On comms design

this blog has moved

2010-07-14T21:55:00.003+03:00

New things happening

2010-07-10T21:43:00.002+03:00

Some new things happening or about to happen:

1. I have succumbed to the general feeling and will be moving this blog to Wordpress although the first interaction with WP was a but scary - stay tuned for that

2. I have been on the hunt for new blogs of interest and... well, remember the times when I was complaining about no niche blogs ever showing up that were interesting. Well, I don't think they are new but I really like:
a. Shopping stories - fun filled stories about how it feels to be a shopper in Romania. Always wanted to write one of those and think that maybe the guys at this one should accept collaborations from all over the country.
b. Gentlemen. Dosar de stil masculin - which is a guide to male style covering the much needed basic of being a well dressed man in this country. I particularly like the URL - domni de Romania - you can't really find a lot of those around these days
c. Daily Cotcodac - which we all know and which got lots of awards and stuff and whose only fault I can find is that sometimes it shamelessly links to stories in blogs of friends which are not all that interesting :D

3. I have come accross at least two awesome ways in which the idea of newspaper is made to live on online.
- one is paper.li where I adeptly made this: Bogdana's own daily
- the other one is the more intricate and beautifully built NewspaperClub here, where you can make your very one newspaper - British style and even print it. And there is an endearing story behind the name of the engine which makes the paper: ARTHR :D

more to come...

True about social media

2010-06-24T14:58:00.002+03:00

"And that Nike World Cup video (here) is not going to help.
With its millions of viral views, brand managers and creative directors worldwide are going to be viewing it as the gold standard.
Which is a huge mistake.
You see Nike is a Prom King brand. A brand people like because Nike’s discovered the secret sauce that makes people view them as “cool.” So they’ll want to pass around a Nike video because they get some sort of cool points for doing so.
Add the World Cup to that equation. Another Prom King brand, and, for anyone who remotely likes soccer, another source of cool. Factor in too the fact that the young male demo likes to share video, particularly video from brands that have a strong cool factor and you’ve got the perfect storm.
Which is not to take anything away from the actual video, which was exceedingly well done, but reality check: even a really bad Nike World Cup video would have gotten millions of hits. Having a really well done one probably doubled or even tripled what was destined to be a very large number.
The bigger problem, as I stated earlier, is that brands are going to start wanting “something like that Nike World Cup video... you know, the one with Homer Simpson in it.... it got 90 million viral hits.”
It’s the same speech an earlier generation of marketing and ad people got about the Apple 1984 spot.
But if you’re advertising corn chips or diapers or a cellphone service, you’re never going to get a Nike World Cup video. You’re just not cool enough. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing."

from here

The hardest year of my life

2010-06-04T12:33:00.003+03:00

I turn 31 today and this past year has been, by far, the most difficult one I have ever had. I am a workaholic, so most of my joys and disappointments are generally related to my work. This past year has been a landmark for me professionally and as a human being.

A while back I said yes to a position I thought was the ultimate challenge in my career. I had never done management before and when I took it on - running a small agency I mean - I thought that it would be a piece of cake, especially since I seemed to be surrounded by a lot of people trying to help, and had a well of enthusiasm boiling inside of me, mainly generated by the novelty of the situation.

All this was happening in 2008, October, just as the financial crash came tumbling over Eastern Europe and made everything different. I was 30, I had never been in charge of anything other than my strategy presentations and my power point slides and my own flat and car. All of which I seemed to manage satisfactorily.

Being a manager has changed everything I though I knew and everything I though I knew about myself. I used to think that I was able to muster up endless resources of energy to finish up everything. I used to think that if something was not being done I could do it myself. I used to think that I could be very good at almost anything. Having to manage a team of people, revenue, salaries, clients, strategies sometimes gets pretty overwhelming and it took me a while to realize that some of the things I knew didn't really apply. The one constant realization is that dealing with failure is the most important skill one can develop in order to progress. Strangely enough though, I don't feel like writing I have learned a lot about teamwork and people skills and client management. I think all I knew about that before I became this new person largely still applies.

But I turn 31 today and if there is anything I have learned is that nothing works unless you keep it simple and have fun with it; and that the hardest thing to do is always, but always, remember that it will not work unless you stick by the two things said before.

So what I wish for myself this day is to always remember to not complicate things and have fun with whatever I am doing. Because only then, it all seems to work out fine.

Speaking about the Ro Internet user

2010-05-30T16:37:00.001+03:00

I'll try to do a bit of that as part of Orange Online Meet-up. This coming Monday. As said here, with Orlando Nicoara and Ionut Oprea.

I want to watch

2010-05-30T16:33:00.001+03:00

Digital changes gears

2010-05-10T22:41:00.003+03:00

In my previous post I wrote about an editorial I had published today in which I was pondering on whether brand managers, and the fact that they largely seem ignorant of online has something to do with things other than stupidity, lack of interest etc etc. I said there may be some redemption in the thought that they actually have to deal with something they are not being actively trained for and that may take more of their time than they can afford to devote to a new medium.

I actually got to thinking about this while reading an interesting article about the take-over and integration of Businessweek into Bloomberg. What struck me was this particular paragraph:

"The rigid culture [Bloomberg's] extends to the work environment. News meetings are held at 7:30 a.m. Every writer has a “dashboard” where the metrics determining his compensation — any scoops, hits an article attracts — are tracked."

This feels very much like something we have to deal with now since online has become a priority. No longer are weekends safe or even workdays quiet after the TV beta tapes have been handed in. You need to track and monitor 24/7. Changes can be made in real time, everything is beta. No wonder then that everyone is under pressure, unable to catch up.

The article goes on:
"Employees swipe ID cards to enter and leave the building, and when an employee sends an internal e-mail message, the last time he clocked in or out appears next to his name. If he forgets his ID, “Forgotten Badge” appears next to every e-mail message he sends to co-workers that day — a tough fit for magazine journalists lucky to remember their wallets, let alone their building IDs."

So maybe we should all have a bit of understanding for this immense change we are going through :D
full article here

Al doilea editorial pe Digital IQads

2010-05-10T22:23:00.003+03:00

este aici. l-am scris dupa ce m-am gandit mult si bine la frustrarea pe care o simtim fata de oamenii din marketing care "nu inteleg" online. Am incercat sa imi dau seama cum se vede povestea de pe partea cealalta a baricadei si daca nu cumva aceasta lipsa de "intelegere" tine de chestiuni mult mai practice gen lipsa de timp, lipsa de motivare la locul de munca etc etc.
mi-e greu sa cred ca ignoranta unor oameni este generata exclusiv de rea vointa. si in plus, lucrand cu clienti cum este L'Oreal sau Coca-Cola, am avut ocazia sa vad cat de benefica este prezenta unui brand manager dedicat activitatilor online.
Cred ca inceperea discutiei referitoare la nevoia de oameni specializati in cadrul departamentelor de marketing nu este una prematura acum si oricum, la cat de greu misca lucrurile la noi in tara, probabil ca o discutie acum se va materializa in ceva peste 5 ani. :D

Interesting read

2010-04-25T12:56:00.001+03:00

Reviewed as "The main body of the book draws out all of the most cherished literary devices in writing and reexamines them for use in the short form. Dom urges writers to spend more time distilling the essence of meaning and emotion from their thoughts. Select tweets are used as examples, showing wonderful invocations of irony, sarcasm, suspense, awe, and humor. The mechanics of poetry are even explored in detail, with suggestions on how they can be applied to the short form." here

Facebook credits - the social network is trying for an economy of its own

2010-04-25T11:05:00.002+03:00

If you're a non-gamer like me you will probably not have heard about FB credits, a form of in-network payment which lets you purchase virtual goods for the FB games and apps you like to interact with.
It seems that this system has been on for a while but it is so slim in spreading out that FB have recently had to consider a whole "promotional" program to get the ball rolling.

As I understand, in a nutshell, the way the credits worked was were much similar to what you would get if you signed up for Second Life about 4 years ago. At that time any new account used to get free land and some Linden Dollars to stimulate purchase of virtual goods. In very much the same fashion, if you're a FB user with a lot of games to play you could purchase FB credits with your credit card and then use them to get game add-ons or perks like cheats or extra energy or stuff like that. So, actually, FB was a financial intermediary between the app/game developers and yourself. [more on what you can use credits for here]

However, it seems that the credit craze has not caught on because recently FB announced some promotional stuff coming users' way in the line of credits. They will be giving out credits to get people used to using them and also allowing people to gain credits by simple on-network actions so without actually using credit card money to pay for the credits [read more here].

It seems to me like the next logical step: FB might have imagined that users will jump at the opportunity to buy gaming goods but in reality they may have overestimated the traction FB games have had so far. Compared to SL or WOW, FB games are still baby games and, at least until Mafia Wars and Farmville showed up, had little potential of getting people wild and digging deep in their pockets for money. The FB profile also, in Romania at least, is not hard core gamers but rather socializing freaks.
so, I personally cannot wait to see how this new credit initiative is going to work. I would have added credits for making profile crazier looking and boosting your social status on the network. somehow it feels that's that FB is about in Romania.

Digital industry - chilly days

2010-04-25T10:51:00.002+03:00

Last Friday a couple of the people running digital agencies met with a UK planner to discuss the options of putting together a sort of knowledge camp for digital. It was like back in the old days with planners' meetings only this time it was supposed to be focused on digital.

It was funny to watch how, being the young pups that we are, we looked at this as both a threat and and opportunity. An opportunity because it would give us a chance to go after new business maybe in the portfolios of other agencies present, and a threat because it would mean sharing knowledge which we think is proprietary and makes us hold on to our clients. Overall the meeting was sad and inconsequential because we were all heads of agencies and all we cared about were procedural issues and "industry" problems as opposed to being really concerned with the systemic lack of know-how that the industry suffers from.

I cannot blame us however. In times of affluence, everyone is focusing on expanding knowledge, on finding out better and smarter ways to create and innovate. In dire straights, we focus on survival, and, being the bureaucratic people that we are, for us survival comes from making rules. Other people, in times of need, become inventive and get smart. With Romanians it seems that in times of need we start imposing regulations [just look at what the government is doing].
i'm not saying this is a bad thing. I personally do not have a solution at this time, but that meeting just felt sad. Because nobody was there to talk about how we can become smarter as an industry. everyone was out to protect his slice of the pie....
I hate this effing financial crisis :(

Romania's publishers decide to set display standards

2010-04-17T14:10:00.003+03:00

I am not entirely sure what this means, but some of the top publishing conglomerates online in Romania have put out a three points standard system for display on their websites. This means that they will start "evaluating" the display they accept on their websites. It will serve to increase the quality of display they get, and thus, enhance results for clients and agencies alike.

From what I understand the consesnus is that publishers will refuse CPC payment when the campaign is clearly brand awareness or brand building driven. CPT payment will be enforced in this case. I also understand that the publishers will evaluate display submitted and decide whether it qualifies for CPC, CPA, CPL or CPT. Plus, ads will get run of network or run of category treatment exclusively in order to ensure targeting more clearly and better results for the client.

Well, to me, it seems like a great initiative for an industry which has managed to bury display almost completely through the very work of some of its agency heads who, avowedly, despise display and consider it a menial form or promotion BUT... :D some questions do remain:

- it's pretty hard to evaluate display creative anyway, banners are small, they move fast etc. Who will be the ultimate decision maker in what gets CPC or CPT treatment? Can we get some basic guidelines, you guys :D (like simple one liners "always say click here, never use flashing arrows or always use flashing arrows)

- does this mean that publishers will become involved in telling agencies what works or not? will this be done transparently? or, like agencies sometimes get with ad serving companies, where the creative is simply rejected without explanations.
If this is not the case, I expect to see an incremental ballooning in revenue for in-house publisher agencies - which caught some wings last year but eventually almost died out.

- if run of category is mandatory what prevents publishers from spawning a host of "category-friendly" mini websites which then will attract top dollar without the actual traffic numbers solely on the basis of affinity?

I think this idea by the publishers gives agencies a great opportunity to go to the clients and make some points about the use and misuse of display. I also think that we will finally see campaigns that will HAVE to be made with at least some guidelines covered (like, for Pete's sake, have a landing page that requires some form of response and then track it!) and that maybe we will stop trying to bury what has so far been the largest source of revenue for publishers. In the meantime however it would be nice if I could get some answers to the above.

Anyone?

Am scris un editorial pe Digital IQ Ads [this post will only appear in Romanian but I will continue to post in English too]

2010-04-17T13:54:00.003+03:00

pe care il gasiti aici si la care cativa oameni au pus comentarii. editorialul relua o idee, pe care o mai discutasem cu colegii de agentie, despre impresia eronata a unor clienti - sau chiar a unor colegi din industrie - referitor la cat de usor sau nu este sa faci Internet. I-am spus "complexul Facebook" pentru ca mi se pare ca Facebook a facut cel mai mare serviciu si in acelasi timp si cel mai mare deserviciu marketingului online in Romania. Serviciu, ptr ca nimeni nu poate sa ignore avantul acestei platforme si toata lumea a fost nevoita sa isi faca un cont, asa ca, vrand nevrand toata lumea a inceput sa foloseasca apps, sa invete sa scrie niste statusuri, sa inteleaga cum si cat de repede merge o stire pe net, ce este interesant etc. Deserviciu, pentru ca nivelul de "user friendliness" pe care il vad ei la FB este transferat automat si proiectelor pe care vor sa le dezvolte pe net fara niciun moment pierdut sa se gandeasca la cat timp le-a luat celor de la FB sa dezvolte platforma, cate erori si buguri au fost rezvoltate, cate probleme de scalabilitate surmontate etc.

oricum, problema e mare si eu am scris putin si mai degraba histrionic despre asta pe Digital IQ Ads. Insa, ce mi-ar placea - si am spus-o si in comentariile de la editorial - ar fi ca oamenii sa sugereze solutii. Si ar fi si mai misto daca nu am arde-o cu fraze sforaitoare si absurde ca "e nevoie de educatie in piata" "ne lipsesc profesionistii". Evident ca astea sunt cauzele problemei, lipsa de educatie si de profesionisti, dar nu poti raspunde unei intrebari despre solutii cu cauze. Asta se cam numeste "a bate inutil din gura" si, din pacate, televiziunile romanesti sunt populate numai cu oameni care stiu sa faca asta si numai asta.

deci, daca cineva are vreo idee practica de propus, ar fi misto sa o scrie undeva. eu ma gandisem la un videocast unde sa explicam the basics intr-un limbaj simplu. cred ca s-ar distribui usor si repede.

alte idei?
.............

