Lecture

Here some slides from my last lecture for this year.

Browse and download from slideshare.

Happy holidays, next year will be great!

Social Media and its effect on brands

Social networks have always been existing, naturally also before the digital era. They were shaped by our friends, families, neighbours, sports clubs and so on. Word of mouth, the recommendation by a member of our social networks, has as well been existing, and was always the most respected and trusted way of communication. So what has changed, then?

The first thing which changed was technology. The paradigm shift we are experiencing right now is enabled by technology. But the dynamics and the dimension the shift reached is cultural. This is how it goes:

Our social networks have started to be digitalized recently, and the process gets faster and deeper every day with an ever growing amount and speed. I am talking about the large number of social platforms and the trend to get everything, anytime. Real time.

The digitalization of our social networks has turned them into a media. Or to be precise: They have always been a media. One to one. But now they are the new mass media. Many to many. From now on everything has to be true and real. That’s why the shift is a great thing for humanity. It’s hard for brands. But they will learn and evolve. Some on the hard way. Game over, old mass media.

In a nutshell:

The digitalization of our social networks has transformed them in the most powerful mass media. The other thing to remember: Everything is a media. Everything communicates. In this context I can also recommend some classics from Marshall McLuhan, although its heavy stuff.

Social Media is Boring

Houston, we have a problem! It turns out that social media is great use for brands as e.g. customer service / interaction platform or corporate communications channel. Makes sense. But as we at the same time are preaching the end of advertising and the raise of social media, where did the creativity go? Of course I love the transparency and the communicative features social media offers, but I would not like to sacrifice the fun part for it. So here is a proposal: Let’s just stop creating blogs and facebook pages and twitter accounts and youtube channels for our advertising campaigns and reserve them for long term communication. Let’s don’t sacrifice that what once was advertising for it. Sounds clear. And still - useless pages and boring profiles are popping up daily like mushrooms, overloading social media services to an extent which makes them unpleasant to use. Just happened recently to facebook.

So I have to correct my headline: Social Media is not boring. It just gets boring like hell if we try to use it wrongly to extend our advertising campaigns. Just happened to me the one or other time recently. So I promise not to do it anymore ;)

World is changing – Search for great ideas isn’t

Most of the work I am doing nowadays is resulting at the one or other point in a digital solution. However, there is always a lot of thinking involved before a solution comes to life. Communication must be based on a great and relevant insight, a bigger picture framework - let’s call it strategy - and a great idea. All that sounds very easy, but it isn’t. It is actually really hard. Digital media has given us more freedom and allows us more open minded thinking. But it should never lead us in the plain use of techniques. The real killer app for the future of marketing and communications is INSIGHT plus STRATEGY plus IDEA plus DIGITAL. Something we still have to learn.

Come on, let’s play

When you are creating, you are vulnerable. To others comments, to failure, to having the right idea at the wrong time or the wrong place or the other way round. And sometimes the audience is just not ready for an idea, or the idea is plain shit. Anyhow. You will do foolish things. Important is only that you do them, and that you do them with enthusiasm and pride. There has never been created anything new out of hesitation. That’s why I respect people who have been failing. Because next time it will go right. 

Come on, let’s play!

Twestival Helsinki – A Review and a Manifesto

As you can see, my last blog post is already a month old – in blogging time this means a century. It is not that I have been giving up on blogging, I was just extremely busy with an endless flow of incoming projects. And as this would have not been enough, the last four weeks were also the time we got to organize twestival Helsinki.

So, this blog post will be about twestival Helsinki. Was it a success? Yes, definitely, and I will explain why. It is a story about social media in the true sense of its meaning, about good people and about a totally new way of raising awareness and funds for a good cause. It is a story of earned media and the ’plant’ twestival which will grow in time.

Let’s have the hard facts first. Twestival Helsinki and the cause chosen by the public got great awareness and PR. In first place on social media platforms and blogs, but also in traditional media like newspapers, magazines and radio. Further we had some great ad spaces like this 57 outdoor screens promoting the idea of twestival Helsinki and a cleaner Baltic Sea. In addition to that there were lots of flyers and posters. All this is particular remarkable as the overall twestival Helsinki budget was 0 euros. All what we got and achieved was due to great people with passion and a good heart.

