Your place or mine? Yet, they will congregate on facebook.
Sheryl Sandberg with a safe hand for finance politics.
Neil Perkin’s weekly letter made me pay attention to Chris Applegate. According to an entry on his personal blog, Applegate (read it here) has quit facebook, at least for now. A curious case, Chris Applegate is employed, by London agency We Are Social, specializing on social media. Bastian Scherbeck is running the dependancy in Munich.
During life, made acquaintances are being detached by increased distances or by losing interest. Facebook turns the natural alienating process around, and makes faces reappear, faces we wished to have left behind. For Applegate this is cultivating a retrospect way of life.
People we have wished to have left behind out of sheer disinterest, come back to life on facebook.
The currently introduced new facebook profile, based on a timeline of the user’s biographical data, amplifies the retrospect condition.
Hardly anyone seems to like Facebook anymore.
Yet, they will congregate on facebook.
It cannot ever be a favorable condition, for people or brands to run after each other. It can only be favorable for people and brands, to do stuff (preferably ‘ideas that do’, coined by Gareth Kay) to the effect that will draw people to come and look up what they have done.
Continuously creating new meaning for brands and people, remains valid for our post-digital age.
On Facebook, people become like brands but brands won’t become more like people.
Make for a great first impression and become lead agency
It’s that simple, is what I would like to believe, while in awe by the cinemascopic impression of how digital agency, Rokkan stages their product.
Don’t eyeball my wimpy imagery here quite yet, if you want to experience Rokkan, set your browser to take over the screen. When you are ready for this, click here.
Can you show your appreciation for a new won account any better, crisper?
Agencies who won't show their product up front, are suspect of hiding the single most important reason for trusting them.
An active brand in the social agenda.
An active brand in the gaming arena.
User Experience in the new world
Rokkan takes advantage of MS Windows users, preferably working in full screen application mode, the popularity of wide screen monitors and finally Mac OS X offering full screen mode with newly released Lion.
Delivering the best possible solution for any device is the job of user experience practitioners.
Here we see brand building in progress for the the new world.
Now have a look at the homepage of well reputed German creative agency, Jung von Matt, also making use of the cinemascope effect here.
A far fetch from what today's marketing is all about?
What if anything is wrong with this agency website?
A disservice for the returning visitor, even the first time visitor aiming to learn more about the agencies portfolio, their capabilities and approach to marketing. Bad, unfocused marketing I’d say as it sends you on a run around for no better reason as to make for a creative impression.
Now Jung von Matt, touted as most successful European agency at the Cannes festival and leading the pack for the German design nation should have plenty of great samples to show, yet appear ignorant of honoring their clientele’s brands and their factual achievements as an agency.
It’s perhaps time for a new agency model of my own
I am working on wordpress themes for a template based new agency model to come to market with an offering of super sociable brand websites for a fixed price of €3,000. An approach to democratize brand experience for clients big and small.
Now that Rokkan got me all excited, I will also revisit earlier designs and have templates make use of liquid design
WordPress developers with HTML5 experience please get in touch with me here.
Who wants to volunteer and take on the new insurance account?
Speaking for EMEA country, no fingers will be raised and little to no excitement is to be expected from creatives when it comes to insurance marketing.
Insurance companies are believed to consist of boring bureaucrats, hopelessly lost on the square side and of no opportunity to sharpen your creative profile.
Something went wrong with the mindset of European creatives and needs adjustment and transformation. We are utterly trained to resolve issues no matter what.
A couple years ago, I returned to Frankfurt empty handed from an Allianz insurance pitch in Munich, a not so frequent incident, I must ad in my defense. I was with zentropy then, now MRM Worldwide and in retrospect, I’d say fair enough.
Being a sucker at failure, I researched learnings from US insurance companies and have come across an astonishing psychological finding. With buying insurance, people want to cut a deal with the devil, a bit of horse-trading by which, bad things are prevented from happening with making the purchase.
Preventing bad things from happening with the purchase of insurance.
Getting reimbursed in case of damage.
Two topics, that should get the creative juices flow, for there are great stories to tell as this example of an Adweek ad of the day comes to show for State Farm insurance.