Si, da, m-am hotarat ca o sa scriu alternativ in romana si engleza. Practic sunt subiecte despre care cred ca trebuie sa stie si oameni din afara dar sunt unele legate exclusiv de Romania.

Why it's good to be in digital this year

2010-04-11T18:58:00.004+03:00

three reasons:
1. any creative that gets done this year will have a digital component if only for two simple reasons: a) www recorded the fastest growth and marketing managers will want to get on that boat b) www remains cheaper
2. most international brands will try to cut regional expenses by making creative hubs and sharing creative work which means that some regions will only get access to dubbing other people's creative, but so far the movement of localizing websites has not caught on completely, simply because sometimes it's cheaper to make one locally
3. every agency is trying to become digital either by integrating digital in all its operations or by working more closely with its digital siblings. digital work results from that more than ATL work

so, if you're in digital, you're the lucky ones.
the same works for direct, or e-direct and mobile :D

Chatroulette

2010-04-10T11:36:00.001+03:00

precisely my experience with it

via zoso

Why procurement has no business handling pitches

2010-04-07T08:41:00.005+03:00

Of course this is a post written under the influence of some major "pissed-off"ness because we lost a major pitch for which we worked really hard and naturally you cannot but be a sore loser. But more than that this is a realization of almost 8 months of in-crisis pitching - not just for us but for our ATL sister agency and also some half dozen other agencies we are friendly with, where we have seen the following repeat itself enough to become a pattern.
1. most in-crisis pitches are run by procurement teams [secretly meaning 'we're only interested in the money']
2. most in-crisis pitches have EXACTLY the same format: request for credentials, request for offer made of CVs and creative plus money. lots of useless paperwork, because participating agencies project the ideal team onto all RFOs and have a standard credential they send to everyone.]
3. no face-to-face unless you get picked to be among the few going to stage final
4. no debrief unless you really ask for it and then whatever gets discussed then gets emailed to everyone for fairness reasons
5. one hour for presentation
6. humongous brief with 70% of the qualification criteria going to.... financial :D. Basically testing to see if you're willing to do shitloads of work for no money.

But what gets to me most, aside from the heartlessness of this process is that final letter, where they tell you that you did not qualify. Thanks for playing but you suck, and we will not even take the time to tell you why. You may have prepared a 300 page presentation for us, which you printed in 4 copies because the RFO asked you to - yeah, we print layouts of online banners ... figure that!, but you do not deserve more than the standard letter of 'thanks but no thanks' because we were too busy to really understand why we picked someone else.

And while I understand the power-position in which everyone in procurement is these days, what with the crisis and everyone willing to do almost anything to get a budget, I think that somewhere in the brand management team someone should realize that this is not the way to handle what is, by all accounts, the relationship with your most important partner: the ad agency. Even when you DO NOT pick them, the point is not to treat them like they're nobody. Because sometimes the winning one happens to be crap, and maybe you want to drop them and move on to the runner-up. And if the runner up think you're basically heartless bastards, you're down to another RFO process. And this is not "not nice", but, in terms procurement can understand, it's NOT EFFICIENT.

LATER UPDATE: I did call the company asking for more info. I got an email asking for my phone number. So at least they were decent, and tried but I still do not know why we lost.
In general, however, I notice from the comments that, what with the crisis and all, the majority view - 2 out of 3 comments :P - is that the factor called 'serendipity' no longer plays a part in agency-client relationships. Weirdly enough, I used to think the same until I realized that the clients where we did find the same wavelength tend to be the ones for which we work most efficiently, most enthusiastically and where we get the best results. I think agencies like W+K and, locally, Headvertising have made this kind of "human" treatment of partners a landmark of their business style and it's worked (don't you just envy posts like these? :D)
BUT, having been bludgeoned over my stupid head by the true business people of this real world, with words like "standards, professionalism, process, transparency, streamlining, capitalism, money" I assume I am just a silly silly girl to think that writing to extra lines in the 10 reject letters is not a big deal and will take my silly silly ideas and put them to sleep for tonight :D

LATER LATER EDIT: Got a call from marketing person - not procurement, who was nice enough to explain why we lost but said they would never put in on record. Feels good to know we are good enough but not good enough at politics :D

LATER LATER LATER EDIT: funnily enough got an official email from the procurement person saying basically that "our creative approach" sucked salty balls of chocolate although we were cheap enough :D. So, there you have it: marketing says we are creative enough, procurement says we are cheap enough, yet we lost :D. it must be we're ugly or something

Social media strategy

2010-03-30T23:41:00.002+03:00

Interesting fact: during a recent digital gathering in London, most heads of main UK brands said that they had "no digital strategy for social media yet". It seems that everyone is just going with the flow for the time being :D

Interesting fact no. 2: local brand manager for nice and exciting brand confessed that the only apps she truly sees the worth of are branded utility apps like USPS's gimmick which lets you calculate the type of box you need for your to-be-shipped item (virtual box)

Pretend brand love

2010-03-30T22:48:00.003+03:00

Romanians are a lot about pretending they buy into things. we have lots of political parties but no political ideologies. we have lots of churches and people crossing themselves but not a lot of true believers. we have a lot of people who are 'fans of jogging' on Facebook but do not own sneakers.
Recently the pretend trend has hit a new low with people becoming interested in fasting. it's right before Easter and everyone who is in any way trendy needs to discuss how hard and intensely he or she is fasting. it's talked about on tv, in ad agencies and on the street. there are levels to fasting, and you are fast warlock if you refrain from sex and swearing which seem to be two things God really hates.
interestingly, someone smarter than me explained that fasting is about humble, humility and not really making a fuss about all that but hey... we are 'pretend nation'
the same works with brands here: we really love them until they screw up minimally, or until some friend comes up and says that the brand sucks. if you market a brand your commitment to its success is limited to its budget. you care about it as much as your money will let you. if something is good for your brand but it requires an extra phone call to your manager, well, heck, it's not worth it. you like the ritual, but not the commitment.
pretend brand love is a symptom of people who are afraid of having an opinion, are unable to defend it and unwilling to stand up for themselves. so it's easier to go with the flow and not commit. it's easier to cross yourself when you pass a church than to NOT cheat your colleague out of his bonus.
pretend. it works. it keeps people afloat and seemingly happy. :(

NYT business best sellers (paperback. it's a damned crisis, people)

2010-03-30T00:25:00.004+03:00

Somehow I feel only people working in marketing are buying books in the States these days :D
[yeah, and BTW BN.com is still NOT letting me pay with my NON-Physically located in the US credit card so anyone holding the magical key to getting some of their ebooks, please do help. and, yes I have tried to come up with a valid US address but I gather they check the credit card address or something]

Palimpsestic advertising

2010-03-30T00:21:00.004+03:00

This kind of title makes you almost invisible for search engines :D
Naturally writing 'poster hacks' would be a lot easier but then I would not be able to comment on this trend of "commenting" on already made artifacts. And since advertising seems to be one of the most accessible forms of expression, commenting on advertising is happening all over.
This one is my favorite - the original poster turns into that when the light turns on at night, but there's a whole list here

Earth Hour Yeiii

2010-03-27T20:32:00.001+02:00

DARK
[as an aside, I understand some people are putting on a music show, a grand one, to celebrate the turning off of lights...makes COMPLETE sense to try to save energy by plugging in hundreds of watts of speakers and so on ...but hey, complete darkness for the rest :D]

Burberry goes 3D

2010-03-27T11:14:00.001+02:00

Light grafitti - whoa!

2010-03-27T10:32:00.001+02:00

from here

Be stupid

2010-03-27T10:23:00.001+02:00

I like this campaign by diesel. In Romanian we would say "nu fi absurd, nu fi tampit, nu fi penibil" :)

Start over

2010-03-26T11:00:00.002+02:00

There comes a time in every blog's life where you have to write a post about a new beginning. it generally happens once every two years when you've gone through all the stages of enthusiasm, commitment, lackluster routine, blah boredom and lack of objective and finally complete and utter disinterest to the writing.
Being a woman, I tend to be more prone to these cycles and since I am currently on a 5 day sabbatical I have had some time to think about this AGAIN.
Two years ago I became a manager and stopped being anything else. I never thought the process of managing a company could be so intense and so time consuming. I have all but lost myself in the attempt to make everyone happy and make the agency a success. Things are going well right now and I am more than ever aware that apart from being the person in charge there I am nothing else anymore.
So, as it befits a blog, I am again making a commitment to come back to writing about what used to be me: strategy, planning, communications, digital.
Romania is not a pretty picture right now: everyone who had anything remotely interesting to say is too busy staying alive and so we seldom hear about anything other than survival techniques. So I should stop reading Romanian blogs simply because survival is not living.
I have grown friendlier with my bed. Now it's time to reconnect with the blog.
Hi :D

I want a relationship

2010-03-11T20:52:00.002+02:00

I have completely forsaken this blog.
Because I need to develop a serious relationship. A relationship which involves a lot of quality time spent together, lots of cuddling, lots of R&R. I want to be able to spend enough time in this relationship that I know every crease and every nook and every crinkle. I need to get to know and enjoy every minute spent. I cannot keep having this casual, good night, good morning and bye thingie where I come in, fall asleep immediately, wake up in the morning and jump out and rush to the shower.
I need a relationship with my bed.
I want to spend time with my mattress and get to feel its every corners. I want to turn the duvet every angle and sleep diagonally, straight, sideways and in every corner of my bed. use all three pillows to their outmost, stack them, spread them, hug them.
I want a relationship with my bed.
I am sick and tired of running into it and out of it. I want to linger and let my shoulders develop a shape into the mattress.
I plan a relationship with my bed.
...
so, I am keeping it casual with my blog.

Our Onion is chopped

2010-03-03T23:23:00.002+02:00

Romania has ... used to have one weekly which behaved much like The Onion in the US: witty, independent, for people who were smarter than the average. Their slogan was "our readers are smarter than theirs". A while back some of the owners realized they were turning 40 and were still broke and decided to cash in and bring in an "angel investor" - one of Romania's most controversial business men. Today, two thirds of the editorial team of the weekly has quit amid accusations of editorial interference, fraud and other such disgusting things. The remaining team - some of the founding members, have issued their own press release accusing the deserters of fickleness and greed. Everybody is trying to figure out who fucked whom and the "brouhaha" is on about whose fault and whose interests (political) are at stake.
....

Nobody cares that one good contemporary brand, a decent editorial product and one of the few print products with a future has been trashed and will probably disappear due to people being greedy (for money or for power). All we care about is the scandal behind. Nobody stops to think about how dire, how disturbingly empty the media landscape is getting: journals are morphing into tabloids, newspapers are becoming political tools, magazines are localizing irrelevant second hand western European content. People break everything for the sake of some extra cash today. We all think short term. It's dog eat dog.
....
How I feel? Like saying "Good night and ... good luck" :D

Frivolous thoughts about politics

2010-02-25T09:16:00.005+02:00

Sometimes when I get bored I think about whether I should pay more attention to politics and get more involved in what happens in this country. Luckily I don't get bored that often what with the agency and all that.
But if I had the time to get bored and seriously take up a civic interest I'd end up in the most dismal place in the world. Because just like they do not make ads for a 30 yo, unmarried woman with a decent income - that's me, they don''t have a political choice for me either. I like smart, I like open minded, visionary, smart dressing, big smiling, enthusiastic, honest and common sensical. I like the Obamas because of this picture

and I like the silly and sometimes ridiculous Sarkozys because they are not afraid to pose like this (all goofy and laughing)

But what is there for me in Romania? The fashionista images of Elena Udrea in Tabu? The Kennedy inspired poses of the Iacob-Ridzis? The ludicrous every other pic and TV appearance of our younger generations politicians, all suited up, gelled up, spitting when they speak types?
Image is everything in politics but the image of our politicians is constructed by consultants whose understanding of the nuances of target audiences is small and biased. We have Dero politicians. And I am the y generation: i like brands that talk my talk. So, here's to hoping I never get bored in the coming years.

Rescuing print

2010-02-25T08:52:00.002+02:00

Somehow I am getting a wiff of an underground lobby movement to revive the dying trade of print advertising :D
Can it be a coincidence that one our best and most respected bloggers is quoting one of our best and most respected creative directors - known for his love of [and exceptional talent in] the printed ad word - and posting a full article about why print is a great medium for advertising and only days later there's a second post about the same thing? :DDD

When I first read this I got sucked into the pathos of the writing and posted an enthusiastic tweet about it. Later on, I kept going back to it in my head and realized there was something amiss with the reasoning. It's an interesting train of thought to start discussing the virtues of print ADVERTISING when the very existence of PRINT is questioned. Mainly because advertising is not something that should be a reason to save print for. Somehow a move by, say, the IAA to preserve the existence print just for the sake of putting print ads sounds ludicrous. I mean we all loathe advertising right? Would it not be seriously silly to try to save print because we need to place print ads in it - especially since only 5-6 years ago everyone was complaining about the rape of print by advertisers when full pages of red or green ads covered the first pages of newspapers?
I fully agree with the need to have print but on the other hand I am finding it hard to understand why print needs to remain the ad volume driver that it used to be. Just to save jobs? Interesting train of though for a country where budget deficit is driven by the government's continued subsidization of industries that contribute with nothing. If ad people need print to continue to get a job maybe we should also continue paying miners to dig on in empty mines.

