14:00h – the first afternoon session started with:
XING und die Klassiker
wahlfreie Informationen und Networking statt einfach nur Werbung
Oliver Nickels of IBM starts the session explaining how IBM uses WoM and direct networking to sell their solutions to the German Mittelstand, because it works better than pure advertising.
Networking is extremely important in German Mittelstand – when it is based on trust. Advertising is too expensive because it’s too broad for this B2B segment.
IBM created and advertised a „mittelstands“-group in Xing. IBM employees actively posts articles and comments, even distributes flyers during events, etc.
Speaker changed: now it’s Dirk Reimers of FAT IT Solutions, speaking about benefits of the IBM Xing group.
In total, it appears to be completely logical to build awareness and consideration via networking – isn’t that how B2B usually works best? Only difference: with Xing these networks expand over time and space…
14:45h Next up is Wolfgang Hünnekens talking about crowdsourcing:
Crowdsourcing
Funktioniert die Kreativität der Massen für das Agenturgeschäft?
The session runs with Markus Roder and Oliver Nickels, but first Wolfgang Hünnekens speaks about crowdsourcing.
Hünnekens starts way at the beginning and tells the old tale of how crowdsourcing was first noticed and researched…
The cases mentioned are the usual suspects: Tchibo, Dell, Fiat500… And now that he wants to show a clip, there are technical difficulties.
The discussion starts with the question: what is creativity? That was a discussion during the last ADC awards.
Markus Roder doesn’t believe in crowdsourcing, because even if a single person gets to estimate things several times in a row, his aggregated estimates are more on target than each individual estimate. Also: people quite often don’t know what they want from a brand. Cites Henry Ford: if he had asked people what they want, they would have said: faster horses.
Oliver Nickels: the examples for advertising crowdsourcing were all „risk-free“. Crowdsourcing in product development is always possible. A brand should not be handed over to the „crowd“.
Interesting question being debated: for which brands could crowdsourcing be relevant? Some brands need to uphold an illusion, a placebo effect to keep up their brand values (Markus Roder).
Next question is: how do you manage consumer perception of a brand – how does crowdsourcing contribute, if a brand needs to be lived?
Another fact: brands have to face an increasing lack of control.
10:55 at the Museum for Hamburgische Geschichte, and the show will start any minute.
The speakers of the first panel are already sitting on stage. First topic:
Share Economy, Collaborative Marketing, Radical Individualism
Markenführung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Klassik und Online, Stabilität und Individualisierung, Kontrolle und Partizipation
The first panel is with Bernd M. Michael, Gregor Stemmle and Dr. Stefan Tweraser, moderated by Mark Pohlmann.
Adwords makes up 95% of Google’s revenue… after a small calculation Mark deducts that Google in Germany makes about 2 billion Euros.
Question posted to the audience sparks the first discussion: can you separate between off- and online.
Bernd Michael states: there are many experts in this room, but not much knowledge about the effectiveness of what we’re doing in terms of revenue. We are not able to give a 100% media recommendation for ROI.
Dr. Tweraser: The seach box mediates between attention and brand promise.
Michael: The average German knows 3.000 words – how should they memorize 50k+ brands?
Stemmle: there are examples of successful brands in this digital world – but not built on traditional principles.
Zara was mentioned as an example for brands that are successful without any advertising whatsoever. Instead it gew by WoM because of the subjective brand qualty. (Triggered a discussion about subjective vs objective benefits of brands)
Good advice by Michael: collect casestudies of companies that were successful during the last crisis (2000-2003 or thereabouts). Show these to your clients when talking about facts.
Stemmle: Use free content online to build your brand – then use the brand power to sell paid content offline.
Michael: does not agree… calls it a huge strategic blunder, what happened a couple of years ago. Traditional media was to fat, to saturated, they didn’t take the internet serious enough.
Stemmle: the business of the future for media: prioritization and weighting of content. Defining what’s „talk of the town“…
Discussion is going back to the original topic: branding today. Tweraser: brand marketing is already a dialogue, some brands already admit that the brand has partially been taken out of their hands.
Michael: the apple store in NY has a simple way of adding value for R&D: every question that the staff gets and has never heard before, they write down and send it to Cupertino… (Great, that’s what every company with direct customer interaction should do!)
Markus Roder (in the audience): Viral Marketing can work, when brands give promises and then overdeliver: that triggers excitement and hence word of mouth.
