'Cross The Breeze

Marketer’s view on 2009

January 28, 2009 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

Mid December last year Peter Kim released his Social Media Predictions for 2009, for which he collected the thoughts of some 14 thought leaders in one nice little document. There’s a lot of good ideas and feedback in there, although I cannot resist thinking some of it is wishful thinking, hoping that some things will change or improve which probably won’t happen. Anyway, worth checking out.

Charlene Li (who was part of the people inputting in Peter’s document) added some extra thoughts on it later on her own blog and also ReadWriteWeb weighted in on the predictions.

More recently Valeria Maltoni asked a dozen marketing bloggers about their thoughts for 2009, and as Valeria puts it: “More than predictions, which is hard to do, we focused on direction. This eBook is the result of our collective energy and execution experience”.

Both documents collect the thoughts of marketing professionals in the field and are definitely worth reading so download the PDFs here: Social Media 2009 (Peter Kim) – Marketing 2009 (Valeria Maltoni)

books, community, inspiration, marketing, media, presentation, research, social media

2009, downloads, marketing, outlook, pdf, predictions, socialmedia

Sales! Everything –50%

January 19, 2009 by Kris Hoet 7 Comments

I was rather surprised to see that this article (PDF/Dutch) didn’t generate more buzz in the Belgian blogosphere. Let me explain.

It’s sales period in Belgium as always during the first month of January. These sales are indeed only allowed a certain moments of the year and are heavily regulated. I won’t go into the details as it’s not to the point (and I would have to look them up ;)).

So what happens at Mango, a fashion retailer? They have almost everything at 50% off, great sales. But if you take away the sales price tag? You notice the ‘real’ original price, shown quite clearly on this photo:

So in reality they’re only giving like 30% off versus what they are advertising right now. According to the folks at the Federal Dept. of Economics what happened here is legally allowed so case closed.

I don’t get it though, legal or not, this is not really showing much respect for your customers is it? Legal or not, we should all find this a problem, seriously. I can already see how the conversation at the Mango office would have been a couple of weeks ago:

GM (General Moron): Alright, January sales are coming up, let’s do all at –50%
MD (Marketing/Sales Dude): Great idea boss, let’s go do it
MD: One problem though, we cannot afford –50%, we wouldn’t make enough profit
GM: That’s not what we want is it … mmm … still want those big –50% stickers on my shops though
MD: I got an idea, why don’t we claim the prices of our products are a bit higher than they really are… and then give 50% off, nobody will notice…
GM: You’re the best! Let’s go get them.

Common practice? According to some it is. Legally ok? Apparently yes. But what I remember from Mango is that they have made it clear they shouldn’t be trusted. Happy shopping.

[Via Goedles]

belgium, consumer

loyaly, mango, reduction, sales, scam, shopping

Some IKEA for the Oval Office

January 19, 2009 by Kris Hoet 3 Comments

In the newspaper (Het Nieuwsblad) this weekend: “American Government shops at IKEA”:

“They might be driving in expensive cars, but when it comes down to furniture it seems that some people in the US government have a slightly less expensive taste. The people in this government limo have clearly gone to IKEA.”

Oh yeah? Apart from overly exaggerating with the eye-catching title I doubt if any of this is true, especially since IKEA is running this campaign as we speak… makes it quite a coincidence don’t you think? Kudos to IKEA though ;)

advertising, consumer, design, fun, guerilla, inspiration, marketing

furniture, gov, guerilla, ikea

Chaos

January 19, 2009 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

… lies in Belgium, finally I found some scientific proof. When I checked out the Twitter Grader page for Belgium the other day, this is what I saw, check out n.4 in the list.

belgium, fun

belgium, chaos, fun, grader, twitter

A traveler’s wine

January 14, 2009 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

Is it because I like wine? Or because I travel quite a bit throughout the year? I guess a bit of both… and combined with the love for all things original. Here’s what I’m talking about. Isn’t that just brilliant?

[Via Steve Clayton]

internet

Turn on the pre-recorded website

January 8, 2009 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

My buddy Matth just IM’ed me this one, a pretty engaging promotion from ING for their Lion Deposit. I reckon it’s not easy to make promotions for banks these days given the whole sector lost quite some trust with their customers… like me for instance.

I won’t say too much about it as you have to go see for yourself but know that not all is in English (although you’ll get the idea). I especially like the banner girl… and her preference for Yahoo! banners, as they are bigger and allow for more creativity. You’ll :)

And yes I know similar things like this have been done before, but that doesn’t mean this doesn’t work. I watched it until the end… and I even clicked. Was this created by Emakina? Job well done to whomever did this anyway!

advertising, belgium, branding, consumer, inspiration, marketing, movies, video, viral

advertising, bank, ing, liondeposit, movie, promotion

This was 2008

January 6, 2009 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

There is no better way for me to describe 2008 than with this snapshot from ‘my’ Swirl. Thanks to all who replied on Twitter by the way for the best screengrabbing solution to get this snapshot to begin with :) I used the Screengrab plugin for Firefox which some of you suggested, worked like a charm. Enjoy.