Driving in a fog

David Jones, global CEO of Euro RSCG is quoted in the eMarketer article Why Now Is Not a Good Time to Slash Your Market Research Budget as saying: "The reality today is that we are all driving in fog, and no one really knows if the fog will lift in one year, two years or more."
This fog explains why there are so many seemingly contradictory trends in marketing reports today. Compare, for example:

1. A survey from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) indicates that 77% of US advertisers are cutting their media spending this year
2. Nielsen reports that U.S. advertising for the full year 2008 was down 2.6% compared to the full year 2007
3. IAB Reports Internet Advertising Grew 10 Percent Last Year; Outpacing TV (IAB 2008 Full Year report .pdf)
4. Online Ad Growth Screeches To A Halt - they "grew only 2.6% year over year in Q4, including search".

Numbers never lie. But unfortunately, this kind of contradictory reports will create only more fog. When driving in fog, don't stop: be patient, reduce speed, don't blind the other drivers with your high beam lights. These are interesting times. Don't waste them by simply following tail lights of the cars ahead.

La Nouvelle Smooth

"Ah, le cinéma! Remember the days when men were strong and silent, women were chic and sophistiqué, and the action was as smooth as our 4% triple filtered beer?" Stella Artois' campaign site
Smooth Originals has some misleading navigation items (call me stupid, but "blog" did not lead to a blog) but in the end it's all about the three sixties-style remakes of Hollywood blockbusters: Huit Kilomètres featuring Lapin, Dial Hard featuring Jacques MeQlain, and Vingt-Quatre Heurs featuring Jacques Baudeur. Formidable!
I love the atmosphere in these movies. Going retro for a brand is certainly not new, but this take makes the George Clooney Martini or nescafé cappuccino ads too slick.
You know what would be really cool? To have Stella Artois sponsored Smooth Movie Nights with real sixties cinema classics. I'd dress up for that!

FAILmom, the book

If you think it's cruel to tell small children great lies like "Wine makes mummy clever" or "milk feels pain", don't read True Mom Confessions: Real Moms Get Real. Because this time, quotes in the lines of “I put an educational DVD on so I could have sex. It wasn’t with my husband.” are not fictional, but true confessions collected from The Mom channel over at truu confessions. I laughed out loud at the That's a dangerous beading/craft tool vibrator anecdote. Other stories, like the one about the RSV vs haircut story are honest and horrible. But somewhere, in the back of their mind, most mothers will recognize the situation. Not approve of it, of course, but if we're honest about it most mothers fail to be a perfect one at least once every day.

Save the planet, do nothing

Tonight, at 8.30 PM is Earth Hour. Below are three examples of how you can make a "save the planet" message your own.

1. For the occasion of Earth Day 2009 on 22 april, Disney repackaged the glorious BBC Greenlight Media and Discovery Channel Documentary Planet Earth / The Blue Planet and slapped a new logo on it: DisneyNature. The voice-over is unfortunately not Sir David Attenborough's but (I think) James Earl Jones' aka the voice of Darth Vader.
2. Advertising agency Leo Burnett Sydney goes all social with a campaign on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook (group, fan page), MySpace, and YouTube. The advertiser is not planet earth, but WWF. Below is the very catchy Everybody sing this song song, in which people try to prove that their laundry is bigger than yours.
3. And what am I going to do to save the planet? Absolutely nothing. I'm not going online, not watching tv, not taking out the car. Because believe it or not, Belgium is one of those countries stupid enough to enforce Daylight Saving Time by law . And it's that time of the year again: on 29 March Belgium switches to summer time. Which means we lose one hour of good sleep, and we have to adjust the clock on every single electronic device in the house.

The Lacta case: love and chocolate

OgilvyOne Athens is very proud of their 2008 interactive campaign for the Greek chocolate brand Lacta. The video below showcases the Love at first site concept: Joanna and Petros, the two characters from a previous tv spot, meet again after two years and it's up to the surfer to make the right choices so these two can be together again. There's some subtle product placement in the videos, but putting "cheat" codes in the chocolate wrappers is a really nice find.
But why does the Love at First Site have to be so slow? The original film is 19 minutes long, but bringing the two lovers together takes at least twice as long because of the many annoying "loading" screens. This could have been done a lot more efficient by using interactive YouTube videos. But then again, the Lacta people would have been confronted with the typical Youtube comments, too.

