Tag Archives: social media

SIME Helsinki 2010

Warning: this is quite a long post about marketing. If you’re interested, get a big cup of coffee and a comfortable seat

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Scandinavian Interactive Media Event, SIME Helsinki for short. You can follow the real-time notes of the attendees in Twitter.While there was no streaming of it, I did take quite a few notes I’ll share with you below.

Introduction – Business as unusual (Ola Ahlvarsson)

  • Evolution of digital from Windows 98 & Wolfenstein 3D to MacOS & blogs to… the Matrix 😉
  • Facebook is the big opium of the people, growing faster than any web service ver.
  • Google branching its business into physical, mobile
  • Rise of apps
  • Traditional media mixing with new platforms: BBC on the PS3
  • Listening is more important than ever
  • Vision-based augmented reality emerging as a trend
  • Cloud computing
  • Cheap iteration
  • Easier access to international markets
  • Internet of things: robotic internet
  • Old industries (books, records) totally disrupted, but content is more alive than ever in the digital world
  • Games going social (sharing gameplay clips an emerging activity)
  • Branding is dead, or isn’t it? Originality more appreciated than ever.
  • Owned, bought, earned media model intro.
  • B2B going B2C

Measurement panel

  • What to measure, what not to measure, how they combine: good discussion but inconclusive.

Voddler presentation:

  • Free movies online.
  • Disruption on three fronts: Business model, film industry, technology.

Rovio presentation

  • Discussion of the Angry Birds case. Best sold app ever, growing to other platforms as well.
  • Best quote of the whole conference:

Because we’re from Finland, we’re so good at branding and marketing.

Social Media panel

  • Intra-organisation Social Media opportunities
  • Forget tools (Facebook, Twitter), identify goals and practices first.
  • Think which ecosystem you want to target: reach out where your audience is.
  • Don’t lie, you can’t shine shit.
  • Know how to engage your audience and channel the energy of your fans.
  • Claim your space

Performance-based marketing

  • Automatically retargeted banners.
  • Relevance is king: ka-ching!
  • Getting numbers are not a problem, making sense of them is.

Blocket (Tori.fi)

  • Classifieds & Marketplaces
  • Expanding globally by challenging Ebay. Growing also in Finland.
  • Measurement based on community interaction.
  • Relevance to community is king (again).

Contagious magazine trends

  • Campaigns need to be useful, relevant or entertaining
  • Entertaining: Durex campaign vs. Old Spice: one-time virals vs. engagement with the campaign reaction (responding to user suggestions)
  • Useful: Carlsberg where’s the party. Find & Share.
  • Useful: Best Buy customer care via Twitter. They archive the request for help for further reference.
  • Relevant: Dentsu iButterfly (augmented reality coupons)
  • Relevant: Ikea Facebook photo tagging
  • Convergenc: Remember what you develop is for real people. Be brave and willing to make mistakes to learn from them.

Mobile marketing panel

  • From ringtones to apps & video ads.
  • Mobile CRM shall not equal spamming.
  • Ingredients for mobile take off are there, ready to get going.
  • Mobile gives timing and location to the relationship.
  • Mobile is intimate.

Qualcomm innovations

  • 5 billion wireless subscribers worldwide.
  • 1 billion are 3G users, will be 2.8 billion by 2014.
  • Chips developed on two dimensions: integration and/or size.
  • New displays: reflective technology with low power consumption and great viewing.
  • Health sensors: pulse, blood pressure, glucometre, ECG, temperature, posture.
  • Visual-based augmented reality: games, toys, promotions.

Hitlantis

  • 70% of teenagers would rather go without sex than music.
  • Bring together music & lovers.
  • New bands sign in, get listeners and fans.