We also raised some good money, although we do not know the precise amount yet. We had four different income sources: The donations made in the evening of twestival Helsinki itself, the money people donated straight to the account of our cause, 10 % of the turnover of the venue Nude and last but not least the contribution the Nokia N86 tour will make to our cause. Once again, 100% of the money goes to the Clean Baltic Sea – John Nurminen Foundation.

Coming to a more personal level, I had so many great discussions with people that I got seriously enriched and inspired. One hour of good discussion with Reino Nordin, who played a fantastic acoustic gig in the evening, ensured me to be even more active on an environmental and societal level. As we could read in today’s Hesari, young people are interested in the world, but don’t want to change it anymore. Where does that come from? Young people have always been a guarantee for challenging the status quo. Social media and networks give back power to people, and we are just in the beginning. How about demonstrations in social media channels? If people don’t want to go to demonstrate on streets anymore, they could make an impact via social media. Will work further on the thought. I have seen many people having great discussions during twestival Helsinki, and it was also a pleasure to see how the local twitter scene met IRL = In Real Life. Apart from that folks enjoyed themselves and had fun. People were dancing to the beats of DJ Jacques.

Other discussions were circling mainly around social media, what it has brought to us and what happens next. Rupert Howe, a video blogger from London touring the twestival world for Nokia put it in a great and enthusiastic discussion I had with him and Phil Campbell this way: ’We are living in the future’. This is true for many reasons. I find this piece of video promoting Charles Leadbeaters’ book ’We think’ a good indication for development in the future. We are talking about social wealth vs personal wealth or the concept of owning vs sharing. A true revolution.

Finally, I have one wish for the further development of twestival Helsinki: Take over the project and organize twestival next time. It will be a twestival global again, the date is set for 4th February 2010. Take over the twitter account, the website, the facebook group, the visual identity and the good spirit and make it bigger. There will be more active twitter users in Finland next time, and I would love to see this project grow over all boundaries, hierarchies and companies. Twestival is crowd-sourcing, twestival is social good.

Thanks for everything.

p.s./ 

Special thanks to Henna, Susanna, Mia, Erol, Teemu, Jukka, Delfin, Reino, Tuija, Jakob & Janine. You were building the bird’s nest and left your remarkable piece.

Twestival Helsinki

After finding out that no twestival local (read here if you have no idea whatsoever I am talking about) was yet to be organized in whole Finland I decided to change that and took the role of twestival Helsinki’s main organizer. As the twitter community in Finland is rather small and the timeframe to organize the festival is short I have a small but classy twestival in mind, and let myself surprise by anything more than that. The twestival is organized with crowdsourcing methods where everyone leaves a small part to contribute to one big goal: Raise funds for a good cause. A good start is the logo created by Designer Teemu Kurko, thanks for that, we love it!

If you want to help out, contact me, follow the twitter feed @twestivalHEL, join the twestival Helsinki facebook group, or visit the twestival local website. So far there is a great active team of 5 people working on the event, and the more it will be the better it gets.

More information follows later, but for now, tweet for good!

Twestival local

Twestival local (more info here) takes place from 10th to 13th September in more than 200 cities globally. If you want to take part or want to put your city on the twestival map, contact the organisers.  I am currently checking what will happen in Helsinki, would be sad not to take part.

http://twestival.com/get-involved/

Give a damn!

Hmm, a great summer holiday has come to an end and I want to share a couple of thoughts which came up while traveling the last weeks, related to the topics of marketing and creativity. After every travel, some things are sticking to one’s mind more than others, as they were more special. Let it be great nature, a restaurant, a sunrise, special service or a nice store.

Great things impress us for a certain reason: They are less compromising then others, they are simply outstanding. 

Our goal in marketing, creativity and communications must be the same: Strong, sharp and uncompromising ideas and concepts, polished to perfection with undeniable logic and irresistible emotion, executed with love and great care. 

We need Marketing professionals valuing the art and craft, investing time and money in the right projects – and we need to bring up these projects. So, let’s do just that until next summer, and let’s see where we end up.

