Daan Jansonius » Marketing

New Project - Interactive Media Rejects

Daan Jansonius — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:23:02 +0000

Three fellow students and I have recently launched a new website. It’s called Interactive Media Rejects and it’s part of our final year Interactive Media Strategies unit. We have to demonstrate our ability to understand and use various types of interactive media, so what better way to do this then starting our own blog?

We’ll be focusing on areas such as viral marketing, social media and affiliate marketing. We’ll be looking at these topics from both a academic and practical point of view. We will also be looking to do interviews with several leading figures in the industry and academia.

If you enjoyed my articles over here please be sure to check it out and leave feedback. Remember, this is a learning experience so we can use all the feedback we can get. And if you are interested in doing an interview or a guest post let me know and we’ll work something out!

Blog Silence, CEMP & the Facebook Fallacy

Daan Jansonius — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:26:35 +0000

I haven’t blogged much lately. In large part this is due to the fact that I have recently moved across the cannal again and am currently residing in Bournemouth, UK. Yes, that’s right - I’m back at university!

Whilst university tasks and another project eat into my time, using that as an excuse for not blogging wouldn’t be telling the whole story. An often used cliche, usually uttered by depressed middle agers, states that ‘university is the best time of your life’. As I fully intend to make the most of, what looks to be my final year of the best time of my life, nights out and hangovers may occasionally be prioritised over blogging.

Some of these university tasks include making a contribution to the CEMP site. I’m a student on the Interactive Media Strategies unit, which means I have to emerge myself into the online landscape and try and make sense of it all. Thanks to my placement at Onetomarket I have no doubt this will be much of a problem. Btw, CEMP stands for Centre for Excellence in Media Practice.

With my first post on the university initiated community I have written an article to stimulate a discussion about Facebook and their ability to monitise their service. Please have a look (check the rest of the site too, there is some very interesting content on there!) and be sure to jump into the discussion

Monetisation - The Facebook Fallacy

Report - When Did We Start Trusting Strangers

Daan Jansonius — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:31:57 +0000

I had a serious case of mixed feelings when I first saw this report. Before telling you why I’ll explain what the report is about first.

It’s another excellent report by the brilliant people from Universal McCann, who early brought us great social media reports in their Wave series - which I’ve also written about. It’s titled: When did we start trusting strangers?

Their wave reports are all about social media and the adoption of social media tools around this world. This report goes further and looks to identify how these social media trends are helping shape new influencers. People blog about their favourite brands, they share horror stories on Facebook and Twitter to applaud great customer service. The report speaks of an influence economy and the democratisation of influence.

For all the stats and figures you can read the report, but they’ve also put together a presentation which can be found on Slideshare. I’ve included it here for convienence.

When did we start trusting strangers - Universal Mac Cann

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: internet international)

So why the mixed feelings

So why the mixed feelings? This is obviously a great report for anyone with an interest in social media, marketing and the internet. It’s because it’s eerily similar to what my dissertation research will be about. At first glance it seemed like my dissertation proposal could be binned and I could start from scratch. I’d been thinking very long and very hard before I finally found a topic which I felt was both interesting to me and also to people outside academia.

Thankfully this report mainly provides statistics from which I will be able to build my dissertation and supplement it with the necessary academic depth and theories. I’ll be writing more about my dissertation in the near future, so if you’re interest in social media, influence and marketing - be sure to check in regularly!

Pacman Finds Love Thanks to Facebook

Daan Jansonius — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:57:23 +0000

A lot is written about the importance of metrics in marketing. Especially in the online marketing world where there are tons of options to track and measure success of a campaign. Whilst plenty of people are moving forward in this area, and more and more companies start to focus on things such as ROI and realise the importance of KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), some are still left behind.

Today I spotted the perfect example on Facebook. Facebook who, ironically, still don’t know how advertising on their site works either.

Have a look at this ad:

Considering the fact I’m a 24 year, single male (as indicated on my profile) I can understand why this ad was targeted at me. An appealing, young women inviting you to ‘meet hot local women’. Obviously I only clicked on this ad for research and marketing related reasons. Honestly!

