Wie bereits erwähnt , mische ich bei der Beck’s Gold Urban Experiences mit. Heute abend veranstalten wir wieder ein eigenes Event, und zwar die Präsentation des ersten Beck’s Gold Design-T-Shirts im Firmament Store. Der Künstler und Designer Dave Little wird vor Ort sein und signieren, außerdem gibt’s frisches Beck’s Gold und die ersten zehn Besucher bekommen eines der auf 500 Pieces limitierten Kollektion for free. Start ist um 19.30 im Firmament Store, Schröderstr. 8 in Berlin-Mitte. Kommt auf ein Bierchen vorbei!
In this video, Tom Littlewood takes us on a journey to places where the Cold War past of Berlin is still visible. So they go to Teufelsberg, an artificial hill where the NSA built a listening station in the 60ies to spy on the communist part of Berlin, consisting of strange big white balls on top of the hill. They takl with a former army commander and visit the bunker at airport Tempelhof where thousands of meters of war film burnt right after world war II. Great piece of work, entertaining and educating, I like.
A very nice branding combination as well: VBS teamed up with Palladium boots to produce this documentary. Taking the history of these french military boot brand into account, documentaries from interesting and forgotten places seem to represent Palladium pretty well.
Doritos teamed up with several agencies (e.g. Mekanism and Proto) and Blink182 to present a concert on a snacks bag. In fall 2009, on www.doritoslatenight.com you could hold a marker printed on a Doritos bag into the webcam connected to a flash app that would recognize that code and put a concert video by Blink182 filmed in a green screen room into the virtual space. You could than turn the bag and thus control the perspective of the video. Great brand transfer and well done technology of “musicians in your palm”.
“Streit! Konstruktive Kontroverse” (Beef – constructive controversy) is Social Media Week Berlin’s motto 2010, in this post we explain why we think it is a good subject and how we see the state of digital Streit today.
Social Media has become a buzzword, so prominent, many people are already sick of it. Social Media needs to be in every marketing campaign, Social Media is finally the utopia “the internet” (in the 90ies) and “Web 2.0” (in the 00 years) both couldn’t fulfill, Social Media can be done by everyone and everyone must do it unlesss he or she will fall into endless oblivion. Plus Obama used it. Obama!
We don’t think that that is all wrong nor are we sick of using all these handy tools to connect and interact, nor are we sick talking about it. But we want to take another stand, another perspective. That’s why we came up with the subject “Streit!”. Streit means conflict, controversy, beef! And we like it! Here is why.
Die Social Media Week ist eine Veranstaltungswoche, die aus mehreren Events besteht und im Februar 2009 zum ersten Mal in New York statt fand. Dieses Jahr soll sie außerdem in Sao Paolo, Toronto, San Francisco, London und Berlin statt finden. Ich wurde gefragt, ob ich da mitmischen will und nun legen wir los und organisieren euch ein schönes Social Media Festival in der ersten Februarwoche.
Wir dabei, die eine oder andere eigene Veranstaltung zu organisieren, so soll es eine Soundcloudparty geben, eine Enterprise 2.0 Veranstaltung, etwas über Social Entrepreneurship, und ein Future of Web Strategy Meetup. Außerdem werden wir versuchen, viele Events, die ohnehin statt finden, unter das Dach der Social Media Week zu holen. Ich selbst möchte eine Veranstaltung zum Thema “Streit” organisieren, denn ich finde, das kommt bei all den Harmonieträumen und positiven Zukunftsvisionen immer etwas zu kurz, dass sich auch mal jemand streitet, vor allem im Internet. Was im zweiten Schritt ja auch wieder positiv sein kann. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Also, save the date, in der ersten Februarwoche, lest das Blog und den Twitter und wenn ihr selbst was machen wollt, sagt Bescheid! Nächstes Treffen ist Donnerstag, 19:30 im Gorki Park, wer was machen will, kommt vorbei!
Starting from tonight, “Beck’s Gold Urban Experiences” will be exploring urban ways of customizing reality today. It is sponsored by Beck’s Gold and supposed to reach out to artists and creative people for producing ideas and lots of beautiful content to put the spotlight on interesting approaches and enrich an entertaining discussion within this field.
The campaign will be lasting at least during 2010 and consists of several events and online documentation and interaction. First, there will be three so-called “workspaces” in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, starting tonight in Berlin. Artists are invited to shape their vision of customizing reality and to present them to an audience which hopefully interacts with the created pieces. The artists, like e.g. Kim Köster, Klub7, Tracknfield or Balestra Berlin create a room filled with pieces which exist, shine or interact with the people. All of the artists have a background of creating art in a modern, reflecting and urban way in a sense of technology and interaction. Tonight, there will be a breadbaking experiment, lifesound recordings and lots of visual approaches to shaping urban environments. Check out some impressions from the preparations:
My role in the campaign is and was to find ways for interaction, preparation and documentation online, including a community for artists, social media profiles like Flickr, YouTube and the Urban Blog urban.becks.de. Together with Silk relations, Coma and the Beck’s team we put together lots of ideas which will become reality in the next 14 months. Follow @becksurban on Twitter to get updates and get the Urban Blog RSS. The blog is curated by Nilzenburger and will feature a ton of writers who will put together their vision of urban reality today.