Nothing great comes easy!

School’s out for summer

Dear all, 

as summer is approaching I will be on a (totally deserved) holiday in US and Canada from 17th June until 26th July. There won't be any blog entries in this time, after a long, hard and rewarding year of work I will mostly disconnect from the digital world during summer. So nothing happening on my two twitter-streams @tobiaswacker and @PalmerstonHEL or any other social media profile. The best way to connect with me in this time is via sms, as I won't read e-mail. I will relax, get new impressions, think, enjoy and explore to be back with great spirit. Until then.

Have a great summer. Life is now! 

New York Internet Week

New York Internet week is coming up, a week-long festival to promote NYC’s internet industry. Lot’s of interesting events, see the schedule from here.

And the winner is…

…according to Alex Bogusky’s tweets…

… brammo.com, a company producing electric motorcyles. So, they won the CP+B intern summer auction, and get three month of blood and sweat from people fighting hard to start a great career. Nice client and a good deal, I would say – the final sum was 17.655 $ (12.700 €).

7857 € and it’s yours – but you have to be quick

Let’s say, you have just about 7857 € (10.099 $) and let’s say, you need three month strategy- and campaign work from the best ad agency in the whole wild world… no prob. Follow this link, the e-bay auction is still open 23 hrs. If you make the bidding, no minor agency than CP+B itself will work for you. (ok, you have to trust their interns – but I guess they don't allow them to fail over there). Anyone?

Typo Berlin 2009 in full swing

Type- and design conference ’Typo’ is currently in full swing in Berlin. As one of the biggest and most influential conference in Europe it features this year topics around the theme ’Space’. If you have the chance, visit! It’s great. How to get there you can read from here.

The Feast – Social Innovation Conference

On 1st of October it is time for ’The Feast’, the great social innovation conference. It will be hold in NYC, and the invitation-only tickets are just 99 $. However, if you can afford it you can buy tickets for a higher price to micro-sponsor the tickets for great thinkers with small wallets. More information about ’The Feast’ in New York here.

The Twitter Book

The internet is full of new applications around twitter and even fuller about people writing about them. The reason why twitter is not heavily used in European marketing is because twitter’s user base in Europe is not that big, yet. But facebook was also late, so twitter will be big here as well. Until then, take your time for preparing and read ’The Twitter Book’ from the inventor of web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly. Set up your own twitter account here, and don't forget to follow @timoreilly. If you want to understand the marketing potential of the web 2.0/3.0, it is essential to actively use the services. Be experimental, it’s fun!

Susan Boyle or how mass media works in 2009

After many weeks Susan Boyle’s first appearance at ’Britain’s got talent’ was droppin from No.1 position at viral video chart, with 140 million views, 12.700 blog posts and 471.000 comments. Susan Boyle was featured in thousands of twitter streams, and in some countries the buzz around her appearance is still hot. The online and offline reaction from media around the world has been overwhelming, and has teached us a lesson about mass media in 2009, as the excitement from people on the web has been too strong to be ignored. So let’s have a look what we can learn from this case.

The news are full of negative messages concerning traditional mass media. Less and less people watch a certain TV program whilst more and more TV channels are born, and newspapers around the globe are in a deep crisis. Mass media seem to be scattered and audiences more difficult to reach than ever before. So, is this the end of mass media?

The answer can be yes, if we think about the classic media channels. It is the end of mass media, as we knew it. Anyhow, there is a new kind of mass media. The media of the masses – the internet.

’Twittizen’

Twitter is much more than a status update in 140 or less characters. Companies are doing amazing things with twitter, and it is long time ago that I have seen so much creativity around such a small service. Janet Fouts has summarized nicely how to be a good ’twittizen’ and how to write interesting tweets. Well worth a read, here the summary.

If you want to check my twitter manners read the trend feed I am publishing for the Palmerston group @PalmerstonHEL or my own twitter feed @tobiaswacker.

13th annual ’Webby Awards’

The winners are announced – see the best on the web from here.

