Wednesday 30 December 2009

Budapest, Budapest, de csodas (how wonderful)

A very creative look at the capital of Hungary by Zsolt Molnar, and through 365 photographs.
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Friday 25 December 2009

On a much needed holiday…

In Vanuatu till the new year, and I can hardly believe it…

Map picture



View Larger Map


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Thursday 24 December 2009

Word of mouth

I had a chat with a friend the other day and as the topic of restaurants came up, I found myself being recommended about 3-4 of them in only a few minutes – all with genuine enthusiasm on her side. And that covers the definition of word of mouth, which is ‘traditionally achieved by creating products, services and customer experiences that generate conversation-worthy "buzz" naturally’ (Wikipedia).

Of course there are some people who recommend often and with ease. As for the rest, they need to be convinced by the product or service and what they are getting makes them feel.

The challenge? Not to get more people talking. Well yes, that, too. But first, to create an outstanding product or service. Positive word of mouth will follow.

Why? We all know it’s valuable, but here it is in numbers: because, according to a recent study (released by Waggener Edstorm, PR firm) it ranks three times higher in influencing power then standard advertising.
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Wednesday 23 December 2009

2010: the focus will continue to be on digital media

With only days before the decade is over, a myriad of articles, blog posts, comments have been posted recently, about the last ten years that was, and the future of media, with particular attention to digital.

Sure, marketing is still what it always was. That is figuring out what the audience wants and what the business is capable of to make a profit (
Batchelor), however a structural change is underway in the messaging, the platforms and product-user interaction in today’s marketing campaigns.

Advertisers always follow audiences and not the other way around. So with the audience’s continuous shift to online, marketers are following steadily. Digital as part of any marketing mix can no longer be ignored. Whether that component is a viral campaign, an application, social media, microsite, mobile, display or search – or a combination of these.

That covers paid media. How about all the information that is being said about the brand, the company or the product that we may represent. Well, this is why online presence is critical. Marketers, have long lost control of what is being said about their brands in the digital world, which is why it’s ever more so important to continuously interact, engage and converse with consumers. And in 2010, digital will still be the best way to do that.
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Tuesday 22 December 2009

A decade in news photographs

The “two-thousands” (has anyone come up with a better alternative yet?) were a ‘dramatic and often brutal decade’. Great and thought provoking photos from Boston.com here.
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technorati tags: news

Hungary in Winter

2009 12 21 Hungary in Winter

2009 12 21 Hungary, Lake Balaton in Winter

Hungary in Winter.

Love it, miss it.

(photos by a good friend, Viktoria)



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Sunday 20 December 2009

The way forward: magazines on tablets

Here is something clever I read today on NYtimes.com: a growing number of magazines are considering some sort of digital platform to distribute their contents and some of the big publishers in the US are only months away from launching the first issue.

This is a change I’m personally looking forward to and applaud for many reasons. People are changing, lifestyles are changing. Yes, technology is developing fast, but we are also adopting fast. The human mind and capacity is amazing and we are certainly ready to embrace the glossy iconic magazines in digital. Or are we?

Many of us buy magazines for the sheer pleasure of looking at (and I’m primarily thinking of fashion magazines here, but this applies to many other categories as well) fabulous advertising executions,  high quality photos and images. Is technology truly ready to move that all digital?

After watching this brief video presentation (embedded below) by Sports Illustrated in the US, I really think it is. This will be so much more than a magazine as we know it. It will allow for more interaction, better content, customisable layout, and more of what most people want (photos and short form videos), just to name a few.

But then how is it different from getting this all on the web? Well two key things come to my mind: convenience and quality. You will be able to enjoy the content in the living-room, in transit, in a work break, or whenever and wherever you want – much like a magazine – once,  of course, the content has been downloaded. Which then takes me to quality. Once an issue has been downloaded, it will be on the tablet to enjoy in all it’s glory – no buffering, no waiting, no flickering: pure magazine quality.

As for advertisers, while the ad space, and pricing isn’t clearly defined yet (judging from the video presentation), I would imagine, that this new technology will allow for a plethora of new ad formats and execution options, as well as smart audience measurements, which should mean better targeting and higher yields. All in good time though, as with any new technology, it takes time to gather momentum and scale – both of which are essential to attract ad dollars.

But for now, let’s embrace at least the concept of the way forward: magazines on tablets.


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Saturday 19 December 2009

Bloggers of The Year 2009, by Nicholas Bate

A big thank you to Nicholas Bate! I’m honoured that my humble blog made the list (see here).

About Mr Bate’s blog… For all your business advice, thoughts on stuff that matters, for inspiration, and if you ever need to be motivated – and we all do – read this every day, better yet, subscribe now! And make sure to check out his fabulous books!
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Friday 18 December 2009

‘Threat marketing’ – bad marketing

Two young men set up a stall in the mall the other day to promote their newly opened natural therapy centre in the city. I stopped, chatted, and after only a few minutes I made an appointment for the next day.
Upon arriving to the building’s lobby, at first I hesitated, as there was no signage at the downstairs elevator. I ventured upstairs eventually, found the place, but there were still no signs anywhere in sight. White walls, reception area. I must have been surprised, as the apologetic therapist explained they just opened up this second centre in the city and are using all their signage at the promotion at the mall.
We went through some routine checks and my therapist eyes grew larger by the minute telling me how important it was for me to sign up to their programme to avoid any further damage…
Ten minutes later the chat was over, and I couldn’t have been out the door faster.

