One of my latest reads – Seth Godins ‘Tribes’ is a book I can warmly recommend. I especially like the way it talks about consumers today and the need to establish a conversation rather than keep on broadcasting your message without listening.
A simple yet great qoute from ‘Tribes’
Here’s the marketing math:
Ideas that spread, win.
Boring ideas don’t spread. Boring organizations don’t grow.
My thought was to write a longer review of it but then I found that you can download it as an audiobook for free. So, half asleep looking forward to the weekend I’ll save yours and my time and instead give you the link. Here’s Seth Godins ‘Tribes’ as an audiobook for free. Go, listen, change!
Branding today is about creating a brand platform, then dramatize it and start screaming to people – COME ON AND BUY MY PRODUCT. IT’S GREAT. Of course in a slightly creative and modest manner than that. But it very often about traditional advertising in classic media channels.
Branding of tomorrow is about knowing who you are, what your brand stands for and start experimenting with innovation, partnerships, entertainment and above all involving your potential audience as a part of your product development. And note – call them audience, cause the will pay to stay but leave if they don’t like the show.
It’s all about constantly innovating your brand and then making sure you know what people think of your work. Do they like it? Do they hate it. What do they miss, what would they do differently. Speak to them. Learn their language. Once you think you know the formula to success – erase your brain and start all over again. We do not want repetition from brands that lead we want the new stuff, the shit that makes us go wow!
The first step to keeping on top of your game is getting into the conversation. There’s no need to wait even if people aren’t talking about your brand just yet. Get in there and learn!
First step – automize your intelligence information
The key to becoming successful when becoming a brand conversationist is to know…yep, you guessed it, where people who talk about your brand are hanging. Put your ears to the rail and listen for. And remeber that most of these things you can output as a RSS feed into Google Reader or Netvibes. Built a dashboard!
The 59 services you can currently keep track of using Friendfeed.
Get into the discussion
Once you know where people are discussing your products, your brand or anything else related to your mission (cause you have one of those huh). These are the tools you should get accompanied with.
And don’t forget to get into blogs and comment on subjects relevant to you!
Spread your digital presence
Getting into the conversation is not only about spying on others and then going after the buzz. Your digital presence – website, campaigns, digital events, groups…everything has to go beyond their own sphere and servers. In order to do this you’ve gotta start spreading your information socially. There’s tons of tools but a first must have are these.
The god of spreading content – SEO (Note, not paid search)
And more and more and more and more. This goes on forever. But you’ve gotta be everywhere!
Last but not least! Create advertising and communication that matters to people. We want to have fun – as I said earlier this year. You’ve gotta be a clown!
Ok, that’s it for now. I’m aware that I’ve left a couple of question marks in the heads of you guys who don’t know what RPC, RSS etc is. But I don’t have the time to elaborate on that now. I’ll get back to it soon
Last week was hell of a week with sick children. Then when they’ve finally have come out of it I woke up this morning with a fever. Now after coming home from a bunch of meetings I felt I have to update the blog with something intelligent, something that will appeal to my audience, something smart and stylish.
A Bowtie, found on The Coolhunter from David Hart & Co. called Dundee Old Ancient Tartan. Can’t be more classical than this. It’s also intelligent, stylish and on top of everything it’s a fashion apparel that is timeless.
Does it have anything to do with communication? Of course. Put this little bastard around your neck and you’ll own the room.
Ok, that’s it for tonight. Tomorrow I’ve beaten the fever and I’ll stop babble.
Freakcasting, a trend that was very common in Swedish advertising a couple of years back is something I personally dislike. Having people in a TVC just based on the fact that you think people will laugh at their real personality is the closest thing to bullying there is. We have a responsibility to be more intelligent than that.
But when these guys, the original employees and not any hired freak, perform a old school rap song I’m sold. It feels so honest and real so I can’t resist thinking this place is the shit!
Found it on Changethought, one of my new favorites when looking for visual inspiration.
I just got back from reading a post on Autoblog about Saab 9-3X and 9-5 officially confirmed for 2009 rollout. And the post is accompanied with the image above.
Here lies the SAAB problem. This image is probably number 200490934782 in line that i’ve seen the last years promising me that SAAB is about to release something that will kick ass. And then when they get a car on the market it’s a disappointment.
I have no doubt in my mind that SAAB has the competence to build one of the best cars on the market, a car that people will love, a car that will be known worldwide for unique ideas and solutions. After all, if we look back in time SAAB has a history of inventing great things for everyday cars.
SAAB’s problem is really not that different from any other brand. What SAAB has got to do is rise to the occasion. It’s time to step up, skip the internal politics and make that vision come alive again.
In many way’s they have some of that uniqueness that people crave from a brand that leads the way, but then on the other hand the car is filled with stuff that makes you go blah. SAAB has a future, but it’s not mainstream, it’s about being unique and launch cars that fill a space in the market that no one else does. You have to get back to building your brand on innovations and differentiation…for real!
B ut until you do, please stop telling people about these fantastic conceptual cars that never make it to the market. Set peoples exceptions right and outperform instead of vice versa.
Pepsi are on top of their game. With the help of R/GA they’ve created a campaign site welcoming Barack Obama to his presidency. They’ve tied the entire campaign site message to their tag line – Refreshing Everything.
