remix09 – live event notes 1

10:55 at the Museum for Hamburgische Geschichte, and the show will start any minute.

The speakers of the first panel are already sitting on stage. First topic: 

Share Economy, Collaborative Marketing, Radical Individualism 
Markenführung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Klassik und Online, Stabilität und Individualisierung, Kontrolle und Partizipation

The first panel is with Bernd M. Michael, Gregor Stemmle and Dr. Stefan Tweraser, moderated by Mark Pohlmann.

  • Adwords makes up 95% of Google’s revenue… after a small calculation Mark deducts that Google in Germany makes about 2 billion Euros.
  • Question posted to the audience sparks the first discussion: can you separate between off- and online.
  • Bernd Michael states: there are many experts in this room, but not much knowledge about the effectiveness of what we’re doing in terms of revenue. We are not able to give a 100% media recommendation for ROI.
  • Dr. Tweraser:  The seach box mediates between attention and brand promise.
  • Michael: The average German knows 3.000 words – how should they memorize 50k+ brands?
  • Stemmle: there are examples of successful brands in this digital world – but not built on traditional principles. 
  • Zara was mentioned as an example for brands that are successful without any advertising whatsoever. Instead it gew by WoM because of the subjective brand qualty. (Triggered a discussion about subjective vs objective benefits of brands)
  • Good advice by Michael: collect casestudies of companies that were successful during the last crisis (2000-2003 or thereabouts). Show these to your clients when talking about facts.
  • Stemmle: Use free content online to build your brand – then use the brand power to sell paid content offline.
  • Michael: does not agree… calls it a huge strategic blunder, what happened a couple of years ago. Traditional media was to fat, to saturated, they didn’t take the internet serious enough.
  • Stemmle: the business of the future for media: prioritization and weighting of content. Defining what’s „talk of the town“…
  • Discussion is going back to the original topic: branding today. Tweraser: brand marketing is already a dialogue, some brands already admit that the brand has partially been taken out of their hands.
  • Michael: the apple store in NY has a simple way of adding value for R&D: every question that the staff gets and has never heard before, they write down and send it to Cupertino… (Great, that’s what every company with direct customer interaction should do!)
  • Markus Roder (in the audience): Viral Marketing can work, when brands give promises and then overdeliver: that triggers excitement and hence word of mouth. 
  • Last question by Pohlmann: what’s in it for the future. Stemmle: network, interact. Tweraser: use the information available on the web (Google was able to predict the winner of the eurovision song contest, for esample). advertising is no longer art, it’s a science. Michael: We need experts. It’s still difficult to get experts. Offer more opportunities for knowledge gaining. 

This marks the end of the first session.

Remix Hamburg 09 starting tomorrow

Tomorrow is the first remix conference: classic meets online (advertising). To recap what it will be all about:

Fachleute aus dem klassischen Marketing-Umfeld treffen die Aktiven des Web 2.0 für einen professionellen und persönlichen interdisziplinären Austausch.
Feste Konferenzelemente treffen auf die adhoc-Strukturen von BarCamp und Open Space – Beim remix09 mischen sich Unternehmerinnen und Unternehmer, Vorstände, Freelancer und Angestellte. Von U-30 bis Ü-60. Eine breite Wissens- und Erfahrungsbasis aus klassischem Marketing und Web 2.0 – ganz ohne Peergroups, Selbstreferenzialität und Tunnelblick.

The agenda is up with a few fixed keynotes and speaches. The rest of the conference will be organised barcamp-style. Looking very much forward to this experiment, which also happens to take place in a really nice surrounding: the Museum of Hamburg History. Even the party in the evening will take place in those surroundings!

I shall be live blogging tomorrow. Well, as live as I can manage during the conference anyway 😉

Remix09 in Hamburg, 12th and 13th of June.

Some of you might have noticed the event tip/ad in the righthand column. This is something particularly interesting for my German readers: the remix09 conference is happening on the 12th and 13th of June here in Hamburg. Title: „online meets classic“. The setup of the event is a mixture of barcamp and a regular conference:

Fachleute aus dem klassischen Marketing-Umfeld treffen die Aktiven des Web 2.0 für einen professionellen und persönlichen interdisziplinären Austausch.

Feste Konferenzelemente treffen auf die adhoc-Strukturen von BarCamp und Open Space – Beim remix09 mischen sich Unternehmerinnen und Unternehmer, Vorstände, Freelancer und Angestellte. Von U-30 bis Ü-60. Eine breite Wissens- und Erfahrungsbasis aus klassischem Marketing und Web 2.0 – ganz ohne Peergroups, Selbstreferenzialität und Tunnelblick.

A few days ago, the agenda has been published. There will be two tracks. The first track is mostly with fixed slots and offers speaches and discussions by quite a few well-known people such as Bernd M. Michael (ex-CEO of Grey Germany), and Prof. Peter Wippermann of  Trendbüro.

Some of the other slots in track 1 plus most slots in track 2 can be filled by participants, in true barcamp style, I suppose.

Working in an advertising agency that offers both classic and online, I am particularly interested to see how the discussion between the two disciplines will develop. We’ll see. I shall be updating this blog shortly before and during the conference with more news on the ongoing discussions.