More stuff for your brain. I just had a look at the February and March edition of Fast Company. In February you should read Clive Thompsons article “Is the tipping point toast” – is the power of influentials overestimated? Malcom Gladwell vs. Duncan Watts.
In the march issue you should read the article about “15 reasons why Google is number one” and the small snippets about “the world’s 50 most innovative companies”. As I remember it’s the first time that with Anomaly and ad agency is in the ranking. For more information about their business model you should check the current issue of Brand eins too.
Chris Anderson published a first preview of his new book Free in the latest Wired magazine and on the Wired website. A great article with some very interesting thoughts that will make you think about your business from another perspective. Can you offer something for free to grow?
Like four years ago you can listen on the 29th of February to a 24h DJ line up on FM4. You can get the webstream at fm4.orf.at or here. If you are not sure if this is something for you check out Dj Beware & Functionist and their daily live mix at FM4 UNLTD. At this blog you can subscribe to the unofficial unltd podcast, so that you get every mix automatically to iTunes, thanks to Fox @ Podbeam I love that podcast feature!
The show is way much better than the loveless trailer I found on YouTube.
Some days ago I found the latest ad for Darbo by D,M&B. They created an unique style for their ads over the last years and I more and more fall in love with their stuff. Or is it just because Coin operated boy by Dresden Dolls fits perfect to the ad? Is Darbo already producing smoothies, I think it would fit to their portfolio?
If you are bored and you want to read a brilliant book, buy L’egoiste romantique by Frederic Beigbeder. It’s a bit similar to 99 Francs which you know, if you work in advertising. A brilliant piece of work, with some very smart thoughts about life that made me laugh and think. The rest is about parties, drugs, sex and depression – great mixture. I don’t find an English version of the book at Amazon, but I think there must be one.
Keep searching or learn French or German – it’s worth.
The new SinnerSchrader website is online quite for a while, and I was thinking about their website approach. Why shouldn’t you use all the nice applications like Google Documents, Twitter, XING or Flickr for your own corporate site? Most of the content that you would upload is already out there. You don’t need to write the same story a second time, and I get the feeling that by linking to other websites the reader gets even more the impression that the company and their content is real and not just shiny-corporate-press-release-information. Ok, on the other hand you can get problems with the usability and probably not all information can be presented in your corporate design but I think the way you are using the medium and the feeling you can create with it is more important.
In case you are looking for a book about viral marketing in German. Michaela Klinger explains the basics of viral marketing and presents some case studies (which you can find in a lot of other viral marketing books and papers too). If you haven’t read Tipping Point jet, Michaela also uses some thoughts from Malcom Gladwell to describe the spreading of content in social networks. For people that are familiar with some terms, thoughts or cases of viral marketing, I can’t recommend the book, you guys will be bored. Let’s rather take a look what Marting Oetting is doing on his new empowered involvement blog.
W+K London uploaded their two new spots for Honda on welcome to optimism. The strategy fits especially to the UK market and the execution is simple an joyful. Good work.
I attended this weekend the first time at a BarCamp and I was really impressed by the top organization of the BarCamp Senza Confini 08 in Klagenfurt . Even there were just a few session-slots booked before the conference started, almost every slot got filled with content at the end of the day. I was surprised how easy the interaction between the organizers and the participants worked out and how fast this process developed during the morning sessions.
It seems that the Austrian bloggers are very focused on making money with their blogs. Blogs are not only used for authentic communication but also to a very high level as information filters like traditional media. At the sessions where I had been almost everyone was a semi-professional blogger and already had some kind of sponsoring deal or revenue source. When it comes to motivation it looked like that the bloggers are more driven by the opportunity to make money then intrinsic motives.
My conclusion is that BarCamps are a cool and easy to set up conference format. But I don’t think I will attend at another Web2.0 BarCamp – always the same topics, companies and stories. The second thing is that austrian bloggers would probably do everything for money and so it should be quite easy and cheap for agencies and companies to buy clicks, attention, content or whatever you are looking for.
Finally I will participate tomorrow at the Barcamp Senza Confini in Klagenfurt. I’m curious about this conference format and the topics of technology, web 2.0 and social media. Let’s see what’s up in Austria, because I got the feeling that up till now there wasn’t a lot going on. The list of participants is loaded and I’m motivated so let’s see what happens tomorrow.