Okay, we need newspapers and magazines and we need them mainly because of two things: 1] the kind of reading experience they provide - more personal, more applied, quieter, more analytic and 2] the kind of editorial art they require - more diligent, more analytic, more in depth, more opinionated. But this kind of experience requires pairing with a certain kind of advertising, and the aforementioned article bemoans exactly the death of that kind of ads: comprehensive, introspective, smart, brand driven vs sales driven. And now, to be completely frank: we had stopped doing these a long time ago. Because Romania is a country of growing needs and growing bellies and these need to be fed fast and cheap and mindlessly. And that kind of advertising in those kind of newspapers and magazines would not do the trick.
So we really don't need print for print ads. What we really need is a customer base interested in both print AND that kind of print ads. Which we do not have. Yet. Or ever?
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PS: and the art of copywriting is real because that letter made me jump for joy with enthusiasm although later on I questioned almost every line :D

The art of ageless advertising

2010-02-16T23:42:00.004+02:00

There's hardly ever a time when I feel the urge to praise people in advertising, mainly because I also do advertising and I seldom feel I do worthwhile things. But today something I witnessed got me thinking about one essential quality that good advertising people should possess and which makes them truly remarkable: AGELESSNESS.

Think about this: as you grow older, your most inherent tendency is to derive insights from what is most familiar to yourself, not necessarily things like gender, but most likely things like age, marital status, kids or no kids, your circle of friends, your interests. It stands to reason that not having had a kid will make it difficult for you to relate to mother with kids and it also stands to reason that as you move around in an environment more than in another you will more often draw inspiration from the more familiar one.

And now, imagine a 40 yo creative faced with the challenge of talking to 15 yo and having access to true and original insights. And when I mean original, i mean NOT something that he himself has gone through as a 15yo but rather something which is contextually and temporally relevant to this 15yo. They will both have liked candy given out by a nice smelling mother, but can the 40yo relate to the lifestyle brought about by incessant texting? continuous contact via YM? In Romania more than anywhere, some generations have different lifestyles both socially and historically.

So, I tip my hat off to ageless advertising people. I think it takes an excessively flexible mind, like that of an excellent actor who can not only play himself in all the parts but rather play every part like it was a different person, to be able to stay tuned to the all generations we have to deliver adverts to.

The world tomorrow?

2010-02-14T22:22:00.001+02:00

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Chatroulette

2010-02-14T21:36:00.002+02:00

I have spent the better part of my Sunday F9-ing people on Chatroulette. This is a service which randomly pairs you up with people all over the world for a one to one chat via web cam. I must admit that the experience is super thrilling, leaving aside the countless dicks (and that is not a name i use to call nasty guys) I have seen AND the horrendous fat guy f***ing a stuffed beaver toy.
BUT, I did get to chat with Max from Paris and Pepe from London and they both turned out to be super nice and told me loads of fun stuff about them and what they do.
Chatroulette is the brain child of a 17yo Russian who gets his server money from friends and family and whose sole intention was for a fun time with this 17yo friends. And while there's numerous drawbacks to the service, stemming mainly from the dumpload of freaks out there, I can see the potential of this becoming incorporated in so many things we do now online. Think about if you could make it part of Twitter or FB. Plus there's a dozen things I can think of that this could do for online dating (okay, apart from, again, the weirdos in lonely rooms).
...

Facebook sucks

2010-02-13T06:57:00.002+02:00

No it does not, but I am reading this book and someone got famous for writing Dell sucks and I thought it may work for me too :D (the book is WWGD? and the person is Jeff Jarvis)

Truth is, Facebook does not suck YET and but it is dangerously close to that, what with the sense of intimacy and closeness between complete strangers getting to the point of the horrific. To me the online world is for collaboration (some great thoughts on that here) and I do not mind some occasional bonding with long lost friends. But it gets to the point where baby pictures show up and as they get wilder and wilder and more intimate in angle and comments, you begin to wonder "what the hell am I really getting out of this?". I am having a serious issue with the obviousness of progress of relationships among Facebookers. Okay, I got over the stage where hearing about every broken relationship from the status was a pain, I got over the zoophiliac tendencies of some application's users, I even understand why some people like to "like" their own statuses and also like every single status you post, but now seriously, why do we have to handle seeing pictures of your baby's freshly wiped buttocks or, worse yet, your wife's nipples being chewed on by the same baby. Come OOOOOOON people! I get the liberating power of networks but again, going back to my ill-fated presentation a while back, think about what this is doing to all but a small bunch of single women who sob at the sight of something they secretly wish for. I get parental pride, I do. But please if you've added me (and may I remind everyone that I have NOT asked for anyone to add me but simply courteously agreed to being added) and I am not your intimate friend, think of my motives as well for being on FB. They are NOT to see explicit pics of your family, but rather to stay in touch, get updates on people I think interesting, see what they think about.

I feel a sequel to that presentation coming on!
....

Social search - my two cents

2010-02-11T08:42:00.003+02:00

The latest hype is all about social search and as always a competent overview comes from the NYT (read all here) which reviews yet another project with social search potential.

I have thought long and hard about this and somehow feel it falls in the same category of "can we make something that gives us irrefutable monitoring of how people feel about a brand online?". You know, the never-ending plight of PR people who have to monitor online and complain that existing tools work mechanically to interpret statistical recurrences of strings of words and combination phrases.

Truth of the matter is that, just like with robots who make cars, at some point you will need one decent human being with enough brains to put it all together. So while the monitoring systems may give you statistical inferences, it does take a smart guy to put the data together and get you an interpretation of what is really going on.
The same, I think, applies for social media and yet another good indicator of why this is are user reviews for travel destinations. Would you pick a hotel based exclusively on the number rating given as the average of all user ratings? Or, plus, would you pick it based on the first reviewer? I think not. I think that, if you work like me and need clear information, you will read ALL reviews and then make up your own mind. Or talk to a friend who was there :D.

Now with social search what can be the clues which direct you to the best person to answer your question? The NYT article counts " the expertise a potential answerer has about a subject, how closely connected the two people are, and how quickly the answerer is available" among the attributes. Yes, but these will have to be measured with what technology has: making approximations based on "code facts" like how many answers on that topic the person has, the number of times the answer has been "liked" maybe. And still this does not prevent the person from being a total ass with no clue or with a silly answer. Or simply with a bad taste in music or food. Just like it's easy to create webpages with clusters of links to make them seem more relevant in searches it's easy to add a lot of people as a friends list and spam them with crap messages about restaurants. Does this make you more likely to be able to give me a relevant answer on where to eat? Probably not? Does it increase your chances of being picked out as a possible respondent? Most likely yes.
So, the argument that a response is more likely to be relevant if it comes from someone I trust is a bit of a stretch for anyone with some intimation on how the pairing happens. "And our key finding is that whereas in the Library paradigm, users trust information depending upon the authority of its author, in the Village paradigm, trust comes from our sense of intimacy and connection with the person we are getting an answer from" say the social search people. True, but I don't get intimate with people social search make pop-up on my radar, but with people I follow for a while, whose style and accuracy of notes I appreciate. This means that every potential answerer for me would have to be pre-tested. By me :D
In the end, it will be a compromise between the amount of thinking that is put behind the search algorithm and the amount of common sense one has to weed out the trolls.

image courtesy o f

The intimacy of new technologies

2010-02-07T12:40:00.003+02:00

When I was in my junior year at university I got a scholarship to go to the US for a year and study comparative politics. For a year, I lived and studied on what at the time seemed like the most beautiful place on earth, the campus at RMWC in Lynchburg Virginia. Since the stipend did not cover any traveling I could not fly back for xmas so for a whole year my only contact with my family was the weekly [always on Snday at 10am] phone call from my parents and some emails I exchanged with my more computer literate friends. And one spring afternoon I also got an 11 page hand written letter from my mom. I remember sitting at one of the many lounge tables spread out across the campus and reading my mom's letter and crying my eyes out, not because she had news of any kind but because it was the closest I had ever felt to her and my people back at home. I still have that letter and every time my friends and I get into an argument about technology and how it estranges people, I think back to that letter and refuse to engage :D.

and yet... for about two months now my mom has a gmail account and has learned the ropes enough to be able to log in every now and then and drop me an email. She writes erratically, sometimes asking me questions to which I reply instantly and which she completely ignores, sometimes telling me stories she has already told me on the phone. And yet the thrill of seeing my mother's name in the Inbox is always the same. Because I know she writes those emails when she is quietly thinking about me. It's not like phone calls when she tells me about hers and dad's day but mostly about a more serene and more mature type of communication. I treasure these emails. I keep them in a folder alongside one special message I got while in the States from a very special person there. I call the folder "post" - like in Post Office, because they feel like real letters, close and intimate.

So, as far as the argument goes, technology may seem remote and intimidating but it's really how you what you use it for. I love getting an early SMS that says "morning :)" and I love my mom's emails. Because, irrespective of the medium, the sentiment behind the message is the real thing.

Technology: smart to stupid?

2010-02-04T08:28:00.004+02:00

Talking to the girls last night about relationships (predictable, huh?) we came naturally to a weird theory, namely that human nature seems to be preset to self-preserve and aim for the lowest common denominator. We generally tend to look for calm, peace of mind, lack of complication, routines. These make us feel good: chemically and in any other way. You get married not because you think it's going to be a rollercoaster of emotions but because you think you can lead a quiet content lifetime with one person. You stay in the less paid job because it's less stress. You are friends with people like yourself and soon you are friends only with those who live closest :D

There's few people looking for aggravation and stress in their lives but weirdly enough it seems that precisely this strife for not-ordinary is the root of progress and innovation.

Now, technology is here to support our natural tendencies, right? I mean we have made all things technological to help us lead better lives and, by the logic above, to help us lead more peaceful, less aggravated lives. Which means what? We will invent moving chairs like in WalleE, machines which make any food we want, phones that pay for us, TV sets that move around the home, social networks to help us communicate, etc etc.

Sometimes I get concerned that, while it may seem like a brave new world, technology will only serve to turn us into turnips. I need to buy a pair of sneakers and start jogging :D

The Facebook complex

2010-02-03T22:20:00.002+02:00

The cross-over from analogue to digital is a challenge for everyone. Mostly so for people whose interaction with Internet is profuse but whose understanding of the mechanisms behind is small. Think about this: they say in 2015 coding will be the new literacy. You will HAVE to be able to become code literate if only to manage your blog the way you want it.
Until then though people interact with internet via dashboards and interfaces without any knowledge of what goes on behind. And this creates something I called the facebook complex - meaning the belief that smooth interfaces and easy navigation are instant and accessible to everyone and every online project developed. The way this works is that people become immersed in a fully functional interface like that of a social network when the latter is at its peak: the more effective and perfected the interface is, the more likely it is to attract users. so the largest number of people will have seen a site at its best, but at its beta beta 16.0 version. which results in one thing: everyone believes that everything else should work as smoothly and as perfectly as their social networking site.
But nobody seems to think of how long it takes before you get to that beta beta 16.0 version and the expectation is for anything new to work from the beginning like THAT.
with what I do now, this is omnipresent. projects need to be delivered fast but they need to have all the community functionalities of a long-established content site. How hard can it be to connect a site to Facebook without retyping in your password? How hard can it be to save a sequence of films in a preset order over and over again and show them in a gallery? Surely this must take minutes to do :D
The sad part is that the coding side cannot win this one: people will always expect more faster and better. Asking for more time will not work online where millions of people may be doing exactly what you do at the same time and have it ready earlier.
to beat the FB complex, it's not the sufferers who need to change. it's the people doing the stuff behind the interface

End 2009 - personal

2010-01-24T19:25:00.001+02:00

because they asked me to...

Vienna 2009

View more presentations from Bogdana.

Social media REALLY breaks into mainstream

2010-01-17T20:10:00.002+02:00

I wonder if there is anyone out there who still argues that social networks are not mainstream. If there is, tonight's news report on national broadcaster TVR 1 should make up their minds that they are.
Tonight, the Romanian PBS, the local equivalent of BBC, has, for the first time to my knowledge, showed actual images/screen captures of Facebook. This was not in some niche, middle of the night teenie show, but in the main news show at 8 pm, as part of an ongoing investigation in the dealings of some local crook.
So, if TVR 1 thinks that research on FB is something that is relevant to be shown to 22 million people and also make assertions using the photos and status updates of a FB account, do we still think that social networks are not relevant? Do we also still think that what we post there is of no consequence?
Serious food for thought...

The joke that good food becomes in times of crisis

2010-01-15T21:48:00.004+02:00

I live next to a McD restaurant and sometimes at night when I cannot sleep, I drop by to grab some fries which are my overt food sin. Lately I have been unable to get my fries in less than 15 minutes because the queues at the drive in are humongous. In the restaurant too. That's because after hitting the neighborhood with 2 for 10 lei offer (that's approx 2.5 euros for 2 burgers) McD has literally stolen the market with full Menus for just 10 lei.

As you know, Romania is in deep financial crisis. So deep the government is scrambling to raise taxes from anywhere they can to keep up the country. This affects McD in two ways, firstly because you'd expect people to not go to McD's which, a while back was a neat place to take your family for a celebratory Sunday. And second, because the government also decided to tax fast foods under the hypocritical excuse that Romanians are getting fat. Yeah, it's a crisis dumbasses: we're definitely NOT getting fat.

At any rate, McD's has once more proven its marketing acumen by turning the situation around with the two hit offers. They are positioned as "a full meal for only 10 lei" so basically what they are doing is saying that you can replace one of your daily meals with a McD Menu for a meanial price. And it worked. First, people assumed that they will beat the crisis if they eat this cheap cheap fast food. Second, people will get offended if the government taxes this cheap cheap means and makes it less available. Good job McD!

What is exceptionally striking about this also is how fast McD dropped the Health card which they played on all through 2008 before September. Gone are the huge OOH posters with fresh salad. McDs does TV now with "eat all you need for 10 lei" messages. Nobody's asking nutritionists anymore: because if we did they would tell us to eat healthy fresh food, which costs more than 10 lei to make. The age of the probiotic is dead. When the choice is something to eat versus nothing to eat, you go for something. It really does not matter if it's actual ...well, food.

image from here. Thank you.

Are we all trolls?