Last question by Pohlmann: what’s in it for the future. Stemmle: network, interact. Tweraser: use the information available on the web (Google was able to predict the winner of the eurovision song contest, for esample). advertising is no longer art, it’s a science. Michael: We need experts. It’s still difficult to get experts. Offer more opportunities for knowledge gaining.
Tomorrow is the first remix conference: classic meets online (advertising). To recap what it will be all about:
Fachleute aus dem klassischen Marketing-Umfeld treffen die Aktiven des Web 2.0 für einen professionellen und persönlichen interdisziplinären Austausch.
Feste Konferenzelemente treffen auf die adhoc-Strukturen von BarCamp und Open Space – Beim remix09 mischen sich Unternehmerinnen und Unternehmer, Vorstände, Freelancer und Angestellte. Von U-30 bis Ü-60. Eine breite Wissens- und Erfahrungsbasis aus klassischem Marketing und Web 2.0 – ganz ohne Peergroups, Selbstreferenzialität und Tunnelblick.
The agenda is up with a few fixed keynotes and speaches. The rest of the conference will be organised barcamp-style. Looking very much forward to this experiment, which also happens to take place in a really nice surrounding: the Museum of Hamburg History. Even the party in the evening will take place in those surroundings!
I shall be live blogging tomorrow. Well, as live as I can manage during the conference anyway 😉
The year the media died… This video is great. almost 10 minutes long, like the original song by Don Mclean, and in bits seemingly redundant, but fun to watch and listen to nevertheless – well done!
In Germany, bloggers receive presents from time to time, from companies who are probably hoping to stir up conversation about their product.
I have received some presents in the past already, however the most interesting one I got last week: a voucher for a „dinner in the sky“ for one person from mydays.de.
Very nice idea, I have to say. Unfortunately, it’s a little bit useless for me, since I am afraid of heights. Hence I have decided to give it away, via a sweepstake on my German Blog. Since the voucher can only be redeemed in 5 German cities, I assume this really is only interesting for my German readeres. You can find out more about what to do and until what date to enter my own little private sweepstake on my German blog.
For those thinking about it, here are the dates for which you can redeem the voucher (no guarantees given):
21.05 – 24.05.2009 Köln
12.06 – 14.06.2009 Frankfurt am Main
26.06 – 28.06.2009 München
17.07 – 19.07.2009 Berlin
07.08 – 09.08.2009 Hamburg
Mark Lazen is bold on the idea that facebook might soon be on death watch. One of the main points is that Facebook is trying to be all things to all people. (Sort of like AOL a few years ago.) Which is supposedly the first step of being nothing to nobody, resulting in comparative irrelevance.
I am of a more cynical mindset. I believe that when you’re everything, you are actually nothing.
Right – and not, at the same time. Yes, there will always be more specialized sites for everything FB offers. Flickr is better for photos (in quality, not quantity!), twitter is better for realtime status updates. Many community sites are more topically focused, gaming sites offer better games,… the list can go on and on.
But yet: Spreading your digital acitivities and personas over x-many sites is tedious. Especially if you have different IDs (ok, there will be solutions) and different social networks everywhere. Trying out the top-notch applications everywhere is only fun for the digitally inspired early adopters. For everyone else, a good solution will just do. And believe me: the majority is „everyone else“.
In my own personal circle of friends, facebook is still growing, gaining new fans everyday. (And watching the newsfeed has only become interesting in the last couple of months, as my own network of friends grew.)
I am convinced that the digitally inspired (native or immigrant) underestimate the size and power of the late majority. These people (most of my friends amongst these) will praise those sites, that make a digital whatever easy with a one-stop-shop solution. Of course the quality of the applications and offers can’t be sub-optimal. And for certain topics of interest people might migrate to a specialised competitor. But the rest of their digital activities they might still keep at places like facebook or other sites like it.
The key factor is relevance: as long as facebook offers sufficient relevance, aggregated across all service offers, applications and the individual social network, it will stay top of mind with a large audience. The problem only arises, if facebook becomes second rate at everything they offer. Here I assume: the personal social network is the last resort of stickiness. As soon as your own social network has mostly migrated to other sites, you don’t care to stay either.
I have received some presents in the past already, however the most interesting one I got last week: a voucher for a „dinner in the sky“ for one person from 
Wo ich sonst so bin...