Some of you might have followed my blog since way back while others followed me only a couple of days. So I decided it was time to dig into Google Analytics and gather my top 100 blog posts, based on traffic, (I have written 596 to this date) between the years 2005 and 2011 for you to read.
I did actually start my first blog back in 2002 but quickly stopped blogging. It was more of an installation experiment. Then in 2005 I slowly started posting again. Up until now I’ve had over a half a million pageviews and 367374 unique visitors dropping in.
Oh, by the way. If there’s anything you like – please Tweet it or put it on your FB page. It would make me happy.
The other day a friend of mine brought H&M’s global website to my attention again. Back in 2006 I was one of their consultants until I more or less lost the assignment due to the fact that I told them what the didn’t wanna hear – Your website sucks! Of course I was wrong and they were right. After all, they’ve been awarded time after time at major advertising shows (Thanks to among others to me and the team I worked with back then) so why wouldn’t they know what they are doing.
This is exactly where the problem start for most major brands – at ad awards like Cannes Lions, Eurobest, Clio and others where people with no understanding for how to build an online presence beyond Adobe Flash and cool animations take these monsters to new heights. Back in 2007 I was also a part of building these kind of platforms for major brands but behind closed doors I constantly tried to convince my clients that sticking to these worn out technologies was nothing but stupid.
Let’s take a look at couple of major players and have a quick look at their online presence.
The Online Nike Store
The online store belonging to the worlds leading sports brand. All built in Flash…in 2010
Nike has always been among the first brands to adapt to change. Back in 1999 when I took part in pitching them into Framfab they were even heading the pack.
At first glance it all looks great. The site design is inspired by blogging with that clear and present left hand menu hanging there. But once you start looking deeper it’s a mess. The entire store is built in flash which is just plain stupid. To Nike’s defense [click to continue…]
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you would know by now that I’m a big fan of sharing ideas and thoughts. Internets biggest contribution to a better world is exactly this – getting rid of protectionism and replacing it with sharing knowledge.
Together we can tear down the walls of monopoly built up by multinational companies more interested in giving money back to shareholders than actually building great things for the people. The open source culture is probably the best example of this with code like Android, MySQL, WordPress, Drupal, Linux but also real objects like the 3D printing Makerbot and Frankencamera 2.0 by Stanford to prove that it works. We’re living in exiting times!
Now that’s a sort of long introduction to this short link tip. But I felt I needed to remind you all to share your knowledge before sharing my knowledge about the Yahoo Design Stencils. This initiative by yahoo is yet another example of sharing. Yahoo has this section called All Design Patterns where you can find all their best practice thinking on usability and design for both mobiles and the online world. Then a couple of clicks away you’ll find all these great thoughts in downloadable templates for Photoshop, Omni Graffle, Visio and…yes you name it!
I love the Internet. When I least expect it someone somewhere has spent the last weeks writing thousands lines of code that turns something we’ve all seen into something none of us has seen.
Today when I visited JoshSpear I ran into this open-sourced project called Graffiti Analysis by Evan Roth. This is exactly what I’m talking about. By tracking graffiti artists when they put their pen to the paper and make their mark Evan and his team can unveil unseen motion involved in the creation of a tag.
Suddenly things that seem flat get a whole new meaning. Just like when you get an idea composed out of two old ones. You bring new light to things people thought were explored to the max. People love that shit just like I love this shit!
Read more about the Grafitti Analysis 2.0 project here.
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…]
For years I’ve thinking about this post but it has seemed so obvious so I didn’t bother writing it. But nothing happens so it’s time to put my thoughts down in writing and give one of my business ideas away.
The unexplored room of business development
The car industry has access to a very unique thing. 4 seats where people have different needs depending on age, sex, where you come from and where you’re heading. All of this in a small contained area that today is pretty boring and unexplored.
What if the car industry decided to start a company together, sort of a foundation like the mobile world has launched Symbian, that developed a new operative system optimized for cars. What would be the specs and how could it benefit the car brands.
The benefits would be enormous. Let’s brainstorm for a couple of minutes:
Maximum connectivity with USB, Firewire, SD card slot and Bluetooth accessibility and Wifi & wireless 3G broadband connection.
It’s pretty obvious. Getting internet into the car would not only enable me to download apps, stream videos, listen to internet radio and play online games but it would also enable me to upload stuff to the car from home. Sync videos, photos, software and more. On top of this I [click to continue…]
My parents always thought I spend to much time in front of my computer. Personally I’m afraid my kids won’t spend enough time there.
If there’s anything I’m sure of its the fact that kids growing up with a sound relation to computers will create a strong platform for the rest of their life.
This is why I love Scratch. Scratch is a programming language suitable for kids that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.
So, if you’ve got kids – move them from slaying other people in war games to building applications in Scratch.
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. The readers of Microsoft Indikat has named Johan Swedens most influential authority within digital communication