The (branded) world is changing

According to the today published Brandz Top 100 studies from MillwardBrown, google is the the most valuable global brand, now the third year in a row. However, there are also big changes in the ranking effecting brand values of car companies and banks. Nokia is ranked on position 13 with a loss of 20 % in comparison to 2008.

Read the whole study here (pdf)

Sofia Bank – Born wise

Let me present some work I have been involved with recently in my function as planner for Finnish advertising agency KING Helsinki. The topic is Sofia bank, a new bank on the Finnish market founded by top professionals of the banking industry. For the launch campaign we chose to focus on that – a new bank with lots of experience. The images have been taken by Dutch top professional Paul Ruigrok and the campaign is focusing on print- and online media. The headline in the ad is best to be translated with the words ’Born Wise’.

Susan Boyle

People love great stories, and people love the underdog. And everybody loves music. Susan Boyle, who made it from 0-100 in just one song at the casting show ’Britain’s got talent’, became world famous for these attributes. 60-70 million views on youtube, 1,2 million facebook fans, a global fan community and media hype. 

Check out how Susan Boyle was touching the world!

JoPo

JOPO – standing for ’JOkaisen POlkupyörä’ and meaning ’the bike for everyone’ is a Finnish design classic and at the same time a good example for great marketing. Produced by Finnish manufacturer Helkama and first introduced in 1965, jopo shows that taking great care of a product and brand pays off – in that case literally, as the bike is rather expensive for its features. However, a great concept, and since yesterday I joined the owner’s club.

Read more and buy your own from here

Bobba

Sulake has launched yet another community named Bobba. The target audience is much older than Habbo’s, and the community is meant to be accessed by mobile devices.

Here more information from Taneli and Arctic Startup.

Happy Easter!

Business as usual

Today is a tough day for everyone in media and advertising business. While in Finland advertising- and media agencies have announced heavy layoffs today, bad news are coming also from US. Shots magazine reports that JWT Chicago will be closed down, after 118 years of history, and the Boston Globe is under pressure from Times Co. to accept major cutbacks, otherwise is under threat of being closed down. I tend to see the opportunities in the crisis, but today things just look black. Anyhow, we all know if the upswing is coming (and it will come), media- and ad businesses are on the forefront of the movement.

Take care until then.

It’s a fake – Postmodern Mini viral

Nicely played viral, bringing the theme a bit further. Lot’s of virals work in the same way, so it is a fun idea to play around with the clichés which are out there. The viral was shooted on Autobahn A8 in Germany, and the joy is in the dialogue, this time. Well done, Mini!

Check it from here

Ars Electronica Future Lab: Vision on e-paper

I have blogged about the changes in newspaper industry, digital paper and alike quite frequently, as this shows us quite well that we are living in revolutionary times when it comes to media or advertising. First, I have to report more sad news, as San Francisco might soon be the first mayor city without a big printed newspaper, as the print edition of the Chronicle is under threat of beeing discontinued, something quite unimaginable some years ago. However, there is hope on the horizon: the Ars Electronica Future Lab has released some vision on digital paper – a quite convincing one. If you want to have a peak how a digital physical newspaper might look, go ahead.

Visit here to see the vision of digital paper

Visit here to see the US newspaper crash in a nutshell

Tesla Motors

Interesting times – while other car manufacturers are struggling or close down totally, one small company seems to have some financial resources to expand and establish a new brand: The high end electric powered sports car firm Tesla motors, at home in Silicon Valley. The first car seems to be well in production now, and various showrooms and sales outlets have opened around US. Tesla is planning to enter the European market as well at some point. Hope this journey will continue nicely and ends up in a success story, I respect the brave and pioneering approach.

Check all about Tesla from here

Watch the roadster in action from here

Tesla on wikipedia

Sustainable cities

According to research more and more of the global population will be living in urban areas, creating ever bigger and condensed urban spaces. That this can be actually much more sustainable than a rural setup is an interesting thought, and the CABE, the UK based Comission for Architecture and the Built Environment, has launched a program for sustainable cities in the UK. Very interesting, read more from here.

Röyksopp – Happy Up Here

Hmm – Röyksopp goes back to the roots. I like that. Check the debut single ’Happy Up Here’, and enjoy the video directed by Reuben Sutherland. The upcoming new album will be called ’Junior’.

