consumer « ‘Cross The Breeze

Love your content, set it free

7 04 2009

I’ve been working on a theory that relates a lot to the content of this presentation. The theory is something I need to blog about later (once I get it all nicely lined up) so take a look at this in the meantime.

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: content, free, presentation
Categories : ageofconversation, consumer, internet, presentation

Enhancing search

26 02 2009

Just installed WebMynd Firefox extension today, based on the post about it on digital inspiration. I like what it does, when I search now I get some additional search results from other services right there next to the main results – like this:

And yes I used a little vanity search as an example, you gotta use something right :). You can easily add other services you want to have in that right column, from the list of services available on top of it. Since you always get the additional WebMynd powered results when you do a search, you don’t have to go to another URL or anything, just using type the query in your browser’s search box and this is what you get. Very nice. Worth giving a try, as is Live Search by the way ;)

Update: There is an IE plugin for WebMynd as well, just open the browser of choice and you’ll get the right download option.

Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: browser, firefox, flickr, plugin, search, twitter, webmynd
Categories : consumer, internet, software

A survey about love

11 02 2009

My wife and I we don’t ‘do Valentine’. We don’t seem to be very representative for the country we live in though, as data shows that celebrating Valentine’s Day is more popular in Belgium than anywhere else in Europe. We’ve done a survey on that topic (together with Cross Tabs) on MSN/Windows Live in 16 EMEA countries which had over 78.000 respondents (Updated with link). We thought that with Valentine’s Day coming up it would be interesting to find out how flirting & dating has evolved in the digital age that is the 21st Century. And given the current crisis we were also curious how much that would impact your Valentine’s celebration. All of that resulted in some interesting data and I decided to put the key highlights in a presentation for your viewing pleasure:

People clearly find it easier to say ‘I love you’ over email, IM or txt messages than face to face as also this research points out (from the press release):

“The majority of people across Europe (66%) admit that they find it easier to flirt over IM than face-to-face, with shy South Africans much preferring this method of flirting (78%) closely followed by Arabia (77%), Turkey (76%) and Ireland (72%). Saying ‘I Love You’ for the first time is never easy, so it comes as no surprise that 1 in 3 have actively declared their love for someone over instant messenger rather than face-to-face. Cupids in the Netherlands (61%), Denmark (42%), Portugal (41%) and Spain (40%) top the league table for saying ‘I love you’ in cyberspace.”

Like I said earlier we also looked at how much impact the recession would have on the spending for Valentine’s Day and although that day is traditionally a time to ’splash some cash’, spendings in most countries will fall by almost 10% on average (see table below). I couldn’t help noticing though that European men spend on average 33% more on Valentine’s Day than European women ;)

lovesurvey

There was a lot more data about this per country and everything which I obviously can’t all post here, but I should be able to point you to the right direction in case you’re wondering about more details (participating countries in the table above btw.). Once I get a link to the press release (which has also more data) I’ll add it right here as well.

Update: Here’s the press release with some additional data

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: cyberspace, digital, love, revolution, valentine
Categories : consumer, fun, internet, microsoft

Sales! Everything –50%

19 01 2009

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]

Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: loyaly, mango, reduction, sales, scam, shopping
Categories : belgium, consumer

Some IKEA for the Oval Office

19 01 2009

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 ;)

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: furniture, gov, guerilla, ikea
Categories : advertising, consumer, design, fun, guerilla, inspiration, marketing

Turn on the pre-recorded website

8 01 2009

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!

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: advertising, bank, ing, liondeposit, movie, promotion
Categories : advertising, belgium, branding, consumer, inspiration, marketing, movies, video, viral

Where’s agency 2.0? (Cont’d)

11 12 2008

Right about a year ago I wrote this thought:

“With more and more agencies adopting new ways to get the connection between their clients the advertisers and the consumer, I think it’s time they rethink themselves as well and look at how they can serve their clients, their customers a bit better. Just a thought.”

It was at a time that I was working simultaneously with several different agencies across Europe and it struck me how all of them were telling me to focus more on the customer etc while in the meantime operating on a very self-centric approach themselves.

I was reminded of this post (and discussion) this week as Alain Thys and Stefan Kolle from FutureLab released a new report around exactly that topic:

“This is the free version of the Futurelab report on the growing disconnect between what advertising agencies offer, and what their clients are looking for. If you wish to purchase the full report with 60 pages of strategic insights and recommendations, go to: www.futurelab.net/agencyreport.”

Enjoy.