An entry on Amsterdam Ad Blog, made me wonder, why no agency with an insurance company in their portfolio has wrapped their minds around an authentic testimonial approach, by which people get to tell their story: How they emerged unscathed from fate in blogger style.
With so many unfortunate, yet curiously strong catastrophes happening around the world, an insurance company will likely take on the role of the guardian angel and savior with current real time events of magnitude as long as the brand stays subtly in the background as an enabler and curator for true stories to get told and talked about in the new world.
Dolly Rogers, an ad agency in Amsterdam published a blog, portraying citizens of Amsterdam, one at a time. This way Dolly Rogers gets talked about and gains popularity (without necessarily having to show off client wins and great work).
With an authentic testimonial campaign consisting of consolidated and curated empiric reports, including a small demographic, illustrating fact and figures to prove the case, and dialogue unfolding between insurants and family/friends having withnessesed the insurance case and outcome, the insurance company establishes an account of lively case studies in the new world. Exciting true stories told by the insurant. Rolled out in collaboration with help organizations, the effort could raise funds, even for the not insured victim of circumstance.
An excellent and most exciting example to help you get your hands around this observation, can be found here and here.
The insurant themselves manage their blog entries and responds to comments with the help of social media practitioners assigned by the agency.
The insurance company gets into the conversation as an increasingly appealing, popular figure.
Trust in the insurance company is gained or returned organically and is strengthened by supporting figures and fact.
The new campaign is centered around the viewpoint of the customer on behalf of the Allianz performance and its 10.000 representatives, a press statement declares on their corporate website.
A close call to my observations, allas a far cry… Grey, their agency has chosen to deliver good old in your face advertising, rather than relying on authenticity, transparency and access as key attributes for good social engagement to bring the magic back.
With their new campaign, Allianz fails to deliver on my observations and misses out on the drama unfolding in the new world. No reasons to believe any of this, are being given.
Empiric reports can be viewed as videos here and are perceived as what they are: adfilms.Testimonials are no longer being delivered as empty promises, dear Christian Deuringer (in charge of marketing). Experience must be shared to be relevant and trustworthy. Grey has been dragging their feet and delivered advertising messages for the old world while we are living in the new world with exciting opportunities for participation marketing and amazing things to talk about.
Have a look here, at how 3 BBH interns raised $24,000 to help 89 year old barber after his livelihood was devastated by recent unrests in London. You’ll get the idea.
Thank you note by the surf troopers to thank fb supporters
What if you don’t have a thousand troopers? Good question, social media.
Keep calm and carry on, is one advice bloggers pass on to bloggers. They want you to get on with it, since they couldn’t help but get on with it themselves.
Then there is plenty of advice for bloggers out there, quick to copy and paste from one another to tell you the obvious: Submit guest blogs to reach new audiences. Be nice or be gone. Apply easy to subscribe to opt-ins. Power up your social media activities. Provide helpful content of relevance. Try controversial. Make a few eyebrows raise.
Yet your bloglevel influence rating is below 50. Now what?
You never liked social media in the first place
If you are like me, you love seeing people enjoying themselves in social gatherings as long as you don’t neccessarily have to take part. You love to hear children or grown ups having fun with one another and you sure adore friendship pictures all around.
If you are like me you want the world you are in to be happy. You don’t care so much about inconsequential twaddle on twitter nor around the water cooler at work. You are far more egotistical than most and you really only want to hear of things that make perfect business sense to you.
You’d rather be giving out orders or post messages with little care for what people had to say. Like Seth Godin, you’d rather turn your sociable option off for good. And no, you don’t want to follow even your best friends on twitter. Hell no, you wouldn’t allow your head to turn when a Maserati GranTurismo drives by in real life.
Dangerous Conditions via surfing troopers
To get it right, you got to take media out of social
The devil is in measuring and media, public standing and public image are all about measuring. Nothing here will ever make you happy unless your sales are providing you with something to believe in.
It now makes perfect sense for the old world countries to have been shy with numbers, keeping income a secret, never ever talking about money, not letting anyone know your plans…
Now if you wish to stay away from social media altogether, you must stay away from aggregators such as facebook, linked in . Trouble is, that those who stay away are staying away for all the wrong reasons.