2010-01-15T04:51:00.003+02:00

Two striking comments in one day and maybe I see a pattern: first a client of mine admits that most of the newsletters he sends get opened and read ONLY because the recipients want to see if they can find something wrong to bitch about. Second, Tolo says in a post "it's a miracle to get praised online". And finally, the nagging feeling that most of my clients refuse blog exposure not because blogger are not controllable but because bloggers seldom bother to say anything remotely nice even when the case is for niceness.
Truth of the matter is in Romania bashing everything equals ratings. And you see it with reviews people post: we must be a singular nation because when we review something, anything, we never ever have something good to say. It's always crap and bad and under expectations.
The most celebrated commentators in Romania have made their fame on being bastards to one and all. Even when there is nothing bad to be said, we spin it so that something bad comes out of it. We are always out to get someone, the government, the MAN, the competition.
Online it works mostly the same: you trash everyone and everyone comments and trashes you back and you're famous. The louder and dirtier your mouth is the more likely you are to get noticed. Tweets saying something nasty are 80% more likely to get responded to. We like to get into arguments. Compare this to the fact that most tweets that get retweeted are positive facts. We are unable to sustain a positive POV, we simply post it on and forget about it. It's the trash we like to interact with.
There are TV stations in this country which have built a show grid on trashing everything. And we all watch and we all interact. Trolling as a national denominator. Ironic in a country which was said to be full of welcoming people.

Why print should/will be niche...but also decent digital content

2010-01-13T08:51:00.005+02:00

There is this huge debate about the death of print and how the reasons are a combo of financial crisis and Internet, which is faster and cheaper and more accessible to everyone and more eco-friendly. Most of these arguments are true: newspapers are dying because there is a financial crisis and reading news is not a commodity, it's a luxury. Plus most newspapers are crap anyway, so in a time of crisis you refuse to buy crap luxury (please note that in times of affluence you will spend a bucketload of money on expensive shit, and by shit I mean actual bad products not "stuff"). In addition to this Internet is cheaper, meaning free and more readily accessible now that a lot of people are connecting. Of course there is the eco-crap, where print destroys the rain forest and therefore Internet is better because it only eats up electricity :D.

What we fail to realize is that there is a glitch in human nature which newspapers have not caught on, or are ignoring because it does not say flattering things about who we are as beings. And this may be their salvation or final blow.

First, let us agree that if newspapers are shit so is most of the stuff you read on the Internet. Frankly, I find no qualitative incentive to search info online, other than it's faster and more. But these have nothing to do with quality of content.
And now the knock-out realization: people enjoy reading shit. Most people, when given the choice will go for crap content, easily palatable and requiring next to no involvement other than monkey laugh. Think about it: what is the number one viral this month? - probably a cute kitty falling out of bed or some baby gurgling. Which newspapers are doing the best: tabloids. We do not search for quality content. Online or offline.
And this is where things get interesting: there is only a handful of people interested in decent content. They are the only ones willing to pay for what they get, good content. They are the ones who will continue to buy newspapers IF newspapers provide EXCEPTIONAL content [which cannot be found online]. I don't think the print edition of The Economist will die. Nor should the NYT. I think that print tabloids will eventually die, not because they are shit but because they are less shit than what can be found online and they cost money.
So, truth of the matter is print needs to buck up and get exceptional if it plans to survive. But it will NEVER preserve the volume it had 2 years ago. And yet, print should not worry. Exceptional content online will also be niche. So there's a sort of divine retribution in that :D

[specific to Romania, Cotidianul - one of the, say, progressive quality dailies succumbed for two simple reasons: it invested like it was going to be mass when it should have stayed niche and also, by the final months, it had gotten so downright bad and self sufficient that no one bother to buy anymore. Meanwhile, The Economist and Forbes are not doing so bad here :D]

Thanks here for this wonderful image

Abusing CRMs

2010-01-08T22:44:00.004+02:00

A while back I was excitedly posting about how easy it was to order ebooks from bn.com and how I was looking forward to the nook. I also ordered one. True, I had misled the company because I am not physically located in the US, and gave a random US address for ...well, some purpose I am unaware of, because I am only getting ebooks and e-invoices. But, naturally, I thought procedures are dumb, and they are implemented because some asshole from accounting wants them so, and, of course, if they see I can pay, they will not bother to ask questions.
And sure enough, bn.com did not. For the first 6 books I ordered, payment and download went smoothly, so much so that I was eagerly awaiting the delivery of my nook.
Now, this post is not about how for some stupid reason, after allowing me to purchase more than 6 e-books, they now have stopped all purchases from my account but rather about the stupidity on which bn.com's CRM system works. Because, lo and behold, although I am forbidden from buying from them, I keep getting, with insane regularity, the advertising newsletters informing me of the latest discounts on e-books and, now, the nook.
Why? Seriously, why bother to make up a system that keeps in touch with your customers and NOT connect it with the system that keeps track of who you choose to oust from your lists. My account has been discontinued, and yet I keep getting prodded to buy. I am at the same time enticed to and shunned from the things I want. They want to advertise to me but they will not sell to me. In the words of the immortal someone "WTF?!"
I understand that e-CRM is a brave new world. That it's easier to make up some stupid newsletter that goes out automatically and fills itself up from rss or product updates. But if you pretend you care, then you should have the decency to make sure that the people who you've slapped across the wrist, do not get your sugared-up advertising messages later on. It's like the bank clerk being rude and then asking you if you'd like to add some product to your portfolio.
CRM is a holistic process. It connects all parts of your operation together. ALL OF THEM.
So, on a personal note: bn.com you are officially spam for me, since you refuse my business but want to feed me your ad messages nonetheless.
[very annoyed me]

reading, e-readers and books

2010-01-04T20:45:00.004+02:00

I like books. I like owning them, buying them, signing them with my initials, smelling them when they are brand new, arranging them by size, straightening their pages. On the other hand I HATE having to borrow my books, not getting them back in time when I do, seeing them messed up by other people, seeing them misunderstood by other people. I love the idea of books and the objects as such.
So, I am writing this as a way to rationalize my unexplained desire to get an e-reader and the ever larger number of books I read in digital format. While thinking about it, some of the reasons that come to mind are intrinsically related to the digital space:
1. Speed of procurement: ebooks you can get at the wink of an eye and this means that necessary information is made available immediately
2. Convenient format: ebooks can be read an any computer or handheld device and if you place them somewhere handy online you can access them from anywhere plus if you have limited storage space (physical I mean) like I do, this makes it easier to store.
3. Easy to share: by no means trying to suggest infringement on copyrights, I think that ebooks are an easier form of disseminating content you like even if it is simply by print screening some passages
4. The fun reading utensil which is the e-reader: this I have found to be exceptionally girlie for a reason but I find the object - the e-reader as such - particularly fun to carry and hold and also somewhat of a status marker, like saying I am a child of the digital age
5. Immediacy of gratification: this is connected with my post a while back on feeling deprived of access to things that interest me NOW. With ebooks, the wait between the moment book comes out and the moment you get it is smaller. Plus I think that in the near future ebooks will come out simultaneously to paperbacks.
6. Convergence of media: whether we like it or not, the digital space and technology have changed the way we physically interact with our environment. I have all but lost the habit of writing by hand (just as a while back I realized that using a fountain pen seemed tedious because I had been using a ball pen all my life) since I type most everything and similarly I am finding reading on non-electronic media somewhat awkward. I cannot explain this and I understand it makes little sense physiologically speaking but it is not far from the truth.

Now, as for e-readers: The Economist has a brilliant piece on what technology they use - (unfortunately I could not find this online, it was part of a technology supplement published in December 2009; I did find a small opinion on this here ) and to make matters even more exciting it seems Apple's tablet has been sped up to design due to the particular rise in ebook consumption as it is, aside from other uses, best suited to function as an ereader also. To me the key issue is not, as discussed previously here, how to include non-content related stuff within the text, but rather how to make a reader that requires little energy to operate, is compatible with other devices such as phones or laptops and MOST IMPORTANTLY where to draw the line at what an e-reader should do. Because if it plays videos, searches the web and displays content, it's a laptop :D

This is, most assuredly, to be continued.
image via

Bet your entire money on Internet?

2009-12-27T22:27:00.005+02:00

2009 has been a year when on several occasions I have had to look people in the eye and say, yes, we can do this without being 100% certain we could. It was also the year when, leaving behind the sweet non-committal years of strategic planning, I have had to put a price on what I believed to work or not.

Scamp places planners last on the list of people who should be asked to comment or have a say in the final form of a TVC (read here), and, somehow, he may be right because, unless the kind of planner you are makes you take responsibility for your recommendations, sometimes the environment can release you from the burden of a final decision.
Not so in 2009, when, after being asked how much I was willing to pay if my agency screwed up a project, I again found myself in a situation where the full burden of a budget was placed on one thing alone. In December 2009 I was asked if I thought replacing the full offline budget (non-trade) of an FMCG brand with online activities was going to increase its brand awareness and brand profile sufficiently to warrant a volume increase. In a crisis year.
I said yes and I am confident that we can make it happen BUT I find myself aware of the scarcity of tools at my disposal to give me the confidence I had offline that my answer was not hasty.
Think of these:
First, we cannot/will not/ have not measure[d] the impact of online over brand. Second, we have approximate tools to recommend media planning and split of budgets according to website clusters. Third, we are fully unequipped to complete the conversion funnel online for anything other than items which can be sold online. Fourth, we cannot measure something that has become more than 50% of the online time of users: social media. Fifth, most relevant social media channels are NOT monitored in Romania. Sixth, we are slowly but surely losing the credibility battle online now that concepts such as branded content, brand utility or brand spaces have but been buried by the financial crisis.
So, do I feel confident? No. Do I think I have my work cut out for me in 2010. Hell yeah! :D

A question of space on the www

2009-12-27T22:26:00.002+02:00

A while back I spoke at Marketing Arena about the idea of Noise Brands: short-term, opportunistic brands built, Japanese style, on whatever is trendy at the moment. My idea did not catch with the audience but another one involving e-books, e-readers and the ability to place ads and comments into e-books seemed more convincing.

Recently I have been thinking about where technology is taking us, and also how, as human beings operating in given spaces, we are able to cope with this.
Consider my premises, which are simple and straight-forward: we used to operate within large expanses of space (we see ads in OOH format, we build mental images of brands based on imagery spilled out on planes and huge frontispieces), we are used to receiving information on uni-vocal channels, (images from TV, words from written pages without any other con-textual information, teletext never really caught on, nor did in-built multi-screen viewing). And then along comes the www and we have to start dealing with smaller screens, more than one type of information per screen, changing information per reload, multi windows etc etc. This is confusing and unexpected for the human brain. My mother is unable to follow the scroll bar on the computer screen with a mouse and she cannot grasp the concept of windows. She also does not see, literally, any of the banners in any Internet page she opens for a very simple reason: she is looking for text because, to her, the Internet is... a bigger book. Hence she is "blind" to any non-textual content displayed.
And now, my question is as follows: is the technology supporting the Internet, with its limited spacial display capabilities, able to support the huge amount of information we are trying to place on it? The iPhone is a hit because it makes browsing easy: meaning its lets the user slide seamlessly among dozens of pages of information and mind you, that is NOT a small screen for a phone.
Why did I start with the e-book? Because I wonder - what with e-reading becoming the new hit and the Apple tablet on the way (fingers crossed) - if we are not trying to cram too much into a simple act already. With Google's visual search, live search and word tagging apps e-texts can virtually become an exploded wikipedia, with EVERY word operating as a pretext for extra information. This information can be referential or ad-driven. And then it will be up to the user to fight the flood.
And I hope also up to the advertisers to not abuse the technological opportunities.

... (3)

2009-12-25T21:35:00.002+02:00

Third year in a row with the resolutions already and, this year, for better planning, I am writing them ahead of time.

But first, a look back at what was planned for this year and what went down:
"So, for 2009 I am being more specific...a lot more. Here goes:
1. Get a second tattoo, my beagle and spotless bathroom tiling
2. Spend at least one week every quarter in another country (a new one)
3. Make a meaningful commitment to a person: friend, lover, pen pal, hobby partner, whatever.
4. Create a time-plan for my mom and dad (moving, new house, retirement)
5. Keep the business afloat.
6. Re-cultivate my planning roots.
7. Work out a solution for my blog/s – how many, in what language, what for.
8. Learn or teach myself something new ( and be good at it)"

So, how did I do against my 8 resolutions? Well, I have a new tattoo (and just so that I don't embarrass myself every time I get asked, it is a line from ee cummings' poem here) and my bathroom is spotless in new white and lilac tiling. I have spent more than a week per quarter in a country which is not Romania but not really different all the time (Barcelona and Madrid count as the same, so do Rome and Ventimiglia, Nice and Avignon and have successfully returned to my beloved London). I think I have kept the business more than afloat, with 2009 numbers doing better than expected (we rocked a 15% PM in crisis year, yeah baby!) and have decided to only keep this blog, make it in English and not give a crap about the people who dislike it. Things I have only partly done is spend more time with my mom and dad but I have managed to give my dad his most desired gift, a new car he can love and also, if you do not count business-plan-making a new thing, maybe number 8 is not totally completed as well. Unfortunately I have failed bitterly at getting a beagle and have completely given up that plan altogether. All in all, not a bad count.

And now for 2010, under the same brief, specific and measurable:
1. Stay committed to my blog and make it smart and interesting.
2. Write a book and refurbish my kitchen.
3. Grow the business by at least 20%.
4. Teach myself another foreign language and take up a sport and keep at it.
5. Visit at least one different city every two months.
6. Make that retirement plan for mom and dad already!
8. Do something silly and unplanned for every month
9. Start something which will enable me to work for me.
10. .... and something less specific about falling in love, happiness and silly smiles while thinking of that special person :D

Okay, so that should do it... Thanks all who've stuck with this blog throughout its latest rounds of uninspiredness and uncertainty and also to those who've stuck with me throughout my recent months of being tired, irrationally pissed off most times and less of the person I should have been. I am learning things and while doing so I sometimes am not my most gracious self.

Happy 2010 to all!