Right, so the ad copy and visuals are stimulating, the targeting seems about right, so what’s the problem? Well, just have a look at this landing page:

The only person who could possibly find ‘hot local women’ on this site is Pacman!

So, what happened? I can only assume that these people are either assessing their campaign based on the wrong metrics, or they are like the Nigerian spam overlords. Their goal is obviously to get as many clicks as possible. But how much is a click worth if it doesn’t convert? It’s great to drive a lot of people to your site, but what’s the point if they leave as soon as they realise they have been scammed?

Or maybe these people are very clever and have found an easy way to trick people. In which case, as Seth Godin has stated before, we are complicit in all this and we get what we deserve.

Either way, it has got nothing to do with marketing as far as I’m concerned.

Social Networking….You What?!

Daan Jansonius — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:50:54 +0000

Apparently a lot of people outside the bubble have no clue what we are talking about when we mention social networking. In fact, 58% of the respondents in a recent survey said they’d never heard of the term.

The research was done internationally and funnily enough, the figures heavily depend on the nationality of the respondents. Us Dutchies are flying the social networking flag high and proud, with 89% of us aware of the often hyped term.

This will hardly come as a surprise to people who keep track of the trends closely, Holland has one of the highest levels of both internet and broadband penetration in Europe. Plus, more than 4 million (a quarter of the population) are a member of one single social network, named Hyves. Whilst Facebook and MySpace are far larger in the grand scheme of things, they don’t dominate a market like Hyves does. Hyves has gone mainstream, hell even my grandma can tell you what it is.

But it’s a nice, little eye opener. People who work with and read & write about social networking on a daily basis its easy to take things a little too seriously. And whilst I certainly don’t mean to downplay the importance of social networking, it does show we still have a long way to go.

Via Scott Monty’s blog

McCain vs Obama - Political Mash Up

Daan Jansonius — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:19:27 +0000

As I wrote earlier this week, I’m following the American elections with a lot of interest. And a few days ago I found a brilliant site which keeps track of various stats about the elections.

This excellent mash up will give you the latest updates about both candidates on Twitter, any mentions in the blogosphere as well as any articles appearing in the mainstream media.

But the main thing it really does is show how much Obama is kicking McCain’s ass online and in the ‘regular’ media.

The fact they’ve also made a widget to keep track of all this information makes me love it even more!

Don’t Drink & Drive………..Idiot!

Daan Jansonius — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:56:29 +0000

Via Frank-ly I came across this campaign by an Indian beer brewer to try and battle drunk driving.

There’s a car on the cap of the bottle, which after opening the bottle ends up looking like a wreck. On the inside the message “Don’t drink and drive” tries to further drive the point home.

I doubt it will be very effective, unless it will be supported by an ad campaign. How often do you look at a cap after opening a bottle, never mind the inside of the cap…..exactly, never. Still, I applaud the effort and creativity.

Not only is this campaign extremely clever (maybe too clever?), I also like the fact it was instigated by a brewery and not the government.

In the comments Melle Gloerich points us to a less subtle Australian campaign with a similar message.

No chance for ambiguity there then.

Obama’s Acceptance Speech in Visuals

Daan Jansonius — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:03:54 +0000

I have a love/hate relationship with American politics and the presidential election in particular. I’ll stay up or set the alarm during the middle of the night to follow it and than wonder why the hell I bother.

On one hand I am extremely fascinated by it all. Everything is orchestrated into the fine details, nothing is left to chance and boy do they know how to get a crowd going. From a marketing perspective there is a lot to be admired.

But on the other hand it annoys me no end. The cheesy campaign spots, the mud slinging and the whole populariy contest element of it. The hollow promises and populist rhetoric. It’s hardly ever about someone’s party program, but more about how the other guy sucks! It pretty much epitomises why marketing has such a bad reputation with a lot of people, and rightly so.