Lacta, Love at first site - Case study from OgilvyOne Athens on Vimeo.

The dark side of Little Red Riding Hood

The Path -------- a short horror game by Tale of Tales "is designed with accessibility in mind. There are no ticking clocks or monsters to defeat. No hard puzzles will ever halt your progress. Most activities in the game are entirely optional and voluntary. The player has all the freedom in the world to explore and experience. The Path is a Slow Game."
The Path's narrative is obviously based on Little Red Riding Hood, more specifically the 14th century French "Grandmother's Tale" and 17th century Charles Perrault's "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge".
Although the game was developed in association with Villanella, the overall melancholy mood of the game and the potentially unsettling course of events make The Path unsuitable for children.

The PATH ----- Launch Trailer from Tale of Tales on Vimeo.

It takes two to libertango

American film actor, director, producer etc Vincent Gallo and Czech model and actress Eva Herzigová ("Hello, boys!") feature in a series of wonderful H&M Spring 2009 tv ads. The music is a version of "I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)". Not by Grace Jones, but I still like it a lot.

Açai berry superscam

Have a look at the pictures of diet bloggers Kirsten Hunt, Ann Conrad, Daniella Conrad, Jenna Patterson. Notice anything? That's right: they're all the same girl - a "casual" German iStock photo model named Julia. She's never eaten Açai berries in her life. Is this because she does'nt believe in its many health benefits?
No: it's becasue "'These diet 'bloggers' are just a mirage,' [CSPI senior nutritionist David ] Schardt said. 'Their weight loss is courtesy of Photoshop, not açai.'"
I don't know what's worse: the whole Acai berry mumbo jumbo, the açai-related scams, the fake blogs, or the impressive but nevertheless misleading use of Photoshop.
Found via Museum of Hoaxes.

Could you live without internet access?

I can only speak for myself but it would be hard for me to go without internet access. Bandwidth Separation Anxiety can be such a bitch. But I'm not the only one: "When given a short list of items and asked which of these could they live without, a majority of online adults indicated they cannot live without Internet access. [...] Internet access topped the list of necessities for the UK, Germany, Italy, and Brazil." Unfortunately, Belgium was not part of the Norton Online Living report (.pdf) so I'll guess we'll never know.
But internet is not the most important thing in people's life: "Most adults in the U.S., Canada, France, and Australia would prefer not to live without their car, while adults in China and India are most attached to their cell phones." And then, wait for it: "Men feel more attached to the data on their computers while women are more attached to their pets and make-up." Say what?

Here we are now, entertain us

I don't think it's easy to run surveys on online ad receptivity. First of all: Adblock Plus is the second most popular Firefox Add-on (in case you wonder: Video DownloadHelper is currently #1). So it's safe to say that at least half of the internet users think ads don't belong in "their backyard" called The Internet. Secondly, aren't the internet users who respond to online surveys about online ads by definition the most gullible ones?
Nevertheless, one IAB study (.pdf) recently found that "internet users are most receptive to ads while researching and shopping." This should be good news for Google Ads and comparison sites like Kieskeurig.be. Also, "people prefer not to be interrupted when they are enjoying an activity that requires their full attention such as watching catch-up TV or movie clips." Which is bad news for YouTube and GarageTV.
A second study by IAB (.pdf) reveals that "adverts that are relevant, useful and [...] money off" grab most attention online, but there are some considerable age differences: "younger audiences are more interested in special offers, the entertainment factor and exclusive information within advertising. For 45-54 year olds however, ads need to be more relevant and useful to make an impact."
The former is very confusing, and I hope it will not lead to a revival of the "make the logo bigger" style microsites in Flash aimed at "attracting the younger demographics".

