…for and from the curious

Groundswell provides outstanding conversation material

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research wrote the captivating book  “groundswell - winning a world transformed by social technologies”. It describes the changed relationship between companies and their customers better than anything I have read so far.

It provides a blue print for companies on how to create a successful interactive online relationship with their clients. No matter wether B2C or B2B, no matter what industry, no matter what product or service.

The authors stress the importance of listening. They make the case that there is no unique approach for all target groups but that you need to figure out the social technographics profile of your consumers first - and then develop a tailored solution according to it. They provided an online tool that serves as a great starting point.

The book provides some great case studies that help with the magical questions:
How much will this cost us?
What is the exact benefit? Read the rest of this entry »

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Book review: Personality not included

Rohit Bhargava is the author of the leading “Influential Marketing Blog” (IMB) and is a founding member of the 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy. That means he is no “feather weight” in the world of marketing.

His first book “Personality not included” is a solid attempt to explain to marketers why many of the old corporate habits of dealing with their customers and the general public iare obsolete. Who came up with all the stupid policies anyway? If you are in marketing you might not find that book ground breaking because it just reiterates what you can read in the blogosphere pretty much every day. Rohit is not as radical as Seth Godin would be.

Actually Rohit is a very good showcase for his own book: He has a mind of his own and has no problems sharing his thoughts. At the same time he works for a large organization with over 10,000 employees. He is a watch and learn case for many guys who think that blogging and working a corporate job simply don’t go together.

This is a book that everyone in business can read and get something out of. It is not too academic or plastered with acronyms that nobody but 50 people in the world would get.

So if the book is not ground breaking in my eyes, why should you read it? Read the rest of this entry »

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Post-its are great - how about their videos then?

Post-its are definitely a great innovation and 3M has to be thankful for their existence.
In order to do some promotion (do they even need that?) they put a crowd-sourcing contest on YouTube: $10,000 dollars for the winner and Laptops for the top 10 finalists.

Sounds like a smash hit. 960 subscribers on the site, almost 90k channel views.

Let’s take a look at the videos: There are 39 favorites listed right now - most of them with 2 or 3 star ratings. No video at this time has more than 10,000 views - most of them much less then that. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in moviebakery | No Comments »

366 days of moviebakery

moviebakery was launched exactly one year ago. We decided to act on an idea for the production of web videos that was a little different. So our “baby” is turning one and we are looking back ton an interesting first year.

Most of all this is a time to say THANK YOU to everyone involved - most of all our movie makers that registered at moviebakery. Without you we wouldn’t be here. Thanks also to our clients that trusted us at the beginning - when we didn’t have much to show yet. Thanks also to the press that took on our story. We are looking forward to continue to work with all of you! Read the rest of this entry »

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Belated Ad:Tech review

I spent two days at Ad:Tech in San Francisco last week. My focus was on video publishing options for our moviebakery clients. But of course I also took the opportunity to look at the advertising scene in general:

Google
Ever tried to get in touch with them in the US? Don’t try this trade show. The put up a front and tried to provide me with an 1-800 number. I was about to ask them why they are even there but then my gentlemen genes kicked in and I swallowed the question.

Yahoo
Totally different story. I know who I will be talking to when I have questions regarding any of their services. Now I hope Google doesn’t buy them and takes their phones away. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Bakery, This n That, moviebakery | No Comments »

Boulder Brainjam review

Since the event was broadcast live on Twitter all this is old news: Dave Taylor of Intuitive Systems organized the first Boulder Brainjam which took place on 4/11.
Local entrepreneurs were invited to talk about their company or what they were up to for 5 minutes. About 40 people showed up.

Observations
1. Boulder is nowhere near to silicon Valley but has a great community of forward thinking entrepreneurs - supported by a network of seasoned mentors (Techstars, Dave Taylor himself and many others) that can help young companies with their baby steps.

2. “What is your Carbon footprint?” is a question an entrepreneur should be able to answer in Boulder.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in This n That | 1 Comment »

Need to clone myself 600 times and some other YouTube thoughts

1. Too much to handle?
Following a scandal in England a YouTube spokesperson declared at a parliament hearing in England that each minute 10 hours of video content get uploaded on Youtube. If YouTube wanted to monitor each video before releasing it by real people (as Revver does) they would require 1800 employees just doing that (3 shifts per 8 hours).
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in moviebakery | 2 Comments »

Marketing the 2008 Summer Olympics

The biggest event in sports certainly makes a lot of people think how they can integrate it into their marketing activities.

Adidas & Nike are rolling their videos and games out already. I came across an interesting idea that Rohit Barghava presented in his blog a few days ago. Lenovo hired Ogilvy for this: 100 athletes will receive a Lenovo notebook and are supposed to capture their preparation to the Olympics in a blog format.

My initial thoughts were: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Bakery, This n That | 1 Comment »

Thank you WordPress for bringing 2.5

Kudos to WordPress: I installed WordPress 2.5 on three of our blogs this week. They really did a great job in uncluttering their interface. That is much harder done than said. Everyone who has ever designed or re-designed functionality-loaded interfaces knows how hard it is not just to change but actually dramatically improve things.
The new interface looks nothing like the old one. I think this version would have deserved a 3 at the beginning. Excellent work!

Still on my wishlist:
A one-button upgrade to a new version. I am still skipping updates because it is too much hassle to download, then upload via ftp and then run the upgrade script. It is simply to much manual work (=source of error).

If Wordpress could do the same for the plugins as well, I’d be really happy. And then I’ll keep my mouth shut.

Posted in This n That | 1 Comment »

Amazon killer application

Amazon just launched TextBuyIt. It allows you to send an SMS to Amazon and they’ll tell you the price for any particular product on their site. It get’s better: Send another SMS and you can actually buy your item right through your cell phone. You won’t need a fancy iPhone for that. Your 1999 Nokia will do.

If I were Nordstroms or Macy’s or BestBuy or any other major retailer I’d start installing scramblers right away. Wait: That won’t make sense. The stores are empty already anyway and the few guys in there will leave if their cell phone reception is dead. How about matching prices then? Read the rest of this entry »

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