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Does social media give more self-expression, or just a bigger wave of noise to fight through? This preview of “The Fight for Significance in the Age of the Microcelebrity: Anonymity, Anonymous, Smart Mobs, Mad Mobs, Bot Mobs and the Great American Poets” argues that it makes it easier to be an individual but it’s also easier to be anonymous. Or…anony-me. [via I love marketing pocketbooks]
An interesting thought for brands who want to establish their own identity online.
I’m on the hunt for a new bag and after trawling hundreds online…there is hardly any expression of individuality. If I hadn’t heard of these brands before, I would come away from each flash-embedded site with only a vague idea of where they stand based on their pricing.
What does it take to stand out?
Do we have to go back to basics like Margiela? (See my last post…)
As important as the destination is, I love a good journey.
So when an advisory chat about entrepreneurship turned into a conversation about what it takes to be an expert I was taken aback but up for the ride. When you see the fire of enthusiasm burning in someone’s eyes, you know you’re about to discover just as much about them as you are about their favourite topic.
His big talking point is the research saying that most experts, top of their field kinda experts, have spent 10,000 hours honing their knowledge.**
That’s 10,000 hours of focussed, intense effort.
To put that in perspective, that’s about 418 days straight, or 1254 working days.
If you wanted to be at that level in 5 years, you’d need to spend 40 solid hours a week.
That kind of concentration is beyond most of us, and only a small percentage will put in the hours they need to be an expert.
(Good luck to the next person who tells me they’re a social media expert.)
The point is; to be good at something, you need to submerge yourself in it.
A similar chat with another person went in the direction of visualisation and whether it can help you achieve your goals. She’d found that meditation, conceptualising issues and writing down what she needed often resulted in lightbulb moments the next day. The mind can do amazing things if you submerge it.
Okay, so far, so good…now enter Gen Y.
We’ve grown up with the miracles of instant gratification, lottery success and thinking in windows. Multitask, diversify your skills and always be connected to everything.
As I write I’ve 8 windows open, three of which have at least 5 tabs each.
Where’s the time or focus to become an expert when the next distraction is an ALT + TAB away?
True, not everybody needs or wants to become an expert. But are we going to see fewer ascend to the heights of knowledge?
**I should note that the research was on sportspeople, chess players and musicians, but the point is the same.
This ‘learning French’ thing has come in handy sooner than I’d thought.
An agency in Montreal called CARTEBLANCHE has a strange proposition. When faced with the problem of how to recruit interns, they came up with a big idea…
“Ce concept, une première mondiale selon une source bien informée, vise à offrir une chance unique à un artisan du milieu des communications de vivre à fond sa passion et acquérir une expérience professionnelle mémorable.
En effet, CARTEBLANCHE met à la disposition d’un pensionnaire, pour une durée de 30 jours, une chambre complètement aménagée située au deuxième étage de l’agence. Après la journée de travail, le pensionnaire a accès à l’étage qui, en plus de contenir des bureaux de travail, contient tout l’ameublement nécessaire afin de rendre confortable son séjour.”
For the anglophones, I think it goes something like this… (look Mum, no Babelfish!)
“The concept, a world first according to a well-informed source, aims to offer a unique chance for a craftsman of the milieu of communications of life ground to grow their passion and get a memorable professional experience.
Basically, CARTEBLANCHE will provide board for 30 days with a fully fitted room on the second floor of the agency. At the end of a hard day’s work, the intern can access the floor which, in addition to a work table, has all the furnishings required to make their stay comfortable.”
Not quite sold? Try this: “Live the euphoria of working in an agency 24 hours a day. Persons with cardiac issues need not apply.”
Some think it was inspired by the World’s Greatest Job campaign, others think it’s just a recruitment tactic with a difference. Is it just a way of ensuring that your interns always get to work on time? Or a way of finding interns who literally want to live, breathe and sleep advertising?
Certainly not everybody gets to write on their CV ‘has lived in an ad agency’.
Don’t know if we’ll be able to find out exactly who gets to live in ‘Le Dortoir’ butI’ll be watching out and itching to do those translations…
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“Ask me what the secret of comedy is.”
“What’s the secret of com–”
“Timing.”
I don’t know if it was intentional, but as I sit here sleepless at 1am I notice that the 1-line ad on my gmail inbox is for an insomnia treatment.
Google, you have mastered the art of targeted ads.
That’s all.
Night.
Filed under: 1
I’ve decided…I’m going to try and translate some of my posts into French.
I’ve been trying to learn it on my own (after my failed attempt in high school) by reading Vogue Paris and Le Monde, but this time it’s serious.
So, if you speak French, please correct me (and forgive me)!
(Most of it may end up relying on Wikipedia.)
–
J’ai decidé que je vais traduire quelques articles en français.
J’essayais étude tout seules (depuis l’école) par lire Vogue Paris et Le Monde, mais cette fois c’est serieux.
Alors, si vous parlez Français, correctez-moi (et pardonnez-moi) s’il-vous plaît!
(Peut-être je vais dépendre de Wikipédia…)
Filed under: 1 | Tags: brand rankings, branding, Cisco, IBM, intel, Interbrand, Marlboro, McDonalds, Nokia, Samsung, social media, Sysomos, Toyota
Agencies are always making up rankings to try and get noticed. So when I saw the Sysomos ‘Top Brands by Social Media Presence’ I thought hey, anyone could’ve counted up the number of social media mentions brands get, what’s so special?