Wherever you are out there, relax.

The Light of Snow

Check out some more pictures from Stockholm Furniture Fair 2009 on the website of Finland’s leading furniture producer Martela (one of my projects)

Here you go

ps/ Thank you Jukka & Tommi for the great layout & flash

Create or Die - Webinale 09 in Berlin

The holistic web conference webinale is hold in Berlin from 25th - 27th of May. The theme is create or die, and on the agenda are topics around the web, see picture above. Sounds good, so here the link.

North Korean elections and a bizarre online store

The world is crazy, and North Korea is even more. In the latest election state leader Kim Jong-il got 100 % of the votes, not that impressive when considering that he was the only candidate on the list. And if Kim Jong-il is not busy with ridiculous fake elections, he is practicing e-commerce, running a bizarre webshop. Unfortunately I can’t laugh about all that, as a whole nation is suffering so badly. Very sad.

Here the link to the most weird online store in the world
(only one server in North Korea, so the link does not work always)

Here the story about the most weird election in the world

Stop recycling – Start repairing

Nice project from my former home city Amsterdam, organized by platform21, a platform for people curious about the future. Here more information on the project, and here background info on platform21. Cheers.

Hasta La Vista, Baby. It’s Cebit time.

The Cebit will open its doors tomorrow, this time smaller and less optimistic than many years before. Anyhow, it is still the global lead fair for the tech industry, presenting as partner the state of California. For that reason governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made his way to Germany. California is hit hard by the crisis, featuring the highest unemployment rate since 25 years. Anyhow, native Austrian Mr. Schwarzenegger, who started his career as body builder in Munich decades ago, did not loose his very own way of dealing with the crisis. He finished his speech on Cebit opening by watching German chancellor Angela Merkel with his most famous words:
Hasta la vista, Baby.

”It is with great sadness that we say goodbye”

The crisis is going stronger every day, and now things happen which have been predicted already ten years ago. In US and many other parts of the world newspaper publishers are facing an existential crisis, now causing the bankruptcy of a major US paper – The Rocky Mountain News from Denver, Colorado, which was awarded with the Pulitzer prize for times since the year 2000.

Please watch the moving documentation created by employees of the paper here

ps/ Needless to describe any further that we are beginning a new era.

Who uses twitter, and why

Nice pie chart, and quite true. At least looks familiar to me and my twitter experience…

via Huffington Post

Young Global Leaders

The World Economic Forum has published a list (pdf) with 230 young global leaders, Finland is represented by Misiter of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Stubb. The list includes also a good bunch of people from tech industry, like Facebook founder Marc Zuckerberg. Times like these need new brains and new leaders, new ideas and new perspectives, and radical ideas. Just like Obama understood, we need change, let it be on a societal, political, economical or environmental level. The recession we are facing now gives us the opportunity to correct things which went out of hand. This fact is also true for advertising, where the industry is transforming fast after decades of standing still. Go, young global leaders, go!

ps/ 

Try to keep the rebel in you! By fighting for change there is a danger to assimilate to status quo pretty fast…

Read the press release here

The Light of Snow

Two weeks ago Stockholm Furniture Fair closed doors, time to take a resumé for my work with Finland’s leading furniture producer Martela. The theme we created for the fair was ’The Light of Snow’, for obvious reasons: One of the product innovations Martela presented at the fair was ’The Tree W’, a light and space devider designed by Finnish design legend Prof. Eero Aarnio, the fair stand, designed by Finnish architect group Valvomo, was shining in total white while Stockholm was covered by a beautiful snow blanket. Or in other words: ’The Light of Snow’. Next to the theme we developed invitation materials, a press kit and the brochure, naturally all in simple and clear white.

Typoberlin 2009 – Space

Over the recent years the ’Typo’ in Berlin has grown to be one of the most important international conferences on typography and graphic design. Next to the big names from the design industry the conference offers unique Berlin atmosphere and relaxed networking possibilities. Now the theme of the 2009 conference has been unveiled: SPACE. The conference dates are 21st - 23rd of May, and until 29th of February you can register with a 100 euros discount. Students get the unique chance to register to the conference for 250 euros until 29th, after that the registration fee is 645 euros for everyone. I really like the conference and encourage everybody to give it a go.

