‘Cross The Breeze

This last Thursday and Friday I attended and participated in the Euroblog 2008 event in Brussels organized by Euprera - the European PR Education and Research Association. The symposium was very much an academic event with a lot of academic speakers and attendees, and less practioners (at least that’s how I experienced it).

That wasn’t a surprise though, as the event was clearly set up to try and have the academia embrace the need to change. Still, sometimes, I felt like I didn’t belong there. Now I don’t mean anything bad with this, there’s just a very clear gap between the way we all approach things. It made me think of trying/testing out the water in a swimming tool. If you’re a practioner like myself you will get ready for the pool, put your toe in to get an idea of the temperature, probably feel like it’s colder than you would have wanted it to be but you’ll get in the water anyway and start swimming. You’ll talk to other people in the pool, maybe about the water, or maybe about that new glide which you then try out as well. This is the way me (and other people) started their blog, signed up for Twitter, Friendfeed, etc etc. After the presentations from the academia, it became clear that they approach ‘the pool’ in a different way. They talk to people outside and next to the pool about the temperature of the water, use a whole bunch of metric equipment to test the water conditions, relate all that info to ideal human body conditions, etc etc (this still fully dressed of course) to work out a project trajectory to get into the water at some point in time.

And I know this analogy is a bit black&white, but I think you get my point. On Friday I sat on a panel myself that was a mixture between academia and practitioners and there the difference was less visible (on the panel itself). The discussion itself with the panel and audience was pretty interesting to me as well. It highlighted once more some of the fears but also strengthened the idea that there aren’t enough case studies to go by.  At one point I feel this is just another ‘reason’ to keep away of change as long as one can. But as you (might) know from an earlier post I do feel we have to reach out more to get more people embrace the need to change so maybe we should just see what we can do about it - there really is more than just Kryptonite you know ;)

Don’t get me wrong, I did like the event. Some discussions where pretty interesting, some presentations like the one’s of David Jennings and Martin Oetting where very enjoyable and it was very good meeting up with the Edelman Digital crew: Steve Rubel, Marshall Manson, Rick Murray, … but also David Weinberger or Neville Hobson, the latter whom I met in person for the first time after being in several online conversations before.

Although it seems like this is pretty much a creative idea, and nothing quite real today, I like it immediately. Good out-the-box thinking from the researchers at the BBC. Imagine how this could bring a totally immersed movie experience into your living room. Or think about gaming, COD4 to name a one for instance, now that would be absolutely amazing.

[Via David Bausola]

I’m not such a big fan of predictions like we see them all over on the web at the start of the New Year. There are a few good ones like those of John Batelle for instance, but other than that many predictions sound more like acknowledgement of something that’s already happening today or a wish-list for something we would like to see happen.

One good example is mobile for instance. It’s going to be the year of mobile since 2005 I think and as I said before, 2008 is not going to be the year of mobile either. Or talk about video, I had a discussion with someone recently about online video after a statement that 2008 would be the year online video will get big. That’s just not true, 2007 was that year already. As a counter argument I did say I believe 2008 will be the year in which online video will become more useful, of better quality, with better metrics, better advertising, … you name it.

And that’s what is happening today indeed. Yesterday Read/Write Web reported on the launch of Dailymotion HD upload & playback, including automatic bandwidth detection which allows easy switching to lower quality versions. Check out the HD example in their post. Now I can see how HD quality might not be on top of everybody’s wish-list for online video, but I do believe it’s a must have for future development of online video.

About a week ago, MIT AdverLab reported on a new innovative technology related to video advertising. The technology developed in Microsoft’s AdCenter Labs included tools for content analysis and speech recognition for advanced contextual advertising. (again disclaimer: Microsoft is my employer). Definitely take a look at the video below to get an idea of what they exactly mean with that:

Now as I am in advertising, I’m interested in this but not only for advertising purposes. If you watched the video you will understand that there are also opportunities for websites for instance to relate archived content to in-video content (think news sites) or how the technology can create automatic chapters in a video for more useful video browsing for instance. There are quite a few exciting technology usages you can think of with this new development.

A last improvement will be about making video more searchable. The technology mentioned before will definitely be able to help in that area, but quite a few startups are working in that area as well. A few weeks ago at the LIFT Venture Night we saw Viewdle showing off their approach on this, including face recogniation etc. Neat stuff as well.

Content analysis, speech recognition, chaptering, contextual advertising and content (based on the video - not on title or tags), HD, … Yes, online video is big already, 2008 will be the year in which it will get better.