The idea is very smart – piggy back mr President with your own brand message. On the site visitors are urged to contribute and upload their own ideas on how Barack Obama should refresh America.
These kind of ideas are nice if well executed. I think the conceptual idea and the way they’re using the refresh tag is on the spot. However, I don’t see why I have to wait for the damn thing to load. There is nothing in that site that requires flash based on the design and the functionality (except for the video streams of course). But, all in all, a great initiative.
The Pepsi campaign is off course not the first. By now you must have seen the IKEA piggy back a couple of days ago. That’s another great example of piggy back advertising.
I’ve been part of executing the same idea during the presidential campaign when we created the Apathy Party together with Strawberry Frog.
Earlier this morning I got an mail from Eva Hamilton, CEO of the Swedish Television letting me know that the SVT Play Beta was live. Obviously this must have been produced by some PR agency that decided my blog was a relevant target when spreading the news. But hey, aren’t we all suckers for spreading gossip.
The new site from SVT is big step in the right direction. It seems inspired by HULU.com and from both a brand and usability point view the new site is a big step forward. The only thing I miss right now is an ajax based search functionality. Something like Booli’s search would have made the site complete from a usability point of view.
The social interaction is missing, and it’s the key to getting paid. I think SVT is missing out on a great opportunity here. Sites like YouTube, Ustream, Vimeo and Hulu got something that SVT has yet not implemented – a personal profile for the viewer.
The opportunity to save favorites, create your own playlists, tag content, write reviews, comment, get personal recommendations, get friends, subscribe to content, create your own channels etc are functionalities that could very well be the foundation to a long term solution to the licensing problem online. (SVT is free to watch in Sweden but you have to pay a license fee for having a TV set). I’m sure if I could log in to my profile during the day to prepare a schedule for the evening, maybe put together my own children’s show, check on recommendations, watch trailers etc I would be happy to continue to pay my license fee.
Of course this is probably something that we’ll see coming in the future. At least the design has room for more buttons and functionalities. However if it had been implemented in the beta launch today my headline would have been “Swedish Television launches the worlds best online television site”. Now I’ll have to go with the headline above instead.
A great site but still a beta I’ve obviously been spoiled with Google having 45% of their services in beta mode. Years ago beta meant you could expect a lot of things to come, but today I want a beta to kick ass! To sum things up the new site is a huge step forward but I would have loved to see more social networking functionalities. So, what do you think. Head over to the new SVT Play Beta and judge for yourselves.
Finally, Eva said in her mail that she and her colleagues were looking forward to my post and would follow my comments on the new site with great interest. So, Eva, I expect you to join the debate here on my blog in the comments field – that, if something would prove that you and the Swedish Television are on top of your game.
There’s a lot of talk about viral marketing through video. But given that you have produced something worth seeing, how do you actually get it on the run?
Well, it’s not necessarily that easy and the biggest single mistake brands do is they believe a good little piece will take off by it self. Is that the case? Of course not. You gotta give that moving beast of yours more than a push, you’ve gotta strap some rockets to each and every frame and hope for a safe launch into outer space.
Spreading video online is not about putting it on YouTube. You’ve gotta see the whole web and each and every site’s own potential.
Björn Falkevik, professional new media producer is one of the most competent consultants there is when it comes to new media publishing. He is sharing this great process map of video spread on Flickr and his blog. Unfortunately it’s in Swedish but I think you’ll get the picture anyway.
Björn Falkeviks social video publishing (Swedish)
Apart from spreading it SEO is important. Scott WilloughbyRand Fishkin and SEOmoz.org clears more questions in this short video.
Finally. Use tools like Tube Mogul to administrate the spreading of the content. And you might wanna consider using agencies like Unruly Media to spread it. If you end up pushing something out there Viralvideoshart compiled by Unruly brings some intelligence to why and where you’re getting spread.
Nothing comes for free but learning the tricks of the trade keeps you ahead of the competition!
Yesterday I attended my first Likeminded networking meeting at Scandic Anglais. I’m very glad that I took the time to drop in since there’s so many talented, smart and nice people you end up getting to know. However as I was sitting there I felt there is room for more networking – networking among blogging [...]
Yesterday Janis Krums found himself on a ferry outside New York witnessing the Airbus that made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. Only seconds later his first Tweet appeared on Twitter with a link to TwitPic and his now world famous photo of people leaving the plane.
Later during the day pictures started to appear [...]
People have always busted ads but this one where a bunch of ads featuring Britney Spears, Leona Lewis and Christina Aguilera outsmarts the competition in my book. Simply create a pack of stickers with different parts of Adobe Photoshop on them. Head down the subway and start busting.
Following my new years prediction it’s easy to suddenly find oneself trying to write smart posts. But there’s one thing we must never forget – communication and especially advertising is relying on loaned time. Once our target group think we become boring we loose them!
Whatever you do and whatever the purpose never forget to put a [...]
ronnestam.com was voted Sweden’s first blog on Innovation, future trends and digital communication. It’s written by Johan Ronnestam. He's widely regarded as one of Sweden’s leading speakers and authorities in the field of modern creative and conceptual thinking and skill of innovating brands and their communication.
