The difference between then and now is that it’s easier than ever before to become a micro celebrity. It still takes talent and hard work, but really anyone can do it. […] Beyond „micro fame“ if you will, the rise of personal brands really reflects something deeper in society that’s changing. In American culture in particular we have always been proud of individualism and expression. Before Web 2.0 we might dress a certain way or do something to stand out. Nowadays, that happens online and it’s being driven in large part by the maturing of the Net Generation – Gen Y.
So Steve talks about the increased opportunities to live out individualism to create microcelebrities.
While Mitch Joel podcasts about „echo chambers“. He argues, that instead of the podosphere, the blogosphere and any other social media being an echochamber, we are merely creating celebrities.
These are two different angles for a similar thing. Steve says, it is all about individualism, supported by the web enabling self expression. Mitch argues we’re quoting&supporting each other to create our own celebrities among each other. Both results in more or less unknown individuals becoming (micro-) celebrities.
Ad agencies are about to trade three-martini lunches, schmooze-fests and fast-talking account executives for programmers, custom software and anthropologists who can navigate MySpace.
One comment was aimed squarely at all those agencies that are desperately trying to acquire people who understand digital and „interactive“ advertising, which invites consumer participation via digital media — for example, voting on products online or sharing text messages as part of a viral marketing campaign.
„Digital anthropologists are going to be the next people you scramble to hire,“ DeCourcy said.
[…] agencies will need people who can use the tools of cultural anthropology to interpret the overwhelming amount of user-generated data, and come up with strategies for using social networks to sell stuff.
But this trend also won’t last much longer says this article. Two more years, and there will be enough young people ready to fill every remaining gap there ever was. So enjoy while it lasts.
They even got some of the typical Simpsons products in these stores, like buzz cola and KrustyO’s. A list of these Simpsons-inspired products is over here.
There is an interesting article about the „sites of social butterflies“ at USA Today. It provides a short summary of Twitter, kyte.tv, twittervision and flickrvision. It gets increasingly impossible to imagine how people kept up to date on each others activities just a year ago. How did they know whether or not their peers were having a coffee or not? I am puzzled how society could have functioned without that…
So here it is. Another „make your own advertising“ by Axe. This time Axe offers a platform for user generated advertising, the briefing for these clips should be fairly clear. At the end of the day, this is a campaign, with a globally comprehensible idea.
However, I am not sure if this campaign really is an international campaign. (This site is in German). But you get the picture, and the videos are, well, boom chicka wah wah. What more need I say?
Wo ich sonst so bin...