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.
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
Some of you might have noticed the event tip/ad in the righthand column. This is something particularly interesting for my German readers: the remix09 conference is happening on the 12th and 13th of June here in Hamburg. Title: „online meets classic“. The setup of the event is a mixture of barcamp and a regular conference:
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.
A few days ago, the agenda has been published. There will be two tracks. The first track is mostly with fixed slots and offers speaches and discussions by quite a few well-known people such as Bernd M. Michael (ex-CEO of Grey Germany), and Prof. Peter Wippermann of Trendbüro.
Some of the other slots in track 1 plus most slots in track 2 can be filled by participants, in true barcamp style, I suppose.
Working in an advertising agency that offers both classic and online, I am particularly interested to see how the discussion between the two disciplines will develop. We’ll see. I shall be updating this blog shortly before and during the conference with more news on the ongoing discussions.
In Germany in 2006, we had Opel (of GM) giving 4 Opel cars to bloggers for 4 weeks. Now, 3 years later and in the US, where everything is bigger, longer, etc. Ford does something even bigger and longer:
In the ultimate foreign exchange program, our 100 agents are spending six months behind the wheel of their own Fiesta, sharing their experiences, and completing monthly missions to show you what experiencing the Ford Fiesta is all about, way in advance of the U.S. launch in 2010.
FiestaMovement.com pulls in all of our agents’ content across the web to let you follow the Movement in one convenient place. And each month will highlight different themed Missions, from Travel, Adventure, and Social Activism to Technology, Style & Design, and Entertainment.
Apparently, over 4.000 people applied for this. You can follow the agents on all the usual social media suspects: twitter, facebook, youtube, flickr and on blogs. Plus potentially a few more – it seems to be up to the individual agents, where they want to be present.
The main campaign site is an aggregator of all the agents‘ content. All photos, blog entries, youtube videos,tweets, etc. you can follow on this site, or alternatively via one common RSS feed. Unfortunately, you are not able to participate in any way on the campaign site. No comment option, no voting, etc. At least for now. Once they start the monthly missions (from May 3rd) this might change, we’ll see. However, it might well be their strategy to keep participation in those places, where the content is, where users are used to participate with content: within the social networks themselves.
According to this source here (in German), the project is the single most important piece of „marketing“ for that car. Sounds like there will be no TV, no print advertising, etc. Quite an interesting approach, definitely one I will follow and see how it develops.
I really like social media aggregation projects like this. They are amongst the most complex to implement, believe me, both in terms of technical integration, as well as working out responsibilities and processes within the agency and with the client. Especially when you’re dealing with time frames that last longer than the usual campaign, i.e. at least 6 months, as in this case (if you include recruitment and teaser phase, which we seem to be in right now).
Last, but not least, you need considerable staff 24/7 to maintain the community to filter not acceptable content (yes, for most projects, there will be some!), if they do actually monitor external commentary. (Because, as mentioned above, you don’t seem to be able to comment or participate at all.)
(By the way, does anyone know the agency behind this?)
Need a short URL for twitter? try http://url.so-smart.be/ instead of the typical tinyurl.com – this is a nice marketing idea by smart, the shortest car around. 😉
A nice new advert by Hondy, in stopmotion, using lots and lots of cars:
A card board trailer of „300“ by Panasonic – what would happen to Hollywood given the current financial crisis. It belongs to a German UGC campaign of Panasonic. At the microsite papphelden.de you can upload your own cardboard version of a Hollywood Blockbuster an win lots of prizes.
A rather cruel (viral) video, could be a little less gruesome, if you ask me. But then, some say, a good viral video needs violence, blood and disgustingness. However, they called it: „violence is no solution“ – it’s an advert for a secure e-commerce shop.
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...