'Cross The Breeze

Real beauty, real breakthrough

October 31, 2006 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

I wrote about the Dove commercial on real beauty a few days ago and there are some key learnings we can get out of this one. Pete Blackshaw at ClickZ Network did a good post with the 10 key takeaways from this campaign which you should take a look at. Here is already one that I think jumps out:

“Evolution as consumer-fortified media (CFM). Unlike the vast majority of viral videos out there, this ad was 100 percent brand or agency created. But it was fortified by intense consumer commentary, conversation, and dialogue. Put another way, co-creation was an end results but not the starting point. Looking ahead, expect CFM to become a key success criteria for brands looking for tangible evidence of consumer appeal, involvement, and engagement. Every Super Bowl ad, for instance, has latent potential as CFM, but it’s not a guarantee.”

Mack Collier also talks about the great results comparing the paid traditional advertising part with the free viral element. Though I think that it’s very much the fact that both traditional and new media were used that results are what they are.

[Via ConsumerGeneratedMedia.com]

Tags: advertising, dove, clickz, real beauty

advertising, blogging, internet, marketing, media

A marketing illustration

October 30, 2006 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

I don’t recall when or where I saw these for the first time, but when I noticed it now at Brand Autopsy I also found the source of the images. Apparently these visual definitions are from ZAG, a book written by Marty Neumeier on the “strategy of high performance brands”. Another book for my wishlist. Take a look at Brand Autopsy or the Z AG website.

Tags: zag, brand autopsy, marketing, advertising, definition

internet

Crossthebreeze.com

October 30, 2006 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

After I started blogging for a few weeks, months (I started in November last year) I figured I would definitely try and keep doing this and that made me decide to buy the crossthebreeze.com domain. A good friend helped me out to do a url forward to my blog at wordpress.com (thanks Tom) but I didn’t really use it a lot since all links would be to http://crossthebreeze.wordpress.com. Then WordPress announced that they were about to finalize a service that you could link your WordPress blog a different domain. And only 2 days later the domain mapping feature went live. DNS changes took a while, but as from today, you’ll see that the url of my blog is: http://crossthebreeze.com.

I know all of this was available if you hosted WordPress yourself, but I just want to use a great service without too much technical fuzz and wordpress.com offers me just that. It’s also great to see they listen to their users, something Technorati should do as well. I sent them a request about domains a week or two ago but still no sign of an answer.

Now I’m on my own domain, maybe I’ll have to take a look at this WordPress upgrade that allows you to change the CSS as well. In general I’m quite happy about this layout, but I do want to change some things here and there. I don’t know a thing about CSS though, so if anybody cares to help me out: you’re very welcome ;-)

Tags: domain, wordpress, technorati, blogging, css, upgrade

blogging

Conversational marketing is not …

October 26, 2006 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

… word-of-mouth marketing. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but in this case, I think I’d rather the imitators keep their distance.
The word-of-mouth marketers have latched onto a term that was gaining traction in the blogosphere — conversational marketing — and they’re trying to turn it into something that it’s not.”

Quote from Tom Hespos at iMedia Connection on the fact that especially word-of-mouth marketing companies tend to define both marketing ways as one and the same (or at least very similar), whereas conversational marketing is something totally different.

Tags: conversation, word-of-mouth, marketing, definition

marketing

Dans la publicité

October 24, 2006 by Kris Hoet 3 Comments

This is just a great little clip on the advertising world, I hope you enjoy as much as I did. You’ll have to speak some French to understand though.

[Via Pietel]

Tags: publicité, advertising, fun

advertising, fun, movies

Ads of the week

October 24, 2006 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

Last week Sony released it’s new Bravia commercial. And how much I liked the “bouncing balls” commercial, I don’t really like this one. I don’t think it’s bad, but apart from a lot of special effects, I don’t get the feeling it stands out. It doesn’t move me or anything. Too bad, I was really looking forward to it (maybe that’s part of the reason?).

An commercial that I did think was quite interesting, was the new ad for Dove. “After their campaign for real beauty, they stretched the idea for reality in advertising a bit further. Stunning.” I couldn’t agree more, here it is:

The last campaign I wanted to highlight is Le Défi (The Challenge) from Stella Artois. I think it’s a great example of how you can bring online & offline together in a well integrated campaign. Coolz0r has the complete story, or just play the game!

