Blog’M

“Get the best talent in one to make the best communications without thinking about above the line, online or whatever line.” - Vincent Jansen

(from Creative Social Blog on Advertising is dead)

IKEA new stab at the Japanese market. Liking this approach… would be even better if they thrown in different furniture and more accessories… but i guess there is regulations… Either way, a good one and think this would work well on this side of the planet as well.

(Thanks Hores Pig Cow for this one.)

(thanks C9 for this one and Lee Chow for the insight)

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-SEO for Branding from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Clear and direct linking between branding and SEO efforts presented on this SEOmoz White Board Friday. A basic overview but a good illustration of how SEO efforts can add to the reach of a branding campaign and extend to of mind.
If you don’t follow the SEOmoz team and/or the White Board Friday video series, recommend you do. Good topics and interesting interviews.

The see-saw that generates generate electrical power by use. Daniel Sheridan, a twenty-three year old student at Coventry University, created this design after working as a volunteer in Kenya. There are many untapped power sources out there, these kind of simple solutions can really make a different.
(Thanks to Thomas Kang through Guy Kawasaki for the heads up).

Goodby Silverstein and partners in San Francisco is turning 25, so there is time for a celebration. Love this invite featuring Rich Silverstein och Jeff Goodby. No luck for those not working for or clients of GSP, but I heard something about an opera house ;) . Next time there is a celebration lets work on some creative invites like this… If you have them please share!

(Didn’t know you could change border and control color on embedded video form YouTube, cool feature.)

Found this list while reading GrokDotCom’s latest post - Blogger Appreciation Day: A Few GrokDotCom Favorites. Apperatently Problogger’s Darren Rowse declared April 14th “Blogger Appreciation Day“… there of this contribution.
Thought it was worth to republish for thoses incline to upgrade your reading list or just want to do a lot of clicking.

Linda Bustos & Jason Billingsley
Mary Schmidt
Matt McGee
Andy Beal
Brian Clark
Baratunde
Matt Pace + crew
B.L. Ochman
Aaron Chronister
Dave Young
Rand Fishkin
Roger Dooley
Marshall Sponder
Linas Simonis
Avinash Kaushik
Fred Reichheld
Paul Williams
Gord Hotchkiss
Adele Revella
Jim Novo
Edward Tufte
Amanda Watlington
Mal Watlington
Garr Reynolds
Tom Limongello
Olivier Favre
David Armano
Richard, Marshall, Sarah, Josh & Alex
Bob Walsh + comrades
Julien Hervouet & Florent Gosselin
Peter Kim
Andy Sernovitz
Tim Huijbers
Kim Krause Berg
Josh Bernoff & Charlene Li
John Jantsch
John Moore
MarsOcean
Don Dodge
Michele Miller
Jason, Matt, Sarah + crew
Mitch Joel
David Meerman Scott
Juan Guillermo Tornoe
Olaf Molenaar
Stéphane Hamel
Christ Coolen
Wayne Hulbert
Mike Drew
David Berkowitz
Augie Ray
Bob Souer
Tim Peter
Steve Hall
Angela Natividad
James Paden
Yvonne DiVita
Bridget Z
Chris Baggott
Steve Woda
Tom Fishburne
Sam Decker
Lars Johansson
James C. Zolman
Carolyn Gardner
and Seth Godin (whose link is especially worth clicking if you’ve made it this far)

AdAge on Separating Brilliance From Blabber. A round the table discussion with some heavy weight bloggers/marketers (Power 150 network) on the subject of making sense of the shift in relationships between the consumers, brands, marketers and media. Brilliant conversation on the subject with maybe a not so surprising outcome which I have tried to capture below.

So the game is changing (yes yes we all know this…), but the large media/ad shops are still ignoring (yes they now have digital departments, but come on)… How do we educate to change the mid set…

“You’ve got to be ahead of what we’re doing. You’ve got to educate the agencies, because they’re the ones who for now are buying a lot of your advertising. So how do you help them see the next best thing? Blogging is going to be superseded by something bigger and better, and people like you, editors, need to know what that is. Because it’s going to bubble up from the people” - Lewis Green of Biz Solutions Plus.

Yep, got to be at least on game, well preferably ahead and know your stuff. The web thing is not that new anymore, so one should know this. The social aspect maybe new, but anyone with a little vision can see the potential in this for both brands and media… why then are we struggling here? It is all about the education, correction, all about the right persuasion tactics… One need to sell this in the right way… for the VP’s there is one way, for the media companies there is another and so on (hey sounds like advertising to me). Like Green and Howard points out.