Will you be left behind when you cut media out of social?
Shut down all your social media accounts and have them removed.
Mind your own business.
Don’t play favors.
Don’t create content with recipients in mind or for making them like what you do.
Concentrate on ideas that do and creating content that will make people search for it.
Search the web the old fashioned way. Use your browser.
Enjoy a lovely weekend, give your action some thought and perhaps we can get ourselves to not coming around here no more. Much appreciated. Now go enjoy yourselves with surfing troopers.
Social Media is no longer about chatting with your friends. It’s about driving business.
Come October, the all business, no hype guide to social media by Jason Falls and Eric Decker is here. Preorder your copy now for only $14.99
It comes packed with practical – one step at a time – instructions on how small business can harness social media as an affordable business driver without any of the hippie stuff. Case studies illustrate how other business are successful with using social media and will help motivate you along the way. Read more over at Jason’s entry.
This is about making a hard working brand work even harder. American Apparel summer sale is on with up to 70% reduced clothing articles. Go shop your heart out. I am a 55 year old advertising man in business since age 17 and I am a wanna be digital marketer since 1986, with early beginnings in New York City, when the web was but a grab bag of hypertext with green and blue reference links. AA ranks highest in the inner listing of most adored companies in the mind of the adman I am. It’s perhaps the hardest working brand out there in favor of the new world, working its industrial strenght branding moore and better than others. American Apparel is old school and you may wonder how come, with a reputation for provocative, outrageous ads?
Dov’s old school which is why the company is old shool. The man is a hands-on, self-made, grass-roots underwear manufacturer, seriously into manufacturing, with what you may call a true heritage and upbringing. If you want to get things done, you must do them yourself, may be his motivational driver. I was hooked to AA instantly when they went to market nearly a decade ago, having been raised on wearing sweatshirts and sneakers like any American, even though I was born and grew up in Munich Bavaria, since Dov had the idea of creating fashion based on good old sweat fabric.
True it is essential to make it transparent for people just how American Apparel works and how AA’s engaged in making clothing manufacturing, contribute to a better world, no high hopes though that this will result in improved sales anytime soon. Expanding the hipster identity to involve mainstream America will result in improved sales. All American Apparel
Consider intensifying your social efforts by rolling out an All American Apparel social campaign much like British Burberry did to refocus its brand around its bestselling trenchcoat with The Art of the Trench, in which every US state gets to show off exactly how each of the states makes use of American Apparel clothing according to its very own customs. Intensify the American Apparel experience by crowdsourcing each state’s local customs, leveraging the hipster identity for all Americans. Outfit local state photographer heroes and heroines to get things started, the likes of Laura Taylor for her homestate. The role of AA and its creative department is being an enabler and curator of all american content aggregated with this campaign. – Remember the no logo roll out of the Saturn car some 20 years ago? All of a sudden a Saturn car would be seen at every street corner thoughout the US. Why? People had the impression it was a new car built by people for people and had no idea it was but a GM campaign. With All American Apparel, American Apparel will show American made clothing worn by all Americans not just LA downtown hipsters. Each state will own its very own AA identity and will no longer be domintated by Los Angeles (or New York for that matter).
serious craftsman: the man with the puppy is also a brilliant marketer
Neil Perkin, Mark Earls and co founder Stuart Eccles of London’s WeAreMany agency have been at it again at the Google firestarters event. Yes, every little helps. Great thinking has already been applied by you fine people in attempts to pursuade our ad industry. For the ad industry to succeed in the post digital age, we must let go of our industrial age past and embrace the post-digital age for the better of the economy. I am thrilled to see Gareth Kay’s ideas that do, become a startin point for the conversation and component thereof.
“I don’t care about why people do things, I care about how they do them.”—Ana Andjelic
Showcase ideas that do
A combined, concentrated effort to consolidate best practices of successful ideas that do will likely spark some magic and help classic creative directors and decision makers in the ad industry get their hands around just what an idea that does may look like. It will serve the ad industry as a spring board to develop ideas that do.