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Tags: agency20, agencyreport, futurelab, presentation, report
Categories : advertising, ageofconversation, bringtheloveback, consumer, inspiration, marketing, presentation, quote

Blogger meetups

24 11 2008

Little over a week ago, I was part of 2 blogger meetups I wanted to highlight here as well. The first meetup was in Stockholm during SIME and was co-hosted by Microsoft and SIME. We both agreed it would be a great idea to have some small side-event during one of the breaks, a dialogue between the bloggers present at the event, both from the audience and speakers. It was a bit unfortunate the only room available was a small cinema theatre, forcing it a little into an audience vs. stage setup but I enjoyed the meetup nevertheless and only wished we had more time. I was happy Thomas Crampton was willing to moderate the mini-event and that also Joi Ito and Dave Sifry agreed to participate, and of course that so many people turned up for it.

Click on the image for the video, only part 1 available but will update once that changes.

I like the way Johan Ronnestam described it on his blog:

“Absolutely one of the better takeouts from this years SIME (so far) even though I think it could have been more of a meetup rather than a ‘listenup’.”

I think we had a great set of topics that we wanted to talk about with all the bloggers (personal vs corporate blogging, sponsored content, blogosphere dead or not, …) but we only got halfway through it. Definitely a format I will try to replicate at other events since most of the feedback was really positive. And Joi, thanks for the nice photo!

The day after we had a blogger meetup in London with the purpose to have a discussion around the new version of Windows Live that was announced the night before the meetup. I had organized the event in the Coach & Horses (Soho) which was a nice location for it, although some wifi improvements are in place ;) We had Ryan Gavin and Jeff Kunins over from the Windows Live team and Redmond to give a rundown of the new stuff which sparked quite a bit of discussion so that was quite fun as well.

The photo above was taken during the dinner after the presentation, but as you can see the discussion is still pretty much ongoing. From left to right you see Scott Lovegrove, Chris Overd, Neville Hobson and Ryan Gavin. Also present were Paul Walsh, Robin Wauters, Pieter Dom and Jamie Tomson. Too bad not everyone who accepted made it to the evening, but we’re definitely going to organize evenings such as this one again on several different topics so hopefully they can join us next time. In case you are interested in joining discussions like this, let me know in the comments or shoot me an email at kris [at] crossthebreeze [dot] com.

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: blogger, london, meetup, sime, stockholm, windowslive
Categories : blogging, community, consumer, internet, presentation, social media, software, technology, travel, windows live

SpotMe or SpyMe?

21 11 2008

At the Creativity World Forum this week, all attendees were given SpotMe devices: The All-In-One Participant Communication Tool (I got that last bit of their website obviously).

“Spotme combines social networking via a searchable photo database, messaging, people radar, unique “Spotting” function and electronic business card exchange, with audience response, Q&A sessions, messaging, lead retrieval, attendance tracking, electronic feedback forms (and more) to create the only all-in-one communication service for events of all sorts – from 200 to 5000 participants.“

And here’s a video of the gizmo:

Hey and I like gizmos so I was very curious about this after I found out the CWF would make use of it. And truth to be told, it has some interesting features, and first thing after I checked into the conference and retrieved my SpotMe device, I started toying with it and started looking in the contactlist for people to ‘spot’, people I wanted to meet. It didn’t take long for the first alert that someone I wanted to meet was in my neighborhood… according to the device, as I couldn’t find that person. Nor could I the next time that happened.

But you can also send each other messages, something I soon found out was not actually real time as it would ‘queue’ the message for you so worthless to say “come and see me by the stairs on the left” if that message would only be sent maybe 10, 15 minutes later. You just don’t know.

There’s also some practical issues. SpotMe has a nicely designed interface, but pretty much everybody assumes it’s a touch interface and it’s not. I’ve also seen plenty of people (especially in the beginning) that have no idea there’s a keypad underneath the screen. And lastly, I’m not so sure about the ‘rubbing devices’ idea for sharing business cards, nor ‘shake it’ idea to send live feedback about what’s on right now.

I also started wondering about privacy. You exchange business cards electronically with the people you meet using SpotMe, which they are supposed to send after the event. Sounds good to me, but what else would they track. I’m not sure if they do (although the description above implies they do at least to some extend) but the technology would allow to track a lot. It allows them to see where you have been all day? Plenary room, reception area, expo, … for how long, who’s been around you, who you wanted to meet and who you’ve actually met, … A whole bunch of data comes out. Some quite harmless, but probably not all. Very curious about that.

Last but not least, why didn’t it offer internet access? Or even better, why a different device anyway? I know it uses RFID, but isn’t there any way we can solve this same problem using our cell phones in some way? For me the SpotMe device became a large digital program, something that a lot of conferences today already offer as a mobile webpage.

Overall, I’m glad I could check it out, I do believe it helps solving a problem but I’m not convinced it’s doing that the right way yet and I would wish to find out more about the privacy questions. Fact is that CWF was great on content but I wasn’t able to do good networking (other than with people I already knew) and SpotMe didn’t change any of that.