Romania 2007

I will be in Bucharest / Romania for the next 2 weeks - look forward to discover the country and see what special things it has to offer.

Neuromarketing - the new sience of advertising

In this presentation Dr. Martin Scheier talks about Neuromarketing and the new art of advertising. My position on this is - since there are so many brands and new products out there - a brand (no matter which one) has to do something to get the attention of its customers. One way of doing that, is advertising. Neuromarketing combines psychological principles with market research and best practise studies in order to help companies to make there advertising more effective.

Like Viral / Connected Marketing - Neuromarketing will be part of the future of marketing.


Link: sevenload.com

Memetics as basis for effective marketing

Dr. Paul Marsden explains in this video the importance of memetics and the Tipping point for modern marketing - this is also the basis for Viral Marketing.

Thesis is finished

I`m really happy to announce, that after good 6 months intense research, 50 books of study and a lot of practical application - I have finally finished my thesis on "Viral Marketing - Psychological Foundations and Application in Brand Management".

The topic is very interesting - since it is in my opinion the future of marketing, it will change the way people and companies will do Business with each other. Look forward for future projects in this and other fields.

Be better then your competition - Outthink them - don’t outspend them

Just wanted to recommend this book - Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes. From all the Buzz-, Viral-, Connected Marketing books I read (around 30) this was one, that was really good.

Hughes explains how you can use word of mouth to build your brand and uses a lot of examples of brands that failed (for example VW cause their poor quality causes a lot of negative word of mouth or the site half.com that renamed an American town in order to create buzz).

Good book - also for the people that want to get into the topic

Study - what do Journalists expect from good PR

If you want to do good PR and Media Networking it is useful to know how journalists think,
what do they want and what you have to do in order to work with them in an efficient way.

This topic is the focus of the Journalism study. They interviewed over 270 journalists about their needs and values and presented some interesting results.

For example:

- what do journalists expect from a PR person in times of Web 2.0
- how to they want to have the press material (press releases, pictures...)
- how should you structure Online-PR

Connected Marketing Video Conference IV - German Multimedia Congress

This is the 4th Video conference on Web 2.0, Connected / Viral Marketing, Social-Networking, E-Commerce.... that I have found in the Internet. Again they have a lot of interesting video presentation from professional speakers.

Some of the topics are:
- viral communication on the web
- brand positioning in multimedia times
- mobile commerce
...

Most of the presentations are in German, but some are also in English, Enjoy.

Guy Kawasaki talks about "The Art of Innovation"

Interesting presentation from Guy Kawasaki, a well known marketing and word-of-mouth expert (used to be one of the chief marketing guys at Apple for a long time) - he shares in this presentation some of his ideas about company innovation and new ways of marketing.

NGO Advertising - Amnesty International

This could be an interesting field for the ones of you that are into NGOs (like AEGEE) and want to see, how the professionals do their NGO Advertising.

This is a clip of Amnesty international - fits also the context of the "Media and Citizenship Seminar" that I have been to last month.

The new Ford Ute - Viral Videoclip for Ford

I just found this video clip on Werbeblogger. This is supposed the new advertising campaign for a Ford car named Ute (I have some doubts that it will be succesful in Germany with this name). The clip itself is somewhat funny but the target group is quite strange. It seems like Ford wants to target Homer Simpson like man (drinking Beer all the time and making fun of Metrosexuells). While it is fun to see the Simpson (from time to time) - I don`t think it is attractive to be one of them.

Which means for the target group - that only few want to be associated with this image and will buy a car that fits that image...

Political Advertising in Web 2.0 - Obama Girl versus Hillary Clinton

I just found this entry on PRBlogger. It seems like the US Top Politicians discovered the Internet for their PR and advertising purposes. Both of the Candidates for the next US Election have posted a more or less viral video in the internet.

That one of Hillary Clinton is situated in a Restaurant where she discusses with Bill about their next plans and advertises her election song from Celine Dion - not very funny, but if it fits the target group and creates interest, it is ok.

The other one of Obama is more interesting - I posted it here. Actually it is not from the political himself, it is a advertising campaign for an internet portal in form of a fan video. This example shows again how you can frame the media and use the potential of the Internet to spread your message. It captured immediately the attention of the media – the Chicago Tribune's wrote:

"The music video [...] put the Obama camp in an odd position. True, the woman in the music video is clearly declaring Obama "the best candidate," arguably a message they'd like to see going viral on the Web.

Trouble is, she's half-naked while lip-syncing Obama's praises and she's also warmly kissing his photograph, yet another reminder that candidates have less and less control of their images and messages when everybody has bandwidth.

To be sure, the campaigns are happy to use venues like YouTube as low-cost alternatives to expensive television ads and mailings. But when the barrier to entry is as low as the click of a mouse, there's no way for them to control where their images go or how they are used."

Here is what the media says about the campaign



Here is the original video - has some good viral potential



Of course Obama Girl has also her own MySpace Account - maybe also a good PR Tool...

Founder of BzzAgent talks about Word of Mouth / Viral Marketing

Dave Balter - the founder of BzzAgent talks on this video podcast about word of mouth marketing, viral relationships and the concept of BzzAgent.

Interesting for those people who want to get more into Word of Mouth Marketing and use its powerful potential for their Business.



Link: sevenload.com

Political Marketing in Web 2.0 - Tony Blairs YouTube Broadcast

One thing I learned during the Media and Citizenship Seminar in Ireland is that Business Professionals can learn a lot from political professionals such as Tony Blair. During one of our Media Sessions, our trainer Lorenzo Nava used Tony Blair as an example, to explain how media professionals use their communication and media skills to frame news in the way they want and to market themselves and their ideas using this powerful method of communication.

It is also interesting to see, how Blair starts to use other means of communication such as YouTube to get his messages across and how he uses the potential of the Internet to talk to his "customers". Maybe we could adopt the same in Germany?