Contagious ideas by PSST : spreading 2.0 innovation (editor = jérémy dumont, strategic planner, france)

New Contagious special reports : Social Media : Methods & Metrics, Branded entertainment, Mobile marketing 2008

The three special reports cover: Social Media: Methods & Metrics; Branded Entertainment; and Mobile marketing. Marketing

Download the presentation : http://contagiousmagazine.com/resources/Spec_Reps_PDF_NS.pdf

Contagious Special Reports provide in-depth analysis of the latest trends, technologies and innovations affecting today’s marketing landscape. Each report is packed with expert opinion, historical overviews, creative case studies, insight and statistics.

   1. Social Media: Methods & Metrics: The growth of social media is
      transforming the marketing landscape. This report provides a
      much needed “how-to” on planning and measuring brand activity in
      this unpredictable space. See an extract here:
      http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/resources/socialmedia_extracts.pdf

   2. Branded Entertainment: In order to cut through, advertising
      now has to be entertaining. This report explores some of the
      best Branded Entertainment initiatives from around the world,
      across multiple media platforms. See an extract here:
      http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/resources/brandedent_extracts.pdf

   3. Mobile Marketing 2008: The latest developments in mobile and
      their impact on the global marketing industry, including the
      growth of location-based services, m-commerce and QR codes. See
      an extract here:
      http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/resources/mobile_2008_extracts.pdf

The wildfire seminar in CANNES, organised by CONTAGIOUS in conjunction with LEO BURNETT

Seen in Contagious Newsletter

If you’re heading to Cannes this year – and we hope to goodness you are – there is ONE DATE and ONE DATE only for your diaries. Yep – it’s the Wildfire seminar! It’s back, bigger than ever, and jam packed with enough innovative case studies to rock your world. Developed in conjunction with our friends at Leo Burnett, this year Wildfire will be looking at the responsibilities of the advertising industry through a distinctly human lens. We’ve all heard the cliché about replacing the word ‘consumers’ with ‘people’, so isn’t it about time that we actually started doing it?

Set the date now now now. It’s Wednesday 18th, at 4pm, in the Debussy Theatre. That’s WEDNESDAY 18th…ok, so long as you’ve got it written down.

Leo Burnett will be talking about their fresh, 'HumanKind' approach to marketing - always putting people at the centre of their thinking. Not the brand, not the category. In keeping with this, we’ve got case studies from the world’s biggest brand Nokia, and will be finding out how Swedish retailer IKEA personalised their meatballs and MDF shopping experience. We’ll be looking at how Guinness in Hong Kong and Coca-Cola in China transformed community events with a little smart thinking, and bringing you the branded content emerging from unlikely places and winning viewers worldwide. We'll also be screening some stunning work from Leo Burnett in Madrid, which shows what can be achieved when you persuade your client that a thirty second spot isn't the aswer to their problems.

Make no mistake – there’ll be laughter, tears, and possibly also some widgets. After all – isn’t that what being a modern human being’s all about?

www.canneslions.com/festival

For those of you who aren’t coming and need some good news – may we direct you to this rather lovely piece of design. It’s a Google News homepage redone to include only the headlines you want to see. Samples making us happy include:

“Darfur Peace Process Well Underway”

“Successful third round of trials for AIDS vaccine”

“Lucas authorizes fan reworkings of episodes 1-3”

If. Only.

www.fugue.com/pics/goodnews.html

The Effects of Social Media on Modern TV

Read in Evidencesx

Leave your old TV device, don’t trust it anymore, as the colour times, and more recently, HD times, there’s a new revolution out there : social voice. I tried therefore, times ago, to demonstrate some changes in TV world, and gave some points of view of what was our holy toy, in such social fields, and I must be right now in front of no way path : what build TV today, in these times with such collaborative initiates ? Is there any time anymore for journalism or are we all, some of them ? what can make the difference between speaks on great major channels, and individual advises, thoughts and comments ?

That it is, the way we arrived now.

Yes it did. The crowd of information, people thoughts, social revolution of ideas, tumbled down all we taught about value circle in TV world. How ?

TV’s interest is about entertainment, information, direct live, and represent anything but having a window on the world, live, without any move from your sofa. But nowadays, and since many years, Web makes it better. Why ?

Because we’re fed up spending too much time, wasting hours in front of TV soaps and nut stuffs, and we find so much infinite possibilities on web, enforced by 2.0 apps, and supported by many communities. God gave us speaking abilities (and writing too). But TV say “no, we don’t need to, just sit down, shut-up, look and listen…”. And web 2.0 gave us the rules booklet to use words.

How did the web lead the main changes on actual TV ?

Before : there was one channel, in black and white, everybody was looking the same things, and no hope for conversation and two ways relation ; a one to all market !

Then, technologies appeared : colors, high definition, digital, sound, time delay and shifting devices ; thousands of channels, for a one to many market, but with broadcast limits : the even new ways of broadcasting (digital terrestrial, satellite, or DSL/cable), can’t lead to the royal state : one to one channel, private channel that I’m the program controler, and decide myself WHAT and WHEN, I’m gonna look.

Now, Web (first tech, then uses) entered the dance, and recently 2.0 fields. What changed ?

1) technology : with DSL access, you can build your own network (friends, pictures, video…), that can be compared to “my web” ; as if the web was divided by numbers of users, and each user could easily create its own ; and the story of Web3.0, leading you to personal networks (beyond personal contents), starts to see some “UG Networks”

2) contents : UGC ; great or bad world…

- great for creation and enrichment of freedom and abilities ; a new field of playing with your neighbours, without knowing him yet, leveraging the individual potentials (musicians, writers…)

- bad for piracy, because, nothing ever belongs to no one ; or must I say, people think they can take, copy everything on their own without paying anything ; some music bands have given up hope of making money with their music, and win money on concerts and shows… ; and you find in several places in dark places on the web, movies that are not on screen yet…especially in DivX form ; who owns what ?

- contents on the web are growing faster than TV ones ; because of costs, probably, and profusion of new 2.0 applications every day, that adds cleverness to others existing yet : feeds, multi-posting, mobile/live (see for example twitterfone, for saving time spent on writing…)

3) use : PC screen (and mobile devices) replaced TV one

- as you can do anything from mobile device (PDA, phones, PC…), you can watch “a kind of TV”, chosing between TV live, Video on Demand, Catchup TV, downloading…Vlog, Blogs and so long ; it’s like the cake is always the same size, but several eaters entered to share it…leading each piece fewer…

- time : we don’t live right now, how we did twenty years ago. “At a time, a use” ; success of recording and time-shifting is growing ; but don’t solve anything in your “part of time”, of entertainment. See a post really fun about it on confused of calcutta’s JP Rangaswami there. When you’re tied within a time, you make your own choices and refuse to be under influence of classical TV ; you make your own, watching social web. Personnay, although I worked on it several years, I understand the escape of time toward the web…Less you have time, more your choice is accurate

4) last but not least, freeness…To get TV contents with value (actual, blockbusters, or live sports…) you paid the high price…And when you already paid the device, the service (VoIP, Web access…), how much money stay in your wallet…?

Welcome to kind UGC’ers, and the infinite land of creation. And for ones who wait for their awards, they can anyway enter in Second Life to get a virtual one…

The Social Media Landscape

Read in Visionarymarketing

Fred Cavazza, one of our most influential Gallic web experts has an interesting story in English about the fact that the 2.0 phrase - originally coined by O’Reilly in 2004 - has been oversold and is now slowly but surely replaced by another buzz word, i.e. ‘Social Media’. Sure enough, I can hear here and there that such association is being renamed… now I understand everything.

Rest assured, the web is not bound to disappear, let alone its ability to bring people together to collaborate/cooperate. This is indeed the gist of the demonstration which is part of my lecture on collaboration,  collaboration tools and their market at the Paris Graduate School of Management. And likewise, blogs will not disappear. The buzz may thin out a little, but not the aim, and not the power of words either (I hear/read here and there that video will replace the printed word, and this is really ludicrous)

At the end of the day, one may wonder whether 2.0, 3.0 and other social media concepts are not killing Aesop’s goose which laid the gloden eggs. Can’t we just go ahead and do it and forget about  the concept machine for a while? After all, reality will catch up one day, sooner or later, and good concepts and bad concepts will be sorted out by themselves.

The Web - in its entirety - and with its tendency to reinvent itself in a cyclical fashion is here to stay and it has been collaborative from day one. Other concepts may go. But do they only matter?!

Fred Cavazza's article on Social Media

The power of Google

Read in Organic Frog

Following my post about the Ask campaign, I came across this video today via Francis Pisani blog. (See below)

Like Epic 2014/15, this video is quite interesting about the real concern that Google Hegemony is developing. (Check out this Business week article) I don’t want to seem obsessed by the Ask campaign but I think that this is the role of the press and whoever is ‘less bias’ to demonstrate this but certainly not a competitive brand... (End of rant!)

Contagious spent a day in the Greek sunshine with some of the industry’s leading international thinkers at Contagious Thinkers, which took place last Thursday in Athens.

Seen in Contagious Newsletter

Contagious spent a day in the Greek sunshine with some of the industry’s leading international thinkers at Contagious Thinkers, which took place last Thursday in Athens.

Contagious’ editorial director Paul Kemp-Robertson kicked off the day looking at the art of getting people to forget that they’re watching an ad, in his ‘What Advertising?’ presentation. Buster Dover, head of digital at VCCP, London predicted the creative end product of the future. He highlighted the fact that while technology changes, humans don’t, meaning that people are still looking for a lasting connection with brands through numerous touchpoints.

Tom Savigar from London’s Future Lab took us through How to Think Deviantly in Strategy, covering a number of demographics and trends that the Future Lab has identified. Tom looked at the importance of listening to the deviant 20% of the population that drives the other 80%, covering the slash/slash generation of teens who set up businesses and side projects under their own steam, and womenomics – the upcoming feminine age which will see trends like caring, empathy and collaboration coming to businesses.

Luminaries from the Greek advertising industry also took part in the event including Tasos Xinaris, chief marketing officer at Netmed Group; Petros Constantinidis, MD and partner at Spot JWT and Helena Chari, MD of TNS ICAP, who looked at shopping and shop layouts as a near death experience for FMCG brands and what can be done to combat this.

The afternoon session saw Hartmut Kozok, managing director of Tribal DDB Hamburg take the audience through the case study of his agency’s creation of the Miles widget for Nike+, and the obstaclesthat his agency had to overcome to bring the project to fruition.

Pio Schunker, Coca-Cola’s SVP Creative Excellence then took us through Coca-Cola’s creative regeneration in a frank and compelling speech that covered the redesign of Coke cans, and all other consumer touchpoints such as trucks, cups and retail. He also told a rapt audience about the creation of the company’s recent compelling adverts such as Video Game, the latest Super Bowl spot and the Happiness Factory, looking at how this output has inspired the entire company and its advertising across other products such as Sprite and Fanta.

The event was hosted by Greek publishers and event organisers Boussias Communications and took place in a beautiful theatre in the centre of Athens, more used to hosting bands and plays than industry events. The unusual setting with a view of the Acropolis through a giant gas works, leant an ambience to the forward-looking content that was delivered to marketing and brand managers and attendees from the Greek advertising industry.

The day concluded with a panel discussion with Dr. Vasilis Theoharakis Associate Professor of Marketing & Entrepreneurship at ALBA, Greece and Senior Lecturer at the Aston Business School, UK, joining the speakers to discuss what is next for marketing directors and the industry as a whole. Although the audience was pretty much shocked into silence, heads were buzzing from the day’s content and how to apply it to innovate the Greek advertising and marketing industries.

The Orange three-screen online strategy

Seen in Contagious Newsletter

In the UK, when we think of Orange, fluorescent canaries, panthers and racoons spring to mind (the mobile price plan representations - not hallucinations brought on by having a whiff of the office glue stick). However, in Europe, Orange is known for being more than a mobile company - a whole lot more.

A recent re-vamp of the online portal along with confirmation that Orange is now the leading provider of IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) in Europe, has proven that the company is now capable of providing content across three digital screens - not just the one which you keep in your pocket. As a result of this, Orange has unveiled plans to step-up their digital advertising initiatives -  utilising their existing integrated content strategy to deliver across all three platforms. Contagious caught up with Paul-Francois Fournier, senior VP in charge of online advertising, who explained this change in direction - starting with the Orange online portal.

‘Last year, the Orange website ranked among the world’s 25 most visited, with 58 million unique visitors every month. We are by no means saying that we want to compete with Google and MSN, however, we do believe that we have the ability to be the number one local player with the content which we have.’

www.orange.co.uk

Furthermore, Orange currently has 1.4 million customers subscribing to its Home Digital TV in Europe - a figure which they are hoping to improve on, no doubt, as the service rolls out globally, starting with the UK later this year.

But what makes Orange think that it can oust the Sky Boxes from our fair nation’s host of plywood TV consoles? Well it turns out that Orange has a crafty trick up its sleeve - 3DTV! We were lucky enough to receive a demo at Roland Garros where full live coverage of the Grand Slam tennis tournament was being broadcast in 3D. For this particular service you require a compatible TV which we are informed are now being produced and cost little more than a normal flat-screen unit. Of course there is still the need to wear the painfully cool 3D glasses (yes we have pictures of this bespectacled Contagious reporter and no - you can’t see them), however we will be checking out new technology from Philips this week which apparently doesn’t require glasses - so be sure to catch next week’s newsletter for a write up on whether this could be the perfect marriage with Orange’s trump broadcasting card...

Clearly therefore, although still a modestly-sized fish in a rather large new pool, Orange does indeed have the content and the platforms necessary to court a host of prospective advertisers. Volkswagen, adidas and Calvin Klein are amongst those who have already seeded integrated campaigns across all three screens; however, perhaps the best example of this is the deal agreed between Nokia and Orange to deliver advertising on the Nokia Maps mobile application. Paul-Francois Fournier concludes - ‘These are early days, however we have proven that we have the tools at our disposal - out attitude has been and will be - Let’s create value and let’s share value.’

Lastly, in the meantime Orange has come up with a cute campaign of its own hosted at playballoonacy.com. By visiting this microsite, you can assign your name to one of thousands of balloons which will be released across the internet on June 23rd. The balloon which travels the furthest will scoop its lucky launcher a trip for them and seven pals to Ibiza, worth £20,000. There are various bonus items in the form of stars to collect on the way - collect five of these and you could win one of many smaller prizes available in the competition.

You can track and control your balloon by visiting websites which have signed up to the initiative - every page you visit counts as one internet mile. Bloggers and website owners can get on board by adding a small snippet of widgety code which will embed their home page as part of the track. Neat huh?

www.playballonacy.com

Samsung Supports Wannabe Musicians

Seen in Contagious Newsletter

Remember the days when budding musicians could only be heard by the masses once they had gone through the blood, sweat and tears of securing a record deal, getting airplay and finally appearing on Top of The Pops? When social networking sites came along, it was like a fairy godmother had waved a magic wand. Suddenly up-and-coming artists had an outlet for their music and a direct way to communicate with their growing fan bases.

Now Samsung has gone one step further by teaming up with Facebook, MySpace and Bebo to offer four bands the chance to have their music featured in an ad campaign for its F400 handset. In an app created by Techlightenment - which launched simultaneously across the three sites as well as at www.f400share.com - hopefuls can upload a short clip of music for others to listen to and vote for their favourite. The winning clip will become the sound-track on the F400’s radio and online ad campaign, which launches in the summer,

This strategy short-circuits the usual way in which soundtracks are chosen for ads which has traditionally involved agencies and record companies. For instance, London Calling founder and former director of music, TV and advertising at Universal Music, Tracie London-Rowell, was behind some legendary link-ups, including Leftfield’s (then unreleased track) Phat Planet on Guinness ‘surfer’. And BBH catapulted Make Luv, a track by Room 5 featuring Oliver Cheetham, into the number one spot after putting it at the heart of an integrated campaign for Lynx Pulse.

By leaving it up to the consumers to vote for their favourite track, Samsung is entrusting them with a key decision in their advertising that could infuse the brand with kudos (think what The Dandy Warhols did for Vodafone - and vice versa - when Bohemian Like You became ‘the Vodafone song’). What’s more, in a summer where mobile operators and handset brands are all over an ever-chronic epidemic of music festivals, Samsung deserves a definite thumbs-up for trying something different.
www.f400share.com

Planet Green takeover

Seen in Contagious Newsletter

If Al Gore’s Current TV just isn’t somehow green enough for you, look no further. The Discovery Channel’s Planet Green, a 24-hour multiplatform eco channel launches today with a series of ‘get your green on’ events all over America. As part of the program, they’re doing some massive tie-ups with Major League Baseball teams (for the Brits reading this, it’s like rounders, but less obviously drunken) in Milwaukee, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.

‘Random acts of greenness’ will be taking place in all five cities through the 4th of June. Those attending the events can expect giveaways throughout the evening in each stadium whenever exceptional green behaviour is spotted by Planet Green teams, green facts and ‘how to’ information for fans, Planet Green bag and t-shirt giveaways, special green scorecards, discounted tickets for those arriving in shared cars, and free parking for hybrid vehicles. Plus, fans will be able to drop off e-waste items including computer monitors, computers, cell phones, televisions, plasma screens, laptops, and other electronic items, thousands of free train tickets home will be distributed after the game, and all the players and officials will be sporting natty green hats to further highlight the launch. Are we getting the green message here?? Super.

We’re noticing more and more marketers fusing environmental concerns with branded utility - the art of doing something useful instead of creating a marketing message. By offering a genuine benefit to the consumer whilst being kind to the environment, a brand can attract a double whammy of goodwill. Planet Green’s launch also comes off the back of this week’s news that various American auto manufacturers will be offering subsidised petrol to buyers of their gas-guzzling urban tanks in what appears to be a fairly ill-advised quick-fix solution to rising oil prices. It’s like handing a Band-Aid to Marie Antoinette. *sigh*

Double points, therefore, to Discovery for going Green for the long term and heading to where the eyeballs are to get an important message across. http://planetgreen.com

This week, music legend and digital visionary Peter Gabriel officially debuts The Filter, a service that promises to sort the wheat from the chaff of online digital content.

Seen in  Contagious Magazine

This week, music legend and digital visionary Peter Gabriel officially debuts The Filter, a service that promises to sort the wheat from the chaff of online digital content.

As the sheer quantity of digital entertainment available via the internet becomes ever more overwhelming, the basic premise of The Filter is undeniably attractive. New users can set up a basic profile by rating a selection of genres and artists in music and film, refining it further by integrating their profiles from Last.fm and Flixter. Based on your individual pattern of preferences, The Filter then provides a range of relevant recommendations, and uses any further selections you make to refine its service further.

It even has a social networking element which makes it possible for users to follow up recommendations from specific friends - a great acknowledgment of those buddies who are always two steps ahead.

Gabriel has a track record in the digital arena, and already attracted heavyweight support for The Filter which has been operating since last summer as a 'white label' recommendation service for Nokia's mobile music offering. It's also been in operation under the radar in online stores for MSN and the Ministry of Sound while in its beta phase. As well as music and film, the free service will also encompass TV, podcasts and books, operating on an ad-supported basis, with additional income from commission on referrals to parters like iTunes and Amazon.

The is a really exciting prospect which appears to have launched at just the right time. Gabriel cites inspiration from computer scientist Bill Joy who told him: 'The first wave is freedom of choice and the second wave is freedom from choice'. We particularly love the super-smart insight that gives greater weight to recently expressed preferences than to older choices... This feature helps the system maintain a greater focus and clarity than those which give equal weight to all information.

www.TheFilter.com