Three key take-out’s

According to Katrines post earlier I just wanted to comment on this Cheil seminar too.

Three things that I found interesting was the cultural insight on eastern behavior where decisions are made, not by the individual, but a decision made collectively in the herds of the young people. 

Then I found the insight, as Katrine also commented on, on girls as technology drivers very interesting. When technology no longer is the goal for the fascination, but the technology as a mean to enter a social process the girls, who are far more social creatures than boys, tends to drive the technology. I actually extended this discussion to a social event where I meet Claus Moseholm from GoViral with whom I talked about how the nature of Viral campaigns in Europe right now seems driven by a masculine humour and the nature of girls, linked up to networking and sharing of information/stories/gossip, aren’t adressed in viral campaigns although their nature would be a perfect catalyst for spreading a message if it is possible to use in their social deeds.  

Third I LOVED the discussion of branded services. Let get down to business. All this talk about brand channels, viral, product placement and so on. The real key to the mayor potential would be in making services, that are so relevant to the brand, so appealing to the target group and so well carried out that the consumer sees it as a service. A little help in their life.

So these are my key take-out’s from this seminar.  

Can Brands Be Friends?

A seminar called ‘Can We Be Friends’ with reference to the possibilities of Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and the likes was on the programme tuesday after we finished our oral presentation. I work exclusively with the young target group in the Aegis Media agency DIST, so I though this must be something for me. However, I must say I was disappointed. I don’t know if it was the moderator or the fact that the market is so competitive that the speakers were holding all their interesting thoughts back. But this seminar never got under the surface of social networking sites and their challenges and possibilities for advertisers.   

Clients often come to me and want to do ’something on Facebook’. This ’something’ is often undefined and bound in a wish to follow the hype, which I totally understand. When it comes to the young target group, I always advice my clients to meet them on their ‘home ground’ instead of using a lot of money and energy driving them to a place, where they don’t come naturally. However, as Paul Woolimington from Naked said at his Young Lions masterclass, with reference to Facebook; ‘Don’t chase shiny objects’. I couldn’t agree more. There are thousands and thousands of groups and applications on Facebook that do not serve any other purpose than promoting a brand. They are developed by agencies who don’t really know the mechanisms behind social networking sites or in turn don’t really care as long as they make money. But guess what, this is not in the interest of their clients.

Blake Chandler from Facebook spoke about utility as the key driver of Facebook. This is interesting when you look at the current phase, that Facebook is in. But perhaps it says something about how Facebook aims to develop in the future. Power back to the users! 

The only thing that I got out of this seminar was a confirmation of the fact that the only way to succeed commercially on social networking sites is by acknowleding that they are all about utility. Identify how you add value by giving something back to the community. This is the key behind succeeding commercially on social networks.  

A Day in the life of a YMC in Seoul

Working exclusively with the target group young people, mobile phones are an inevitable part of the media landscape. However, unlike what many believe, Danish youths are not that mobile-tech-savvy. This was indeed proven by the Cheil Worldwide seminar I attended on wednesday, along with Pernille and Lisa. Cheil Worldwide has made an interactive exploration of marketing technology among the YMCs (Young-Minded Consumer) in Seoul. This more than showed that Danish youths, and obviously also Danish mobile companies, are far behind when it comes to exploiting the possibilities of the little device you take with you everywhere you go.   

While most Danish youth still primarily use their mobilephone for texting and calling (yes, that is how it is) South Korean youths are making the mobilephone an extension of their existence. Besides Internet, mobile TV, m-commerce, m-banking and m-movies, other and more sophisticated mobile services were introduced. For instance the Polygraph which is a mobile lie detector allowing South Korean girls to test if their boyfriends are telling them the truth about their where-abouts etc. Very effective – but also a bit scary! Another interesting mobile service, that the seminar introduced, was the so-called Navi Call Taxi Service. This service is an sms-gps taxi service that evolves around making the taxi experience more safe for young women by i.e. sending a text message to the parents and/or friends with the name and number of the taxi and its location.

It is a common fact that South Korea as a highly developed market when it comes to mobile communication. However, it could have been interesting to know, how many of the South Korean youth actually use these advanced mobile services. The interesting part was, that the mobile services discussed by Cheil were primarily targeted young females, and that these served as drivers of the services making them a natural part of their daily lives and social connections. This could definetely be a source of inspiration for Danish mobile companies in their never-ending quest for the young target group.  

The brief

Sunday at 5pm we started the brief after a few hours of training from Getty Images and Apple. These people were so friendly and helpful. Thanks to both – this was really a pleasure! We saw some cool Keynote features… Sorry to say it, but keynote beats Powerpoint 10-0. Of cause a challenge working in a new program but we learned a lot – and the interface was really intuitive, so it went quite well. Getty is just nice as always… Didn’t know though that it contained video files to. So that was interesting – but we didn’t have the time to really use it in the assignment.

We got the assignment from War Child. The task was to raise money from huge private donations, and this was really a challenging brief, because of the crowded charity landscape and the very hard to reach target. But challenges are good. We discussed the brief for a while. Then we went home to work….

 

At 2am we fell a sleep.. 

 

Accenture – post in beta

This was really interesting… There was so many good things – I’ll get back to this later)

(this post will be updated)

Quotes:

“creativity requires the courage to let go of ertainties” Niels Bohr

Trevor the mentos intern

“When dealing with people remember that your are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion” Dale Carnegie

4% of fortune 500 company sites contain links to porn

Ariel frpm Ink direct

- perfect case – (more later)

 

Branded content is in the air

Sunday morning we went to a workshop with Giovanni Rivetti og Roberto Feres from New Content. 

They started out with a madison and vine approach and it started out very interesting. But after 5 minutes we experienced that the whole workshop would be solely about IFE (In-flight entertainment) and the key points was spoken out pretty quickly, so after an hour we left. 

Most interesting was the idea about in-flight learning, with an obvious but interesting base in language learning but evolved to everything else. Think about a 3 hour trip to Egypt learning the basic glossary.

Interesting but a little bit to long….

 

Saturday evening with Envision

Saturday night we hooked up with the danish ad agency envision and got the first taste of cannes with a bottle of rosé and a view over the marina. 

Here’s a picture of Katrine together with Anders Rasmussen who is going to compete in the film competition.

 

Arriving in Cannes

We arrived saturday evening. Katrine came here early and Pernille arrived in the evening. We went to take a look at the palais, but everything was still quiet.