Google goggles - visual search is here

2009-12-08T09:17:00.000+02:00

hey hey heeeey

Via

Prettiest thing I got lately

2009-12-05T12:19:00.003+02:00

Lovely bag, from lovely young lady with lovely little site: Gourmandise :D

Marketing Arena presentation

2009-12-05T12:17:00.002+02:00

Ma 2009

View more presentations from Bogdana.

ON randomness

2009-11-16T22:17:00.003+02:00

I am again speaking at Marketing Arena in less than three days. And, as always, I am paired up with a bunch of creative people which lessens my chances of ever making an impression.

So this year (suspense!!) .... I am going with the same recipe: logical deductions from existing data. Which usually gets me in the exact same place as last year - someone from the jury stands up and says, yeah but somebody is already doing this. [Of course, the assumption behind the thinking there is that we will come up with fully genius, completely innovative stuff :D which is always enough to freeze your brain for almost two weeks before the actual event...]
but this year I think I might have something good... and I have also thought of a smart way to present it and am also leveraging the risk of someone saying, yeah been there done that, by actually making it clear that some really smart people are doing that already. It's on using randomness in marketing.

Stay tuned for presentation on the blog but also, you might want to come by because it will be fun :D

Several reasons this has been quiet for a while...

2009-11-15T17:55:00.002+02:00

On political communication in Romania

2009-11-04T21:46:00.002+02:00

I am having loads of fun these days having stumbled on a couple of heated debates between people involved in working on political communication online. Most of them always track back to the Obama campaign in explaining why they are suggesting so many "innovative" tools to their respective candidates.
I remain puzzled for mainly two reasons:
1. It was my understanding that the major success for Obama via social/online media was NOT awareness but money - as it is normal online, where contributions are made via online payment tools, can be more easily tracked and more easily followed-up on. Plus awareness in a U.S. campaign is mainly achieved through canvassing and public shows as the nation is more of a "let's go and see the man" than a "let's watch TV and see the man" type. So, when using online Obama was less about awareness and trust and more about money.
[think about it, why bother with all those great speeches if online had been his main focus?:D]
2. It was also my understanding that online was used to obtain more specific information on undecided households and their direct permission to receive canvassing teams to get them to switch.

So basically, Obama did not use online for awareness but rather for persuasion, leads and closing. Weirdly enough (wink wink) this is exactly what online is good for.

So, what puzzles me is this:
- in Romania elections are swayed by semi urban and rural people who are less likely to miss elections because of bad weather [or good weather driving them to the closest mountain resort.]
- in Romania there is no system of online contributions for campaigns and payment tools are still primitive and more likely to be available to a small urban high education crowd
- in Romania there is no system of mapping undecided households based on IP or google maps or anything like that
- in Romania, by all logical deduction, Internet users are either:
a) smart enough to know better - forum goers, site readers and blogs and the such
b) stupid enough to not know better - forum trolls, social network afficionados and the such
c) young enough to not be able to (pay, vote) - social networks, video sharing sites etc
d) young enough to not care (ab politics, ab voting) - idem

So why are we constantly referencing Obama as a case study? We are unable to get people to contribute, we are unable to get their info to map out the country, we are unable to track their progress from undecided to voters, we are unable to make them care. The latter obviously has nothing to do with the tools of Internet but rather with the fact that online is a great "de-frauder" - meaning a medium where frauds are easily spotted and crucified. But the former are, I think, facts.

Somehow, I feel online is once more being used for insane "viral" tactics like attack TVCs which cannot be aired, games, pointless social media accounts. For the sake of this country, though, I hope people will not give their vote based on fun-ness.

Again the thrills of Marketing Arena

2009-11-04T21:27:00.002+02:00

Remember last year? Marketing Arena and how you did help but we did not win because someone had an idea involving a hole? I mean come ooon!

Here I am again, again having to speak at MA and again, not really brimming with ideas. I thought of something and then realized the only reason I was thinking about it was that I had seen it done.
Plus, the organizers are asking me to write something worth placing in a banner [of course if you take the view that banners suck, then I don't have to try really hard... but I, unfortunately, believe that banners, when well made, work]
So now I have two challenges: make a presentation that will impress the audience AAAND get clicks...

bof. help. seriously

Performance based agency remuneration

2009-11-04T21:14:00.002+02:00

"WTF?" you ask yourself.
Well, it's something ad agencies have been dreading for a long time and which is slowly but indomitably creeping its way up into our lives. And the ultimate proof of this "nemesis" is the jaw-dropping question I got from a client in a pitch. He asked me straight out "if you fuck up majorly, how much would you be willing to pay for it?"... fun, huh?
I initially thought, is he seriously asking me how much? Maybe he means will we feel bad? Are we willing to gather and take some criticism in a workshop? But no, the question he was asking me referred specifically to amounts of money we would be willing to pay back based on a clear evaluation of the damage our actions might create.
Agencies are not used to this. Actually we are seldom used to being evaluated on results alone - sales results that is. We like to make evaluation a combo of brand index, agency relationship, sales, reputation etc etc. Eventually, results, financial, hard-core are not really a major part of the evaluation process. And, get this, agencies only do evaluations to get bonuses. NOT to get penalized.
But with the crisis and with measurable Internet, the game is changing. Once you can evaluate your objectives clearly and numerically, you can also evaluate the cost per new customer and the money you are losing your client. So, by all accounts the client should be entitled to ask you to pay up.
And obviously there is the other view: you did do work. You do have to pay the people who did the work. You have to maintain revenue. Even if you screwed up, some work was put in the process, so its really confusing. Should you have done this work for free? If you make a sweater and nobody likes it, should you not pay the people who made the wool and the needles and who chose the pattern?

What would you have said, if someone has asked you "if you screw up my project, how much are you willing to pay me back?"

If I could make myself

2009-10-31T22:49:00.003+02:00

I would be a traveler like him, I'd have the talented hands and sensitivity to the good things in like of a wonderful woman like her, I'd give myself a great curious mind like him, and add in touch of brilliance like his, and I would want to also be a seeker like her.
And obviously, I'd have a Mac. :P

Is advertising killing the concept of happiness?

2009-10-27T09:59:00.002+02:00

Lately I have been talking to a lot of my friends about what being happy means. Somehow I feel that we are in the middle of a crisis of understanding what happiness really is and I have been, on occasion, wondering if advertising has something to do with this.
Think about it: advertising is built on the logical assumption that you need to create a need for something and instill the idea that satisfying that need is going to make you happy. Most ads actually work like that: you are having an issue and the product comes in a solves it and then you are happy.
But truth be told most of these problems are not real and by consequence the solution provides only temporary satisfaction because the next ad will only create a new desire to be satisfied. And also, truth be told, this is what keeps the market economy going so it's not all bad.
What I am concerned with is with the fact that we seem more and more unable to specifically define what happiness is because we have developed priorities which sometimes do not relate to who we really are. We are cultural beings and thus respond to cultural stimuli. Advertising is becoming a huge part of culture so it is generating a lot of the stimuli we respond to (as opposed to a while back when the only stimuli were basic human needs and stuff you read in books) and which mess up our radar of what we are really looking for.

Think about it: when was the one time you were you really happy? and why?

How to confuse someone

2009-10-25T11:10:00.002+02:00

make them watch this first

and then take them to watch this

:D

Interestingness in marketing is dead

2009-10-24T22:23:00.002+03:00

well, no, not really. Just thought making the title more interesting would get more people reading :D.
But seriously, remember the good old times when internet was just beginning and the marketing of things online was all about new things and we had just realized that we were no longer competing with stupid TV content but with stupid youtube content?
Those were the days. Because while competing with TV content has proven somewhat of a smaller challenge - okay, ads are only 30 seconds so it's kindof hard to fight motion pictures but some ads out there really kick some motion pictures' butt.
It turns out that being interesting these days is becoming more and more of an impossible task. Basically because of "stupid" internet things. And it's not just that people who post things online are sooo much better at making more interestingness than brands. Actually, they are not, mostly. Mostly it's just silly antics and sexy stuff. And in a one to one contest brands would definitely kick these people's butt in quality and idea and all. So it's not about interestingness per se, but rather about the amount of time one is able and willing to devote to any kind of interesting thing.
Think about it: however cool and amazing one website might be you go back how many times? If you are in any way a real net surfer, it takes less than 10 minutes to stumble onto something equally interesting. I mean look at people who tweet about stuff as opposed to themselves: you can have up to 100 tweets daily about interesting things from all over.
Interestingness is no longer the issue. Lasting power is.
So, what can brands do?
Well, for one they can be consistently interesting, like all the time. But that's hard and if you think about it, almost impossible because people make brands interesting and people change. Your start copywriter gets a baby and no sleep and down goes the quality of your copy. Or your marcom manager decides he wants to become an entrepreneur and you're left with the stupid executive manager. So consistency in interestingness is almost untouchable (and consider global brands...)
They could also focus less on achieving interestingness at any cost and more on making sure that they provide users with more reasons to create interestingness themselves. I truly believe that crowd sourcing for interestingness is the next frontier for brands. And by that I don't mean give them TV ad cuts to make their own video but create environments for them to do things with your brand universe. Not sure where to go with this thought but seemed like a good idea at the time...

I am 30 and they make no advertising for me

2009-10-24T22:02:00.003+03:00

I am 30. Jesus, this is even more distressing than I thought, saying it on the blog!! But I am, and somehow I feel that in this country I have been pushed into a demographic deadend. I am 30 and unmarried and have not definite plans to start a family - with kids and all that - soon and I also do not plan to stay in the same job forever and also do not think changing my furniture every year is trivial and lacking in financial common sense. I travel and like doing it and do not like to relate to my mom or my potential mother in law when i choose my detergent. I took out a loan to fund my one year abroad not to buy a flat.
My problem is that, although I am financially sound and interesting as a purchaser of things, nobody seems to give a damn about me. There is no advertising that targets me... in order to feel connected to the ads on TV, I should be married by this age, with a kid and a husband that likes sandwiches with either cheese or pate. I should do a bunch of laundry everyday and get love from my family because I use the right kind of softener.
OR, if I refute my age and assume I am still in the 20yo demographic, then I should want to download silly ringtones, pick up people on FB and eat loads and loads of chocolate or skateboard.
I do not exist as a target although I am probably the most likely to spend, uncontrollably and a lot. But I do not exist for two reasons: 1, because I am not statistically relevant as research only focuses on the golden mean, and 2, because I am not predictable, and, as we all know, advertising works with the mass and with the predictable. And it's not really even advertising's fault, because businesses need to have 5 year projections and someone whose career outlook is not predictable cannot function as a projectable source of income.
So, although I make more money than my mom and dad, more than my married friends and spend it all on me and my house, I do not count for the very industry I work in. Most websites are not for me but for 20 yos. Because they are future income. But I am not, because in the future when they will be able to spend I will be too old, or so I assume the thinking goes. So I am invisible.
Being 30 sucks... from a demographic point of view that is :D

Strategic planning in Romania - where to?

2009-10-07T23:29:00.003+03:00

I have become very separated from planning in the past year because it seems managing a company is not a part time job :D But a recent meeting with some colleagues who are still doing planning as a first job reminded me of the good times and how we felt that planning could save the world.
Interestingly enough these days there is little talk about planning in Romania for obvious reasons:
- the crisis forbids development of the community of planners, it's hard to hire someone still considered a nice-to-have
- there is not enough know-how pouring in because people are stuck on day to day issues
- the former strong planning group is now focused on other things
This is not okay since planning is meant to help especially at times like these when the industry is at a loss. So, the opinion piece Stefan Stroe writes makes a lot of sense. While I do not empathize with all his points, I respect the insight behind: this is a time when planning should show what it's made of. And it is not. What are we going to do about this?

His full presentation below

Manifest pentru strategic planningul romanesc: Incotro ne indreptam?

View more presentations from Stefan Stroe.

How will we handle it when HI5 becomes mainstream?

2009-10-07T22:45:00.002+03:00

There is an interesting "snobbery" being perpetuated in the marketing industry in Romania. We have two channels of communication which are being programatically ignored by most advertisers and most agencies: HI5 and OTV (local tabloid channel with huge audience). HI5 is, by all accounts, the largest online community in the country. Yet because people choose to feature silly images of themselves, which do no resemble the hygienic families in our ads, HI5 is deemed off-limits for any self respecting brand.
Now, HI5 is finally being monitored by the official meter in Romania - SATI - and the first reactions (on Twitter) are telltale: people are scared. We feel invaded by a world we feel alien and we resent the attempt by this "outsider" to fall within the limits of our prejudices. From now on there will be no rational reason to reject HI5. When monitored reach is huge brand compatibility is hard to invoke. So HI5 has made a clear step towards credibility.
Yet the questions remains: how will brands navigate this world they have nothing in common with? We make advertising for perfect human beings, for picture-perfect families and sometimes for funny people. But we have never made communication for people who do not relate to Grey's Anatomy, who prefer cheap novellas and listen to manele (local oriental-like music) on a daily basis. We do not know how to communicate with people who do not like Discovery. The edgiest we have ever gone is a tele-novella featuring gypsies on a national channel. But when edgy for us is premium for them, what will we do?

1. My first guess is that some extensive research should be done. On more than the "protected" demographic of Bucharest, where even the back of the neighborhood boyz are mainstream material. We need to understand what we are dealing with in point of cultural references and align our own with the ones of our target.

2. Second we need to understand that communicating for this target is not beneath us, that it does not make us worse people BUT rather it makes us better professionals.

3. And finally, we must internalize the idea that communication can reflect OR inspire and we can either give them what they know or show them something else they might like and we can live with.

I have a feeling of unease writing this, since I use "them" as a term of alterity, as if this target is somehow alien to what is mainstream and common. In the statistics of things though, and SATI will prove it, it seems that we are "them" and they are the norm.