I’ve touched on this before (related to Advertising) and since I’m color-blind myself I hold a strong interest in the topic. Most important fact to repeat out of that earlier post: 8% of all Caucasian males suffer a color vision deficiency. And that might be more than you would expect.

With this in mind I said that it’s not that silly to have your ads tested to see if someone who’s color-blind can see/read everything alright. Same counts for websites obviously, but the most time I personally have problems with it is with presentations.

We all know that every single minute there’s probably someone in the world working on the most horrendous powerpoint/keynote presentation but apart from ugly presentations, some people use texts on backgrounds in a way that I can’t read the slides anymore. And guess what, If you have a reasonable audience, I probably wasn’t alone.

Last week AdLab did a post about this topic again and posted these 2 color wheels. The first one is the color-wheel as seen by a red-insensitive protopane, the second color wheel is a regular one.

So here’s the normal one:

Now it’s very hard for me to say if the first wheel actually represents what I see, since I obviously see both color wheels different then you, but it should give you a good idea. Also read Paul Martin’s post on color-blindness where you can see a whole lot more of comparison images.

I got the opportunity (I wouldn’t call it luck) to work with many agencies across Europe for all the projects that we’re developing for MSN and/or Windows Live. This year alone my team worked with agencies out of the US, UK, France, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Italy and The Netherlands and even as we speak the team is working on 5 projects with 5 different agencies.

Why? Or how come, you might wonder. There are 2 reasons for this. First of all not all agencies have the same competencies and I like to chose where I go with each project. And second, we develop quite a few activities for all European markets that initially were created in one of the countries, and so we end up working with the initial agency as well (at least for part of it).

All of this is just an introduction to what I really want to say though. All the agencies we work with have their own competencies, their own way of doing business, their own strategies … and what not. Still they all the same problem. Over time agencies have been able to optimize how to do agency business, the problem is that this optimization is very agency centric and doesn’t always benefit the client (that is me in this case).

Let me give you an example. When an agency develops a quote for a project we ask them, they will look at who internally needs to be involved, how much work there is at it, etc… Since the designer, accountant, senior strategist all have different rates per hour work, they will calculate how much time each of them will have to work on the project times their specific rate and that will be the quote you eventually get. Price looks good and you give your OK to the agency and that’s when the fun starts. When you get the first designs for instance you might not like it at all and ask a new design - mmm - there was only one concept round foreseen in the budget they gave you, that’ll be extra. It will be like that until all goes live are gets launched. And who benefits from this? The agency does, it fits in the way they plan things, but you as a client pay for a solution don’t you. Not for 1 or 2 designs, iterations, copy changes, … or whatever.

Another example is related to outsourcing. I get the impressions that agencies, especially digital agencies, are outsourcing more than they used to. From an agency point of view I can understand. Look at the complexity of all things web and how fast it all is moving. As a result you don’t try and get all knowledge in house, but you work with subcontractors. What’s new? Nothing you might say, if it wasn’t for the fact that subcontractors are also passing more and more jobs on to yet another subcontractor and then that might be a problem. Why? Commission here, commission there, who do you think pays these in the end?

Anyway, 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.

I just stumbled upon an interesting presentation that was made by a Belgian friend of mine who works for Naked Communications in London. The presentation is named: “Great Quotes to Use and Repeat When You Can’t Find a Better Way of Saying It” … and that’s exactly what it is. Maybe you had noticed it already since it’s 5 months old by now, if not check it out. I suggest you download it as well, might come in handy one day… when you can’t find a better way of saying it ;)

And allow me to add a nice one from our chairman Bill Gates:

”We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.

Technorati Tags: presentation, quotes, tomhimpe

The Blue Monster Show: now this might become interesting. I’ve got as much information as you about what this is going to look like (that is after watching this video) and probably nobody really knows. To some point, that is part of what made the Blue Monster so interesting to me so far, the fact that you never really know where it is going. Apart from the fact that it is a good conversation starter for better conversations about Microsoft and where the company is going.

Here’s the video announcement of Loic Le Meur and Hugh MacLeod on Seesmic, since that’s where you should be able to find the “Blue Monster Show”. As Hugh states, the Blue Monster isn’t really owned by anyone, which is good. I know that many benefit from it, and that’s maybe even better.

