marketing « ‘Cross The Breeze

What a ride!

12 07 2009

The last 2 months have been kinda crazy. After my last day at Microsoft, I started jobhunting right away, jobhunting new style that is – using my blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, … and every other network that could help me spread the word. Interestingly enough it all became a bit of an experiment along the way as well, like when I introduced the #hirefriday tag, but nevertheless still a rather unpleasant reality of being unemployed during a crisis. Lucky enough for me things paid off rather quickly and 5-6 weeks after my last day at Microsoft I started working again.

My new home is Duval Guillaume, an idea-centric communications agency with offices in Antwerp and Brussels. Since 3 weeks you can find me in the Brussels office (photo below) as the new head of strategy there. But more on what I’m doing there in future blogposts.

A lot of people have been very helpful during all those weeks and I’m very thankful for that. I realize I have been pretty silent on this blog during most of that time but we’ll be going to a more regular rhythm again soon. First I need to change a few things here, for one I should really get that self hosting thing going (yeah I know it’s not the first time I talk about this).

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: advertising, agency, duvalguillaume, hirefriday, jobhunt, microsoft, twitter
Categories : advertising, belgium, branding, inspiration, marketing, media, microsoft

Ignore everybody!

22 05 2009

One of the perks of being unemployed is that you actually have time for a few things that you didn`t really have time for before… like reading books for instance, so that`s what I`m doing… well one of the things I`m doing – looking for work is another one ;) One book I read a couple of days ago was Hugh MacLeod`s upcoming “Ignore Everybody” of which I had received an advance copy thanks to Hugh and the fine people at Penguin Group.

ignoreeverybody

Long time ago – while reading something on Hugh`s blog – I stumbled onto a series of posts/writings that were all tagged with “How to be creative”. It was a good read, so finding out it the content was also available on a free PDF on changethis.com made it even better. More than 1 million downloads don`t lie of course, I still have a printed copy of that PDF right here. When Hugh mentioned he got a book deal on this which involved writing some extra chapters I was a bit sceptical though. I totally loved the series but all of that stuff had come about quite organically, there`s a difference when you write things when you think about them basically whenever you feel like it… or when you have to write chapters for a book. Hugh proved me wrong about being sceptical, there`s now way you could tell which chapters where there first or which ones are new, the book is rock solid. It`s an easy read in the typical style of Hugh MacLeod – unique, smart and funny – and with a good dose of cartoons in them. My favorite one in the book? Especially while jobhunting… is this one (from 2006):

thefuturebelongs219

So pre-order the book now, you won`t regret.

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: book, cartoon, gapingvoid, hughmacleod, ignoreeverybody
Categories : books, inspiration, internet, marketing

Checkmate

16 04 2009

Who says you cannot do funky advertising on billboards anymore. You gotta love stuff like this, I know I do :)

Via Absoluut Matth

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Tags: advertising, audi, billboard, bmw, checkmate, santamonica
Categories : advertising, bringtheloveback, inspiration, marketing

The history of the internet

23 03 2009

The team behind IE8 released this video last week to go with the launch of Internet Explorer 8, worth a look.

Bonus link – Lifehacker posted about the “surprising” search tools in IE8, making the web searching/surfing experience quite a bit easier.

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Tags: browser, ie8, internet, internetexplorer, microsoft, search
Categories : internet, marketing, microsoft, software, video

Microsoft Advertising

5 03 2009

Although most of my work is related to some of Microsoft’s biggest consumer brands such as Windows Live, MSN, etc I also do (more and more actually) work for Microsoft Advertising. What does Microsoft have to offer to advertisers? Many of you might remember “Bring The Love Back”, today we have created another little 90 seconds video that explains a bit more what it is we do at Microsoft Advertising, check it out:

I’ve also set up a Twitter account for Microsoft Advertising Europe, offering another way to get in touch with us so follow us in case you are interested in advertising and curious about what we have to offer.

Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: advertising, bringtheloveback, microsoft, video
Categories : advertising, bringtheloveback, community, internet, marketing, microsoft, social media, video

Kinepolis meetup

23 02 2009

My old friends at Kinepolis invited me over for a blogger meetup 2 weeks ago, something they had set up together with Proximity BBDO (represented by the one and only ‘Druppels’) and Adhese. I wasn’t too sure what to expect, but given the fact I worked at Kinepolis myself for some 7 years I had more than enough reasons to go check it out.

I don’t really want to cover the content of the meeting (as others have done that already) but I was mostly interested in the approach of the company towards the community. And the commentary after.

Photo by Dipfico

I once wrote a post called ‘not for sale’ and featured it in my side navigation since then. And then people started asking me why I don’t like advertising on my blog… I tell them to read it again, it’s not what I’m saying. The whole social media approach, the whole thing about being more consumer friendly, about engaging in a conversation, … is something that needs to be in your soul so to speak. A lot of companies get some recognition because ‘they get it’ whereas they just started using social media technologies to do one way communications. Sigh. I like genuine innovation, genuine openness… and yes even when you could argue about why it didn’t come any sooner.

Kinepolis is a company that gets it, maybe late but they showed me they do. Why? Because of the genuine openness and honesty of the conversation we had with the Kinepolis management during the meetup, including their CEO. The 20-some bloggers present at the event will probably agree, when was the last time you had such an open conversation with the CEO of a company the size of Kinepolis? Very curious to see how this will evolve, I guess that’s where I still can go wrong. At least the goodwill is there…

Looking at the commentary after the event I realized even more people don’t seem to make the distinction between ‘I approve how they did this’ and ‘I will now believe whatever they say without thinking’. Did I buy everything they said at that event? Did I think they are now all saints? No. But they did show in a very honest way what their plans are and how they want to have this conversation. I liked that a lot. And for the naysayers, if you really care about this just tell Adhese about it and there’s no reason why you couldn’t be part of this.

There were only 2 things I missed really, one being some more food and the other one a demo of the big screen gaming they do because I always loved that. There’s really nothing that beats playing COD or other on a 24 meters wide screen in full THX Dolby Surround sound ;)

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: adhese, bbdo, blogger, kinepolis, meetup, proximity
Categories : ageofconversation, belgium, blogging, community, marketing, movies, social media

Mini augmented reality

10 02 2009

Mini has created a fantastic ad that is truly engaging using some augmented reality technology. Just watch this:

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: advertising, augmented reality, mini
Categories : advertising, bringtheloveback, electronics, inspiration, marketing, technology, viral

Marketer’s view on 2009

28 01 2009

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)

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: 2009, downloads, marketing, outlook, pdf, predictions, socialmedia
Categories : books, community, inspiration, marketing, media, presentation, research, social media

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 ;)