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’.