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…]
I believe in the saying – ‘Sharing is caring’ and most of the post on this blog is about just that. Trying to get my head around things that could help brands and companies to outperform themselves. Now I need to cash in some of that sharing and the currency is cudos – your vote!
Vote for Ronnestam.com in Swedish YABA Awards
This blog has been nominated in ‘Trend’ (I was awarded in more categories but they didn’t allow that which is kind of typically Swedish) category in Swedish Yet Another Blog Award. Please lay your vote on me by heading over the place where you vote for Blog of Ronnestam. Vote now and help yourselves in terms of securing a white leather lounge chair in heaven once you die. (or at least a fluffy cloud to lie down on)
Gratefully Yours!
Johan Ronnestam
Those are the words said by Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President World Wide Product Marketing over at Apple when speaking about the new Apple iPad. It pretty much sums up what I thing after having followed the keynote given by Steve Jobs today.
The new iPad is a game-changer and I need one now! (you too!)
I spent far to much of my youth riding my snowboard, so getting me into MIT would probably involve both bribes and plastic surgery. But if I had, the MIT Media Lab is for sure the place to be if you wanna tap into the future for real.
Hidden in room 320 you’ll find Pattie Maes and her Fluid Interfaces Research Group. This is a part of MIT where the goal is to radically rethink the human-machine interactive experience. Pattie and her students has already brought us tons of cool stuff like the wearable computer interface and the Stiftables (that I’ve written about before).
Well, this morning when I browsed through the Shapeways blog I feasted my eyes onto the Fluid Groups latest vision for the future – a 3D food printer called Cornucopia. You heard me right. The 3D food printer.
This little beauty, yet to be seen in real life, will let you print your food. Get it? Cornucopia’s cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user’s favorite ingredients. [click to continue…]
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…]
December 30, 2009
in Books, Cases, Entrepreneurship, Innovate, Link of the day, People, Research, SEO, Social communication, The trend is my friend, branding, presentations
I’ve always wanted to write a book. This is NOT it!
So far this year my blog have had more than 115 000 unique visitors and just over 240 000 visits. I’ve written more than 500 blog posts covering everything from design, gadgets, trends, technology, advertising, innovations, personal things, branding and more.
About 28% of the visitors during this last year have ended up reading a post that was tagged with branding. That’s probably not a coincidence since besides trends and creativity I’d say branding is the subject that is the most dearest to me.
When I’ve been looking deeper down into the stats I’ve seen that many of you visitors haven’t really explored my blog beyond the posts on the first page or the actual post you came to read. This is why I thought it made sense to gather them all like this – ‘Top 10 Blog Posts on Future Branding and Communication From Ronnestam.com’ - My first book.
A Book, MashUp, PDF or Whatever You Wanna Call It By Johan Ronnestam
Even though this isn’t actually what I would call a book it’s been the perfect opportunity for me to experiment with the production process of a book. I’ve put a big block in my calendar covering January, February and March and if everything goes right I will present my ‘real’ book sometime in April or May next year. It will be a book on how to integrate future communication with product and service development. One things for sure – I’m doing it on my own. But for now you have to do with this first book, mashup, pdf or whatever you wanna call it.
4 Ways to get your hands on Top 10 Blog Posts on Future Branding and Communication From Ronnestam.com With Love
1. Buy a signed copy of the printed book – 39€ including shipping world wide.
I’ve printed 150 books in Denmark at Norhaven. Out of those 150 I’m giving 50 signed copies away to the first 50 Twitter retweets of this post (if you live outside Sweden you have to pay for the shipping). If you wanna get your hand on one of the other 100 signed ones you either hope to get one at one of my speaking occasions during 2010 or you contact me to buy one for €39 including shipping costs.
2. Download the PDF for free (pay by linking or tweeting this blog post)
Here’s the PDF if you wanna download it and read it off your [click to continue…]
One thing I love about the internet is the fact that suddenly you find things that haven’t surfaces for many years. Last week, thanks to AdLab I got word of a book by Douglas Atkin – ‘The Culting of Brands’. Douglas wrote this book back in 2004 but as I’m reading it I’d say it’s more relevant than ever.