Einige Initiativen haben sich ein Beispiel an dem sehr erfolgreichen “Der eine Nichtwähler, der Obama verhindert hat”-Tool genommen und ähnliche Web-Instrumente produziert. Immer geht es dabei um ein Video, das sich mit Name und Bild personalisieren lässt und anschließend an Bekannte als Link verschickt werden kann. Ziel ist es bei allen Tools, Menschen am 27. September zum Wählen zu bewegen. Continue reading →
“Ein Jahr nach dem Bürgerentscheid „Spreeufer für alle“ wollen wir dagegen demonstrieren, dass vieles was Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain lebenswert und besonders macht, verdrängt wird. Wir werden nicht zulassen, dass die (sub-)kulturelle und soziale Infrastruktur und unsere urbanexperimentelle Underground- Kiez- und Clubkultur durch einen musikalischen und kulturellen Mainstream ersetzt wird, den wir auch noch mit steigenden Mieten bezahlen müssen. Wir wollen gemeinsam entscheiden, was in und mit unserer Stadt geschieht. Komm zur Demo-Parade am 11. Juli. Wir werden laut sein, wir werden viele sein. Wir sind die Kinder Berlins.”
Nobody really likes their telco provider. Everybody can tell a story of a contract which could not be cancelled, about intransparent tariffs, crazy roaming prices (send one mail, pay 5 EUR) and unsatisfying service hotlines. So telecommunication is not a sexy product and what is the telco’s approach to that problem? Change their products? No, it’s massive investment in marketing. Which is why e.g. Peter tells us why telcos are doomed.
Now, Vodafone Germany puts 200 mio. 50-90 mio (!) EUR in a big marketing campaign. And makes it even worse by especially targetting a group of people who feel the need to be online a lot, call them “generation upload” and starting all sorts of social media channels (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and so on). While the term itself might be questionable, the targetting itself is quite smart in my opinion: it is an interesting, important and targettable group. What is missing here in the branding strategy is the consumer insight!
These people who use telecommunication more than others know exactly about the lack of good contracts, good service and fair treatment by their telco provider. They are the ones who are able to tell all the stories I started this blogpost with. Targetting them with advertising without changing the behaviour is exactly the way of one-way marketing and placebo dialogue that should be over since the days of the Cluetrain manifesto.
Vodafone picked the advertising company Scholz & Friends especially for their ideas on social media. But Scholz is an advertising company. They are not business consultants. And social media won’t change that. They talk to marketing directors about ads, not about products. They might talk about products over coffee, but they will never change a company’s behaviour. Claiming to do so, claiming to listen, claiming to put the customer first and then not living up to the expectations is worse than not even rise all sorts of expectations at all.
Of course this is not my sole opinion. The German blogosphere is filled with harsh, taunting, zynical and serious critique. No one of the targeted “generation upload” is impressed by the campaign which was presented this week in a press conference streamed live to the web. Johannes writes in a very short and precise post how a real change could have looked like.
Unlike many commenters I am not talking about sell-out of the blogosphere because some bloggers and prominent twitter users are testimonials of the campaign. That’s not the core of the problem. On the contrary: I hope, they get paid a LOT for being in that campaign. Sascha Lobo, one of the main faces should receive around 100K EUR in my estimation, everything less would be dissapointing.
Moreover, the clip itself is crap! It’s an ad which we have seen in around 100 variations for 100 products in the last 20 years: young, happy, enganged, curious, active people doing young, engaged, active stuff. Wohoo! And the David Bowie interpretation is hideous and hurts! Just to remind you that Vodafone can do better, here is the “Bohemian like you” spot again.
Update:Nevertheless, it’s a very visible campaign and all the buzz that has been created is obviously free brand space. Plus: If you work in internet marketing and like to create social media tools for companies yourself, this is a brilliant example to point to. May it be for the use of social media channels in general or the overall message I hope I made clear in this post: Social media can be about listening and in the end changing behaviour. I am curious how this works out for Vodafone.
A true Stylewalker leans back. And waits and reads all the Michael Jackson posts and remixes and then selects the best for the reader. (the picture ist taken by the brilliant Ralph Uetzelhöffer who does very nice textportraits) Here we go:
Wie bereits erwähnt , mische ich bei der Beck’s Gold Urban Experiences mit. Heute abend veranstalten wir wieder ein eigenes Event, und zwar die Präsentation des ersten Beck’s Gold Design-T-Shirts im Firmament Store. Der Künstler und Designer Dave Little wird vor Ort sein und signieren, außerdem gibt’s frisches Beck’s Gold und die ersten zehn Besucher bekommen eines der auf 500 Pieces limitierten Kollektion for free. Start ist um 19.30 im Firmament Store, Schröderstr. 8 in Berlin-Mitte. Kommt auf ein Bierchen vorbei!