And Loic, if you read this, thanks again for the Seesmic invitation but I haven’t had time to record anything on it yet… but I’ll get to it ;)

Technorati Tags: gapingvoid, bluemonster, seesmic, socialobject, stormhoek

Last week I presented at Customer First about Microsoft and social media. Literally a day before that presentation I decided to change my little speech a little. I hear so much of companies setting up their own blog, their own Facebook or whatever that it gets on my nerves. I’m a believer, but heck, when fellow marketing colleagues are ‘totally getting it’ because they want to set up controlled areas for consumers to come to and engage with their brand… I have a problem with that. Why, because they haven’t gone out first to tune into the ongoing conversations already. Like a consumer only tells his opinion about you when you’ve set up an area for them to do so.

So I changed my introduction and decided not only to talk about some of my own experiences in social media with microsoft, but to clarify some things first. Here is also where I talk about what I believe is a new balance. In short (slide 5-6) we’ve gone from a balanced situation in the relationship between brands and consumers a long time ago to a situation where the business solely owned the power to send out messages and consumers could basically only receive these. With social media that power came back to the people, to consumers and hence it created a new balance between brands and consumers. This is obviously a very good situation and one that is much more normal than what we experienced the years before… but brands aren’t feeling comfortable in that new situation, at least a lot of them aren’t.

This is also where the ‘conversation’ comes in. Pete Blackshaw asked on his CGM Facebook group recently if we are overusing the term ‘conversation’. I don’t think so at all. I find the ‘conversation’ metaphor a very easy and powerful way to help brands to understand why they need to change. How they have to imagine the situation of both the brand and the consumer sitting at a table, where both parties have the same value in the conversation… and more importantly (which many forget) where both parties can start the conversation!

The definition found at Wikipedia is maybe even a better explanation. Keep this in mind when you start evaluating your next campaign and maybe it will make a difference.

“Conversations are the ideal form of communication in some respects, since they allow people with different views of a topic to learn from each other. A speech, on the other hand, is an oral presentation by one person directed at a group. For a successful conversation, the partners must achieve a workable balance of contributions. A successful conversation includes mutually interesting connections between the speakers or things that the speakers know. For this to happen, those engaging in conversation must find a topic on which they both can relate to in some sense.”

Age of conversation indeed, no question about it.

Technorati Tags: conversation, advertising, marketing, pr, internet, socialmedia

Soo little time, soo much work to do… and so much more stuff to write about. Therefore I’m writing this post to wrap up the week.

It was a busy week with many events. On Wednesday I was Bea’s guest at the first Brussels Girl Geek Dinner, kudos to Clo for organizing this. Some familiar faces and some new ones and a little goodie bag for everyone. And yes Sarah, I’m bringing one of those for you on Wednesday ;)

On Thursday & Friday I was present at the second Customer First event in Brussels, and of course to the MIXX awards on Thursday night. Again these events are mainly interesting to network and to hook up with some people you haven’t seen for a while. The Belgian internet advertising industry is rather small, so it’s fair to say that everybody was pretty much there :) Great results at the MIXX awards by the way since Geert and Openhere won the Gold Award in the category Brand Awareness for Bring The Love Back. I recently started a group on Facebook for Bring The Love Back by the way, 163 members in the first week, join us here.

I also did a presentation on Microsoft and Social Media at Customer First, which I’ll post here in a separate post. Feedback was quite ok so that’s always nice.

This morning I received my ‘invitation’ for Customer First 2007, the second edition of this “gathering of more than 2000 professionals in interactive marketing, mobile marketing, online media, SEM, …’. Well actually, I received the invite 4 times this morning, maybe I get some more tomorrow.

Although this is a free event for everyone, this invites you to pre-register to the event which should enable faster entry. It’s a personalized invitation and I always like that, because in the best cases it gives you the feeling you’re getting more than just a standard treatment, it’s like the sender knows you and acts upon it…. unless you get the invitation 4 times of course. In that case the so called personalization makes it actually worse.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Customer First is going to be an interesting event and I’ll be attending probably both days (and doing a presentation on Friday) but the invitation is a missed opportunity. My guess is that it should haven gone out earlier already (invite came in today and the event is on Thursday), there were probably a few partners (sponsors) involved to make it happen, addresses were gathered from different sources, etc etc… But how hard can it be to filter out multiple records of the same person, same address, … in a database? Funny enough, there is a personalized URL to register and even these start at http://…../kris.hoet to http://…./kris.hoet.3. The system even knew it was me every time again and again ;) My colleague Geert received it 3 times, anyone doing better?

It’s all in the details.