Why I am part of a global trendspotting network

The Palmerston Group has set up a global trendspotting network operated via twitter. The system is ’live’ for a couple of days now, and the idea is to let people report about the latest trends, movements, atmospheres etc. from their homebase. I was asked to do the reporting from Helsinki, and as I benefit from tweets around the globe and as I like to promote Helsinki and Finland I am happy to do the job. As twitter allows you just 140 characters, the project is not very time consuming. My personal tweets are still available on this blog (in the box on the right) or on twitter, @tobiaswacker. For Helsinki tweets follow the link below.

Follow Helsinki trend tweets from here

No idea what I am talking about? Read more about twitter here

Microsoft forever

Ok, I really don't like Microsoft, who does. Anyhow, now that the Mobile World Congress is going strong in Barcelona, I browse through news, watch press conferences etc. Microsoft launched a new operating system for mobile devices, Windows mobile 6.5, and called it Windows phone. Of course it is the same crap than Windows 6.1 mobile operating system, just some pimped surface. I thought that they should have learned something out of the Windows Vista disaster, but they didn't. But now to the point: I wanted to see the MS press conference, and they want me to download their stupid silverlight plugin, otherwise I can’t see the press conference. Never, never I will download this lousy flash imitation. Never. Microsoft, your power is vanishing, as you refuse to learn anything from the past. Good bye. 

ps/ 

Pumping hundreds of millions in Crispin Porter & Bogusky advertising doesn't help. Not a bit. You Redmond guys will never be cool. 

Recession is fun

In media the recession is described as something extremely negative, and after thinking about it for a good while I take a contrary position. So, here my reasons why I like the recession: 1) We get rid of stuff we don’t need and want, like bad quality cars ruining the environment, greedy bankers with ridiculous salaries, extremely high consumption of natural resources, too many airlines, impossible to pay real estate prices and stupid women- and car magazines. 2) With the physical and mental ressources having set free in this process, people start to be creative again, doing things they want and they believe in, without trying to protect status quo. Naturally there is a downside in the recession, people who lost their jobs and have to struggle to make a living. I would support more social security for these people, accept higher taxes. If we care more for each other and support small businesses we can turn the recession in something fun.

Berlinale

The 59th Berlin Film Festival Berlinale just closed doors, with the big win, the golden bear, going to La tete asustada (The Milk of Sorrow) from Peru. Check all the awarded films here, and read more about the golden bear winner from here. Cinema rules!

The beginning of twitter

Just found this great document about the beginning of twitter, worth a read as it shows nicely how an idea turns into reality. Good example for business creativity…

Here you go

Twestival: New forms of charity

Twitter managed to set up an event in 202 cities around the globe on 12th of February, named twestival. Under the theme ’Tweet. Meet. Give.’ fans and users of microblogging service twitter, the fastest growing social networking platform on the web, gathered to raise money for a good purpose, in that case for charity water. The money was mainly raised with an entrance fee of 10 euros, and is estimated to exceed the 1.000.000 dollar barrier. The official results will be available by tomorrow, Monday 16th. And hey, join twitter, it’s nice! And feel free to follow my twitter stream on http://twitter.com/tobiaswacker

Bingo Bango… Bongo!

Our dear colleague Mary Lee is planning to open a creative hotshop in Helsinki, named Bongo. She is currently recruiting, so if you need a job, check from here. The concept of a pure advertising agency without any strategy or such sounds interesting, although it is not made for a strategy thinker like me. Anyhow, welcome and good luck!

Read more on shots magazine or in creativity online.

Tweeting

Feel free to follow my twitter stream, here you go. You can find my facebook profile here, the website and blog from the company I am working for is here, my last.fm profile is available from here, here and here you can find my xing and linkedin profiles, my travel dates are available from dopplr, and something regarding me and planning you can check from here. I don’t know where all that will end up, but we will see. It is fascinating living in pioneering times with lots of change in advertising and marketing. A great chance for all of us!