Thinkful

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Youniversal Branding: in-games advertising and online communities

A superb and comprehensive report from trendwatching on opportunities available for brand in games and virtual worlds. There are several case studies mentioned but I will just highlight some numbers here:

More than 100 million people worldwide log on every month to play interactive computer games (source: NYT, December 2005).
Gaming is, for gamers, the third-most-popular use of media entertainment in the last week, after watching TV (96%) and listening to music (94%) (source: Mediaedge:cia, December 2005).
In 2005, advertisers spent approximately $56M placing ads in video games, up from $34 in 2004.
In-game advertising results in a 60 percent increase in awareness for a new product and animated 3-D ads achieve twice the recall of static billboards (Nielsen Interactive Entertainment)

It's me and me again!

I rarely comment on my public speaking engagements or publishing mentions but I decided to be more upfront. So with a total lack of subtlety, I am pointing out to two recent contributions: an article on blogs in Corp Comms magazine and a merit award for Atticus, WPP's thought-leadership magazine for the piece I submitted to Global PR Blog Week 2.0. last year. Apparently it will be published in the next issue.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

It has been a long time...

Since my last post. I have been incredibly busy with work, travel (for work) and studies, finishing my third term core courses exams. Two words: corporate finance... I am starting my electives with our summer school, and it does feel like summer. Nothing to do with workload as we have courses throughout the day, and often assignments to hand out for the next day, but because we are enjoying the heatwave that is striking the UK. I am very much looking forward to my first weekend without any homework sine the beginning of this year and will be back blogging next week.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Hitler Cats

Only on the web, a blog dedicated to cats that look like Hitler....

Sunday, July 02, 2006

It's France v. Portugal in the semi final!

And they did it without stamping on any Brazilian! The sky is the limit now... I see a France v. Germany final, which doesn't bode well for us as we always struggled against the Germans (no pun intended here).

Chinese blog more popular than Boing Boing

The directory of wonderful things lost its crown as most popular blog to an online diary by Xu Jing Lei.

Friday, June 30, 2006

5 reasons why social networks fail, succeed

Tristan Louis gives us 5 reasons why social networks fail and 5 reasons why social networks can succeed.

I would add that social networks can fail or succeed depending on whether they attract the right type of crowd at the first place, then balance members quality and quantity. Example: if you and your friends joined a social network, only to find out that the coolest kids in your class are on another one, will you switch? Most likely because cool people will attract more cool people. This networking effect is behind the success of Linkedin, who has many members at VP level and above. So if I were to look for a job, would I go to the place where VPs hang out or just any social network as long as it has loads of functionality?

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Geoportail: exclusive picture

I managed to get as far as the homepage. One day I hope to click on these promising maps of exotic places such as St-Martin, Wallis and Futuna or even "la France continentale".

Monday, June 26, 2006

Geoportail offers closer look on France (when working).

The French government launched a rival to Google Earth in France with more detailed maps and photographies of the French territory. The service, a joint project by the National Geographic Institute and the Office of Geological and Mineral Research is called Geoportail and it went down a few hours after launch due to an"unforeseen number of visitors". I wanted to use this post to question the role of public funds v. private sector for such initiatives or highlight the lack of an English translation on the temporary error message but I am in a bad mood and rather keep my praises for the actual service, when it will work.

Geoportail offers closer look on France (when working).

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Cannes Lions Advertising Festival Slams Google on Failure to Build Brands

From Publishing 2.0. quoting an article from the FT where the Chief Executive of Mediavest USA admonishes Google for not putting enough branding in its search results. Google and Yahoo! push back and argue that traditional agencies and clients need a bit more "self education".

I understand Mediavest's concerns: they are not making a lot of money when their clients spend their media budgets on Google AdWords v. TV or online ads. And yes, most advertisers are still in the dark as to how AdWords work.