Cosmetics as female war colours

RETHINKING THE LIPSTICK INDEX � spectre footnotes: "the word “cosmetics” comes from the Greek, “cosmos”, meaning order. “In traditional cultures cosmetics are not mere frippery,” [Senior Lecturer Anthropology at University of East London Camilla Power] says. They define who belongs to which group, who can touch who, and who can mate with who. “The regularised use of cosmetics as a sexual signal could even have been the thing that marked off modern humans.”
The title of the article at Spectre Group refers to the Lipstick Index, an economic indicator based on consumer spending. You might compare it to the Hemline Index: the oldest adage about fashion and the economy is that hemlines rise and fall with the stock market. So theoretically we should all start wearing long skirts now. And wear more bright lipstick: not because it's a cheap luxury product women like to indulge themselves with, or to appear more sexually attractive to men, but as a sign of disapproval with male politics. Or, as this MetaFilter round-up suggests: "get the men to hunt".
Fascinating take on why women apply make-up.

A woman's world

Marketing to women | Hello, girls | The Economist: "In America, where female consumers make more than 80% of discretionary purchases, companies have started tailoring their products and messages to appeal to women, in an effort to boost their sales."
A recent example was Mc Donald's sponsoring New York Fashion Week. (Imagine them handing out Happy Meal vouchers to all those skinny models, but that's a different story). An other example is Frito-Lay's Only in a Woman's World - a website that looks more like a children's website to me, but your mileage may vary. Embedded below is the World Series Premiere of the campaign. "Watch four friends as they navigate their way through life, relationships, and dessert menus." Hmm...

Accountable media

Razorfish Digital Outlook Report 2009 (.pdf): "As the economy softens, advertisers will be asking more from their budgets. Even those with healthy financials are likely to push for, and command better price terms and concessions from media companies, who are eager to fill the vast supply of ad space available."
Reminded me of the guide to advertising in a downturn (.ppt) The Economist published about a month ago: "The biggest shift in a downturn is towards accountable media - this typically means a greater spend online."

Advertising On The Edge

View more presentations from jcredland.

UPDATE: The OMD report of Media Investments in Belgium - January 2009 (.pdf) seems to confirm this trend. In January 2008, internet ad spending in Belgium was at 3.1%, while it's at 4.4% now. A + 1.3 point growth versus one year ago. But 0.5% less than in December 2008, when internet ad spending was at a promising 4.9%...

Internet as the center of the digital Ecosystem

New 4A'ss Book: "Understanding the Economics of Digital Compared to Traditional Advertising and Media Services": "Digital is unlike any other medium and should not be viewed using traditional benchmarks." That is clearly stating the obvious. Yet this 60 page report is definitely worth killing the proverbial tree. Not just for the clear explanations for the (seemingly) higher costs of Digital advertising (while "the internet is for free, right?"), but also because of their infographs.
The one on the left really caught my eye. I would use different terms, though. For example:

• Personal Web Pages -> Embedded Publishing
• Corporate Webprise -> E-commerce
• Newsgroups -> Online Communities
• Streaming Content -> Webvideos
• Publishing -> Broadcast publishing

But Internet is in the middle of this model. I like that.

Social skills in cyberspace

My speaker slides for today's seminar on social skills in cyberspace in Kortrijk: Van digitale flirt tot cyberstalking? Sociaal vaardig in cyberspace!.

Dreaming In Public

View more presentations from bnox.

Twitter used as a PR tool

Twitter for PR (Keynote & Youtube version)

View more presentations from Corinne .

Corinne Weisgerber's Twitter for PR keynote is an excellent round-up and contains some interesting cases. Her list of possible PR uses of Twitter is in fact applicable to other social media as well:

1. Tracking
2. Monitoring
3. Live-reporting
4. Journalism
5. Activism
6. Public Relations
7. Political Communications
8. Crisis Communications

Corinne Weisgerber runs Social Media for PR Class, the course blog for her Social Media and Public Relations class at St. Edward's University.

Victorian Silhouette Postcards

Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre: a combination of the PostSecret style collage technique and the cruel humor of someecards.
The Bazaarium (blog) "is helmed by the elusive and horribly disfigured Wilhelm Staehle and his perennial beauty, T.D.Rio. Wilhelm spends many hours in seclusion, fingers bleeding from the arduous task of paper-cutting and hunched over with the burden of his twisted sense of humour. In the other room, T.D.Rio gazes though a lace curtain as she crafts stories of flight and fancy, leaving only in order to exercise the crows, or to trim Wilhelm's long hair when it becomes unruly."

