OMFG. Facebook Eats the Web.

Juni 27th, 2011 • Social, Trends
Tags: Diagram, Facebook, Future, Media, Prediction, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Tech, Trends, Truth, World

About two weeks after the world almost ended Inside Facebook reported about a couple of people enjoying summertime instead of staring at their computer monitors 24/7 traffic drop on Facebook the opposite seems to be true. Facebook in fact eats the Internet.

Ben Ellowitz, Founder and SEO of Wetpaint writes:

When you exclude just Facebook from the rest of the Web, consumption in terms of minutes of use shrank by nearly nine percent between March 2010 and March 2011, according to data from comScore. And, even when you include Facebook usage, total non-mobile Internet consumption still dropped three percent over the same period.

Technically he separates between two different webs: The dominating Facebook-driven web and the web of documents. And the web of documents is under sever pressure. “The illusion of the growth of the internet is just that – a mirage caused by Facebook posting 69% growth over the last year.” (We are Social). Ellowitz’ conclusion: future companies will need to spend less time on SEO, and more time on optimizing for Facebook – the web inside the web.

Read the full article here. I don’t think Facebook can replace the document web. But to be honest, I don’t want to find out. It seems we are currently handing over the greatest invention of mankind to Goldman Sachs and Mister Zuckerberg. Doesn’t feel right.

Media Planning. A pretty good presentation on what it is…or what it wants to become.

Juni 8th, 2011 • Media, People
Tags: Future, Media, Presentation, presentations, Strategy, Trends

John V Willshire is Innovation Officer at PHD Media in London. And he seems to be a good media guy. He created this great presentation on ‘What is Media Planning’. I am usually not a big fan of media planning (see post below). But thanks. That’s interesting John (and to Griffin).

Copycats. Intel and Deutsche Post celebrate Me, Me, Me.

Juni 1st, 2011 • 4 comments Brands, Ideas, Social, Trends
Tags: Bouygues Telecom, Brands, Campaign, Copycats, Creativity, DHL, Documentation, Facebook, Ideas, Intel, Life, People, Social Networking, Tools, Trends, visual, World

Sometimes you see a good digital marketing idea and you can bet your ass off that dozens of copycats will pop up a couple of months later. In November 2010 the (then) team around my friend (and new colleague) Branislav launched a (then) new idea for Bouygues Telecom in France: an app that turned your Facebook profile into a real book. 1,000 personalized books were gone within an hour of the promotion’s launch even though the campaign never really became as viral as Old Spice or Shoot the Bear.

Fast Forward 6 months. Deutsche Post DHL launches Social Memories, an application that turns your Facebook Profile into a (surprise, surprise) book. This is how it goes…

The app is here.

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Campaign + LinkedIn. Just a more serious Facebook Connect?

April 27th, 2011 • 2 comments Brands, Experimental, Social, Tech, Tools
Tags: Agencies, Amex, Amsterdam, Brands, Creativity, Experimental, Ideas, LinkedIn, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends, Volkswagen

Yesterday I stumbled upon the first major digital campaign that builds upon LinkedIn’s open API – Volkswagen’s LinkedUit campaign here in the Netherlands (Source). The online special builds up on the Volkswagen Passat campaign ‘Nogal vol van zichzelf’ (‘quite full of himself’) and uses your LinkedIn connections to discover profane information in your profile and compares it to an opponent’s data in your LinkedIn circle of connections. The more information your profile contains the more likely you will win against an opponent of your chosing.

Volkswagen’s online special is light weight fun, looks nice and is well integrated with LinkedIn – which is of course the actually interesting aspect of this digital campaign. Because of course – Achtung Amsterdam and Volkswagen could have alternatively used Facebook Connect. But they went for innovation and decided to use LinkedIn’s open API.
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A new Hotspot. Amsterdam wants to become Appsterdam.

April 23rd, 2011 • 4 comments Mobile, Underway, Work
Tags: Amsterdam, Apps, Creativity, Development, Experimental, Jobs, Lifestyle, Mobile, People, Strategy, Tech, Trends, World

“If you want to make movies, go to Hollywood. If you want to make musicals, go to Broadway. If you want to make apps, go to Appsterdam.” – Mike Lee, mur.mu.rs

About a month ago I praised the qualities of Amsterdam in an article I wrote for the German ad magazine Page. One thing that struck me in this city is the level of innovation here as well as the city’s clear objective to support new industries and get them to Amsterdam. I have never met anyone from Amsterdam’s city council but in contradiction to many other cities there seems to be a clear vision here on how to shape Holland’s capitol from both, a cultural AND economical perspective. That’s why Amsterdam is also hometown to some of the most creative agencies in the world – the city father simply subsidize taxation here to relocate the right blend of industries on the rivers of the Amstel.

