Freeware.de Virals

I was in Cannes, but I somehow missed this submission.

Pretty funny and ballsy (no pun intended!) how try to communicate the product benefit. How effective this is remains to be seen. It’s a little disconnected.

Check it out.

Thanks Phillip!

Philippe Starck: a HumanKind Design Approach

In this very funny and witty TED speech, Philippe Starck speaks about the different types of designers and his approach to it. A must-see!

After there is people like me, who try to deserve to exist, and who are ashamed to make this useless job, who try to do it in another way, and they try, I try, to not make the object for the object but for the result, for the profit for the human being, the person who will use it. If we take the toothbrush — I don’t think about the toothbrush. I think, “What will be [finger in mouth] the effect of the brush in the mouth?” And to understand what will be the effect of the toothbrush in the mouth, I must imagine: Who owns this mouth? What is the life of the owner of this mouth? In what society this guy live? What civilization creates this society? What animal species creates this civilization? When I arrive — and I take one minute, I am not so intelligent — when I arrive at the level of animal species, that becomes real interesting.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/197

Stating the obvious: Online Social Media generate awareness, influences opinion.

Okay, sometimes I have to repeat stuff I’ve already said before, even if it is the equivalent of stating the obvious. I do this usually when I find a study with an air of scienctific credibility that supports something that is being talked about, but lacks the digits.

In this case, I stumbled upon an article in Adweek which states that a new study was release proving that some of the most desirable consumers use the opinions of others from blogs, and social media applications to make their purchasing decisions. In fact, 74% of people polled do this. Of course this means that the brand message and promise seems to be becoming less important than what other people say about the brand and customer experience they have had. Which in turn means, that mass media advertising is becoming less important. Thanks for the statistics, but as I said, it’s still a “duh-moment.”

Still, I like it when marketing people are quoted with something that is a Heureka moment to them. Here it is:

“This study indicates that there is a growing group of highly desirable consumers using social media to research companies,” said Ganim Nora Barnes, a senior fellow at SNCR, in a statement. This demo includes adults 25-55 with a college education, making over $100,000 a year. “These most savvy and sought-after consumers will not support companies with poor customer care reputations, and they will talk about all of this openly with others via multiple online vehicles. This research should serve as a wake-up call to companies: listen, respond, and improve.”

Yeah. Stop making advertising to generate awareness if you cannot listen, respond and improve. Otherwise you will get grilled and served with a slice of lemon on a nice “ineffective traditional advertising sampler platter.”

A (beer) case of handling an inconvenient product truth

Charging more for the same thing is difficult, but people are used to things getting more expensive. You usually don’t even tell them. They are used to it and they know. But when you charge the same for less, things get a bit tricky. You better tell them.

This is exactly what cult-brand Astra Beer tried to do after they took 3 bottles out of the case without lowering the price. They let the brand’s fun personality do the job: Show a lady who got a boob job holding the new beer case and say: “Didn’t somebody change something?”. It is funny (and funnier in German) for sure and matches Astra’s tonality which people love so much. After all, it is one of the only beer brands in Germany that isn’t conservative and boring.

Only problem with this picture might be that, while the boob job visibly provided for MORE , the beer job didn’t. Since people are smart enough to figure that out, it all depends on whether people will let the brand get away for just being funny about this inconvenient truth.

Thanks to Dirk for bringing back the flier from Hamburg.

Kill the Gun

We’ve been doing some fair amount of Pro Bono Work recently for Amnesty International (including some Guerilla, see here) and Weisser Ring when I came across this thing from CHOICE FM, a UK radio station on the bockscar blog. This thing has quite a pulse stopping moment at the end.

Citroen is unmistakably German

Citroen is out with a new spot for the UK market. UK car shoppers first consider German cars, then others. Based on this insight, Citroen goes all the way and uses every German cliché about Germany and Germans. It is a bold move for a french brand.

Also refreshingly absent are description of product benefits cluttering the experience. Rather, the whole spot is used to communicate the “unmistakeably German” message with a sense of German humor. The campaign is also supported by a German-Test Website, which, unforunately mistakes Mozart for being not German.

Kudos to Citroen for having the brand balls to move away from boring and uninspired product advertising to category-shifting, unconventional communications!

Thanks, Philip!

360 degree camera clips

Dirk sent me this example of moving 360 degree camera footage. While the camera is rolling it allows you to look around in 360 degrees, very much done the same way “StreetView” is done on google maps, I presume, except it is moving footage.

Check it out

 http://adn.blam.be/papervision/

Thanks Dirk

A statistic I have been waiting for a long time for

Thanks, Gerald.

Updated Shareaholic Tool out for Firefox

Social bookmarking tool Shareaholic has just launched its latest release, which now supports Tumblr, Mixx, Simpy, and FriendFeed. Additionally, Shareaholic is now compatible with Firefox 3+. We mentioned Shareaholic a few months back when the site first launched. It works as a Firefox browser extension that lets you submit items to various social bookmarking tools across the web. It’s tools like these, that work with Firefox, that make it more difficult for social browser Flock to gain significant market share.

via Mashable

Anyone still convinced Silver Surfers don’t create content?