Nextopism in 5 seconds

I used to think that the 30-Second Bunnies Theatre was pretty funny, until @TamaraGielen showed me Titanic in 5 seconds. The latter is part of the 5 Second Movies concept by That Guy with the Glasses. Below is the 5-second essence of Watchmen:

That Guy with the Glasses caters to Generation Next cohort, typically the tech savvy internet generation with the short attention span. Professor of marketing and consumer behavior at the Stockholm School of Economics Micael Dahlen describes Nextopia as "our evolutionary drive to strive for the next thing. The next anything will be the best one, a utopian hope that affects lives today."
It's funny he classifies this behaviour under utopian thinking: I think many of this generation or becoming more and more uncomfortable with the pressure to always have the latest smartphone and know the latest update of the internet meme du jour.

An endless Twitter mantra

Endless Mantra: "(Every 5 minutes, [the Twitter account] Endless Mantra will publish a new, anonymous message. It is designed to keep publishing messages, into eternity."
Another great Twitter art project by Jan Leenders (@auctionart), with coding help from Steffest (@Steffest).
Steffest is the guy who built my Twitter wonderwall and who showed up wearing a self-made Tweetshirt at last year's Barcamp.
Jan Leenders is the artist who gave away a commissioned artwork at Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #8.
Found via @clopin.

Online media: entertainment makes room for communication

Netpop Highlights: Netpop | Connect Broadband Population Data: "Stated simply, 7 million people in the U.S. are contributing content online through six or more activities (uploading photos, publishing blogs, posting ratings/reviews, etc.). These heavies are also connecting with 248 people in a typical week, on average." This is an important trend for publishers: if they want to keep their online reach, they are forced to serve their content as a constant stream of social objects. These objects are easy to pass on, to comment, to rate, to re-mix and to track. Launching an entertaining, one-purpose Flash site for a campaign will no longer do.

Netpop | Connect: Media Shifts to Social 2009 Preview

View more presentations from Netpop. (tags: internet communication)

Lessons in Twitter Hygiene

Now that Twitter has reached the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" in its hype cycle, I thought I'd share my Twitter best practices with you.
If Facebook is to find old friends, Twitter is perfect to discover new ones. But be careful: "friends" in a very, very broad sense. If your expectations are really inflated, Twitter will drive you crazy. Here are a few tips to keep your sanity.