Geek cool

2009-10-03T16:30:00.003+03:00

Technology changes a lot and it is mostly expected to change the way we perform some strenuous or undesired tasks. Initially, computers were developed to do things human were too slow or to annoyed at doing because computers were able to do repetitive work without breaking down and screwing up. With the rise of computers a special community of people was born, those who could "talk" computer-talk, coders and tech specialists, who, because of their propensity towards long-nights in front of the computer, some lack of social life and the habit of speaking in highly specialized lingo became to be known as nerds or geeks. Interestingly enough, the term is a pejorative one as shown by the most common definitions that google provides.
BUT, the immersion of easy to use, shareable web 2.0 type of technologies into mass culture has managed to create a shift in perceptions and give rise to something resembling geek coolness. The power of being able to control the very essence of something that has come to be more a part of our everyday lives than TV - Internet, makes all this formerly-ignored community highly attractive from a number of points of view:
1. They can interact and work with the Internet
2. They may become very rich if they come up with something truly ingenious (witness the Google guys, Facebook creators etc)
3. They have developed a type of fashion that seems to catch on (message Tshirts, baggy trousers with loads of pockets) witness the google search
4. There is a big chance that infusing some geekiness will generate higher performance - as discussed in this Wired article
What makes this community so attractive is also its unwillingness to change and to become more like everyone else, thus displaying a form of rebellion which in itself is commendable. A questions remains though: this may be beneficial for the technology, but is it helping the rest? I work with "geeks" on a daily basis and so does anyone who has an IT department, and it seems that there is still a divide between the expectations of the two sides. Somehow both sides need to come to terms with the special needs of the other. And, however cool geek may be, I fear this process still needs to happen two ways, not just one :D

On a completely different note

2009-10-02T09:14:00.002+03:00

In a world far far away people running a city think about using new technologies to improve the lives of their dwellers. Wonderful project from San Francisco authorities, a website gathering a variety of apps to help users with life in the city [details here]

Some of the apps include:

Crimespotting – San Francisco Crimespotting is an interactive map of crimes in San Francisco and a tool for understanding crime in cities.

EveryBlock – EveryBlock publishes a news feed for every city block in San Francisco. Enter your street address, neighborhood or ZIP code, and the site shows you recent nearby mainstream/blog news coverage, police calls, building permits, restaurant inspections and much more — updated throughout the day, every day.

CleanScores – CleanScores is bringing you the health inspection scores of restaurants around San Francisco.
EcoFinder – EcoFinder for iPhone and iPod Touch helps you find out where to recycle and properly dispose of just about everything. You select the material you need to recycle or dispose of, and the EcoFinder will show you the relevant businesses and services closest to you.

Routesy San Francisco – Routesy will help you find your way around the Bay Area’s top transit systems — San Francisco Muni and BART — in real time. Simply choose the line you want to ride, and Routesy will show you the closest stop or station, along with real-time prediction data to make sure you make it on time.

One should not look for excuses for one's country

2009-10-01T09:11:00.003+03:00

I don't usually write about social and political stuff because I try to keep this as much a reflection of what I am doing professionally as possible. However, these days I cannot help noticing how deranged this country of ours is. It may be that I have developed a form of oversensitivity to real circumstances what with spending most of my waking hours surfing the Net to read about cool stuff, but somehow thing are amiss with Romania and I don' understand why.

If I was a comedian I would take solace in realizing that stupidity has an in-built comic element if you are not personally touched. Witness these...

1. Sector 1 City Hall is trying to be inclusive and allowing flat dwellers to vote for the color of the paint that is to be used on their building. Large billboards show pics of what the building will look like with the two coats of paint and you are invited to vote. The problem is the paint is the same color. Brown. Light brown or dark brown. Virtually undifferentiated. And furthermore, eventually the building gets painted in....green.
I am hoping this is a result of democracy and of people choosing neither light nor dark brown. And I am looking at the comic part of it.

2. The city reeks because of the uncollected garbage. And this morning I found what they came up with to fix this. No, it's not collecting the garbage: it's spraying the sidewalks with fragrance water. So now everything smells like dishwater..... and uncollected garbage.

3. Street cleaners: their job description includes the necessity of keeping things CLEAN. But they are picked from among the most unclean people possible (of course because no clean person would do the job) and they are not trained so if you watch them sweep, it's painful to see how much dirt they actually leave behind.

4. We are in deep deep financial crisis. So deep, jobbing websites only search for top management because all other positions are being made redundant. And yet the only thing the government worries about is elections and how to rig them. They do so publicly. They do so with such disregard to what we care about that it makes me sick.

I am tired of the stupidity and lack of decency in this country of ours. I am tired and disappointed and I would leave tomorrow given the chance, with one purpose only: to drag my parents out of here too.

Creativity

2009-09-27T16:48:00.001+03:00

This is something to think about. Hint: it has to do with the kind of education we give ourselves and our kids

"NASA did a long-term study decades ago where they tested a group of Kindergarteners on creative problem solving. 95% scored in the highest quadrant. Then they came back and did the same test every year with the same kids all the way through high school. By the time these kids graduated only roughly 5 percent still scored as highly-creative problem solvers..."

From here

A culture of "making of"

2009-09-27T00:43:00.003+03:00

I spent some time watching the music+visuals of the various artists under AVmotional and one in particular got me thinking about the importance of the "making of".

But first things first, without any background I tend to credit MTV for the concept of "making of" simply because that's where we all started going behind the scenes of videos and what not. The idea of "making of" created the first real bridge between artefact - which was the musical or in any way artistic work, and the public. You could see how things were made and that created a form of intimacy with the artist. It also made the whole process more exciting because you got the see the workings behind the final result and sometimes even facets of that work you had not considered. It gave you a different perspective.

Somehow as time passed by "making of"s became as important as the product itself and with Internet I tend to think that the Making of is just as important as the work itself. Witness the Sony Bravia campaign where the first commercial was followed up by a teasing of the making of the second commercial. Also think of most of the eepybird experiments which are always presented in conjunction with the "making of'. The same works for Post-It experiments done by the same team. And of course, now we have "How it's made" on Discovery/Science.
In all instances the way the thing was made is just as interesting as the things itself. The making of becomes ... well, a thing in itself.

[PS: that's what you get from watching modern art projections all evening...]

Map of Twitter users in Romania

2009-09-25T22:22:00.002+03:00

Not sure how accurate it is but I think it's a great idea.
Check it here
via Mishu

Of all the places to use the computer...

2009-09-25T22:13:00.003+03:00

A while back I saw an insightful print from Vodafone UK with the headline "LOOSURFING". This got me thinking to the various places I have used to connect to the Internet. With some blushing I thought I'd make a list. I surf:
- while in the bathtub
- on the loo
- while I cook breakfast (well actually, then I watch TED conferences)
- in bed
- on the floor
- in the airport toilet
- in hotel lobbies
- hanging from the corner of a balcony to catch a free wifi
- on the sidewalk in front of starbucks
- in the mall loo
- in the cinema
...

Advertising yourself

2009-09-25T21:49:00.003+03:00

Online is a lot about personal branding. Bloggers are essentially small brands and they make money like small brands, by co-marketing with bigger ones. So promoting oneself is actually business as usual - you do it via your social media accounts, through the blog, through images you upload.
But recently, one marketing manager chose to promote herself with the classical means of offline advertising: she needed a job and so she booked a huge mesh prism in downtown Bucharest which sent you to a website. They both said the same thing: "17 years of experience, 4 multinational companies, 9 brands introduced: Marketing Director Seeking Employment".

The initiative created a storm online with people speculating that it was: a) a hoax b) real c) a great guerilla campaign by a new jobbing service.Everyone was mesmerized by this, either because it was so daring and so crazy, or because it was so desperate and crazy. Eventually, pretty much everyone got convinced it was real (the person exists, people have worked with her).

But the question remains: WOULD YOU HIRE CARMEN?

There is always two sides to advertising and we never seem to understand which is the one that matters most, or that makes the difference. We have awareness, everyone is talking about Carmen and then we have affinity, the right people are saying the right thing about Carmen. Which is more important?
Awareness was achieved in this case: she got people talking. A lot. Mostly that she must be desperate, that the crisis was hitting deep, that she was taking huge chances, that she was paid to do it. Everyone knows Carmen.
But did she get affinity? Did her audience - CEOs in search of a marketing manager - understand that she was proactive [she did not sit on her ass and expect to be head hunted or simply send out CVs], and using the tools of her trade [she is a marketing manager, so she used advertising to market herself]?
This is where the connection breaks because if no one hires Carmen then she will have made the point that awareness/buzz is not enough and that her message somehow was not sent using the correct means or to the right people. Which I tend to think is the case. But what if, seriously, what if someone does hire Carmen? What then?
.....
Then, we have two ways of looking at it: a) mere awareness is still enough of an incentive to buy or b) innovation will make a difference. Once. At least for Carmen :D

Things the Internet will kill

2009-09-21T23:04:00.003+03:00

There's a list going around of things the Internet will end up killing. And it's a good opportunity for me to add something that I have been thinking of for a while now.

Some context: don't know about you but I have always lived with the fear that at some point I will not have anything left to do. I fear lack of purposeful activity so when I was at university I used to make endless lists of books left to read in case I had managed to be left without anything else to do. When doing my Masters in London, I asked my supervisor to enlist me for double the classes because the required number did not seem to fill my time. Later on, when I became an adult and got my first serious job I found myself again in that conundrum and quit that job to find another that would keep me busy as long as I wanted.

Today the fear of not having anything left to do/read/inquire about/search is meaningless. I wake up every morning at 6 and go to bed every night at 12 knowing that there are a million things to be done tomorrow and the day after. If I chose to not control it, life now would happen to me without me having anything to do about it. There is no respite. There is no time when I have nothing to do. Because of Internet.

For me, Internet has literally killed the idea of "mental leisure" - the option to be ON all the time is something I cannot escape. Even on vacation I need to find out more about the place, to post my thoughts, to post images, to write replies. I am connected and truly find that "the machine is using me" [like a famed viral said] to perpetuate itself.

so what about you: what has the Internet made redundant for you?

Internet's BIG IDEA for monetizing

2009-09-20T12:05:00.002+03:00

Remember how everyone was hoping that at some point huge online hits like Twitter, Youtube or Facebook would come up with that BIG IDEA of how to make loads of cash in one quick move? Secretly we were all hoping for that because it would have given Internet that all mythical quality we all assumed it had.

Now Facebook has hit break even. How? Read this (and weep, because there is no big idea, it's just a combo of what Internet entrepreneurs hate most: advertising and gimmicks).

"Meanwhile, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg also made a significant announcement last week. This was not his revelation that Facebook now had 300 million users (interesting though that is), but that it has reached the point where its revenues now balance its operating costs. Everybody has been waiting to see if Facebook would hit on a Big Idea that would make it financially sustainable. What now transpires is that there is no Big Idea, just an agglomeration of small ideas like self-service (plus traditional) advertising, sales of gifts and "virtual property" etc which add up to a significant income stream."

from here

Protocols over people?

2009-09-19T10:12:00.003+03:00

A while back I tweeted this: "protocols beats people", thinking that, if one has great processes in place, that could replace the need to recruit exceptional people all the time.
The trick with that statement is that protocols are seldom exceptional, and most often they are designed NOT to help but to cover up stupidity and faults.

Case study: five days ago my cable stopped without explanation. I checked my bills and saw that everything had been paid on time. So I called the operator to ask for a solution. The reply I got was that they would come by, but I needed to be at home for two hours when the teams were coming over, anytime between 9 and 17 which is, obviously, when I am at work. Since all I have pertaining to the cable company INSIDE my flat is a cable and a cable-ending, which goes into the TV, I protested and asked to be given a reason why they would need me home. My logic went that if they came and fixed the receiver box, which is outside the flat, I would be ok when I got home. Their reply was "it's protocol". So I stayed at home and got a buzz at 9 am the day established. A man with a ladder was furiously knocking on my door. I answered and he looked in with the words "so yer cable is not working?". I nodded. He said "okay, I'll check the receiver box" [again, which is OUTSIDE my flat]. Sure enough, two minutes later the cable was working. He came back and again pounded on my door to say "it's all fixed now".
............
This got me thinking: why wasn't it easier for them to simply send someone to check the receiver box without inconveniencing me with three phone calls where we had negotiated the day when I could skip work. By all accounts, if the problem had not been with the receiver box, it could only mean my TV was broken or the cable severed inside the house, and that was something I could diagnose. Plus, if the TV was broken they could do nothing about it.

The only logical explanation I have for this protocol is that they need to make sure people SEE a repair person so that they cannot be sued for not showing up or not giving a crap. It's self protection, the protocol is in place to make their lives easier, not their customers'.

So then I got to thinking about how many of the things we set up as procedures are really designed to help our customers or simply to establish a pattern which is safe enough for the company...

hmmmm

Webstock 2009 presentation

2009-09-18T13:21:00.001+03:00

I spoke about this. It got me 30+ more Twitter followers which I ascribe to me saying swear words from time to time. Also want to make sure people got the message which is NOT "stop using social networks" but rather "be AWARE of yourself on a public space online"

Social Networks And Private Life

View more presentations from Bogdana.

Lego calendar

2009-09-14T22:57:00.000+03:00

More at/From here
Guess what month this is? :D

A year later - Orange's new adv platform

2009-09-12T23:43:00.003+03:00

Almost a year ago I was writing a blunt "I Hate it" post about the new worldwide positioning of, my then favourite telecom brand, Orange. I think it's smug to quote oneself but I was saying this: "The communication is bland, indiscriminate, boring. The commercials are like corporate presentation movies, featuring expressionless and uninteresting people. The OOH are stupid, uninsightful, lost in the noise."
A year on and I find myself looking back and thinking that I may not have been as silly as I was told back then. Back then, talking to a friend she saw amazing potential in the campaign, she saw campaignability and generousness, she made me think I had no clue.
Today the only thing that differentiates Orange's ads from anyone else's is, sometimes, the soundtrack (smugly and posh chosen tracks from smug and posh artists such as Nouvelle Vague, Jasom Mraz and such headliners at a possible smug festival in Bucharest). Sometimes the poorly understood insight with dreadful executions like the one about the pathetic husband whose wife won't let him do what he likes (where the pay off is "I am all the people who think they know better"). Today I remember every Orange ad, because it's just so under expectations. Common looking visuals, common looking people, septic environments, 80s style smiles and everywhere a non-sell non-telecom line "I am ...". I have no figures to support my claim but I know for a fact that I have not heard people talking about Orange ads for, hmmmmm, almost a year now. Back then the marshmallow duo was on everyone's lips, and the postpaid services with their eerie minimalistic executions were posted on artists' blogs.
I know it may sound biased because I work in an agency who works for the competition BUT Orange was my favourite brand a year ago, even with the agency working for another telecom, and I would have stuck with it. I don't do corporate brain-wash. Fortunately for my paycheck Orange did me a favor and turned bad. So now, I can be on-message with my agency: I have no reason to like Orange anymore.

