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

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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

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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!

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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.

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Seventy eight teams competed, in what has become one of the biggest events in the online marketing world in Holland, to raise money for the Earth Water project and UNHCR.

We showed up with no women in our team, whilst the rules stipulated each team had to field 2 women at least at all times. Plus one of the guys overslept. Add to that the fact it was pissing it down and you can imagine my mood! And with the first opponent claiming the three points because we could not comply with the rules (booooooooooo!) meant we were always fighting a losing battle.

Thankfully, Holland’s biggest social network Hyves showed just how social they are by lending us a few of their female team members. But not before we were lucky enough to be able to persuade a few ladies from the Sanoma/Playboy team to masqerade our incompetence. Although it didn’t inspire us to victory it certainly helped making this event even more enjoyable!

It also helped me progress further in the tournament then my team mates as I was asked to play for their team, too. So now I can actually say ‘Been there, done that - got the t-shirt’

We failed to win that game too, which may not come as a surprise!

But we did manage to get our hands on a trophy….and not by beating up one of the winning teams or stealing it. We got it legitametly……just like all the others teams who failed to win anything.

You can view the rest of the photo’s of our glaring incompetence and allround great day on my flickr account.

We owned the bar and dancefloor though!

Great job and a big hand to the organisors of the event, who not only put together a kick ass event and party, but also managed to raise more than €50,000 for charity!  Well in guys!

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Today somebody pointed me towards Carlsberg latest marketing stunt, they are offering vouchers to readers of The S*n to get a free pint in one of 13,000 pubs.

I’ll start by explaining why I refuse to name that rag properly. Almost 20 years ago, under the supervision of Kelvin McKenzie (spit) wrote some horrendous lies about people who had died at the football game between Liverpool and Nottingham Forrest. Whilst people had been crushed to death the rag reported that Liverpool fans had pickpocketed the dead and were picking fights with police men trying to help the injured.

If you are interested to find out more, please, please(!!) have a look at the Hillsborough Justice Campaign website.

Most people in Liverpool and indeed the north of England still boycott the rag because of this. The fact it’s one of the worst newspapers (and I use that term losely), which isn’t worthy being used as toilet paper makes it all that much easier.

So back to Carlsberg. They’ve sponsored Liverpool FC for the last sixtien years. Whilst I won’t hold this action against them, it’s obvious the fans of the team they sponsor weren’t on their minds when they came up with this sponsorship.  But considering the fact that the boycot of that rag isn’t officially endorsed by the club itself, Carlsberg can hardly be forced to join us in our boycot.

However, I do have a problem with the response they send to a fellow fan after he had expressed his disgust of this link up. I’ll start with what he sent them:

“Sir,

I have just read with disgust that your company,shirt sponsors ofLiverpool Football Club,are to run a joint promotion with the Sun newspaper.
I would have thought that a firm that has such a long standing association with my football club would have more tact and commonsense than to engage in any sort of alliance with the paper in question.
I am sure that you are aware that the majority of people on Merseyside boycott this filthy rag because of the proven lies it printed in relation to the Hillsborough football disaster.
As a customer who supports you for supporting my club please be aware I will now not consume your brand if this promotion goes ahead from now on.
I also suggest you find another club to sponsor as anyone associated with the publication in question has no place as part of Liverpool Football club.

Yours Angrily and in disgust”

And here is their reply:

“Thank you for your email which we received via the Carlsberg website.
Carlsberg is pleased to be able to offer consumers one of the largestfree pint promotions ever this August Bank Holiday.
By working with TheSun, the UK’s largest selling paper, Carlsberg has been able to ensurethat approximately 3 million people across the UK will be able to enjoy a free pint at their local this Bank Holiday Sunday.
Carlsberg is sensitive to the fact that Liverpool fans feel very strongly about The Sun, and is very proud of its long association withand support of Liverpool Football Club over the past 16 years, and apologises if any offence is felt as a result of the upcoming free pint promotion.