1. Getting started. Create a profile on Twitter.com Add a profile picture, a website link (preferably your blog) and a short bio. Don't "lock" your Twitter profile. If you want to Tweet about stuff your wife or boss is not supposed to hear: don't Twitter.
2. Find the Twitter interface you're most comfortable with. Many use Twitter.com (the web interface) but the TweetDeck app is very popular, too. I use both the web interface and TwitterBerry. To keep the messages under 140 characters you will need to shorten your urls. TinyURL is popular, but bit.ly allows you to monitor the stats of your shortened url, too.
3. Find people you know on Twitter by checking who in your Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail or MSN contact list is already in. Follow all of these people and take at least a week or so to simply listen to what they are talking about, who's talking to who, etc. Ignore Twitter's Suggested Users because that list is simply bollocks.
4. Learn the language. This first phase is also very useful to learn about Twitter Lingo, like DM, RT, HT, FTW, #followfriday, "Pics or it didn't happen", or "That's what she said!".
5. Follow the lead. Have a look at Twitter users they talk about and follow those if they appear interesting. Also, follow @MrTweet. Trust me on this one: Mr Tweet is a great service that helps you find out who you should follow because they are "relevant to your current needs".
6. Go local. Find out who's the Twitter Elite at your home town (example: Mechelen) and/or in Belgium, have a look at their Twitter pages, and follow them if they appear to be interesting. You might end up having a Twunch (twitter lunch) with them some day.
7. Kill the robots: unfollow any Twitter users that are simply an automated RSS-to-Twitter feed. If you want to know whether e.g. a news site has updated, you don't use Twitter: you use RSS.
8. After a period of listening, start adding value: reply to whom you follow by answering their questions, by re-tweeting interesting tweets they do, post tweets that you think might make them react in the same way (i.e. reply, retweet, etc). The reply feature is the one that interests me most because of its speed: Twitter is near-realtime and an example of Instant Media. If you can't stand the heat: lock your Twitter profile and step away. Twitter is not for you.
9. Check your replies regularly and follow whoever replied something useful to you. Do a Twitter search of your nickname one in a while to find out who's re-tweeting or quoting you and follow these too if they're adding value. Bonus tip from @FrederiekPascal: use ReTweetist to track how tweets and URLs are re-tweeted.
10. Take time to find your voice. It's not easy to add value in just under 140 characters. You can always delete a Tweet you regret, but unfortunatly Twitter Search never forgets.
11. After at least one month it's time to kill the Twitter Zombies. Twitter Zombies are users that haven't said anything at all in over one month (or three months, depending on how patient you are). Find them by using MyCleenr or Twitter Karma and unfollow them. Careful: MyCleenr stops working as soon as you follow over 700 people.
12. Unfollow the Twitter Snobs. Twitter Snobs are people who have large flock of followers, but almost never follow back. They do this because they don't wish to enter the conversation, or because they are obsessed with their Twitter Karma. One of the parameters to get a high Twitter Grade, for example, is to have a high followers-to-following ratio. An other parameter is to have even bigger Twitter Snobs go against their own principles and follow you back. If Twitter founder Evan Williams is following you (@ev: 224,100 followers, but follows only 948 of them back), your karma is reaching for the sky.
13. Recognize Twitter Spammers for what they are. They usually have bios/websites that mention "finding Twitter gold" or "free e-book on how to get 10k followers in one week". One of their characteristics is that they talk to you first, to have you follow them back. As soon as you do, they send you an automated DM you with a link to their "get rich quick" scheme site. Unfollow them as quick as you can and tell everyone you did so, too.
14. Try to be nice until you follow almost 700 people (or less, depending on how nice your really are). You will want to use MyCleenr in the future and that's where I got the 700 number. If you're not particularly nice, you will get annoyed at the point where you follow, say, 350 or 400 people. It's up to you to decide some of the users are too nuclear for you, but generally I simply look at who doesn't follow me back and probably never will. FriendOrFollow is a great tool to do this. Try not to obsess with FriendOrFollow or take it personally when someone has decided not to follow you back or to unfollow you. Twitter is about people and conversations and things like that are bound to happen.
15. Repeat steps 5 to 14 until the end of times.

Anything missing? Let me know (@bnox).

The New Digital Divide

Dutch magazine MMNieuws just published my article De nieuwe digitale kloof: "Maar dat je doof bent voor wat ze over jou zeggen, of erger nog, als je zo oninteressant bent dat niemand iets over jou te zeggen heeft, dan blijft de nieuwe digitale kloof ook voor jou onoverbrugbaar."
The spelling error in the article (can you find it?) is not mine :-)
The article is mainly based on a presentation I made 3 months ago for the refreshday event: Mind The Gap.

Poken's viral marketing strategy: it's a pyramid scheme but I like it anyway

I wrote about Poken last year (USB sticks that go HIGH FIVE!) and initially it was merely a gadget for geeks (who, ironically, already were connected through social networks before meeting each other in real life to poken each other).
And even it is indeed one of the signs of the internet of things, it is certainly not the only one. The Netherlands have MyNameIsE, Belgium has Touchatag, and France has Violet's Ztamp:s.
So what makes the Swiss Poken Team so succesful?

1. The simplicity. They are actually able to explain what a Poken does without having to explain how RFID works. This technology-unaware communication strategy is also a thing they have in common with Violet: Violet's dream: Let All Things Be Connected.
2. Cuteness. These USB keychains have a high kawaii level that attracts both geeks and youngsters. I use pokens as a small gift to people I like or admire (often both).
3. Their Viral Distribution Network: "You buy a pack of pokens by pooling with your friends, so you’re certain not to be the only one with a Poken. Plus, you get the best deal ever – you can even give 6 away for free and still be in the money. In addition, if you place the order through your account, you’ll be the sponsor of the whole pack- which means you get Poken points for all the action those pokens are a part of, even if you’ve passed them along to your friends."

By the way, my Poken promo code is P8SEOLK8SO4UWC4L6CKC :-)

Proximus TV ad in progress

Proximus Generation is the youth-oriented mobile subscription from telco Belgacom. They launched back in 2006 with the highly under-estimated Proximus moblog. Proximus as a whole is one of the largest advertisers in Belgium. But for their next Proximus Generation TV ad, they're relying totally on youth-generated content. Generation Movie Project asks young people to upload their pictures so they can be part of a the tv ad. Eventually 470 pictures will be selected (do the math: it's a 45 second ad and they need 8 to 12 pictures per second).

