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.