Kind regards The Lagers Team”

Excuse me? Someone just expressed their disgust about your part in a very sensitive matter. And the first thing they think of is further iterating their marketing statement?! We don’t care you are pleased to offer consumers on of the largest free pint promotions ever. And we certainly don’t care that rag is the biggest selling newspaper in the UK!!

They were bound to get plenty of complaints about this, so surely they could have drafted something better than a glorified press release which just smacks of not caring. Whilst I don’t expect them to cancel this whole shabang they’ve arranged, I do expect more than this half hearted, lame ass apology.

They’ve just pissed off a substantial number of the people they pay £3m a year to reach and even after been given the chance to make amends they failed miserably. It’s already been reported on several blogs and Liverpool FC communities. I doubt we’ll see any involvement from Carlsberg though.

Carlsberg, probably the worst listeners in the world.

Justice for the 96 - Don’t buy the S*n

or Carlsberg.

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We got to the semi finals of our regions, which means we are among the top 50 teams in the Europe, Middle East & Africa region. Although we were gunning for a place in the final at least (the top 5 teams of each region) we are still very happy with this result. Considering over 1,600 teams entered we have to be pleased.

Also, without wanting to make excuses for not reaching the final - we’ve had a few ‘challenges’ to deal with.

Firstly, all team members were in different locations (I was actually in a different country than the other team members). Which means we only managed to meet up once, which was also our only client meeting.

We did have a contact at the client’s company as one of the team members worked there for his work placement. But this is where challenge 2 arose, he fell ill just as we launched the campaign which didn’t really help either. Besides making communications with our client just that little bit harder, it also meant the other team members had to do more work.

And lastly, we did this without any help from the university whatsoever. However, I should stress that this was known before we started and we knew what we were getting into. As we were on placement the university was not able to support us, other than sign us up for the competition. That’s fair enough, so this is not a complaint against the university. I will try and see if I can get the university to take a more involved approach next year, when I’m back for my final year. In fact, I’ll see if I can have some involvement again, too.

I’ve included the final report which we submitted to Google, bar a few stats I’ve taken out to protect our client’s business interests.

Plus, a quote from somebody at the university who was kind enough to review our report:

“I must say I was really very impressed indeed - I thought you’d done an absolutely first-rate job.”

We’ll be sure to celebrate our result as soon as we’re all back at university at the end of September!

post-campaign-report_1_

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So, I just wanted to find something on Google. I use Firefox, so without surfing to the Google page, I just typed in my query into the top right search box. And this is what I got:

Obviously I’m connecting to the world wide web via an Egyptian connection, so Google serves up a localised page. I just wasn’t expecting it!

As a tribute to my hosts, and just to be a bit awkward, I have right alligned this post so everyone else knows what I’m going through here!

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Holland have been a joy to watch so far. First we destroyed the World Champions and next up were the runners up. After the dazzling performance of the game against the spaghetti slurpers I was fully expecting another great performance from the boys in Orange.

And boy did they not disappoint. It wasn’t always pretty, but we got the result. And how….4-1 against the number two in the world. This makes us the best team on the planet by default, so the other teams may as well pack it now and save themselves some time and bitter disappointment.

I watched the game in a packed tent in Rotterdam where local lad Wilfried de Jong gave his opinion during the game, as well as a spot on impression of the cool Dutch goalie Van der Sar. I started filming the last 30 seconds of the game to make sure I got the explosion of Orange happiness on camera. Not only did I get that, I also got our final and probably most spectacular goal of the evening!

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But rather than these more general and quite possibly cultural problems of the team, I think I can trace back the moment I decided to pack it in and no longer care for my national side. This day was 18th of June, 1996. I’m sure I don’t have to remind most of you on here what happened that day. Holland got outclassed by an England side which ran out comfortable winners with a 4-1 scoreline. More importantly, this was also the tournament of what we call ‘the cable’, the racially challenges dressing room shanigans between the white Dutchies and the black Dutchies from Surinam. However, what really turned me against the team was the fact I was present. I was sat at one of the very top rows of Wembley stadium. And not only did I lose faith with the Dutch team, I fell in love with the English team. And not just the team, but the whole atmosphere. This is probably why I took a liking to Liverpool only a few years later.