I wasn’t really suprised when I read Mike Lee’s open letter on mur.mu.rs. It’s a call for conquest. And appeal for app developers to settle over to Amsterdam and to rebrand it as Appsterdam. Funny to read because it really reads like a letter from the colonies but at the same time strong and intelligent.

I have traveled the world looking for the most livable city on earth, a place with the ideal balance of quality and price, history and vibrance, culture and innovation. That place is Amsterdam. (…)

The success of Apple’s platforms has been in no small part due to its unique developer community. Our community is unique not just in technology, but in business. (…) We cooperate, because we are friends. If one of us does something to piss the other off, we don’t call out the lawyers, we call up our friend, and talk it over like people. We don’t just attend conferences, we get together at conferences, go out together, and have a good enough time together to generate blackmail material sufficient to nip litigation in the bud.

Mike’s point – a new industry needs a friendly hospitable place that invites them to work together and to exchange ideas. And his call to app developers all over the world to relocate to Amsterdam isn’t just an abstract one…

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OMFG. It’s as if Skynet and Satan had a Brood of Soul-Eating Children.

Februar 23rd, 2011 • 2 comments Business, Social
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Ads, Agencies, Business, Funny, Future, Media, Prediction, predictions, Shit, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends

Rubbishcorp calls it ‘Officially the most shittest thing I have ever posted on this blog.’ A Youtube commenter replied ‘If you work in marketing, kill yourself. If you made this video, kill yourself twice.’ And who am I to disagree?

‘We are the future’ is a declaration of professional bankruptcy. It is a video about the weird Reality filter that many media agencies use to look at the world (this time it’s the PHD network). It’s about people who believe that other human beings ask for more marketing content. Or – to quote rubbishcorp one more time – ‘it’s a reflection of the views of a bunch of middle aged ad-people about some random technologies that none of them have any actual understanding of.’ And yes, PHD rightfully is getting grilled on the intertubes right now.

If you watch it you will find out that it’s pretty much the video version of ‘Stuff real people don’t say about advertising‘. Only this time it is not meant to be ironic. To finally illustrate my thoughts with one more Youtube comment – ‘Oh jesus, its like skynet and satan had a multicultural brood of consumerist nega-children that eat souls through the innernets.’ Thanks.

Thanks to jkleske for sharing it.

Quora. Twitter gets a Jeopardy Update.

Januar 6th, 2011 • 9 comments Social, Tech, Trends, Twitter
Tags: buzz, Quora, Social, Tech, Tools, Trends, Twitter, Viral, World

Quora. Currently my favourite example of an overbuzzed platform and I strongly recommend to follow the bizarre network effects that are taking place these days.

Quora is a knowledge platform that was founded in summer 2009 by Facebook’s former CTO Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever. Quora received some funding in March 2010 and is in closed beta since summer 2010. Quora basically is a polished version of a forum. It merges forum functionalities with social platforms such as twitter or Facebook to generate a new type of Q&A platform. That’s not dramatically new but it’s a nice, well presented concept.

Quora turned red hot in late December 2010 and early January 2011. And it seems everyone tries to get on board asap. On January 2nd Techcrunch mentioned Quora as one of the 7 technologies that will rock 2011. Quote: ‘Quora will have its twitter moment’:

…2011, which I believe will be the year Quora has its Twitter moment and start to really take off. Quora represents a bigger technology trend, which is the layering of an interest graph on top of people’s social graph. On Quora, you can follow not only people, but topics and questions. It defines the world by your interests, not just the people you may know or admire. This is a powerful concept and is not limited to Quora (both Twitter and Facebook also want to own the interest graph), but Quora is designed from the ground up to expose and help you explore your interests.

I agree that Quora is a great platform. It nevertheless is not the reinvention of earned media. And I don’t see how a Forum 2.0 + Digg functionalities should come close to a general, broad interaction platform. Anyway for a couple of days the tech press keeps on posting about Quora day in and out. Did you for example know that the former AOL chairman is posting on Quora as if there was no tomorrow? No? I didn’t as well. And I don’t care.

The reason why Quora is so successful is definitely related to it being a helpful, well set up platform. But the momentum behind the current craziness is based on some superstars of the scene pretending Friendfeed, Plancast, Foursquare Quora is the reinvention of anything digital. Oh, and if David Armano and Jeremiah Owyang are posting there as well…we all follow, right?

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2010. The Mobile Year in Review.