Yet, to advertisers 1.0's credits, their brand (and clickthroughs to their sites) would certainly benefit from having pictures or videos displayed in search results. Google AdSense already does that with click-to-play video ads. When searching for designer perfume, to use Publishing 2.0. 's example, I could tolerate some visual ads in the sponsored results. This is the thin line between providing me with relevant information and enticing me to click and as long as these two do not contradict each other, why not? Note of caution: I would recommend Google to test whether its users would accept seeing Google’s purist white layout turned into a billboard before wide-scale rollout…In the meantime, advertisers will have to relearn writing compelling copy.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Marketing to avatars: American Apparel opens in Second-Life

American Apparel opened a store in virtual world Second-Life (via Micro-Persuasion)

Business week ran a comprehensive article last month on Second-Life highlighting business opportunities and how companies are seeing more than fun and games when looking at virtual worlds.

Harvard Business Review has an excellent article on "Marketing to Avatars"

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Italy 1 - USA 1

I just caught the last half of the Italy v. US game. I usually tend to cheer for the underdogs and it is not very often that the US are underdogs but in football. They really fought it and came to a draw (thanks to Keller among others), earning a precious point to keep them in the cup. Congratulations to my american friends and readers. Now you've got a reason to watch the "soccer".

Friday, June 16, 2006

Pentagon to tap social networks?

The National Security Agency is funding research into harvesting information people post about themselves on social networks and online communities and could possibly combine these with other data to build extensive personal individual profiles. Sounds like a big brotherish conspiracy theory but the Centre for Research on Globalisation that published this article states the New Scientist as it sources. We know who you are hAcKEr345!

Social Media: Big Numbers

From ComScore Media Metrix, unique visitors in may 2006:

MYSPACE.COM: 51,441,000
Classmates.com: 14,792,000
FACEBOOK.COM: 14,069,000
YOUTUBE.COM: 12,669,000
MSN Spaces: 9,566,000
XANGA.COM: 7,146,000
FLICKR.COM: 5,163,000
Yahoo! 360°: 4,936,000
LIVEJOURNAL.COM: 3,904,000
MYYEARBOOK.COM: 3,048,000

I am lazy to copy it but look at ComScore Media Metrix's press release as it also includes the top 50 websites in the US per number of unique visitors. You'll need these figures the next time you try to convice a client that there is a world outside press releases.

First seen at Steve Rubel's.

Tagfetch

Tagfetch retrieves and displays on one single page all content listed on various sites for the tag you are searching for. Handy time saver.

Via Steve Rubel who retrieves and displays on one single blog all new applications you are searching for. Handy time saver.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Diet coke + mentos = unhappy brand managers

There has been a renewed interest in practical science recently as seen in hundreds of video clips demonstrating that if you drop a mentos into a bottle of diet coke, a natural chemical reaction occurs and turns a refreshing carbonated beverage into a spectacular geyser. The story was even featured in Monday's issue of the WSJ. Coke's reaction has not been very enthusiastic: "It's an entertaining phenomenon ... [but] doesn't fit with the brand personality of Diet Coke". I sympathise, it is a far cry for Diet Coke's more feminine and sophisticated image. But it is very entertaining. Rich Smith thinks Coca Cola should capitalise on this user generated trend instead of snubbing it.

Yet another example of consumers 2.0. derailing a campaign from traditional advertisers' carefully laid out tracks.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Is the blogosphere too US centric? Technorati's World Cup's tags say no.

Today's Technorati's hot tags:

Given football's popularity in the US, we can assume that:

Joga.com, the Nike - Google's social network for football fans is becoming popular,
US brands are integrating blogs into their world cup themed sponsorships,
Like the World Cup, the blogosphere is becoming a global level playing field.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Au delà du PR: Beyond PR goes global.

Beyond PR is now mispelled in Franglais, Italian (Soprano style), Spanglish, Beginner's Chinese, Japlish and World Cup tourist German.

Thanks to Trevor Cook who gave me this bad idea from looking at his excellent blog.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Blogger spreadsheet screenshot

Got my invite yesterday. Unfortunately, I had and have very little time to review it. It looks to be comprehensive enough for basic Excel usage though. I haven't located the charting options yet but the sharing options are shown on the right hand side. Instead of a thorough review, I am posting a pretty picture (typical marketing guy really...).