Vacation
With all the pre-vacation hectic I completely forgot to publish the „mandatory“ vacation post.
I will have only limited access to the web, hence I will probably only post on the 4th of October the next time.
Viral trigger happy Krantman
Adrants points me to Krantman, which is, as a reader comment at Boing Boing says, an advertisement for a dutch newspaper.
They have done it in the style of „trigger happy tv“ („Comedy Street“ in Germany), only not quite so drastic.
But the principle is the same. Put a guy in the public an let him do silly things. Then film the reactions of the unaware people with hidden cameras.
I don’t know, if they really filmed this with hidden cameras and unaware people, but it does look like it.
Nice idea, and the fact that Boing Boing (and also Adrants) mention it, should give it at least a small viral push.
Subway Guerrilla Marketing with a dangerous twist
First it looks like a great guerrilla idea. And I think, this has been done before, but not with a projector attached to the train, but with screens within the tunnel. The screens were placed in certain distances and each one displayed one image subsequent to the image of the previous screen. This way the people on the subway saw the film on many different screens, each one of them just showing one step of the animation. Like a thumbnail cartoon (or whatever they’re called)
I just wonder, if this kind of marketing tactic is feasible these days? (See the comments to the blog post linked to above).
If you tried this in any big city today, poeple would panik. They would expect an act of terrorism instead of an act of advertisement.
So, summing up: Don’t try this in your city. (In fact, don’t try this at all.)
Google vs Microsoft is indeed a war of (quite different) platforms.
This was a comment to an article at AdJab, but you should also read this article:
I don’t think, the current discussion is about Google vs Microsoft competing on the same platform (software). I also agree, that Google doesn’t have a platform (yet).
I think this is about influence. And power. Microsoft was and is gaining influence on software. Products that let you manage/store information. They built a platform, which has reached every desktop PC near you.
Google is gaining influence on leveraging that information. Building a yet to be defined platform. And yes, they finance their endeavours by advertising. But ultimately, it’s about information, their mission statement says that. And, from leveraging information via control to power it’s a short distance. Once they have achieved that, they have a „platform“. It’s disconnected from software, hardware or anything else we define as a platform these days.
It’s about information and control. And it will make all other platforms obsolete, because access to and leveraging of, information is not defined by operating systems like Windows any longer, but by, well, whatever Google will call it…
The Yahoo!-Flickr scare – and what else might be in store?
Here is an interesting story about the current Flickr and Yahoo! situation:Flick Off!. Basic outline: Yahoo! bought Flickr in March this year and now announced, that all Flickr users will have to register with Yahoo! starting 2006, even if they had been with Flickr for a while.
A heated discussion of as many as 910 of the 1.3million flickr users has started. About Yahoo! integrating their bought services (not allowed!) while Google also does this (err, not so bad…).
Really, if you read the official flickr blog, nothing much seems to change. You need to sign up with Yahoo! and you need that login in future for flickr. But you’re screen name doesn’t change, the copyright of your photos still belong to you (unlike when Yahoo! bought geocities and all of a sudden claimed copyright for all the geocities content), and you also keep your flickr URL.
So why do people bother so much? Why does run across the blogosphere?
I guess it’s because people are so involved. It’s not just a brand or service they buy and use. It’s their creation. So far, they could influence flickr by adding photos, posting ideas for new features, shape the whole community. That way, flickr seems to be everybody’s creation, every body is participating in shaping flickr. So it does indeed become really personal:
Millions of people now interact with one another via computers on networks, where they have the opportunity to talk, to exchange ideas and feelings, and to assume personae of their own creation.
(A quote from here )
Fact is, the way Yahoo! starts to behave now is much like it would be in a badly communicated corporate takeover (which it wasn’t), when the employees start wondering what will happen to the future of their company (I have experienced that feeling myself!).
The way the users have helped shaping the community, it is „their“ company. And now they wonder, what Yahoo! is doing, what else they might have planned. The feeling of a loss of control over their own creation and hence „personae“, even if this community is just a little part of their digital identity.
So in effect I think it is much more of the great „what else is coming?“-scare, rather than the fact that people need new login IDs.
[added, a few minutes later:]
Imagine this situation in the non-communicative offline world of brands. One softdrink brand buys another. They change the logo, the distribution channels, whatever. The target audience (at least those that feel strongly connected to the brand) can only express their disgust over the merger by writing to the company, tell their friends (on the phone or at a social event) or tell market researchers (if their lucky enough to be picked for interviews). So, how many mergers have happened in the past, that have not had that much controversial discussion?
It’s the other phenomenon of digital culture: companies, that have their product within this space need to be much more diligent in terms of PR and comunication. Because thousands of negative opinions are just one click away…
A new microsite with video and viral from Nike France
Nike has a new campaign in France with a microsite on which you can watch 4 small video clips. Even though the films are nicely done, I got bored after the first two, because essentially, their all too similar. And for the „game“: I don’t understand it, but then again, my french isn’t too good. Do I really only have to fill in my details and those of 10 friends? Or is there something more thrilling to this game?
Anyway. It’s a very simple mechanism to let this go viral and capture addresses. Wonder if it works…
(via)
The Secret New York
The Secret New York is a great idea of interactive sightseeing. There are several yellow arrows placed in NY with a phone number and a code. When you see one, you can call the number and type in the code. Then you hear a voice recording telling you all about this place and why it was worth for the yellow arrow.
The best thing about it: anyone can suggest arrow placements, for all sorts of reasons. On the website you can see the arrow placements and also the description. Sometimes, it’s even a short film clip about the place (I wonder, though, how you would use that feature on your mobile phone).
This in itself is a nice combo of web, mobile and real life. However, I think it won’t be long until this might be exploited by advertising or marketing:
1) Stick an arrow (whatever colour) to your shop door.
2) Users can then call up a number and listen to what other people said about your shop.
A community of shop (and/or product) reviewers like at shopping.com or others, only with shops in real life instead of online shops.
(via)
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