Dezember 21st, 2010 • Mobile, Trends
Tags: 2010, Business, Diagram, Media, Mobile, predictions, Tech, Trends, visual, World

One thing that hopefully stops in 2011 – info visuals that explain digital media. To finally celebrate this marketing meme of 2010 I’d like to post mobilefuture‘s Mobile Year 2010 in Review. Enjoy.

Convergence. Why talking about Social Media bores me to death.

Dezember 19th, 2010 • Allgemein
Tags: 2010, 2011, Advertising, Agencies, Future, Industry, Social Media, Trends

As 2010 ends it’s time for new year’s resolutions once again. I should stop smoking but it would be kind of dumb to initiate my new healthy lifestyle on new year’s eve. So my professional resolution is this – I try to avoid the use of the term ‘Social Media’ once and for all.

I feel kind of estranged nowadays when I stumble upon one of the many, many social media presentations that we keep on quoting over and over again. Or to put it more precise – I get sick of them. I cannot flip through these decks anymore that try to teach the industry about the ethics and mechanisms of Social. I simply think we’re past that point.

2010 has taught me that the focus on customer interactions and conversations simply must be part of any piece of marketing that you come up with. No matter if you are talking about e-retail, a Facebook page or a classic microsite – if you still don’t listen, if you still don’t enable users to share or talk about your brand you will soon have a problem. The crucial element here – to understand the distinction between earned and owned assets. Your client’s Facebook page is NOT earned media. Earned media is what this platform can initiate. But the platform can be a trigger, while brand-user interaction (hopefully) is the result. We simply cannot produce social interaction. But we can lower access barriers, invite and give reasons to interact on our behalf. This is our task. It is not our task to build platforms in the first place.

Doubtlessly the campaign of the year was Wieden’s Old Spice guy. And while I engaged in debates about whether this campaign was a Social Media campaign or not (and whether social media campaigns exist at all), I now have to admit that my position at that time was wrong. The strength of this campaign was that it added a conversational layer to a traditional advertising campaign. It built upon a traditional ad campaign and made it dynamic. But it turned a traditional piece of marketing into something relevant and real time. Something that turned a TV ad into something that was fun to talk about and to share. And that’s what made it both successful and trendsetting.

By now most agencies struggled with integrating traditional and digital marketing concepts. Wieden’s Old Spice campaign may not have been deep-digital. But it tried to bridge the gap between traditional advertising and customer conversations. My respect to the team around W+K’s Ian Tait to bring this risky concept to live.

In 2011 I hope, both digital and traditional agencies are intelligent enough to stop talking about isolated marketing concepts that almost always lack real sustainability. As a customer I want to print ads that makes me want to start a conversation with or about a brand. I want to get invited to an online store through a TV ad and I want to get a discount if I make my friends buy there as well. And here we are not talking about just driving to a campaign site – I think about integrated marketing models that truly deliver added value when it comes to interaction. Value exchange that is. And this is not just an agency challenge.

One of the best articles about this topic comes from my former colleague at Razorfish, Shiv Singh, who is now responsible for digital at Pepsi Co. In his article ‘From the other side‘ he has summarized his experiences as an ex agency guy who is now on the client side. Shiv’s advice to agencies is simple – stop telling your clients stories about how special you are, start understanding and managing the complexity of nowaday’s marketing.

In the digital space, digital agencies don’t like that the fact that they’re at a significant relationship disadvantage. Brands don’t like the fact that they’re sometimes kept at arms length from consumers (agencies and publishers are in the middle). Digital agencies feel traditional agencies don’t get it and traditional agencies can’t understand why brands don’t completely appreciate their digital chops. In a sense, everyone is unhappy. That’s not good. It has to change and probably only will when truly a new form of an agency rises (yes, I know there have been lots of false starts!).

It would be a blessing if the industry began to realize that concept convergence would help all of us – to make marketing more engaging, interesting and fun to interact with. If agencies found a way not just to promote themselves and their isolated view of the world and if marketers finally understood that it is not about communication but about integrated business models. Talking about social media simply bores me to death…

Agencies. What the hell is a Creative Technologist?

Dezember 8th, 2010 • Jobs, Trends
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Agencies, BBH, Connection Planning, Creative Technologist, Creativity, Prediction, Strategy, Tech, Trends

The job profile ‘Creative Technologist’ has become something like the It-job of 2010. I don’t know when these thing start, but if you want to be hot in digital nowadays you must be into social media a creative technologist.

I doubt there is a desperate need for an autonomous job profile like this in most digital agencies. But I sense there is one in rather traditional shops. BBH (even far from being a traditional agency) have an attitude on the role of a Creative Technologist. Or to be more precise – BBH’s Griffin Farley has presented his vision about the (future) role of a creative technologist.

As usual, great stuff Griffin.