Social media workshop

  • Social media is a diffuse, container term
  • Engaging with as many people as possible… really?
  • Mass communication coming to an end.
    • Quality, not quantity communications
  • Number of communication messages everyday increasing times 10.
  • Internalise social media practices in your organisation.
    • Keep on developing, things never get out of beta.
    • Participate, don’t just enable if possible.
    • Sociology know-how important.
  • Aggregate & summarize (widgets, RSS, etc)
    • Package but allow unpackaging.
    • Data is owned by users, make it portable.
    • Absolute clarity for licenses and permissions is vital.
  • Monetisation is possible & can be planned for: make it free first, charge for additional services later. Made me think of the growth of SMS in the Philippines.
    • Segment product on different layers: Spotify basic vs. premium
  • Presence / status update important, becomes social currency.
  • The combination of social media and mobile has the potential of becoming very powerful, especially with its links to location (& even more, proximity).
  • Recommendations for companies getting started:
    • Start with content calendar.
    • Basic listening tools (Tweetdeck, Google Alerts).
    • Authenticity crucial: you have to be close to the essence of your brand/service proposition.
    • Customer care can be a great way of getting started if you do a good job.  Look at it as cost vs. opportunity.
    • Don’t do external-facing communications if too stiff, but internal blogging/comms are also a great opportunity.
    • Don’t experiment, commit to do it well.

Marketing communications workshop: From one-night stands to meaningful relationships in marketing

  • The full talk from Hasan & Partners. Please make sure to check it first before reading the rest.
  • Heineken Milan Champions League case: One night stand using earned & paid media
  • Gatorade replay: Huge ROI, much more than a one night stand. Concept can be scaled up or down, and continue even if the brand is no longer behind it.
  • Livestrong, Nike Chalkbout: Post-digital executions. It’s all about you (reminds me of that Time cover)

Wrap-up and Conclusions

  • Change is not a choice, it’s a necessity.
  • All marketing is performance based.
  • Social media must be entertaining, useful and/or relevant.
  • Finns can make world-beating services if their vision is big enough.
  • E-health will be close to your heart 😉 .
  • Innovation is definitely accelerating.
  • Creativity in communication is more important than ever.
  • The ones who can connect the dots will win!

A world without airplanes

As many have experienced this past week, I don’t think that it would be as rosy as Mr. Alain de Botton remarks. Our world is humongously interconnected as you can see in the TED talk below (from TEDx Volcano, an impromptu event created by speakers stranded in London due to the recent contingency).

Severing links, however temporarily, is extremely painful in both personal and economic terms. You can ask the 7 million stranded passengers for their opinions if you think otherwise.  Many of them have been using social media tools to somehow cope with the situation, as Teemu Arina explains.

The past few days have looked quite a bit like a teaser of what a world without oil would be.  Hopefully it serves as a wake-up call to us all.

Chatroulette!

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

The video above (via alt1040) explains Chatroulette better than I would.  My experience with it has been mixed, but it reminds me a lot of the old BBS/ICQ free-for-all 10 years ago.  I’ve read metaphors comparing it to TV zapping with people, but I think it’s more akin a people player in shuffle mode.  Some of the nice people I’ve found (after nexting all the flying male body parts) included:

  • A bored Filipina (at 3 a.m. her time) asking what music was I playing (Nortec Collective, of course).
  • A Dutch law student with a great sense of humour.
  • A German dude interested in banking for development (we were chatting about Muhammad Yunus)
  • Random male stranger asking questions on existential philosophy (my conclusion is he had watched The Matrix too many times).
  • A Texan in his 50’s very interested to know my views on the Mexican drug violence situation.
  • A French literature student just interested in a chat, also with a really nice sense of humour.
  • A young Indian female doctor waiting for her night shift to start who gave me a couple of nice suggestions of Indian indie after I mentioned I collect “local rock” from all over the place.

Serendipituous, yes. Extreme, sometimes (but you can also next them or even better report them, jerks!). An interesting study of the human condition, absolutely.

Helping brands think about their social media presence

My colleagues and friends Arto and Dan have been talking about their very own PESH model (participant, enabler, supplier, helper) which helps brands map their usage, presence and possible/required measurements in their social media activities.

If you do social media marketing, it would definitely help you out to check those two posts.  Definitely helps to get your ideas in order, as any good model should. 😉