basically). Barbie’s new job profile was chosen as result of a global poll asking fans whether they want her to become Architect, an Environmentalist, a Surgeon, a News Anchor, and a Computer Engineer. Two new careers were chosen among this list – Nerd Barbie was launched together with News Anchor Barbie. Read more about at Chipchicklets.

Bring the Noise. Why google Buzz will Fail.

Februar 11th, 2010 • Comments Social, Social Business
Tags: Brands, Business, Facebook, google, google Buzz, google wave, Social Networks, Strategy, Tech, Trends, Twitter, World

Two days ago google announced google Buzz, a new socialnetworky add-on to its well known and beloved gmail service. As expected, google is trying once more to advance into enemy territory – social networking. Since its foundation the company is great in search and media but it sucks big time when it comes to content and real, human interactions.

So, yesterday morning I found this google Buzz Button in my gmail account. And what I saw next was nice but two years too late.

One day with google Buzz

google Buzz tries to do anything at once and doesn’t do anything really good. Basically it’s a mixture of twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and Foursquare. That does not sound too bad, unfortunately I have no idea where google is in this concept.

Apart from the lack in own, new ideas the first finding is – the UX is horrible. Years ago google was on the forefront of UX design. But google Buzz almost looks like google Wave light. Do you remember google Wave? Sure you do (I have 1 gazillion invites left if you like). In short, google Buzz combines at least four specialized interoperable social services in one shitty interface, spices it up with even worse than ususal privacy flaws, integrates it into gmail an calls it Buzz.
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Let’s call it reality. Why agencies will pretty likely stick around.

Februar 8th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Agencies, Brands, Business, Debate, Experimental, Future, Prediction, Strategy, Trends

Bud Caddell from NYC’s Undercurrent has published a great rant about the question on how the agency of the future looks like. As usual it is a great text to read but it ends with a plea to share our opinion. And that is what I do now.

Hi Bud.

I would like to share my opinion with you and I appreciate the time and effort it took to write such a long article about the agency of the future. First up, it’s a good perspective to start a discussion. But before we talk about the question what the agency of the future might look like, let’s begin with the essential question what an agency actually is. At this point we encounter the first logical problem. You won’t find a global definition of “Agency” on Wikipedia. But you will find a definition of “Advertising agency”.

An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients.

If you scroll down a little bit further you will find the chapter “Types of advertising agencies”. It separates different types of agencies – such as Inhouse, Interactive, Search Engine etc.

Simply stunning!!! This little chapter alone demonstrates the disadvantage of 99% of the world’s agency models. It is not at all focused on the core business needs of their clients but on the output the agency founder once planned to generate – SEO, Social…you name it. But do we still have a clear understanding about what we are supposed to produce? In a small poll on my blog last week I asked if there is still such a big line between traditional and new jobs in the industry. The answers ranged from ‘Absolutely. Traditional agencies haven’t got anything to do with digital ones’ to ‘Not at all. The future model is integrated’. Or, to put it another way, there is no average ad guy who has got a precise understanding about what he is supposed to produce anymore. Pure confusion, no matter where you look.

The problem

Agencies are just normal companies in the first place. And then there was the web, this fantastic engine that made all these fantastic concepts of crowdsourced products, E-Learning, brand fandom and LOLcats possible. But, the web is half as old as I am. And 7% as old as the Top 3 ad networks nowadays. Companies such as Ogilvy, JWT, or McCann have been around for decades. They produced innovation at a certain point in time. But unfortunately they cannibalized their own concept. Customers drowned in messages and meaningless awareness campaigns while more and more products hit the markets.

It may sound a little bit cheesy, but my dad told me about his childhood days in Germany last weekend. There was not too much choice when you were a kid in Frankfurt in 1960 – there were only a handful of products, few toys and most of the time you played soccer outside with your friends. According to a study from earlier this month modern kids spend enough time with screens of all kinds to make it a full-time job – 53 hours per week!

What I say is, the crisis of the agency business is the crisis of our society. We just have anything we could dream of. And it’s not a question of traditional versus ‘new’ agencies. It’s not a question whether I drown in traditional or digital messages. It’s just a problem that we possess anything and nothing seems special enough to us anymore. We are not not thrilled by brand campaigns anymore. We aren’t thrilled by anything anymore. We just struggle to stay alive in a sea of stuff.

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Apps. An Explosion is underway.

Februar 2nd, 2010 • Comments Mobile
Tags: Android, Apps, Business, Diagram, iPhone, Lifestyle, Mobile, Prediction, Smartphones, Strategy, Trends, visual, World

Ooooh! Aaaaaah! 2010 is the year of the mobile, social, social CRM, IPTV App. No matter how realistic that is, check out this lovely piece of info visualization from the Fast company. Because according to Gartner an app explosion is underway. A developement which is closely intertwined with smartphone sales. Word up!