Every year around this time one can find many predictions about the new year in terms of tech & social media trends. So in order to get an overview myself, I have started this post with a collection and summary of the various predictions I could find:
Pete Blackshaw wrote in an Ad Age column that social media marketers will need to embrace three critical words in 2010: Serve, Shrink and Simplify. Since you need to log on to Ad Age, you can read some excerpts on Pete’s blog. The main idea: service is the new marketing, our screens are shrinking, make things easer/reduce complexity for your customers.
The groundswell team lists 6 predictions, but you get an excerpt. Nevertheless, you can read the topline predictions on the groundswell blog. Overarching theme is, according to the blog, that social technology will be a mainstram part of what marketers do.
eMarketer lists 12 predictions for 2010. The insights include „future monetization models, the effect of transparency on advertising, social and search, mobile, social commerce, public relations, social advertising, Twitter, video and mom/pop internet usage“.
Read/WriteWeb has two different kinds of lists: General predictions and social media predictions. The general predictions consists of the views of 9 contributors from rww and cover a wide variety of topics concerning social media, mobile, cloud computing, Google/Twitter/Facebook/bing, etc. The social media predictions list 10 ways social media will change in 2010, i.e. how it will become part of everyday life, being increasingly used on mobile devices, ROI will become more important (and will be measured), etc.
The NY Times „bits“ blog writes about 2010 being the year of the tablet PC. Quite a few companies seem to be on the verge of presenting their versions, but everyone is, of course eager for Apple to release theirs!
Mashable has a post about 2010 being the year of the data. Data that should and will be used by every profession – journalism, marketing, SEO, Advertising, PR, etc. User data (static and behavioural data, I suppose) is becoming ever more important. Somehow I don’t think this is a trend just for 2010. It has been going on in 2009 already and will stay with us forever…
Pete Cashmore of Mashable wrote a special for CNN Tech about the 10 web trends to watch in 2010. the keywords are: Realtime, location, augmented reality, content curation, cloud computing, internet TV and Movies, convergence conundrum, social gaming, mobile payments, fame abundance and privacy scarcity.
As I find more predictions, I will add them (let me know if you know of any).
I suppose you all remember Jill and Kevin’s wedding video, in which the couple and a few of their friends were dancing to „forever“ by Chris Brown?
For those living outside Germany, here it is (YouTube is blocking music videos in Germany):
I really liked that video and copied it into my German Blogs. I enjoyed the story of how this idea came about (here is some background info about the wedding). I liked the idea of the couple wanting to celebrat their most important day in a special way. And I am sure quite a few of the many million who have watched this video thought alike.
Hard to believe, I have to admit. Highly disappointing if it’s true.
So what was it marketing for? In that article it says that it was a campaign for the music of Chris Brown, who had popularity challenges and low record sales after having hit his girlfriend Rihanna.
Which is apparently the reason why you could not only purchase the song „Forever“ via Jill and Kevin’s website, but also donate for the Sheila-Wellstone-Institut, which is a foundation against domestic violence.
I am not sure whether this story is true, since I haven’t heard anywhere else about it. But if it is, then I am heavily disappointed:
People (including myself of course) believed this story to be true – only to find out the they have been tricked by a marketing campaign. Working in advertising myself, I know about the current challenges to get the attention of the target audience. But lying and cheating should never be an option for any marketer.
So I wonder: is it true, was it really just a marketing campaign? Does anyone know?
Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy UK spoke on TED Global about the value of the intangible, and how advertising helps create that value:
Highly entertaining, as usual for Rory. Having worked with Rory in a brainstorming some time ago, when I still worked at Ogilvy, I can tell you: he really is that entertaining. The story about how to make the train ride between London and Paris any more enjoyable I already heard back then, it’s a classic…
For the rest of that talk: I do believe that we’re now living in a world of mass produced commodities, no matter what you buy, the added value almost always lies within the imagined value that you yourself (with the little help of stories created by advertising as well as socially networked word-of-mouth) asign to your individual brand experience…
Martin Oetting – sorry, Dr. Martin Oetting, as of a short while ago (congratulations!), just published a reference to his newly released thesis: ripple effect (How Empowered Involvement Drives Word of Mouth). The link leads to a page with a small „social media release“, which includes a PDF with a short summary (in German), a video interview, etc.
The key question triggering this whole study was: „how can marketing leverage word-of-mouth for products and brands?“
The answer, in short: empowered involvement, by offering choice and meaning, leveraging consumer competence, allowing for real impact by the target audience. The long answer: buy the book 😉
Here is the video interview with Dr. Martin Oetting (in German):
According to the study, which looked at 150,000 tweets, 11.1% of the brand-related tweets were information-providing while 18.1% were information-seeking. The latter of these two is especially useful to companies looking to understand what questions and concerns customers have about their products. However, the large majority of the tweets – 48.5% – were simply comments made in passing which mentioned the brand but whose primary focus was something else.
In only roughly 23% users were expressing sentiment (positive or negative) about brands.
So why is that? Why don’t people express so many negative opinions on twitter as compared to the rest of the web? ReadWriteWeb assumes that it is the easy and quick handling of twitter which results in many more positive or neutral, fact based chatter.
That does make sense to me. People will go through a lot of effort, writing long and nasty blog posts, when they’re fed up. But they won’t do the same for positive or even neutral remarks, unless the brand experience was rather extraordinary.
While I am scanning and writing about all sorts of crowdsourcing initiatives by brands, I couldn’t help noticing a new campaign in Germany asking users to participate in a DIY contest. Guess I couldn’t miss it, since it was plastered all over spiegel.de, Germanys biggest online news source, which I happen to visit almost 10x a day.
Hornbach is a German DIY store that everyone watching tool time would enjoy. They had TV spots running for quite some time, in which people completed seemingly complicated projects around the house – refurbishing bathrooms, redesigning gardens, etc.
It excites due to size of presence. Advertising for a whole day on spiegel.de (and I guess other large sites, too) is no small deal. Also, they’re willing to sponsor up to 10 projects with up to 15k Euros per project. Also, I should add: they’re not just asking for any project, rather, they are looking for extreme, original (what’s the translation for „wahnwitzig“?) ideas. Nothing of the ordinary kind.
In the contest conditions, they of course make sure that they can publish photos and names of participants, as well as reserving the right to document and publish the whole project they will sponsor. Unless they only receive applications of complete idiots, which I obviously doubt, they will have some fine material for future advertising, authentic, close to the community, relevant and most likely touching. We’ll see in a few months time, I’ll keep you posted.
Wo ich sonst so bin...