Tags: dove, real beauty, bravia, sony, stella artois, le défi, advertising

advertising, art, gadgets, marketing

A day with Shel & Rick

October 23, 2006 by Kris Hoet 7 Comments

Last Saturday Shel Israel & Rick Segal where in Belgium and we had the chance to spend the day with them. The fact that we could have this meeting is for me one of the best results of blogging so far.

Back in the beginning of August I wrote about ‘Naked Conversations’ and Shel, who obviously is very much in the conversation, commented on that the day after. In the same week, Shel also announced his plan to do a world tour with Rick. I thought of this as a opportunity and sent an email to Shel asking whether they were interesting in traveling to Brussels as well to meet up with a few people and Shel & Rick immediately said yes. So we started planning for it as well. Originally this was supposed to happen at the beginning of September, but badly enough it had to be canceled/delayed. By mid September, the new dates were set and Brussels was on the schedule for October 21st.

So Simon McDermott (who had also been in contact with them) and I looked at what the most interesting agenda could be and we decided to do a dinner with bloggers and a roundtable with agency bloggers/strategists. The dinner to take place in a restaurant called Belga Queen and the roundtable at the H2O Towers. Since I travel quite a lot myself, but hardly ever see something of the cities that I’m in, I also proposed Shel & Rick to start a bit earlier so we could have a quick walk around the center of Brussels. I’m not a big fan of Brussels, but the “Grand Place” is definitely amongst the most beautiful in Europe.

(c) Pieter Baert

It turned out to be a very interesting day and I couldn’t thank them enough for this opportunity. We had a good dinner with Pietel, Ine, Peter, Luc, François, Damien, Jean Philip, Veerle, Bea, David, Geert, Tom, Coolz0r, Simon with our guests. And also the roundtable generated a really good conversation with Bert, Philip, Olivier, Evert-Jan, Tom, Tanguy, Peter and David, Geert & Simon again as well. I enjoyed the day, hope all the others did as well. Here is some coverage of the day (I’ll update when needed):

Digimedia (NL)
Monuments (ENG)
detender@media (NL)
Bert Van Wassenhove (ENG)
LVB.net (ENG)
Marketing Thoughts (ENG)
ODD (FR) / Emakina (ENG) (update 24/10)
Attentio (ENG) (update 24/10)
These Days (update 25/10)

Or check out the Flickr sets of some of the guests:

So that wraps it up. Thanks to everybody for being there and to the others: the conversation is already going on, also for your brand, so you’d better join ;-)

Tags: shel israel, rick segal, blogdinner, belgium, brussels, naked conversations, microsoft

blogging, books, internet, marketing, microsoft, quote

Respect! Farewell in style

October 22, 2006 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

He didn’t win the race, he didn’t even make it to the podium and the championship was already lost after last race really. But man, what a great race it was. Having to come back from the last place (after a tyre puncture) to the front, Schumacher showed what he’s got in him, even on retirement day. And all this to end eventually come back as far as the 4th spot, passing Raikkonen, Barichello, Fisichella, … in the last rounds. Respect! A farewell in style from a great racer.

Oh, and for next year? Raikkonen is going to win the championship for Ferrari with Honda as the big challenger. You’ll see ;-)

Tags: schumacher, f1, formula 1

news, racing

Battlefield goes Top Gear

October 20, 2006 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

Yesterday on Digg someone pointed out to this great Top Gear parody. I had seen the original “Challenger 2 tank vs. Rang Rover Sport” on television, but this parody is really well done.

Hope you recover well Richard.

Tags: top gear, rang rover, digg, parody, fun, television

fun, movies, racing

The vibe. This must be London

October 20, 2006 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

More than any other city in Europe, I feel this vibe every time I’m in London. It just keeps amazing me. Last night we had a dinner with a few people in Yauatcha (great restaurant by the way) and had a drink in some Havana cigar bar close to Oxford street. After that I walked back to my hotel all the way at the end of Piccadilly and even though it’s around midnight the streets are just crowded. I really enjoy that every time.

Courtesy of Ariz

Downside to these regular trips is London City Airport. It’s annoying me more and more every time I go there (although I used to like it). I’m not going to rant about the security check again, but it’s becoming really silly. And to make the London City Airport experience complete, the wireless didn’t work (again). At least I didn’t pay for it first this time.

Tags: london, london city airport, travel, wireless

travel