But wait…here’s something a bit more interesting.
- The top-scoring brands for positive reactions are in green, negative reactions in red. (See the Sysomos page for actual rankings.)
They’ve done an additional ranking using their ’sentiment engine’ (an accurate name but odd image) which analyses whether the mentions are positive or negative from their context.
It’s interesting to note that all of the highest scoring positive mentions are related to electronics – due to review sites perhaps? More surprising then that Apple and Google, the top two from the mentions rankings and general favourites, don’t feature in the sentiment top 5.
It’s also unclear whether positive and negative mentions could cancel each other out or whether they were separate scales.
Do you think it’s accurate?
Filed under: 1 | Tags: branding, business, Coles, corporate identity, Design, Hulsbosch, strategy, Woolworths
It’s becoming a game of ’spot the difference’.
There’s some mentality that the moment your main competitor does something, you’ve got to do what they did.
When that something is ‘make lots of money and use it to completely change the layout of their stores’, it’s a bit more difficult.
One, it’s expensive. Two, they’re going to have a massive headstart on you.
So sometime when Woolworths was having their consultation with Hans Hulsbosch and started rolling out their new corporate identity, Coles was having a chat (with McKinsey, if the rumours are true) about its own identity crisis.
Lo and behold, a new store layout!
This humble observer would like to present to you what’s new, what looks suspiciously similar and where Coles might be breaking from the mould.
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As someone who once compared the internet to a democracy for business, it’s amusing to see the government actually getting in on user-generated content.
Like most other UGC campaigns, it is tempting to say that it’s being used as a replacement for coming up with something original it’s probably in the name of effectiveness and better stakeholder outcomes.
So I got an email from Connecting Up (an NGO) about the latest initiative [and it's much better than their medical one]:
Encourage open government and perhaps win some cash for your nonprofit
Do you have an idea for using government information that you’d love to have but you can’t get now? Would you like to win $5,000 for your favorite nonprofit? Well, all you have to do is come up with a great idea for the nonprofit sector to use government information to make the world a better place. The contest details are below.
Who’s behind this? The Gov 2.0 Task Force, appointed by the Australian Government. http://gov2.net.au/
What’s Gov 2.0? It’s about governments being more open with information and using social media to communicate with the public, so they are more accountable.
So how does this contest work? The Taskforce will select the best idea(s) for using public sector information in a nonprofit/charity setting and award a cash donation of $5,000 to the charity/not-for-profit organisation of the winner’s choice. http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/10/09/not-for-profit-psi/
What happens after that? The winner(s) (or their nominated not-for-profit organisation) will get help from Connecting Up Australia to scope their idea as a project proposal to the Taskforce.
What does that mean? It means that your idea may get funding from the Gov 2.0 Project Fund to be put into action.
How long have we got? You’ve got until Friday 30 October, so hurry. But don’t panic, you just need to generate the idea at this stage, but you’ll need to provide some broad details to allow the Task Force to make a decision.
What sort of government information are you talking about? Have a look at http://mashupaustralia.org/data-sources/ for some ideas of what’s already out there. But we’re really looking for great ideas about government information that the nonprofit sector could use to make a difference. We’ve also included a light-hearted example at http://www.gov2taskforce.ideascale.com/akira/ideafactory.do?discussionID=9853 to kick-start your brain-storming but the only limit is your imagination.
What other smart ideas for Gov 2.0 have others thought of, just to get us started? Check some of these ideas out for a bit of inspiration http://www.gov2taskforce.ideascale.com/akira/panel.do?id=5361 . Some ideas from overseas include http://www.fixmystreet.com/ and http://www.ilive.at/Public/LocInfo.aspx
OK, we have an idea – how do we enter? Go to the Idea Scale site, sign up, and then submit your idea. http://www.gov2taskforce.ideascale.com/akira/ideafactory.do?discussionID=9853 While you’re there, you can vote on other people’s ideas as well.
Don’t forget, the contest closes Friday 30 October, so get your skates on!
Regards
The Connecting Up Australia team www.connectingup.org
So I was at a dinner with one of Australia’s top human rights lawyers the other night, Julian Burnside AO QC, and in a moment of temporary insanity started debating the merits of a dual legal system with him.
Julian was in town for a debate about whether Australia should have a federal bill of rights, timed well with the release of the national consultation paper on the same topic. It’s one of those issues which can affect everyone but very few know a lot about – like taxes, or syphilis.
Being the only marketer at the table led to some interesting situations (like the argumentative discussion mentioned earlier). On one level, Julian’s campaign to get Australians educated about having a bill of rights is going to go completely over the heads of a lot of people. For non-lawyers, there’s not much of a difference between a constitutional bill and a statutory bill.
On the other hand, his charisma and humourous presentation style appeals to hearts not minds, which I think is the key issue for the masses.
When you’re in politics it’s all about the marketing…apparently a Minister described the electric fence around a detention centre as an ‘energised’ ‘courtesy fence’.
As much as it will annoy members of a ‘real’ profession, it’s often how you communicate your argument that matters more than the content of that argument.
[I suppose the same thing should be said about Apple's current trademark action against Woolworths - they might vaguely have a chance at law (uh, vaguely) but as a marketing exercise it's only going to bring ridicule. Are you listening, Cadbury? Keep your hands off the colour purple.]
Then again, there are times when content really is what matters.
So remember kids, never try and argue with a QC…