Video online

2009-09-11T08:32:00.002+03:00

Last night there was WebClub again and it felt nice to see everyone and go back to Colocvio. The topic was video and the panel was heavy with important people (Nicoara, Stanca, Biris, Stan, PA de Hillerin, Todi Pruteanu) who had something to say under the smooth moderation of Victor Kapra. The topic was video online and discussions ranged from who hosts it, what people like to watch most, is UGC relevant, how do we make video for online and of course how do we make money from it.
It took me a while to put all the ideas that were being thrown about in some order and also to make a summary of what seemed truly relevant.
What stayed is this:
- none of the local players knows exactly what to do with video online, except for maybe Orlando who understands that there is good content already available for online and all he needs to do is be the only one who streams it and gets paid for that
- premium content to be paid for by the user and advertising are the only two ways to monetize video right now (or ever, for that matter)
- nobody is really struggling to put video on your mobile because technology is not convergent and because simple internet on your mobile is not really raking in the shitload of money people were expecting
- producing content for online is something everyone is looking to do except that, surprise, surprise, it is not that easy to make, it's expensive and so far it does not pay off.
- if it has tits it has a better chance of becoming popular and the question are the tits we are paying for better than the free ones users post (okay, this is my silly take on the much sex banter there)
- everyone agrees that video is the next big thing

At which point I cannot help but wonder what the hell is going on and what are we really talking about. There seem to be 3-4 reasons why you would want to place [original] video online:
- no advertising during the show
- available anytime and anywhere there is a connection
- less legal constraints and more creativity (more tit-showing)
- instant broadcasting - no need to haggle with TV stations to use your content and less advertising money involved to promote it
BUT, in Romania fact is that:
- unless you place advertising there somehow, you will not be able to cover costs because nobody will pay for your content (and there was talk of inserting ads in the stream which by all accounts might be even more annoying that regular TV commercials)
- people, the big chunk of them, have fixed watching periods driven NOT by TV schedules but by everyday life. Prime time is called prime time not because TV stations decide to dump their best content there but because that's when, statistically, more people have time to watch
- so far there has been no online production capable of beating anything HBO produces :D

I think that people are looking online for things they would like to see offline but don't have the chance. Highest views are always for series we don't have on TV and someone has posted online from the US, movie clips, and stupid chimp videos. Fact is online is possibly just a means of getting to the video content that is forbidden to you offline. I wonder if someone had a hit online show what would happen with it. I'll tell you: it would get moved to TV. Effectively, online may be just an opportunity provider versus an alternative provider. So far. What are the other options?

Other points of view?

Social networks and personal life

2009-09-07T09:05:00.002+03:00

We seldom talk about this because SNs are more about the future, making big money, cultural shifts, but how often have you thought about the deep impact they have on your personal lives?
I loved this confession here

"And then there's jealousy. In all that information you're posting about your life—your vacation, your kids, your promotions at work, even that margarita you just drank—someone is bound to find something to envy. When it comes to relationships, such online revelations can make breaking up even harder to do.

"Facebook prolongs the period it takes to get over someone, because you have an open window into their life, whether you want to or not," says Yianni Garcia of New York, a consultant who helps companies use social media. "You see their updates, their pictures and their relationship status."

Mr. Garcia, 24, felt the sting of Facebook jealousy personally last spring, after he split up with his boyfriend. For a few weeks, he continued to visit his ex's Facebook page, scrutinizing his new friends. Then one day he discovered that his former boyfriend had blocked him from accessing his profile."

If you think you are not part of this, think about the following:

- do you edit the images you post of yourself? do you untag unflattering images of yourself posted by your friends? do you sneak a peek at people's relationship status everytime you visit their page? do you check out your ex's page or do you try to see who they post wall-to-wall with most? do you sometimes play with your relationship status message just for kicks? do you post status messages with inuendos? do you comment on people's relationship status? do you post cheesy love songs?

Fun image of the evening

2009-09-06T20:23:00.003+03:00

From across the pond - illegal downloads, a softer view

2009-09-06T15:02:00.003+03:00

Romanians are famed for liking free stuff and that is why we do so many promotions and take so much shit from our consumers when they complain about the free stuff they get. We are a freebie nation and illegal downloads are part of everyday life because free is better than not free under any circumstance.

Interestingly, in a different world, not only because it's across the big pond, Faris thinks that there may be a different way of looking at this. While I find it natural to dig for the free stuff, he says
"Most people can't really be bothered to steal stuff, if it's easier not to, within certain price elasticities, I imagine. In fact, I reckon there will be room for free, ad supported and paid for versions of the same content to mutually co-exist, based on context." from here

I am trying to figure out the circumstance in which this could become a fact, an worth considering, fro Romania as well. First you would have to have relevant content and you really wanted, then you would have to have an easily accessible way of getting it at an acceptable price and finally you would have to have reliable and fast means of payment and delivery. Where we are right now? The only decent content I would pay for is foreign, there is no easily accessible route to it and I actually have to drive to pay for it or pick it up sometimes.

It's a sobering and hopeful thought however, that at some point, we might evolve to the point where the desperation of a few cents or a few extra minutes of waiting will not be so excruciating to us that we are willing to spend hours on end to find a free option.

Interesting things

2009-09-06T14:48:00.000+03:00

From Noah who took it from here
"Why is it that everyone is so dead-set on having their children exceed them? From a logical standpoint, doesn't it seem hard to understand how everyone's children are going to advance forward? Especially when there are an exponentially increasing number of children on the planet; and at the same time technology is exponentially decreasing the need for human intervention in the production of our goods and services? As we go each day into the future we have more people to do work, while at the same time we have less work to do. How are we all going to find our kids well-rewarded jobs, when we just don't need as many people working?"

MMARG making a deep impression on socio-cutural perception

2009-09-05T19:58:00.002+03:00

Went to the movies today and saw no less than 3 (!!!!!) trailers to movies connected to the idea of alternate realities and "second life" like situations.
Avatar (trailer below), Gamers (trailer on youtube has embedding disabled - BTW really stupid move on the producers part, but simply search Gamers trailer, and Surrogates are just three movies dealing with people leaving their real lives behind to start living in alternate realities. From the straight forward Gamers, where the plot is simple: one gets deathrow inmates to control via brain mapping and play in a bloody war, to the more intricate Surrogates where the real life human sends out a clone to live their life and finishing off with the much hyped Avatar, the concern of Hollywood directors is that technology is making people renounce their real lives to move to alternate realities where their powers are enhanced and their overall experience is heightened.

The topic seems to be endless, with Southpark also doing a hilarious episode on World of Warcraft (most disgusting scenes embedded below but it's really worth watching) and also, a similar topic under-running the script for Wall-e.

scary huh?

Respectful ad serving

2009-09-05T19:36:00.005+03:00

A couple of days back I was talking about this and like never before discussion got heated up with some excellent points. If you don;t click on comments I am posting all of them here and then some more clarifications of what we might have been trying to say:

@Marketosaurs

da, am zis eu ca se va ajunge aici, poate o sa te creada lumea pe tine :)

http://marketosaurus.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/varianta-la-continutul-platit/

9/01/2009

Costin said...

Nu uita, ai decat 20% din idee. Nu e vina mea ca nu ai cerut mai mult :-P

PS. Blogul lui Costin este refresh.ro! ecostin.com nu mai are nicio legatura cu new-media de exact 6 luni si cateva zile! (Thanks!)

9/01/2009

Blegoo said...

Hmmm... no!
It aint' going to work. In real life, I mean. Take your blog: see at right certain book covers.
Doesn't bother me - wether it's ads or not. It's not intrusive.
I might even click on some...
But if you start STOPPING me from reading something... well, I don't care about this kind of "respectful ad"...

9/01/2009

Marketosaurus said...

Blegoo, o sa mearga clar!

Cine nu are curajul s-o faca pe motiv ca-s pierde cititorii, ala clar nu are valoare. Dupa cum am mai spus, la inceputurile radioului si televiziunii, aceeasi reactie a avut-o publicul, dar s-a obisnuit in timp si acum isi povestesc si parodiaza reclamele.

9/01/2009

Bogdana Butnar said...

Costin, am modificat link. Multumesc de precizare. 20% din cateva milioane e bine :P
Marketosaurus, look at it this way - acum ai doi trei oameni in plus care au avut aceeasi idee ca tine deci poate se va intampla ceva. cumva ar trebui sa fie despre idee si nu despre tine :)

9/02/2009

Radu said...

Cu liniuta, ca la scoala:

- E dovedit ca userii au devenit imuni la display ads, sunt antrenati sa le ignore. De asta unii oameni mai destepti decat prevede bunul simt au introdus overlay-ul. Am avut probleme cand formatul / pozitionarea unui buton sau call-to-action se apropiau de cele ale unui banner, userii le ignorau instinctiv.

- E ca si cum m-as uita la un videoclip pe YouTube iar in mijlocul lui... zbang! pauza 10 secunde de reclama. Nu de asta migram dinspre TV inspre online? Nu de asta mai degraba ma uit la acelasi film pe TVR sau pe HBO decat pe Pro TV. E ok sa-mi servesti la interval asteptat si masurat dar nu sa-mi intrerupi experienta.

- Visual vorbind, ce tii in locul ad-ului "respectuos" pana iti dai seama ca omul petrece pe site tmediu + 1s? O sa-i afisezi peste content-ul pe care-l citeste ceva?

Don't get me wrong dar mi se pare mai lipsit de respect sa-mi intrerupi experienta / cititul / belitul ochilor cu o reclama decat sa-mi arati 10 din start pe care oricum le ignor din obisnuinta sau le blochez cu AdBlock :)

N-ar fi mai simplu ca advertiserii si publisherii sa devina pur si simplu mai responsabili si sa invete sa respecte userul decat sa reinventeze roata?

Iar ideea unui nou browser e... ceva deosebit :)

Poate am inteles eu gresit ideea...

Spor!

9/02/2009

Marketosaurus said...

Bogdana, ai dreptate. Orgoliul e mare ce sa-i faci , mai ales cand esti luat in ras cu ideea de mai sus, ca nu e buna, ca mrr crr. Si mai ales cand esti ferm convins ca asta e viitorul advertisingului pe net.

9/02/2009

Blegoo said...

@ Marketosaurus: your reply reminds me of Adrian Cristea (back in the times of Netoo) - "...you wanna, or you don't - it's gonna happen!"
Well, we all know shit happens...

I agree with what Radu says on line 3; other than that, my objection is not with the idea, but rather with the way it will be implemented. So far, the formula Bogdana describes is the same as the one used on tv, right? Looks to me like another discovery of heated water delivered to consumers.

Tv is a passive medium, as we all know; pausing for ads every 15 minutes or so allows watchers to stand up, grab a bite or visit the bathroom.
Tv content is MADE to allow for advertising breaks. Movies, telenovellas,serials, etc - all these are designed to be segmented.
Do you envision articles written by Bogdana here (to use an example) in distinct paragraphs of, say... 20 seconds?
Say... I'm arriving here, I start to read... 30 seconds pass... BLAM! pop-ups, banners, etc - for 10 seconds...all over the screen. Is this what you call "respectful"?

Tv content is delivered at the same speed for everyone. Internet content, on the other hand, is more like traditional publishing; I might pause in the middle of an article to pick my nose or answer the phone. Or maybe I just have 4 tabs open in browser, and I move from one to the other. Technically, I'm still reading this article, right?

I'm not making fun of you personally, nor do I put down the idea just to play Gika-Kontra.

I'm just having problems with ideas not fully explored. I can continue to punch holes in your concept until tomorrow morning - but I'm sure that you can start discovering them yourself...

9/02/2009

Marketosaurus said...

@Blegoo,

well, nu stiu cu exactitate dedesubturile ideii Bogdanei, asa ca nu am sa raspund in numele ei. Ceea ce eu am scris la mine pe blog nu are deloc de-a face cu "respectful".

Vorbesc din punctul de vedere al unui publisher, nu mi-e deloc jena sa bag reclame invazive, televiziunile fac lucrul asta si nimeni nu se plange. E foarte simplu, bagi o reclama full screen cand vizitatorul acceseaza pagina. Apoi bagi cate 10 secunde la fiecare 5 minute. Ideal ar fi sa-i bagi vizitatorului reclama targetata, in functie de pagina pe care respectivul o viziteaza.

Nu cred ca idea are vreun punct slab, pur si simplu eu iti bag tie reclama obligatorie pentru ca pot, tu iti bagi picioarele in situl meu, te duci in alta parte si vezi ca si respectivul a bagat tot reclame obligatorii. Nu te gandi la chichitze, la subtilitati! Esti tentat sa crerzi ca nu merge. Daca gsp,prosport, realitatea, evz, cotidianul, neogen, softpedia samd adopta ideea, tu ce faci?

Iti bag reclame ordinare, plictisitoare, enervante, cateodata chiar reclame fun, iar tu vei trimite linkul meu amicilor cu mesajul "uitati aici o reclama suuuupeeer"

Cheia intregului concept vine din psihologie. Cand un lucru este impus ca fiind obligatoriu este mult mai usor acceptat.

9/02/2009

Blegoo said...

@Marketosaurus: Ei, deja vorbim altceva; Nici ce zice Bogdana, nici ce zice Manafu. Am sa ma mut cu latraturile la tine pe blog, ca devine oarescum... ne targuim pe ideea ta la Bogdana in curte. (ma si mir ca nu a dat cu pietre inca... :) )

9/02/2009

Radu said...

"Vorbesc din punctul de vedere al unui publisher, nu mi-e deloc jena sa bag reclame invazive, televiziunile fac lucrul asta si nimeni nu se plange.

