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…]
Think social media and conversational marketing might be the next train to heaven for your brand but don’t know where to board? Well, here’s three social media marketing models that will make sure you’ll find your station.
If you wanna get moving into the social country of love where conversation rules you’ve gotta get one thing straight. Valuable content is king. Buying a loudspeaker and start tweeting wont get you anywhere. Swedish brands like Comhem and Boxer have effectively proven that just twittering the 140 sign language doesn’t earn you any followers. Every social network will provide you with it’s own possibilities and traps. A well executed strategy is a must or you’ll end up in a minefield.
Here are 3 models by Johan Ronnestam that will guide your brand towards a successful social media strategy.
3 Models That Will Guide You Into The Social Media Landscape
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The Social Staircase
The Social Staircase is a model that focus on the overall process. It’s the stuff that pays for your ticket to love.
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The Social Tool Matrix
Now you know what kind of presence your business needs. Now it’s time to map the tools to make sure you know what to keep your mouth shut, when to speak and when to listen.
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The Social Viral Spiral
This is about speed. Spread that love I’m talking about below. But make sure you do it with finesse and timing. Create a couple of Social Viral Spirals and you’re ready to make out!
How your brand makes good use these three [click to continue…]
While spending some time reading up on what the ‘fine art’ video photographer Vincent Lafore was up to I ran into a campaign by Canon placed on the video site Vimeo.
The concept called ‘The Story Beyond The Still’ is a perfect example on how brands could look into creating digital events rather than necessarily trying to pull traffic to their own sites.
Swedish brands as well as most brands seem preoccupied with trying to figure out how to get traffic to their campaign (often built in flash…) and brand sites. This is of course the number one strategy for any brand with an online business. But so far most brands do not have their business online so brand building and advertising is still what it’s [click to continue…]
Students over at the Berghs School of Communication asked for some advice on research about social networking behaviours in Europe.
As I gathered my links and sources from my Delicious account I ran into this wonderful presentation below by Tom Smith from Trendstream. The presentation was given by Tom to the IAB Europe Social Media Research Showcase, sharing insights from Wave 1 of the Global Web Index. It’s well composed and extremely valuable if you’re into branding, communication, advertising, business development and social media. So I thought I should share it with you too!
Tom lists three big trends that will impact your brand in 2010 based on Social Media involvement across Europe.
- The passive impact of social media is bigger than the active one
- We increasingly consume content and information based on the consumer network
- Digital networks are much now bigger than our face to face ones
So there you go. Nothing to blame on now. Just get going!
So there you are. Heading a beer brand. You’ve turned into a ‘baldy’ since most of your hair has fallen off due to crazy competition, expensive media investments leading nowhere, a product that is older than your ancestors (I’m talking the ones that lived before we had bikes and shit). Now you want people to drink more of that golden product of yours. What do you do? Advertise? Hell no!
Easy. You stop that advertising stuff you’re doing and launch a product instead. As a matter of fact you launch a bag of crisp to complement your product. Smart as hell. This is exactly what the guys down under at Droga 5 Australia managed to convince beer brand Victoria Bitter to do.
Result then? Better brand visibility in-store very close to the actual beer buying decision. Double your revenues (if it tastes good that is) and on top of that – Salt. Yes, that white little thing that melts on your tongue and makes you crave more…you guessed it..beer!
Now there’s innovative advertising for ya!
Those are the words the packaging of your product should whisper over and over and over again. The customers immediate response should of course be – I want to live the rest of my life with you no matter if it will make me go bankrupt!
This is exactly what Soon Mo Kang’s Tea Bag packaging does. In fact I think once you’ve taken this little beauty home the first person that comes for a cup of tea will steal it. Now there’s a brief for ya – “My product should be so well designed so my customers have people stealing it from them”
On top of the sheer beauty of it it also keeps your tea bag from sinking to the bottom of your cup. Also what we should expect from products in the future – everything communicates. I love it.
As often before SwissMiss beamed it to me.
Det började igår med att jag läste en artikel på SVD där man skriver: “Sociala medier ny PR-kanal”. Strax efter retweetade jag @byBalsam som uppmärksammat chefredaktören Martin Jönssons morgontweet (som senare bloggade om allt buzz). Inte många timmar efter postar Brit Stakston en strålande betraktelse av hela historien som hon idag följde upp med en Del 2.
Artikeln i Svenska Dagbladet förenklade kraftigt vad sociala media handlar om och därmed gjorde mer illa än nytta. Jag kastade mig såklart på tangentbordet men hindrades av kissiga blöjor, pulkaåkning, lekstugor, sällskapsspel och annat som hör ledigheteten till. Dagen gick och jag hann får ur mig vad jag tänkte. Men nu är jag hur som helst på banan igen.
Tillbaka till politiker och sociala medier – varför blir alla så fokuserade på Twitter och Facebook och hur gör man egentligen? Det här går nog inte riktigt att svara på, men man kan definitivt lägga fler kort på borden än vad Svenska Dagbladet gjorde.
Om vi ska prata om politik och sociala media måste vi först fråga oss – varför väljer jag egentligen ett politiskt parti? Det kan tyckas vara en komplicerad fråga. Men egentligen är den rätt enkel att svara på:
- Politiskt söker jag ett parti som tycker som jag. Jag söker ett parti som representerar mig i sveriges riksdag.
- Likt vänskap måste vi komma överens emotionellt och inte bara åsiktsmässigt. Jag och era representanter alltså. Gör vi det har jag överinseende med mycket. Vänskap väljer man inte bort så lätt.
- Om vi har varit vänner länge och tycker olika vill jag att du ska lyssna på min åsikt.
Det parti som lyckas svara upp mot de här tre faktorerna på bästa sätt får mig på fall. Det är utifrån det här perspektivet svenska och såklart alla politiska partier borde verka i sociala media eller som jag helst säger – digitala media. Sociala medier i sig har inget egenvärde utan det handlar om totalt integrerad kommunikation.
Olika sociala kanaler/verktyg är bra på olika saker och bör såklart användas utifrån en övergripande strategi. En sådan har helt klart alla politiska partier fått på plats. Men det taktiska genomförandet sviktar [click to continue…]
This last year, 2009 has been a blast in many ways. Almost every day I’ve received interesting news from friends, other bloggers and my RSS feeds. Even thought we’ve seen one of the most severe economical downturns this year it seems advertising, communication and technology has been the business to be in.
Brands seem to have learned from the history and brand spend has rather gone up than down for a lot of brands. We’ve also seen Twitter and Facebook continue to grown faster than anything else on the planet and social media and open technologies has prospered due to that fact. The iPhone has continued to grow and Android is picking up it’s pace. Google has released lots of new cool products even though the Wave didn’t really become the clean double over head a lot of us expected.
Most brands have been looking for one-offs and as I look back at the 2009 Cannes Lions winners it strikes me that I can’t really remember one single campaign that stood out and changed the world of advertising. We’re slowly moving away from bought space to earned space, this is most certainly the reason why my brain plays these tricks with me.
I’m not gonna spend more of this post summing up 2009. Other people, papers, bloggers and personalities has done a great job doing this already. Instead let’s move on to 2010.
Click for a larger image
Here are the Brand and communication predictions for 2010 by Johan Ronnestam
REAL
This is more of a change in how we live, consume, work, advertise and communicate. We will of course use all technology available to become more real but we will strive to make things more realistic, true [click to continue…]