Today I came across a visual representation of the words used most by Obama in his acceptance speech created with social media tool Wordle. Normally reserved for creating word clouts for things such as blogs it has now shown another valuable attribute. It can help analyse more important things, such as political speeches.

And the main thing this word clout has done, is that is has re-enforced my belief that most of American politics is a popularity contest, about having as many digs at your oppopent as possible. My dad’s bigger than your dad, that type of thing.

Anyway, here’s the image. McCain is prominently represented in a speach which was about Obama becoming the Democratic party presidential elect. It was his night, yet McCain was a large part of what he talked about.

What do you make of it?

Via Neil Perkin’s Only Dead Fish blog.

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

Daan Jansonius — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:19:41 +0000

This is a great presentation from Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University, about Youtube and the internet as a whole. If that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen one of his other videos.

Mike doesn’t just study Youtube, he gets it. And he’s got several million video views to prove it. If you’re interested to find more about an anthropological view on Youtube and the internet in general, watch this video. It’s funny, it’s inspiring and full of great examples. Well worth the time, if you ask me.

If you liked it, be sure to check out his other video’s including his biggest hit: Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

EA Turns Tiger Woods Into Jesus

Daan Jansonius — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:57:30 +0000

Sounds like sacrilege? Maybe it does, but I’m not religious and I loved this video by EA to promote their latest installment of the Tiger Woods franchise.

The video was inspired by another video which was uploaded to Youtube by Levinator25. He uploaded a sequence of the game during which Tiger Woods hits a shot whilst standing on water. He thought he’d found a glitch in the game which, in fairness, it probably was. But according to EA he’s just that good!

Rather than ignoring this person and fixing this bug EA realised there was much more mileage in this idea. So they went with it and turned it into an advert for the new version of the game.

The whole thing is just perfect. It starts with the fact such a large company has been able to listen to their community and spot this video. And the way they’ve taken it to the next level and turned it into an ad is just genius. It’s gotten them some 1,2 million views on Youtube alone so far.

Joseph Jaffe asks some interesting questions about the EA video over at his blog, such as the reward Levinator25 received from EA for providing them with not only this idea, but also the first part of their advert. If they have used it without consent it could lead to an interesting discussion with a large brand on the other side of the fence for a change.

Thankfully, more and more brands are starting to see the power of the consumer. Some of them are using user generated content as inspiration, like EA has done in the video below - others go the whole 9 yards and ask the consumer to produce their adverts for them.

Whilst to some that may sound like taking advantage of the consumer, but if it’s done right it can do wonderful things for both the company and consumer.

Take the Doritos example from above, where the winner had his advert shown on ITV1 and got £20,000 in prize money. Whilst that makes it an extremely cheap and lucrative exercise for Doritos, the guy was hardly left in the cold with a bag of peanuts! Crowdsourcing at its very best.

And then there is Apple. They saw a home made video about the iPhone which was posted on Youtube. Rather than sending the men in black round his house for a stern talking to and a C&D letter, they bought the video and he was asked to fly to Los Angeles to redo his video in a professional studio. The video aired during the 2007 World Series.

This shows how helpful listening and talk with, rather than to, your customers can help your company. It goes far beyond the adverts its delivered these companies. It stimulates people to engage with your brand. And by showing them you are listening to them their loyalty to your brand will increase. People love telling stories and what better story to tell then a company which has involved you in creating their latest ad. Stories spread fast, especially on the internet. You better make sure it’s a good one.

Daan Jansonius » Marketing

New Project - Interactive Media Rejects

More posts like this:

Blog Silence, CEMP & the Facebook Fallacy

More posts like this:

Report - When Did We Start Trusting Strangers

More posts like this:

Pacman Finds Love Thanks to Facebook

More posts like this:

Social Networking….You What?!

More posts like this:

McCain vs Obama - Political Mash Up

More posts like this:

Don’t Drink & Drive………..Idiot!

More posts like this:

Obama’s Acceptance Speech in Visuals

More posts like this:

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

More posts like this:

EA Turns Tiger Woods Into Jesus

More posts like this: