MORE THAN ADVERTISING

“The Creative Revolution” was the theme this year at the ADC festival in Berlin. And they had invited some really good speakers to their conference which took place on Friday and Saturday. My personal highlight was Paul Bennett CCO IDEO and his presentation about the idea of thoughtless communication and Prof. Dr. Hans A. Wüthrich´s talk about how to break out of the ordinary. Unfortunately there was no WLan or mobile service available at the whole conference area, so it was hard to blog or twitter about it. But you can watch their talks on www.idee09.tv

Besides the talks I was interested in the awarded work. I was keen on seeing new innovative ideas and cases because this award is also an indicator about the status quo of German advertising.

But what I saw really disappointed me. Most of the campaigns were still very traditional print or TV ads and there where only a few truly innovative ideas.

One of them was the “23 Days- fan diary” from Kolle Rebbe which had won gold in the the category digital media and justifiably so.

During the EURO 2008, German director Detlev Buck and the YouTube community created the first fan movie made out of user generated videos. The movie was shown in cinemas across Germany.

Another great campaign was the Sony Ericsson “Fan Walk 2008″ from Serviceplan.

Sony Ericsson was searching for the biggest music fans on earth. More than 3500 music fans from all over Europe applied. Finally, 100 crazy boys and girls walked from London to Liverpool, to the MTV Europe Music Awards 2008. Documented online using all social media channels. The Idea was awarded silver in the category events.

The Project “House of Immagination” from Heimat was also awarded with silver in the category Events plus silver in media, gold in integrated communication and sales promotion and last but not least the grand prix.(I hope I didn´t forget anything)

A great campaign for their client Hornbach.

But my personal grand prix goes to Walker Werbeagentur and their project for Bindella “Tanti Aguri”. (they won silver in the category integrated communication)

To promote 31 local restaurants in Zürich the agency hired an author to write an book. The story plays in all these different places and in cooperation with local newspapers they created a lot of buzz and excitement to actually go and visit the restaurants in real life. The book became a bestseller. This campaign is for me one of the best examples for branded entertainment.

These are some great examples from the festival but it needs way more of them in order to start a “creative revolution.”  I hope that the success of those agencies will also shape the profile of German advertising and inspire other creatives to come up with ideas like that.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION

Tomorrow is the start of the 2009 ADC festival, wich is something like the springbreak for German creatives. The ADC is the most important advertising award in Germany so everybody who works somehow in this industry will be in Berlin during the next 3 days.

This years theme is called “The Creative Revolution” and the focus is on the major shifts that had taken place in our industy. The ADC team had invited some really interesting speakers to their conference like: Mario Testino, Sophie Clements or  Paul Bennett  co-Chief Creative officer of IDEO. 

So I´m looking forward to 3 inspiring days and keep you updated about what the german advertising revolution really looks like.

For updates in real time just follow my twitterfeed

“Markets are conversations.” - is the first of a set of 95 theses from the “Cluetrain Manifesto” written in 1999 by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger. This manifest is a call to action, for all businesses to join this newly-connected marketplace and transform their mass communication into “human to human” conversations.

What does that mean for advertising. I don´t believe that agencies could manage these “human conversations” for their clients, but I think that it is possible to be part of them if we create something that is worth talking about.

Here is Marschall Ross definition of advertising:

„I define it as a conversation starter. Interruption doesn´t cut it anymore…you either get people talking…or nothing happens.“ Marschall Ross CCO Cramer-Krasselt

And here is what you could achieve if you get the people talking:

Mark Ecko & Barry Bonds home run record ball:

Marc Ecko was about to launch a new sportswear collection. Therefor he bought  Barry Bonds‘ record-breaking 756th home run ball in the auction, paying $752,467 for it.  To determine the fate of the ball, he  started a website, www.vote756.com, and asked the American public to vote on what they think should happen to it. Visitors’ choices were giving the ball to the Hall of Fame, branding the ball with an asterisk before giving it to the Hall of Fame, and putting the ball on a rocket to be launched into space.

Mark announced the results live on TV:

With over 10,000,000 votes, 180.000.000 blog mentions and a lot of media coverage Ecko managed to be at the center of the greatest sports debate of all time. He gained so much public attention that he got over $80.000.000 of free media space. Not a bad ROI for spending originally $752,467.

Instead of wasting the money on a TV branding campaign, he created a national conversation among sports fans and honored his audience with giving them a voice in the debate.

A great strategy and it shows how powerful it is to create conversations instead of ads.

So I´m in Berlin now and the Republica09 is about to beginn. Looking forward to meet interesting people and listen to some inspiring talks. I´ll keep you updated.

Just found this presentation on TBWAs Media Arts Blog. They put together all the interesting and inspiring statements about how brands should change. Have a look and then start to change something!

Adidas launched an new integrated campaign with young Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard.

A TV spot invites people to follow Dwight live during the NBA’s All Star weekend. At the event they pushed his content out to fans on the net as quickly as possible. These bits of celebrity-insider content were uploaded to Dwight Howard´s  Twitter, Flickr and YouTube pages.

Here is the Youtube trailer:

“The biggest challenge was getting the site, technology and media ready to deliver a constant steam of communication, that alone was a huge task and all credit goes to the folks who worked day and night to pull it off,” says 180/LA ECD William Gelner

What I really like about this concept is that they had used mass media to drag people into this branded social media experience. Plus they generated a lot of interesting content that will remain on the web long after the campaign period ends. But what 180 and Adidas failed with is to really engage with their audience.

“Howard’s Twitter account, while followed by 1019 others, doesn’t follow anyone, and hasn’t managed to graduate from Twitter 101 and attempt @replies or ReTweets. Compare Howard with Shaquille O’Neal, who has been vocal about claiming his online identity and boasts over 111,000 followers and a more advanced familiarity with the service. O’Neal and Howard have jousted over who gets to be called Superman on the court, but it’s clear Shaq is the social networking man of steel.”  Nick Parish creativity online

The key to succeed as a brand in social media is participation. You have to take part in these conversations, retweet and follow them in order to connect and be accepted.

I don´t believe that it is possible to build up real relationships with your customers when your efforts are limited to a campaign period. Social media only works with a good longterm strategy, thats the reason why most of the agencys fail to manage a process like that, because the client only pays for the realisation of a particular project and not for the maintenance of these potential relationships.

So we have to change something in the system if we want to succeed in this new emerging media world.

via Creativity

Here is a great webinar about how to use Twitter for your marketing. I found this video on HubSpot, an interesting blog about inbound marketing – SEO, Blogging, Social Media, Landing Pages, Lead Generation and Analytics. – have a look.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ 140 character updates. It is also the third largest social network (behind Facebook and MySpace), and puts the number of users at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visitors at 55 million.

Twitter had become a media channel on its own, not surprising that also some large businesses have discovered that this is an effective way of communicating with consumers. Companys such as Cisco Systems, Jet Blue, Sun Microsystems, IBM and Whole Foods Market already use Twitter to provide product or service information.

Dell even set up an Twitter marketing programm and offer their followers @DellOutlet some pretty exclusive deals.

“Beginning today, Dell will offer deals from the Dell Outlet exclusive to Twitter in the U.S. With over 11,000 followers, our team wanted to show their thanks to the Twitter world through these new deals which will continue each week.”

Here is a short interview with Stephanie Nelson about the programm:

Given the great response they have decided it seems to expand the program. Dell says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts.

Dell’s initiative proves how effective it is to use Twitter as a marketing tool and have a conversation with your market and make and mange connections with prospects, customers, bloggers and other influencers.

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Everybody knows that the world is about to change. Especially the web is revolutionizing the economy and the way we communicate. But I´m thrilled everytime again when I see these gigantic numbers. So, the shift is happening and this video is a really good summary of what is about to change.