[...]

pur si simplu eu iti bag tie reclama obligatorie pentru ca pot, tu iti bagi picioarele in situl meu, te duci in alta parte si vezi ca si respectivul a bagat tot reclame obligatorii. Nu te gandi la chichitze, la subtilitati! Esti tentat sa crerzi ca nu merge. Daca gsp,prosport, realitatea, evz, cotidianul, neogen, softpedia samd adopta ideea, tu ce faci?
"

Avem nevoie de mai multi oameni ca si tine ca sa scoatem online-ul romanesc din rahat.

Te rog, arata-ne Calea Cea Dreapta!

9/03/2009

Marketosaurus said...

Blegoo, ideea Bogdanei difera de ideea mea (cel putin prin prisma celor prezentate de ea) doar prin faptul ca la ea are o denumire mai putin invaziva gen "respectful".

Uite, ca sa fiu impaciuitor, sunt perfect de acord cu denumirea data de ea ;)

Radu, pe orice publisher il intereseaza sa faca bani, nu sa scoata o industrie din rahat, asa e peste tot. Totusi nu vad de ce "respectful ad serving" ar dauna onlineului.

Calea cea dreapta ti-o poate arata Bucurenci si altii care fac voluntariat, aici e vorba de revolutionat advertisingul online aka bani grei, iar mofturile utilizatorilor pot fi trecute lejer cu vederea. Sau poate tu preferi varianta hard a lui Murdoch in care ti se cere abonament?

Imi dau seama ca orice as spune, nu prea pot sa va conving. Dar repet, parerea voastra, a mea, nu conteaza aici, pt ca asa va fi! De ce va fi asa? Simplu, pt ca banul dicteaza mersurile in mainstream.

Va salut...respectful :D

9/03/2009

parvan said...

treaba cu "reclama ca pe Tv" nu poate sa ignore si comparatie de CPM -uri pentru ca de la idee la practica sigur se va trece prin asta.

in plus sistemele astea de care vorbiti ar trebui sa includa si variabila "timp" ... care momentan iar nu cred ca-s in favoarea onlineului.

predictibilitatea reclamei si usurinta de a o "skip"-ui nu cred ca este un atu al televiziunii (dealtfel nici nu identific demersuri ale teleiziunilor in acest sens)

Bogdana ... oricate "masuri miraculoase" am imagina ... fondul ramane acelasi: userii trebuie sa inteleaga ca pentru a avea acces la diverse forme de media ... acele media au nevoie de timpul/atentia lor pe care sa-l vanda pentru a finanta continutul.
Totul depinde de "valoarea" acelui timp cedat.
Advertiserii pot ajuta incercand ca acest timp cedat sa aiba si o relevanta pozitiva pt useri (prin targetare)... dar "acceptanta" depinde de noi toti ca useri si de modul in care publisherul ne convinge ca "merita".

So first, the good points of the above (if you don't speak romanian)
- where's the difference between Respectful and what is happening right now?
- it's no different from TV and TV ads are the main reasons we are migrating to Internet
- how is this going to be implemented, really?
- people need to understand that good content needs to be paid for.

Now, what I was thinking about is simpler. First of all, respectful ad serving is not about removing non intrusive ads (like the simple leaderboard and sky scraper), but more about - as the name says it - striking a respect-based deal with consumers. When they care about the content they should be warned that the time they spend will be interrupted. So the idea was to mark all participating websites with a logo. This logo would, for instance, start flickering when you are in "open for ad serving mode" - meaning when you've spent more than 15-20 seconds on a page. That would make you aware that "intrusive ads" are about to be served. You can choose to leave or, like in classical TV mode, wait to see what they are and then read on. the difference is in the manner you connect with the reader: you don't push your ads but ask for permission. Once there was talk of permission marketing - maybe we can do permission ad serving.

The thing is, people, asking users to pay for content in the form of micro payments like The Economist is not going to happen in Romania anytime soon. Anderson was right: digital is free so advertising is the only way to pay for stuff online unless we finally discover that magical monetizing method everyone is talking about. That we have developed immunity to online advertising already can only be a big problem and instead of continuously relying on the famed "creativity" we can try to brainstorm for smarter and less elusive ways to handle our customers online.

I am seriously open to more reactions and maybe we can do something worthwhile with this. For instance I am going to ask Manafu to let us maybe discuss this at Webstock. Anyone interested in doing a roundtable on this?

CLoser to advertising of the future

2009-09-05T19:32:00.002+03:00

Remeber when Facebook tried to scan all your friends' links and generate ads based on their preferred locations? Well, we might have yelled back then but check this out: people can like or unlike Ads :)...are you telling me you will not click on something 39% of your friends have given a thumbs up for?
wow

Respectful ad serving

2009-09-01T22:57:00.005+03:00

Interesting talk tonight with Manafu, Sorin Tudor, Adrian Soare, Costin and Mihai Dragan. One idea stuck to my mind: serving display on a delay mode for readers who spend more than 10 seconds on any page.
The thinking behind is simple: with TV you accept advertising because it interferes but at measured and expected intervals. With online you don't because they come at you all the time with no regard for your linger time on the page.
So we implement something called "respectful ad serving" - meaning that large formats are only served if the user spends more than the average time on the page. The logic is that you are interested in that content and one is willing to accept advertising for content you are interested in. At the same time, respectful ad serving would also entail having one set timer for all large formats so that they go off in a sequence. Very much like the commercial break we are used to on TV.
One suggestion was to create a browser which would do exactly this: a simpler idea yet might be to get publishers involved in a "respectful ad serving" scheme.
I know lots of brands which would adhere to something like this only to be allowed to do display without being accused of being intrusive.
hmmm?

Browsers vs Seekers

2009-08-31T21:25:00.003+03:00

I have been thinking lately about reader behaviour online. The thinking comes as a result of more and more people dismissing display advertising and requesting special projects. Now the trick with special projects is that unless you advertise them, they have absolutely no reach (come on let's face it, the Twitter community may be big but it can only do this much and forwarding it to your friends simply does not work) so maybe a solution is to work more coherently on making the display more effective.

The argument goes, however, that ignoring advertising online is much easier and much likely to happen since the advertising is played alongside the thing you are interested in and tends to move and flickr - most of the times pointlessly.

But this is where something interesting happens: when navigating, one can be searching for something specific or simply browsing. I have found that I am most likely to click on banners when I am checking out Facebook, because my commitment to the content there is minimal - I am not particularly keen to read all updates and am just skimming so my degree of openness to advertising content is higher. By contrast, when I read articles in news sites, I seldom, if ever, click on advertising because I am not interested in being moved away from the content I am reading.

So, one challenge maybe, would be for media to identify content with high seeker potential - meaning content that you must read consistently and not leave. This would probably be less likely to yield high CTR but would function well for branding and awareness. On the other hand, high-degree browsing content, meaning content you simply skim to get to something that might interest you, might work to attract more engaging display.
Just a thought.

Nice music for Sunday evening

2009-08-30T20:24:00.002+03:00

Part of the global buzz

2009-08-30T18:12:00.003+03:00

Thought I'd play my part. Happy Bday MJ and my all time MJ Top 3 :)

3. Because it's the best MJ had ever looked

2. Because I secretly do the dance when I hear it :-)

1. Because I was 12 or 13 and felt I should have been in love when listening to it

Spot the difference

2009-08-30T16:25:00.002+03:00

Let's play a game. Spot the difference between:

1. An banner ad for the fastest Ferrari placed underneath an Andrei Plesu interview and a TV commercial for the Happiness Factory ran during a movie about Hiroshima
2. A contextual ad for a loan placed within an article about the suicide of a young loan officer and the celebration fest TVC for a beer placed during the news report about the bus crash with 13 dead
3. A banner which rolls over the text you want to read and a TVC which interrupts the movie you were watching.

Let me tell you, what the difference is: there is no "close" button on the TVCs.

:D

The meaning of advertising

2009-08-28T10:52:00.007+03:00

I got this interesting link from Zoso. This artist is mixing corporate slogans and Flickr photography in the avowed intention to prove this point:
"By remixing corporate slogans, I intend to show how the language of advertising is both deeply meaningful, in that it represents real cultural values and desires, and yet utterly meaningless in that these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold."
[Some examples above]
Naturally this sparks some happy grins on the faces of advertising haters because, lo and behold, someone has proved advertising is pointless.
This got me thinking what a vicious circle advertising is in. Companies make products but in order to make money these products are not all that special or all that different. Advertising is meant to make them different. But in order to make them different advertising cannot relate to something in the product (as shown above, economics prevents differentiation). Advertising thus needs to create something beyond the product to make it stand out. This has grown to be called the brand. A brand makes a product different but in order to stand out a brand needs to feed on its own difference and thus becomes ever more separated from the product is was created for. Eventually advertising promotes something which is very special but in very little ways connected to the product. So, QED the artist.
BUT, if advertising stuck to promoting what the product is then there would be only two options: EVERY PRODUCT would need to be very different or there would need to be so much fewer products and economics would suffer. Of course, there is the third option: no advertising.

In reality, advertising is a part of culture just like music videos and the reason it is so, it's because products are NOT so different, the marketplace does NOT work solely through direct to consumer and NOBODY would listen to or look at ads talking solely about the qualities of a product. As human beings, we have an inherent craving for stories and get them from every piece of culture be it movies, music, pictures or advertising. The trick, as with any artefact, is to make it good.

Like these ads

2009-08-28T10:50:00.002+03:00

aaaa, blissfully beautiful (b)executions :D from W+K

Like this pattern

2009-08-28T09:41:00.003+03:00

Still via Ben (well. from his guest blogger really) but made by Hanna Werning

Books like organisms

2009-08-28T09:25:00.002+03:00

This is neat. Found it via Ben and it's a young lady who makes visual renderings of books. Like, for instance, this is On the Road, by Jack Kerouak (she broke the first chapter into segments, sentences, words and color coded everything :))

Creative Internship

2009-08-26T00:08:00.005+03:00

Internships are very important when you look at them for what they are. An opportunity. But internships are the easiest way for anyone to screen something else which is equally important: people's attitudes towards opportunities. And this is valid not only for the people having interns but also for the interns themselves.

Opportunities are not occasional. I know the essential definition of an opportunity is something in the way of "an unexpected events which occurs and opens a new path of action which may lead to positive results" BUT one big mistake we make is to wait for opportunities and assume that they will always be "special, unexpected, opening up something wonderful". Opportunities are everything we do. They are not occasional but they are ordinary and how we choose to deal with them transforms them into THE OPPORTUNITY versus just something that happened.

It works pretty much the same with internships and trying to be a creative intern. You walk into an agency and expect them to give you a shot. You look for the opportunity. But all you get thrown at is stupid research, running errands, filling out forms no one wants to fill in, or simply getting ignored. And here is where opportunity radar kicks in: you either choose to be bored, annoyed and irritated at the stupidity of it all OR you choose to see an opportunity in getting coffee.
Malcolm Gladwell makes a point in "Outliers" that there is no such thing as exceptional people but simply people who, when put in the right context, know how to make the most of their talents. Some people are lucky in that they understand they are in the right context. With internships, you are ALWAYS in the right context because you are smack in the middle of where you want to be. So, think that opportunities are everywhere and if you think your OPP radar is a bit off simply try to do something special anytime you are given the chance.

Leftover from holiday

2009-08-24T08:21:00.004+03:00

I found these in the internal memory of my camera. Portofino this summer. One place I would definitely like to live in.

Want to watch

2009-08-16T13:59:00.000+03:00

yeeeeeiiiiiiiiii

A good newspaper failed

2009-08-12T17:20:00.004+03:00

I have been away for two weeks and the one thing that caught my attention is the obvious demise and u-turn in the destinies of the daily Cotidianul.

This whole post is very personal and not at all researched (which makes for no actual change from my regular posts :-D) but I feel something needs to be said about the ability of this country of ours to sustain different voices and different points of view.

Cotidianul was a newspaper that in my view acted like The Guardian of England. It sometimes focused on things of lesser national importance but always tried to add fresh points of view or topics to the public agenda. I asked myself countless times if a newspaper was meant to devote full pages to blogging - a national daily, mind you- and always the answer was "no, but it's refreshing to see they do". I always felt they were being silly when they advertised internet conferences with quarter page ads and asked myself who in, say, Brasov cared about these things. Probably nobody and yet is was great to see that public agenda was not restricted to what the president was doing wrong or who had stolen what.

Now the newspaper is failing, out of money and out of readers and new management has been brought in to change it. Make it more like you would expect a national daily to be. And while I am pleased the newspaper is given a chance to survive I cannot help wondering where will we find that other point of view, that other topic and that unexpected book review.
It is depressing to realize that we are a country so poor and so small that we are unable to support one publication attempting to be different. When advertising money ran out, the different one died out. And so we are left with a mass media which is largely the same.
not good
for context read also this from Tolontan
and also this for a different POV from Zoso

The Editors Bucharest or How social media can (maybe) make things happen

2009-08-11T18:23:00.004+03:00

These are The Editors.

They come to Bucharest this Sunday and will play what is probably the only non-sponsored concert in the history of concerts in Romania. I hope they do good and I hope people buy out the tickets.

The thing is this, for cool bands to come to a country like ours, you need someone to sponsor part of the costs of the concerts. Otherwise the tickets would cost billions. So you get sponsors like Vodafone or Coke or Orange or Pepsi (I am being equidistant). This is not too much of a bother to people on the tarmac because they only see a bunch of billboards and are handed stupid little flags at the entrance. But truth of the matter is that, because we are only used to paying this much for tickets, we could not handle non -sponsored concerts. That's why what the people who have brought the Editors are doing is bold. They hope to use social media and word of mouth and networking to get the concert to pay for itself.
So, if you think this is something you might want to support do like I did: mention it on your website/blog/twitter and then go and see it.

Tickets here
A funny contest here

Two weeks off - cond

2009-08-09T16:50:00.002+03:00

And then we had some drinks and drove to Portofino where the camera broke down....

two weeks off contd

2009-08-05T19:53:00.009+03:00

before it was nice, san remo. then we moved on to aix en provence, avignon and the provence hills