How is that for bad marketing and sales tactics?

First impressions matter.
Be ready before you open for business.
Build trust with potential clients before the sell.
Don’t use intimidating sales tactics, they seldom work.
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Thursday 17 December 2009

Blog make over (1)


I feel like I discovered an entirely new World today. Bloggershpere. There are so many things one can do to their blog page, and I felt the urge to try some out… by no means is this attempting to be a guide, more like a few tips for those, who are new to this as well… and since technology, platforms and trends are changing so fast, this is only the first attempt to keep up – I assume there will be many more.

Blogger (my blogger platform) no longer offers 3 column templates, so one has to edit the HTML code of their blog and here is a great step by step guide on how.

In order to drive traffic and increase awareness of your blog (well, if that’s what you aspire to do) it’s important to register it with search engines such as Bing and Google and certainly with Technorati – the homepage which will elaborate on why exactly.

(support
and tips)
You would probably want to add a Retweet button to make it easy for all those Twitter fans to spread the word. Here is how you can do that.

I tweaked the code that’s offered on the site a bit and created my own html code for this, here it is if you want to use it (if you have a Twitter ID, replace that between the ‘’, otherwise just delete that line):

<div style='float:right; margin-left:10px;'>
<script type='text/javascript'>
tweetmeme_style = ‘compact’;
tweetmeme_source = ‘Your Twitter ID’;
tweetmeme_url = ‘<data:post.url/>’;
tweetmeme_service = ‘bit.ly’;
</script> <script src='http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js' type='text/javascript'/>
</div>

And finally make sure you add buttons to share or ‘Add This’.

Here is a slide share on how – have a look, it’s really easy!


Good luck.

before / after

Reka-Zsuzsanna's blog before
Reka-Zsuzsanna's blog after

Sydney Harbour at lunchtime today

‘it’s beginning to look like Christmas… but boy it’s hot today’ – wrote a good friend on Facebook today.

Christmas in Australia. Hot & sunny, beach, bbq & loads of seafood.

2009 12 17 - Sydney Harbour
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Tuesday 15 December 2009

Frequency

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It is said that if you are introduced to a new person, you should use their name immediately as many times as you can for it to stick. e.g.: ‘Hi Sam, nice to meet you. So, what is that you do Sam?’
Don’t be discouraged, no one ever notices the apparent overuse of their names. Why? Because it’s one of the sweetest things we can ever hear… So repeat it to remember - at least three times in the first five minutes of meeting them.

And that is the definition of frequency exactly: the number of times the message is being repeated within a certain time period.
A ’legacy concept from the one-way communication era’, but still relevant today, frequency is used in media planning to achieve the communication goal, or campaign objective. Which will also determine the number of repetition. ’Effective frequency is expressed as the number of exposures necessary to produce an effect’ (Surmanek, p110), but as a general rule, the more detailed the message the higher frequency needed for people to memorise. But wait. Apart from finite media budgets, is there no upper limit at all to the number of repetitions?

This takes me back to one of my earlier posts about an advertisement for a popular online auction site, at a city train station, which I saw again this evening and many others since then. Credit to the billboard, not only did it achieve it’s frequency goals, but also recency, in other words reach and continuity, as I went home and logged on to the site. But on the flipside, by now, I have probably started ignoring it.

So yes, there is an upper limit to frequency beside budgets. Media planners’ challenge is to find that fine balance of sufficient repetition to assist memorising, but not too much to avoid wastage and for the message to become annoying.

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Branding – Dubai & Tiger Woods

‘Dubai is basically […] the biggest, greatest and newest of everything’ said Tiger Woods earlier this year when he was asked about his choice to support the opening of a golf course in Dubai, named after him – as quoted in the Guardian’s June article by L. Donegan.
Reading this now, only a few months on, this comment seems almost surreal.
According to original plans, the golf course should have opened this (Northern) Autumn, but as you may know, two things happened since June 2009, when the comment was made. Both brands involved irrevocable damages: Brand Tiger Woods and Brand Dubai.
Dubai is being rescued (for the third time) by its rich and increasingly reluctant neighbour, the conservative Abu Dhabi, while no apology can save Tiger Wood’s image and him being dropped by sponsors – first of which is Gillette.

The internet offers millions of definitions on what a ‘brand’ is, but here is a good one from Seth Godin. Building it takes years and years of consistent messaging to achieve credibility and trust. But all that hard work can be destroyed in no time.

Dubai-MichaelFoley  TigerWoods-KeithAllison

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Monday 14 December 2009

Work should fit into life…

Back from a unintended break from my cherished blog. Three weeks older, but a whole lot wiser. As a start, ‘work should fit into life, rather than the other way around’. (Joan Smith)

And of course the world around me didn’t stop… And even if I stopped writing, I certainly didn’t stop reading so here is some great stuff to share…

First and foremost, the forever motivating
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A free ebook from the marketer extraordinaire
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And at last but not least, Cultural Offering’s yet another delightful post ‘Funny because it’s true’.
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Wordle

‘Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.’ Try it here. Here is mine for this blog:.

 image
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