Entrepreneurship

Some companies get it, some don’t but now at least it’s easier for you to do something about it.

Dell hosts this fantastic site called Ideastorm where they invite everyone to be involved in their products and services development. The site allows anyone of us to post ideas, then the community (including you) can have a say if an idea should be promoted or not. The management (yes, the real management) then evaluate the ideas from Ideastorm every month and on top of that even give feedback which ideas the might develop.

This qoute from last weeks evaluation meeting illustrates the power of the community:

“This has been a busy couple of weeks!  We had almost 250 ideas submitted and more than 225 new IdeaStorm users in the past two weeks.  It’s great to see Dave (davnmc) and Petzy again in StormRoom and badblood back on the site!  A special welcome to a few new IdeaStormers natakuc4, idangold and inkslug!”

So how can you get going with your company?

That’s where Kindling comes in.

Kindling is this new Web 2.0 service where every company (even yours) out there can do exactly what Dell is doing.

Straight from their own site: Kindling is a place where companies, organizations, and small groups can share and collaborate. Kindling cultivates ideas from the ground up and believes that everyone in a group has something valuable to say, from the interns to the CEO. 

So if you’re one of those people sitting on a management level thinking: Wow, this collaboration, social media, community, consumer involvement, interaction…thing seems fantastic, but it’s to much of a hassle to get going - get your but over to Kindling, request an Invitation and start now!

Right now people all over the world tune into Eurocup 08 in Switzerland/Austria. I live in Sweden, so TV4 and Canal+ are the channels of my choice since they are the ones holding the rights to the show. They paid a shitload of money for it.

This will not be the case in Eurocup 2012 when the event is held in Poland. Then I’ll turn into Socialtelevision.com where the TV is a result of Social Broadcasting edited live online by it’s users for it’s users.

Let me tell you about Social Television

The community

I guess you’ve seen that Apple launched their new 3G iPhone the other day.  The new phone got GPS, Video-camera, 3G connection and a browser that follows web-standards.

  Imagine now that we launch a site called Socialtelevision.com (or YouTube Live) that let’s any signed up user upload video streams, much like the ones we see on YahooLive or Bambuser for that matter. On the site, users can now sign up as plain users, producers, broadcasters, editors or commentators. When an event comes up,  say Eurocup 2012’, basically users express their interest to become part of the broadcasting of the event and take on different roles.

Kick off the game

It’s match day. On the stands 247 SocialTV users turn on their iPhones and connect to socialtelevision.com. On the site, 19 pro editors collaborate by social voting to decide how the broadcasting of the event will be edited. Through the built in GPS, it’s easy to understand which camera can cover what. A free kick is coming up and users positioned behind the goal all get the order “close up on Zlatan Ibrahimovic”.

  By using the dynamic circle tool integrated with Google Map, the editor in lead (by voting) draws a circle around the left corner of the field and sends out the order “focus on corner kicker” This results in another 24 cameras covering the kicker.

  Through the integrated motion sensor the editor automatically get the most stabile shot of the situations (if he doesn’t override it). The cameramen on site get Kudos (rating) depending on how much their specific coverage of the event is used. 

Access to all areas

90 minutes later the whistle blows and the first ever Live SocialTV event is a fact. Aware of his most loyal fans, Zlatan avoids the “paying” media crowd and approaches the side of the field.

  36 SocialTV “cameramen” cover the interview performed by a SocialTV journalist who has received a Titanum Status on socialtelevision.com. The questions asked by millions online and decided upon by social voting are delivered in his right ear. The interview ends after Zlatan draws his autograph on the iPhone, the touch screen senses the pressure and the result is a unique date-stamped autograph with information about Zlatan’s pulse among other things.

Just like ordinary TV but different

At home, me and my family eat up the last snacks on the table. My youngest daughter (almost 5 year old in 2012) is eager to show her friends Zlatans “time-stamped autograph”.

  Next week Disney On Ice turns up in Stockholm, and she is already signed up to cover the story. Her best friend will cover the back stage scene where Poh, Tiger and the rest of the crew hangs out.

The old generation…

In boardrooms of TV networks all over the world, directors asks themselves…what are we gonna make money on now? (or maybe they are the founders of SocialTV…but that would have to call for some innovative digital thinking, something they still lack)

The end

Is there such a thing as Social Television? No. But I truly believe that there will be within the next couple of years and it will change the business of broadcasting rights forever. Social TV will change all kinds of events there are.

Feel free to steal the idea and challenge the dinosaurs.

If there is one thing I will always be proud of when it comes to my life as a creative, it’s the fact that I founded an agency, built it and then won the global Football World Cup 06 project for adidas.

The solution was a 10 month campaign that took 1.5 years to build and it included 29 localised launches in 28 markets on 18 languages. 

This is a short and definitely not a summary that gives the project justice. But it gives you an idea what we did during those 2.5 years. All designs, photography, videos etc were made by Foreign.

I’m back at work after 4 days of moving into a new house. So this post will be a short one!