Really bad ticket to Hawaii

Hard Ticket to Hawaii is a 1987 action-adventure movie "in the great tradition of James Bond" starring no less than four Playboy centerfold beauties and Ronn Moss (The Bold & The Beautiful). The 2,5/10 imdb score is telling, but sometimes a movie is so bad it simply stays bad.

• Hard Ticket To Hawaii trailer [YT]. This comment nails it: "You know you're in trouble when even the trailer can't make things look good."
• Hard Ticket to Hawaii freesbee toss scene [YT]: "Great ass!" - "Thank you!"
• Hard Ticket to Hawaii Heart-Wrenching Death Scene [LL]: "the most expensive worst amateur action scene ever"

Me on Mr T's knee

Well, as you probably heard: I did it! I sat on Mr T.'s lap, Nancy Reagan style. Did you know by the way that Mr T. is his real name? He had it legally changed: even his driver's license says "Mr T". "I grew up in Chicago. Lots of racism there at the time. As a young boy I heard white people call my father "Boy". So when I was in the army my nickname became Mr T, so I was sure they'd never forget the mister."
He's proud of his heritage but very friendly and open. Very self conscious when you ask his opinion about other famous people: he clearly never wants to insult or provoke anyone. And he talks about his belief (he's a born-again Christian) and his family a lot. When I asked if he was the cute little one in the family (he is the youngest of 12 children) he said it was the opposite: his older brothers would push him around. And he got suspended from primary school 17 times for fighting in the playground: "Every time someone said something bad about my mother, I'd fight. Yea I know it's bad, but that's how I was." Even now he's famous, his older siblings still treat him no different: "It keeps me humble, to go back to my family and see my older brothers and sisters."
And finally, the White House story. He was there for the "Say no to drugs" campaign that Nancy Reagan promoted and wore his father's old boots on purpose. "My father never made it to the White House but his shoes did!"

Adventures with an N85: one month later [update]

As you know I got an N85 for testing and conveniently outsourced the reviews. But not without testing the Girl Geek factor of the thing first!
Quick roundup:

• Why the Nokia N85 is like Naomi Campbell @ Girly Geekdom Blog: "the N85 is a top model as far as looks are concerned. It's just plain gorgeous. [...]But like top model Naomi Campbell, the N85 will also get the reputation to be difficult to work with."
• Testing the Nokia N85, aka Naomi and 48 hours with Naomi (Nokia N85) @ Sigrid schrijft: "If you’re looking for a phone with some nice features enabling you to check something online now and then…The Nokia N85 seems like a good option."
• Another N by Nokia @ From my mind onto your screen: "The music player is very intuitive and has a clean interface. I personally liked the podcast support, enabling the user to subscribe to and download podcast from his or her phone."
• [UPDATE]Nokia N85 @ Clopin.be: "In vergelijking met de iPhone/iPod Touch is er iets dat duidelijk opvalt, en dat is het prijsverschil van de games zelf."

In the meanwhile, I'm holding on to Naomi for as long as I can.

Will blog for chocolate

You know Belgians are terrible chocolate snobs. As long as there are no Swiss in the room, we even claim to make the best chocolate in the world. Which is probably why (I can only guess) San Franciscan chocolate makers TCHO asked me whether I would like to taste a couple of their chocolates.
And that's when the coolest thing happened since I started blogging 5 years ago: I got a beta version of their chocolate. Only to lose the package in the chaos of my living room for a couple of months.
Only recently I found it back and decided to taste it. You know: smell it first, look at the shiny surface, bite off a piece, then let it melt in your mouth. Swallow it, and enjoy the aftertaste.
And then go completely speechless. This chocolate is so perfect it's probably illegal in most of the United States. Or so expensive you'd have to sell your family jewels. But worth it! Totally.
I'm now only eating half of the piece that's left. The day after, same thing. So mathematically I could go on for a much longer time, eventually ending by letting melt the last morsel of this heavenly chocolate on my tongue. Thank you, TCHO!
Update: CNET video 6/18/2009 A recipe for high-tech chocolate.