“I came out of the corporate world as VP of marketing, and I’m not going to do any of the things you guys are suggesting, as a VP of marketing, because you haven’t told me how that gives me more customers. I only care about social media if it helps me to create more loyal customers. As a VP of marketing for a major brand, I don’t care about filtering and aggregating, and I don’t care whether you give me a link or not.” - Lewis Green.

“The conversation that needs to be had with big brands is this: They are looking at how media is changing, they are talking about fragmentation, about spend, about all these things. That’s not the game. The game is that behaviors are changing. So the discussion we generally get into is to focus on understanding the shift in behavior. Once we start to understand the shift in behavior, then we can start talking about things like context and relevance, which is really what we’re talking about.” Sean Howard of Livingston Buzz

Only when one has understanding one can reap the benefits (that sounds very zen, but not a quote:). There are lots of great people out there that has full understanding of this, so  persuade without steeping on peoples feet. Aha, there lies another dilemma, the egos. As pointed out by Dickman:

“The other conversation inside the agencies that I’m seeing now is there’s so much confusion. Really, because the PR shops, Fleishman, Ogilvy and all those guys are doing the digital stuff, but the client may have a digital agency, and then they have an ad agency that also has a digital group, and there’s all this confusion on who has control of that space. And it’s worse for the client, the marketer. Trying to educate them on how to deal with that situation to get the most out of their money — it’s very confusing.”  Matt Dickman of Technomarketer.

Adaption without full knowledge. Noted that many of the larger shops get good people joining but many of the clients don’t, to many players syndrome. Hard pressed to find a solution here, but believe that it is good with separated disciplines, have specialists on each subject. This is especially true for fields that are constantly evolving. Important is that these specialist have a 360 view on what they do, so opportunities do not get lost in narrowness. Integrated com, optimal use of all channels - done by specialist in respective fields. So let’s put egos aside. Less confusion and better communication…
Good point also by Green on where this will happen (quickest).

“The Fortune 500 is never going to lead anything. The Fortune 500 [are] going to be the last adapters. I work with what I would call midsize companies ($100 million companies). It’s uphill with their marketing people, but they are willing to listen because their margins are thinner, and some are public and some aren’t. And that’s where I think we have to do a better job. Because it’s not going to come down from above. It isn’t. The Apples and IBMs and Microsofts — when the time comes, they are going to do the mergers and acquisitions to get what we’re all talking about.” - Lewis Green.

Warping this up - educated persuasion with friendly collaboration between specialist from the ground up… I love to here your thoughts on this subject.

An interesting post form Tom Hespos (Underscore Marketing) iMedia - on how to provide relevant ads to users of aggregated feed services such as FriendFeed.

Now here’s my assessment of the company’s opportunity.

FriendFeed aggregates many important data points about lifestyle and interest. Thus, it could become a very powerful behavioral marketing play. This wouldn’t be the place for demographically targeted brand advertising, or for FreeCreditReport.com to whack prospects over the head with direct response ads.

It would, however, be a good place for ads targeted by interest. Perhaps when someone reads that a friend posted a link to a product, or commented on a story about said product, or otherwise interacted with it, there would be an opportunity for a targeted online ad, once FriendFeed observed an interest in it.

For instance, if Jim Meskauskas twittered a link to a blurb about the new season of “Battlestar Galactica,” and I followed that link, I might start seeing ads for tune-in in my feed. In this way, targeted advertising would not only be able to inform, but it also could amplify viral effects, and we could avoid much of the criticism of online ads by steering clear of the shotgun approach. 

I see an interesting ad play here, provided it’s managed such that the ads are kept relevant.

Agree in general - a good way of delivering ads here is to react on behavior and provide relevant ads/links. I would find it very annoying though to find ads floating around my feeds, even if relevant. These services are meant to be an overview of what is going on in your social sphere, clutter free… not filled with relevant ads…
Now, there is a big opportunity here - a endless sea of user behavioral data, both social and private - which can’t be ignored and must make money at some point (sorry to say, but that is the reality).  In my opinion, we now have a chance to do something more and move along relevant ad serving.
A thought: we have the data and can attach this to some sort of promotion or brand, the questions is then how? Without being intrusive and add to the clutter. Thinking of in post linking - once an interests is identified one get links (ad served) added to relevant key words in the post and / or at the bottom, this is for both own and friends posts. As in the example above,  Battlestar Galactica and a new season, when a key word relating to BG in your next posts appears, they are now linked to the new season site. You might also find links at the bottom of the post that links to complete previous season available for download on… or DVD. Should also add an link preview to this, you know rollover bubble of info on link (nice place for graphic as well). This I feel would eliminate the ads floating around (- clutter) and give relevant links to the specific interesting content right where you read… Thoughts? 

Do I have to say more… just brilliant! Thanks Hugh Macleod for this cartoon.
As for Twitter I am a big fan - join the conversation here.