Yesterday Netvibes (my favorite RSS aggregator) launched their new Ginger platform.

The new Ginger platform includes a lot of changes that will make your Netvibes experience better. But the most important and interesting one is the way Netvibes now alows you to share what ever you want to a public Netvibes Universe.And that’s exactly what I did. Here’s my daily read on Netvibes. Sharing is caring - remember that

The other week, students from Hyper Island came over to do a short video piece on Foreign.

The video was to be used on their portfolio site launched today. On the site students present themselves and a selection of the best of breed Swedish digital agencies.

Here’s the film.

More and more companies out there spend more time blogging and less money on traditional advertising. Blogging can potentially be the perfect marketing tool for a small business IF you know how to handle it.

MarketingVOX has a post for you people out there who want to know more. The post gives 10 tips.

1. ROI based on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Widespread employee blogging
3. Control is OK
4. Conversion goals
5. Social conversion
6. Marketing democracy
7. Localization
8. Spaghetti
9. Video
10. Data driven blogging

One thing I think the list totally forgot is where you host your blog and which blogging tool you should use. My personal tip would be: Host it at Bluehost.com and run Wordpress. Then the world of plugins and themes is open to you. If you really want to take it serious you should get a designer to create a personalized theme for your company.

Here are the 36 hottest tips I’ve seen online.

It’s ReadWriteWeb (lot of ReadWriteWeb right now, but they’re on fire) that has gathered a collection of startup tips covering software engineering, infrastructure, PR, conferences, legal and finance. They describe best practices for an early-stage startup.

Head over there and then get going!

Great entrepreneurs have always inspired me. And Richard Branson is definitely on my top 10 list.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised when Lars, one of our Art Directors at Foreign, tipped me about this new safety video Virgin America has produced. They’ve teamed up with world class illustrators and created a brand new way of delivering safety information.

We all know how it is when safety videos starts to roll in the cabin. We shut our ears and eyes and start to think about something grey. But this one will turn our heads. It’s informative, it’s creative, it’s bold and it breaks the mold. It’s a killer.

(by the way, did you see I used the new customization tool over at YouTube)

Have you heard about Flying Dog Brewery? No. Well, then it’s about time you do.

Flying Dog is this kick ass brewery founded by copywriters, illustrators and advertising professionals. Their attitude is raw, fun and very unique in the business of brewing beer. What Flying dog is doing different is basically just that. They’re doing things exactly they way people say you are not supposed to do things.

• Their bottles are different
• They design the labels different
• They communicate with their target group in a totally different tone of voice
• They’re not afraid of basically saying beer is a drug
• They’re honest.

With their own words.
“Purposeful, provocative irreverence. These words echo through the brewery corridors. Purposeful in the pursuit of making bold, yet highly drinkable craft beers and provocative and irreverent in the way we view and communicate with the world around us.”

Flying Dog is a perfect example on what happens when creative brains get some freedom to do things their way.
Different works. Different is cool…when done the right way of course. Does their beer taste different? I don’t know. Haven’t found a place in Sweden where I can try it out. But I sure want some!

Take a couple of minutes of your time to view the above video where they talk about what’s different with their company. Then visit their website.

ps. It’s cool to see this in real life. Copy-guru Neil French created an advertising campaign for local newspapers in Singapore where he created a very different but virtual beer called XO to prove that spirits could be advertised in press. He broke all the rules and conquered.

A couple of weeks ago one of my startup’s, PremierGoals.com was launched in China.

About one and a half year ago, me, Henrik Barck and Claes Bourghardt set out on a mission to bring football to China. Our idea was to gather some of the best teams in the world and build a football portal where Chinese internet users could enjoy football.

After some initial branding and conceptualizing we put together a team of people representing the best within their respective field. Our most famous team member is probably the former English coach Sven-Göran Eriksson. We then started our field trip and visited some of the best football clubs in the world.

After signing Liverpool in may last year and then agreeing a strategic partnership with Sohu.com, one of the major Chinese portals with around 300 million page views and 40 million unique visitors per day we were close to deliver on our idea.

Now since a couple of weeks back we’re live in China representing 16 of the worlds best football clubs with written content, videos and other online content.

If you’re fluent in Chinese. Feel free to check it out.

It seems that there are some cool apps being made solely for the new OS X Leopard update from Apple. Naked Light is absolutely one of them.

Naked Light is a new imaging tool that throws away antiquated concepts like pixels; layers; 8-bit color; and destructive, non-re-editable filters and operations. Instead, compositions in Naked light represent a sort of Platonic ideal-with infinite resolution, 590 quintillion colors!!!, and perpetually re-editable nodes.

Brandon comments on the Naked Lights blog: “Naked’s targetted squarely for less professional users, or at best, a tool to use alongside Photoshop. But it’s not going to cut it in a commercial environment. It’s too 1.0″

Well, I personally just love when there is a new imaging product being released, since that is not an everyday event. So, gotta get that Leopard up and running now!