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…]
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…]
Thomas Traxler has got his shit together. Powered by nothing but sunlight and some threads, Thomas Traxler‘s “The idea of a tree project” shows us how objects can grow during the course of a day. His project more or less mimics the way a tree grows and changes shape due to weather conditions. Amazing.
Thomas got exactly the characteristic you need in order to create future communication. The competence of combining art, technology and while caring for the nature into ideas that get noticed.
The music industry have for many years kept musicians at an arms length mainly because the hard- and software has been to expensive for the everyday musician to buy. On top of that the record companies has owned distribution and marketing. This way they’ve made sure that they make the big bucks while the actual artists get screwed over and over again. Now thanks to affordable laptops with software that doesn’t cost anything compared to a traditional studio production has been democratized and the internet makes marketing easy. Today a 18 year old kid walks into a record company with a final version of his song. The power has shifted over to his side and as a result the music labels are left with their pants down.
Now it’s time for the movie industry to follow.
Good friend Caroline mailed me a link to a new surf movie that is in production on Hawaii at the moment. Being a surfer myself I was of course first stunned by Jamie O’Brien handling Pipeline as if it was nothing. However, the quality of the footage amazed me even more. My first thought was that this was a big ass Hollywood production but as I was browsing through the shots I learned that this was the brain works of the next generation studio Laforet Visuals.
Laforet Visuals is run by tech geek Vincent Laforet, recognized as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Photography” by American Photo Magazine in 2005 and among other things awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002.
By using a combination of the RED One, the Canon 5DMKII and radio controlled helicopters the studio shows Hollywood quality doesn’t have anything to do with big ass budgets anymore. Of course Laforet Visuals have spent more than most every day photographers, but still, the price tag in the end shows that if you have an idea you can actually pull it through. Only 2-3 years ago a production like this would cost 1000 times the money.
The Canon Mark 5 with a Redrock cinema lens – Hollywood democratized
The final results are yet to see as Vincent hasn’t published a final version of the movie. But one thing is for sure. When I see this I know that the next business that will have young creatives challenging the establishment will be the movie business.
(by the way, I can’t wait to get my hands on one of those RED One cameras)
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. In 2010 the readers of Microsoft Indikat named Johan Swedens most influential authority within digital communication
