I found myself thinking. I need to write a blog post. After some browsing, thinking and searching I came to the conclusion. I don’t feel like writing a blog post right now.
Not because I don’t know what to write about. But because I’m not inspired. I may find new energy tomorrow morning. I may find new energy tonight while sleeping. But one thing is for sure – whatever logical and rational causes the left side of my brain comes up with I’m not gonna start punching that keyboard of mine until my heart and right side of my brain goes alley oop over something.
Rational things might make me interested. But passion, like great communication, make me and the right side go bananas.
psst. You haven't missed the new app for kids aged 1-9 years old? It's created by my other company JAJDO. Check it out in the App store
I haven’t really spent to much time blogging about what I’m actually am doing besides blogging. However, for some time now I’ve been working with everything from re-branding, advertising, digital communication to point of sales, packaging and raw problem solving for both Swedish and foreign brands. Some of the projects are pretty darn cool but nothing visual will surface for the next couple of months.
Everyone that works in communication shares a wet dream and it spells word of mouth.
Creating something that grows a life of its own without the support of mainstream media is what buzz and viral marketing is all about. But when we talk about creating buzz we seldom mention the dark side of the trade.
This visualization made by Mario Vellandi as part of a competition over at Logic+Emotion is a great eye opener. It really nails the fact that word of mouth got that dark side and that’s every brands worst nightmare, something Domino’s Pizza experienced recently.
(What I really love about the bloggosphere is the fact that a single image like this leads me to a new place that I have not yet discovered. Mario’s blog Melodies in Marketing goes straight into my RSS reader.)
Decisions is what life is about therefor decision is what communication is about.
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
Look at these three words above. Yes will move you forward. Everything you say yes to will inevitable lead to some sort of learning and ultimately to your goal. No will stop you in your tracks. But as long as you straight after saying no to something challenge yourself and end up choosing between yes or no you are still moving and finally you’ll end up saying yes.
Maybe? This is the party killer. Nothing good comes out of it. Nothing happens. Maybe kills passion, maybe kills energy, maybe kills creativity and maybe kills love.
I love YES. NO makes me sad. I hate MAYBE. Yes is the essence of happiness.
Domino’s Pizza has gotten themselves into a lot of trouble thanks to one of their employees. What’s interesting is the fact that they’ve ended up there even though they’ve done their homework on online presence. What’s lacking is obviously enough brand fans.
ReadWriteWeb reports on a video broadcast by two of Domino’s employees. The video that among other things, features an employee who farts and sneezes on a sandwich, was viewed over 500,000 times. RWW writes that Domino’s were quite fast to publish the response (below) to the video where they of course are explaining how something like this could happen – but is it enough?
This is only the beginning. As technology becomes easier to use brands will face industrial sabotage like this every week. The problem tomorrow or obviously already today is the fact that one single employee or competitor for that sake can do a lot of harm…A LOT OF HARM.
In order for companies to stand future attacks, brand communication becomes more important than ever since it’s the only protection they’ll have once something like this happens. Brand communication is the one thing that turns us into loyal and long term brand fans and therefore also gatekeepers.
Brand fans = drones. (Star Wars rock’s, doesn’t it?)
Imagine if Domino’s Pizza would have had a couple of million brand fans only waiting to be called into war. The fans would have killed the employee video with comments and created related videos. Once the official response above was published fans would instantly have created a viral spread of the video. Blogs would have been swarmed and Microblogs would have been buzzed until nothing stood in Domino’s way…
If you’re a brand owner. Start thinking. What can your brand really do for your customers. What can you give away. How can you make your brand fans loyal. And how can you gather their contact details so that you can direct them straight into the war zone? Start building walls, tanks, guns, jet fighters and everything you can think of. Then get your brand fans into training cause when the shit hits the fan you’ll be to close to the front and recruiting new soldiers will be the last thing on your mind.
ps. Just to clear things up. I’m a drone in many cases
As Twitter grows bigger and bigger I came to think of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds. What looks like a flock of beautiful birds end up being our worst nightmare.
Terminators. Robots created by mankind came to the decision that in order for them to solve their tasks it was more efficient if mankind were extinct. A fantasy or a probable future?
The last couple of years I’ve seen lots of videos coming out from laboratories that makes the Terminator future quite possible. I can only hope it doesn’t happen in my kids lifetime.
This latest video that I initially spotted on Ted’s blog is one of the creepiest. The most scary thing about it is the way the human beings in the video treat it. They’ve almost convinced themselves that this little killer is a kid like any other 2-year-old.
Now they’re moving on. The japanese team that developed this robot is aiming for a new robot with the intelligence of a 3 year old. Hell, why not go for a 50 year old one instead. He would at least know what he was doing…
On top of that this next video below has been one of the most viewed videos on YouTube the last couple of days.
Combine the two and what do you get?
Damn. I’ve gotta start building that rocket ship now cause you never know when we have to leave this planet.
My parents always thought I spend to much time in front of my computer. Personally I’m afraid my kids won’t spend enough time there.
If there’s anything I’m sure of its the fact that kids growing up with a sound relation to computers will create a strong platform for the rest of their life.
This is why I love Scratch. Scratch is a programming language suitable for kids that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.
So, if you’ve got kids – move them from slaying other people in war games to building applications in Scratch.
I often meet people or brands saying everything has been done and there’s no room for innovation in their bransch. Never, no, not in a million years! There is always room for product innovation. Sometimes all it takes is looking at your business from a different perspective. What the iPhone has done to the mobile [...]
Here’s a little something for you people out there who forgot to put enough Redbull in your drink tonight. 1. Stare at the image for 10 seconds. 2. Look at something — your hand, a book, your friend 3. Enjoy! Thank you BoingBoing.
Linus Omark, the 6th most viewed video on YouTube this week. The 6th most viewed video worldwide on YouTube this week is a video showing Swedish hockey player Linus Omark, drafted 4th by the Edmonton Oilers, scoring in a friendly exhibition game against Switzerland. Linus does what every innovator would do – he dares to [...]
This blog is 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. In 2010 the readers of Microsoft Indikat named Johan Swedens most influential authority within digital communication
