December 30, 2006
1 Comment
A week or two ago Miel ’Coolz0r’ Van Opstal joined Microsoft to work as a enthusiast evangelist for EMEA. Many of you might know him from Marketing Thoughts (which he promised to keep as is) but now he has his new blog related to his experiences at Microsoft: http://micromiel.com. Curious what content he’ll produce for Channel 10 as well. Welcome on board dude!
Tags: miel van opstal, coolz0r, micromiel, microsoft, marketing thoughts
December 30, 2006
0 Comments
Since October WordPress offers the possibility to use your own domain name for your WordPress.com blog. I had bought crossthebreeze.com a couple of months earlier already so I did that right away. The only doubt I had about the switch from crossthebreeze.wordpress.com to crossthebreeze.com was related to the Technorati ranking, I claimed both blogs but they’re and have a ranking for each… but they’re both one and the same so that’s a shame. I figured it can’t be that hard to claim one blog under separate url’s but since I couldn’t find it myself, I sent an email to Technorati (in October) … and I’m still waiting on the answer. Any of you know if this is possible (and if so, how)? Or how you can get Technorati to answer you when you’re not an A-list blogger?
Tags: technorati, domains, wordpress, support
December 24, 2006
2 Comments
Many have argued about the value of having a lot of friends on services such as My Space, but I guess this card (sent to PostSecret) says it all:
Tags: holiday greetings, my space, friends
December 22, 2006
0 Comments
“Pay attention, professionals –or not- in Communication, Marketing and Advertising. These things happen almost every day; sometimes we don’t even notice them. But they’re here to stay. They are verbatims. And yes, they’re REAL.”
So reads the introduction of AdVerbatims and if you hadn’t seen this before, you should go take a look. It’s weekly fun in my RSS reader ;-)
Here are some examples:
#351- “The client has given us FINAL approval, but asked if we could change one small thing.”
(Agency, Project Manager to Art Director)
#342- “Can you make the URL resemble a web link? You know, underlined in blue. That way everyone knows it’s for our web site.”
(Client, to Account Manager, describing the URL at the bottom of a print ad)
#327- “This flyer is URGENT. I don’t know how you do it but just do it so it fits an envelope. Just like the one I’m holding now”.
(Client, Trade Marketing Coordinator to Account Supervisor… on a phone conversation)
And ofcourse, share your own experiences! Send your collaborations to ad.verbatims [at] gmail dot com.
[Via Brandopia]
Tags: advertising, communication, marketing, agencies, fun, adverbatim
December 21, 2006
0 Comments
Only two days ago Jaffe announced the name of the new book he’s writing: Join the Conversation (How to engage marketing-weary consumers through the power of community, dialogue and partnership). Given the subject I think it’s cool to see that today he goes even further and offers everyone out there to be part of this new book:
1) Design the actual cover of my book. There’s a Creative Brief waiting for you on the JTC Wiki (http://www.jointheconversationwiki.com/) which outlines the process, deadlines and type size of your name on the eventual cover.
2) Contribute i.e. co-co-author Chapter 10, “Why are you so afraid of conversation?” via the JTC Wiki (http://www.jointheconversationwiki.com/) You’ll need a password, which you can get by e-mailing jtc at crayonville dot com. Subject “password”
I think that’s an interesting move and look forward to the results. I’m not sure if I’ll apply but I’ll definitely take a look at the wikis. If you’re interested I suggest you do the same.
Talking about books, for now I need to finish Freakonomics, so I can start with Citizen Marketers before the book review on Jan 10th. Looking forward to that as well I must say.
Tags: join the conversation, jaffe, jaffejuice, citizen marketers, freakonomics
December 21, 2006
0 Comments
It took them almost a week, but today got the call I was waiting for from Aviapartner: my luggage has been found. That’s good news, I still believe Aviapartner should provide better ways to query on your lost luggage, I definitely didn’t get the information I wanted about it while waiting, but at least they found it.
Tags: aviapartner, lost luggage
December 20, 2006
1 Comment
Yesterday I got an early Xmas present: a Zune. I had the intention to get one anyway to find out how it compares to the iPod, I wanted to know how Microsoft (my employer) is going to compete in this space and you can’t do that only by reading the reviews (at least that’s what I think).
First of all, it compares in no way to the ‘what if Microsoft designed the iPod package‘ opening up the Zune package. It’s quite funky. Something that sort of surprised me as well is that the Zune has some battery power already when you open up the package so you can turn in on right away. It’s no big deal, but if you’re like me you like to start playing with your gadgets right out of the box so I liked that.
One issue I knew I was going to have was the lack of Vista support for the moment. Luckily just yesterday Microsoft pushed out a new firmware update for the Zune that new supports Vista as well. Well that feeling lasted for about 5 minutes, until I found out it only supports the Vista RTM and I’m still on Beta 2. A new pc with the Vista RTM is on it’s way so I guess that I’ll just have to wait a little bit longer then.
Anyway, My iPod is empty since yesterday evening and I can’t upload it here so I’m playing with the Zune radio features to get some music while on the Eurostar and I must say that works quite well. Hopefully my new pc arrives soon so I can discover all of the Zune’s functionalities. I’ll let you know what I think of it ;-)
December 20, 2006
0 Comments
I’ve been a bit unlucky with traveling the last few days I must say. Last Friday I flew back from London with British Airways to Brussels after spending the whole week in abroad in Paris & London. I think it was probably the worst day of the year to take a BA flight anywhere, I haven’t seen such a mess before on any airport in my entire life! There was an amazing queue that went outside, through a tent, back inside… luckily I found a way to skip big part of it otherwise I would have missed my flight for sure. When I finally arrived at Brussels Airport after a long week of traveling, my luggage wasn’t there. Seems like that Friday a lot more passengers suffered from lost luggage, which is no surprise to me. Still I haven’t heard anything yet from Aviapartner who does the BA handling, and when you call them there’s no way to get an operator on the phone. You have to enter your file number and it’ll tell you that “we haven’t got it yet, we’ll call you when we do”…. sigh.
This week I’m over in London again and I’m traveling home as I’m writing this. I should have been home already for an hour or so, but my 7.55 flight from London City got delayed due to the fog to 12.40! No way I was going to wait that long, so I went back to Waterloo Station and got myself on the Eurostar (Veronique will be happy ;-)).
I don’t have any more traveling planned until the second week of January and I can tell you that I don’t regret that for the moment.
Tags: travel, ba, british airways, paris, london, waterloo station, eurostar, london city, luggage
December 18, 2006
9 Comments
I doubt whether you really want to know this, but since you asked here are the “five things you probably don’t know about me”:
I tag Ine “global neighborhoods” Dehandschutter, Geert “I need to blog more” Desager, Luc “new logo” Van Braekel, Tom “I-Wizzard” De Bruyne and finally let’s include someone from the Independent Republic of Wallonia as well ;-) Damien “blogging the news” Vanachter.
Tags: peterforret, mustang, guitar, buttonfly, fivethings, mypast
December 16, 2006
0 Comments
Agencies start to embrace guerilla advertising tactics more and more, so it makes sense that they use it as well when advertising for themselves. There is a difference though between agencies/brands using guerilla tactics to target consumer and agencies going head on with eachother. I guess Saatchi & Saatchi won’t leave it like this, after this guerilla action from TBWA NY. AdArena says ‘this means war’ and I guess it does in some sense. I think it’s fun and definitely hope to see a ‘battle’ on the creative field.
[Via AdArena]
Tags: agency, guerilla, advertising, saatchi, tbwa, adarena, war
|
