branding – Page 3 – 'Cross The Breeze

2nd Edition: Age of Conversation

Some 18 months ago I was part of a project called the “Age of Conversation” and today I’m happy to announce that the second edition of the “Age of Conversation” is a fact. Instead of 100 authors there are over 200 contributors this time (not me anymore) and it’s themed around “Why don’t they get it”. Other than that, all proceeds still go to charity so to encourage you to by the hardcopy this time, John Moore lined up the ‘Money Quotes’ in one little presentation.

Building relationships

This is truly brilliant! Thanks Darryl for sharing, it’s probably the best take on brands building direct relationships with their customers ;) And I guess for all women who can relate to this… there’s always The Women of course.

Check it out.

Coming soon

… to a computer screen near you. I hope you have seen / remember this little movie that was launched about a year ago? ‘Bring the love back’ or ‘The Break-Up’ as it was officially titled. Today the sequel to that is almost ready and Geert – my colleague responsible for all this – made a little teasing trailer of it. Hope you like it.

Nice little detail, the voice over on the trailer is done by Don Lafontaine, who is an American voice actor famous for recording over 5.000 movie trailers, etc… so you might recognize that voice ;)

Most Contagious 2007

Contagious magazine just released it’s ‘most contagious’ overview for 2007 which you can get here (in PDF), and which is “a round-up of the most intriguing, effective, and downright exciting happenings of the past year from landmarks to gaming, from design to social media”. In the report you’ll find Facebook, the iPhone but also Photosynth, Halo3 and ‘The Bomchickawahwahs’ and much more. Enjoy the read.

Technorati Tags: contagious, report, 2007, viral, technology, campaigns, gadgets, gaming, advertising, socialmedia, mobile, brands

Great quotes galore

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

Fedex vs. UPS

I’m not a big fan in general of comparative advertising because I find that brands should focus on their own strengths and not on other brand’s weakness or whatever. But sometimes it’s done in such a fine way that I do like it, like in this example for Fedex for instance. I thought that was really original and good.

[Via Buzzing Bees]

That’s a wrap

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.

Brands on fire

There are a few reasons why I got very interested in the email Chris Abraham sent me a week ago about Firebrand. Not only did it seem to be about a very interesting project, but also the approach Chris and Firebrand took to get the news spread was a good example of good engagement in social media. Since Firebrand is not live yet for public viewing (launches on October 22nd) I will talk a bit more about their outreach to bloggers and leave the review for once I get access.

Here’s just a little introduction to Firebrands though, so you know what I’m talking about:

“Firebrand is a new, opt-in entertainment and marketing destination that gives consumers interactive access to their favorite brands, products and promotions. Firebrand programs the “coolest” TV commercials the way MTV used to program music videos and its multi-platform network, slated to launch on October 22, is the first to go “live” simultaneously on TV, the web and mobile. Firebrand even has CJ’s (commercial jockeys), the same way MTV had VJ’s, who will contextualize the commercials as art and entertainment, and guide consumers through playlists, contests and promotions.”

And while the above copy may sound like your average PR speak (and it is from the press release obviously) the approach taken by Firebrand is interesting:

The email from Chris Abraham announcing Firebrand was personalized enough to make it feel personal. I know many people will have received an email that was pretty similar to mine, using my name and blogname in the email shows the effort to make it personal. And I can tell you that – even though that simple – that doesn’t happen very often.
They invited influential bloggers to their press event together with press, not as a separate event.
It’s right on target as well. Advertising, marketing, etc are amongst the topics I cover regularly so telling me about Firebrand makes sense. Again, pretty obvious to some, ignored by many. I receive emails about the most random things and I don’t even consider myself influential… think about the silly stuff bigger bloggers are getting.
Apart from their blogger approach, they also used social media in a smart way. Not by just creating the next Youtube video, but really making good use of the power of MySpace, Youtube, Delicious, Flickr and Facebook. All links which were included on the PR site (click on the links to see the examples).

It remains to be seen whether the service will become a success but I can only notice they seem to have their act together at Firebrand and given some of the most popular videos on the web are actually ads there’s definitely potential. Hopefully I can tell you more in a few days/weeks.

Technorati Tags: firebrand, blogger, outreach, mtv, brands, advertising, tv, mobile, entertainment, promotion