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…]
This post is probably most stupid post one can write since CEO’s and board members seems to have decided to stay behind with the dinosaurs while the rest of us look for new ground where we can thrive and prosper. Basically on average they read three local newspapers of their own choice, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and watch a couple of TV channels. They haven’t got a clue about blogs, feed readers and social networks. But I’ll give it a go anyway.

Dear CEO and board member. In most cases you’re probably +40 years old. You have a wife, two kids and live in a house that cost above average. Two cars in the garage and a [click to continue…]

This year when the students at Berghs School of Communication graduate they sum up their examination exhibition like this:
- No one reads ads.
- People read what is interesting.
- How do we become interesting?
- We create news instead of advertising.
Instead of having a regular examination exhibition they’ve launching a live news channel the 27th of May where all their projects will be highlighted. The news channel will be available online on the Berghs Live website. Apart from that you can visit the studio at the Berghs school. Finally they’ve managed to get the channel live on Stureplan, Stockholms most central public square. Of course they’ve created a Twitter # for the event as well.
Larger than life. Make it larger than life. That’s what I was told when I was working with a Nike campaign back in 1999. Today, make it larger than life but make it true!
What the student have actually been working with for their final examination is yet to be seen. But the wrap up of it all in the context of Berghs live shows they’ve got what future communication is all about:
- Make things interesting.
- Make it bigger than it actually is.
- Use multiple channels.
- You can’t buy distribution, you have to create it.
- Viral marketing is achieved when context beats the hell out of surface.
Good Luck ›› Class of 2009!
ps. If you wanna check it out
Broadcasting live at berghslive.com:
Thursday 28/5 19.00 – 20.30
Friday 29/5 15.00 – 18.00
Saturday 30/5 13.00 – 15.00
Sunday 31/5 13.00 – 15.00
Opening hours for the offline version at the School:
Thursday 28/5 17.00 – 22.00 (Vernissage for invited)
Friday 29/5 11.00 – 19.00
Saturday 30/5 11.00 – 19.00
Sunday 31/5 11.00 – 16.00

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.

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.
Say yes.
Just say the word – Viral – and brand owners go bananas. It’s what you want. Communication spread all over the world without a penny in media spend. It sounds so easy but in fact, not that many videos circles the globe every year.
Let me share one of my ways of increase the probability of succeeding.
I call it “The Viral Triangle”

I’ve created The Viral Triangle in order to get a better understanding from clients that viral marketing is all about buzz and creating hooks that pull people into the loop. The components of The Viral Triangle is something [click to continue…]