A popular as much as populistic case of ideas that do was demonstrated by VW, The Fun Theory. Stefan Zschaller, Leagas Delaney’s chief creative has endorsed an idea that does with followfish. In bionic man, Gareth Kay’s words: “Stop communciating products & start making communication products.”
Businesses and brands want to be known as dynamic.
Rather than falling prey to the practice of traditional advertising in the past, by which we assumed we can predict consumers reaction to our long term communication planning in advance – today we make use of tools and technologies that enable a more dynamic setting. We can now make use of agile, iterative planing. Step by step. The trend to a lean agency aims to replace the risk inherent, in hypothetical assumptions and covers with detectable metrics. Analytics in real time are available with every dynamism enabled, social enabled, serious content management system. This allows communication to take place in real time fashion. Businesses and their agencies can react to every mood swing of consumer behavior. Lean means to strip your agency of anything slowing the response time.
"I'll have what she is having" roadmap to Neil Perkin's upcoming book
…and a neclected place is transformed into a constructive one.
Before I die I want to______________
Candy Chang is a public installation artist, designer, and urban planner “who likes to make cities more comfortable for people.”
Come to New Orleans, go see the landmark at the corner of Marigny und Burgundy before Sunday April 10th and share your thoughts on what you want before you die.
It must have been 2004, when past 4PM you would find all members of Frankfurt’s extended zentropy creative team behind their desks playing Quake. The glas shields of the info architects cubicles were fogged in the heat of the game play. It was Martin Biela who discovered that the game engine of Unreal Tournatment would provide an even faster and more precise game play. Hence we became addicted to playing UT99.
I took the game home and found out that you can play it with gamers around the world by hooking up to Unreal Tournament game servers scattered around the globe. This is how the meaning of social grew on me and my natural life moved into being digital in a serious and playful way. The largest, most reliable gathering took place on a game server called Candyland. This is where a good dozen of first person shooters gathered at any time on any day of the week.
=MoR= clan sports arena design
Digital athletes were organized in clans. Clans then were responsible for creating maps to play on and organized frag fests and tournaments. I became more conscious playing for clans with a great reputation than I was concerned with the reputation of the agency I received my paycheck from. There was simply more energy and creativity out there with global gamers.
A guy called hoser organized an association called GMC or Giant Map Clans, an early attempt to consolidate the internet for the benefit of UT99 players around a game no longer supported by the industry. The industry did but ignore the large following and the intentions of early adopters. Interestingly enough, UT99 followers meant to play in a setting ressembling the homes they grew up in. A growing desire to allow ourselves to remain infantile or cute. Preferred maps were backard, living room, kitchen, bedroom or nursery besides the always popular arena maps. The players size was reduced to the size of a cockroach, making the maps appear giant and gravity was reduced considerably allowing you to survive jumps of 100 yards and providing a freedom of 360 degree movement as if you were free as a bird. The gaming industry moved on to Unreal Tournament 2004, forcing gravity and a military environment upon users with a less immediate game play. The gaming industry insists on you dragging your feet as you would in real life despite the users wish for unreal.
During the first generation, I played for ~SiN~ and IDF using aliases, paused for a number of years, then had a successful comeback as Onrie for London clan Chumpykillerz and lately Leicester’s now defunct =MoR= clan. While a girl called Becky was all the rage in the early days, the games are now ruled by a considerable number of girl gamers such as Fabs, Gurl, Candy, mur, buggerlugs, Queen B, Eloise, Slimyfrog…
Queen B’s avatar
Namedropings of great people, I am honored and flattered to run into on any given evening of the week:
Candy, buggerlugs, Eloise, gurl, Simp, Spark, Zeisel, Storm, POOSTICKS, dad, Kugel, Roscoe, Cowbell, Cracker, Chuck, ///, angry Muslim, Tkin, mostly harmless, Zaa, Storm’s younger brother with every changing aliases, Carnegie, TEBEBE, pang, Va, Skydog, John Dough, sashman, Pitbull Köln…
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About me
I am Mark Sargent, I don't have ideas for advertising, I am advertising ideas. Much like Nicolas Roope, I do things, not advertise things. Your support is welcome:
I am Mark Sargent, I don't have ideas for advertising, I am advertising ideas. Much like 
