State your problems first. Then it might turn out social media is not what you need. And if it is. The do something unique made to work. Don’t just treat it like another channel where you can dump your offline activities.
A sloppy little drawing I did this morning inspired by the works of Al Baik.
Oh…like when you do traditional advertising you actually need money. It’s not free to reach success. And oh nr 2 – online communication is about creating equity over time. Campaigns might work every now and then but overall you should strive to build a socially distributed content driven platform over time. Then you might get fans. Might…
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 have gotten the question over and over again from people, organizations and brands: “How do we start a blog the right way” – I’ve decided to put my advice into writing.
Some of you might think this post is unnecessary. Other people have written about this already. I thought so too until I started searching for good posts on how to set up a kick ass blog and learned most things written on the subject either covered the tool or the actual writing but not actually leading you to do it the right way I think there’s room for another post on the subject.
The purpose of this post is sort of a combination of two things that I hope will lead to the following:
Make sure agencies cannot charge big money for setting up your blog. Setting up your personal or branded blog is to me a democratic right and should be free and accessible for anyone who has something to share.
I think more people should start a blog. It’s good for you. It’s good for the democracy. It’s good for the world.
Here is the essential guide on how to start and configure a blog that will rock the world:
1. Buy a unique domain name for your blog and preferably do it at the same place where you intend to host the blog
Personally I’ve followed WordPress own recommendations and used Bluehost.com to buy my domain name and then installed a WordPress blog with their simple script functionality. It’s a 3 minute process from registering that domain [click to continue…]
Apple, Nike, adidas, Google and so on. It’s always easy to point the wow pointer to these huge brands that have massive amounts of brand fans world wide. But sometimes you’ve just gotta remind people about why these brands often are leading the pack.
I have just gotten of stage in Tallin, Estonia after speaking on the future communication landscape. Right now I’m in a sofa listening to James Matthewson who seconds ago quoted Simon Pestridge from Nike and I just have to share that quote cause it’s what it’s all about:
Nike’s point of view on advertising: “We don’t do advertising any more. We just do cool stuff…It sounds a bit wanky, but that’s just the way it is. Advertising is all about achieving awareness, and we no longer need awareness. We need to become part of people’s lives and digital allows us to do that”
Simon Pestridge – Nike UK
And boy do they deliver on that promise. Here’s just one of thousands of projects they do every year to make people join their brand.
Do great stuff and people will follow you. That goes for products, services, support, communication and advertising. It’s a simple as that!
Every now and then when I spend time online I find things that make me shiver cause they’re so freakin cool. Today I found an open source project that matches that description and I’d like to share it with you. It regards an organization called Ushahidi and their kick ass crowdsourcing platform.
Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, was initially a website developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. Since then Ushahidi have grown from an ad hoc group of volunteers to a focused organization.
Crime reporting in Haiti with the Ushahidi platform
Now the platform is available as an Open Source platform and it kicks ass. It’s among the coolest mashup platforms I’ve seen. Since launch the Ushahidi collaboration platform has been used to collaborate on crime tracking in Atlanta, , wildlife tracking in Africa, monotoring of voting in Mexico, mapping the crisis in Haiti and even cleaning up after the Snowmageddon in Washington and a lot more. The platform lets you contribute via mail, Twitter, SMS and online reporting.
You might have read the book Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. If not the short story is basically that Clay writes on how internet fundamentally changes the way we communicate due to the fact that this world wide web thing creates a never ever seen platform that enables people to create, share and consume information at a close to no cost. The Ushahidi platform is more or less rocket fuel for the ideas Clay is bringing forward in his book.
What do you wanna mashup? Head over to Ushahidi and get going!
People over here in Europe are getting ready to change their light bulbs at home due to a decision taken in the European Union a couple of years ago. This has triggered an earthquake of ideas on how to repackaging this old product that haven’t really seen inside of a designers room the last 50 years (or at least it feels that way).
This is more or less what the industry has offered us the last 50 years
Sometime last year I noticed that this business is on the move. As I was shopping bulbs it struck me that good shit is happening inside the hardware store on the light bulb shelf. What the light bulb industry is going through is a great inspiration for any business lost in history and it shows that once you get that ball rolling things will happen fast.
Here are 10 light bulb packaging concepts that leads this industry forward
Sweet and Informative from Greenlite found on Aaron Skippers blog.
Last summer I got on a train leaving Stockholm for Gothenburg. Together with freelancing project manager, planner and colleague Caroline Karlström I had a meeting set up with diving brand Poseidon. This was the start of a project where I truly had the opportunity to work with all aspects of branding and creative communication.
A dream project.
Ingvar Elfström, the founder of Poseidon back in 1958.
The Background
Back in 1958 this brand was founded by a young Swedish diver, Ingvar Elfström. Since then the brand has become famous for unique, different and great products. However over the last couple of years they’ve lost speed when it comes to innovation and marketing initiatives.
But then something happened. The company was bought by a small group of investors three years back. Headed by visionaire Kurt Sjöblom they set out on a journey – to develop the first ever automated rebreather for recreational divers.
This was why we were there. About a year from launch Kurt and his team felt they needed to do something about the brand. And after a successful meeting that actually started with me diving [click to continue…]
Right now I’m trying to find the time to finalize a couple of posts hidden among my drafts. However I’ve got a quite tight schedule right now with 4 exiting speaking appearances (and another 4 closed ones) where I’ll be speaking about future communication, social media, branding and creativity the coming 2 weeks.
So, if you wanna tap into my brain before Easter you’re probably better off meeting me in:
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