The Culting of Brands is the fruit of research that has spanned more than seven years. Douglas was fascinated by the way brand addicts expressed the kind of conviction one might only expect at a religious revivalist meeting. If these people were expressing cultlike devotion, he reasoned, then the best way to understand these dedicated consumers was to study the original, cults.
Inside the book book Douglas has listed 10 ‘easy’ steps on how to successfully cult your brand:
An image from Douglas Atkin closed but archived site
- Difference – Distance your cult from the establishment
- Connectors – Recruit successful, attractive and spectable souls
- Exclusivity – Not anyone can join
- Solidarity – A clear sense of belonging to a group
- Ideology – A clear belief system
- Lovebomb – Overwhelm with love
- Paradox – Make joiners feel that they become more individual
- An Enemy – To define what you are not
- Contact – Splash your ideas onto the right people
- Let go – Don’t be a wide-read, psychopathic, control-obsessive cult leader
This is by far one of the best ‘to do’ lists on future branding I’ve seen. I’ve printed this and pinned it to the wall. You should too!
Here are some of my reflections on Douglas Atkin’s 10 steps to successful cult branding:
Number 1 – Differentiation is the key to success. But make sure you don’t differentiate beyond stupidity. The net is overflowing with campaigns and websites trying to reinvent usability. This is wrong. Make sure you measure everything and build yourselves into existing communities first.
Number 2 - Make sure your ’spectable souls’ understand what the internet is all about and how they can utilize social media in order to maintain and extend their network.
Number 3 – Exclusivity should be interpreted as ‘not everyone wants to join’. Every brand out there could and maybe should be accessible for everyone. But when you’re trying to position your brand – positing it so that people love AND hate you! That thing in the middle won’t pay your salary and on top of that it’s a very grey and boring place.
Number 4 – When shaping the tactical execution – build on classical identification systems. Think “I live in Thailand and I like the King so I dress in Yellow”. What markers of excellence can your brand dress itself in?
Number 5 - Ideology. Building a brand requires tons of fans that are prepared to help you. Manifesto or Ideology is a trendy thing today but it also is a very effective lighthouse that people can steer against. If you plan to build a brand focus on one thought should be your first and foremost plan.
Number 7 – Paradox is one of my favorites. People tend to think that because we all like the same brand we are a tribe. That’s partly true. But people almost always join a tribe in order to strengthen themselves as individuals. Don’t forget this! People who wear your brand do it so that others understand who they are, not where they belong! You should get your but over to Elia Mörlings blog Tribaling and dig deeper into Tribal marketing!
Number 8 – En enemy. Per Robert Öhlin, Swedish brand blogger and one of my favorite brand ping pong sparring partners always stress this and I agree more than most. You cannot win a war without knowing who to fight. Pick one not ten!
Number 9 – Contact! The internet allows for different levels of networking. Think hard about how and where you interact with your target audience. Facebook might be the broad scope? Twitter might be more focused? Should you create something like Ideastorm or MyStarBucksIdea for your fans. How do you treat the people within your company? Who out of everyone you interact with truly brings the most value to the table – do you know this? In order to make things even more exclusive. How can you interact offline with your super fans, no matter if they’re B2B or B2C fans? Closed events, exclusive dinners or steering
Number 10 – This is very important today. The transparency is total. People will connect with your brand everywhere. I’ve written about this before but it’s worth repeating. You don’t really own your brand anymore. You merely look after it while we’re shaping it. Listen and listen hard and you might trick us into shaping it the way you like. Ignore us and we’ll turn you into dust before you can say ‘homp chomp’.
Now 5 years after this book was launched I’d say this is more important that ever. We’re living in a complex world with global competition, the consumer is more empowered than ever, new generations are shopping our products, speed is essential and technology is being democratized. Adapt, innovate and change – then you will be a player in this new exiting world!
Ah – forgot. Get the book on Amazon or maybe Bokus if you’re a Swede.