When Van Basten was appointed I was largely apathetic, but also thought it was a bad decision. There is huge pressure on the national coach and I felt it was too much for someone of so little experience. Terrific player though he was, as a coach he hadn’t come any further than the Ajax youth sides. It quickly became obvious that his playing style was nowhere present in his coaching style. As graceful a player he was, unfortunately the new Dutch side under his command showed none. It was the result that counted.

Add to this his insistence on playing a system for which we lacked the playing staff and you have a coach who received plenty of stick from both journalist and the average guy on the street.

Something which really annoyed me at the time and can still set me off on a rant is when Van Basten and the Dutch FA claimed that the World Cup in Germany served as a learning experience for the young and inexperienced coach. Holland should not go to a tournament looking to be taught football, it should be teaching everyone else a lesson. Van Basten claimed Euro 2008 would be the tournament he should be judge on.

Our qualifying campaign was dire. We played poorly, but managed to get the desired results to finish second behind an largely average Romania side. In the meanwhile he managed to piss off some of our best players in Seedorf, Van Bommel and even Van Nistelrooij. Van Nistelrooij was deemed too old and had to make way for the younger Huntelaar. Van Bommel was considered a trouble maker (which in fairness, he is) and Seedorf was too vocal in the dressing room. In the end Van Basten had to concede he made a mistake in dropping Van Nistelrooij and promtply recalled him to the side.

Up until the first game against Italy Van Basten appeared to have no clue as to what his line up was going to be. In fact, he hadn’t even decided on a system. Babel got injured and to replace the strike come left winger he recalled Khalid Boularouz, a central defender who can also play as full back.

He is stubborn, self centered, he seemingly has an intense hatred of anyone asking him questions. He made all the rookie mistakes and often refused to admit to them. To say I had no faith before the tournament would be an understatement. In fact, somebody was kind enough to report some of the comments I made, so for the sake of fairness I’ll include them here too:

Quote 1:

“The Dutch will not win anything with Van Basten as coach. I can’t wait for him to leave.

I’ve predicted we’ll fail to get out of the group, although I could see us sneaking it past France, but we won’t win it.

If we do win it will be despite van Basten, not because of him. He’s crap.”

Quote 2:

“True. But we need some steel in our midfield, even Van Basten said this, yet he refuses to recall Van Bommel. And that’s got nothing to do with football related issues, they just don’t get along. If someone causes problems in the dressing room then fine, but Van Basten tends to take his personal feelings with him on the job - which I think it a bad trait for a manager.

Seedorf has won pretty much everything out there. I don’t agree with him demanding a pivotal role in the team, but Van Basten could have worked this issue out. He failed and keeps belittling a player who’s won more trophies than he has himself! Seedorf hasn’t retired from international football, but is simply on a break until we get a new manager. Says it all really.

Van Basten can’t deal with ego and backtalk. So when he takes over at Ajax it will be a real test of his managerial ability.”

Quote 3:

“I just don’t like him.

He’s got the results, but the football has been dire. We are just unwatchable. It started with his stubberness to stick with a system which A) wasn’t working, B) we didn’t have the players for and C) was only being stuck with because of Cruijff’s influence.

Then there is his inconsistency in his policy. He’s made numerous decisions which go directly against things he said in the past. Like giving younger players a chance and not selecting Van Nistelrooy, only to recall him as soon as we hit a bad patch. I wouldn’t have had (as much of ) a problem with him dropping the Horse if he’d stuck to his guns. Recalling him just showed he has no long term vision.

Than there are the incidents with Seedorf, van Bommel and Davids. He can’t deal with players who have the experience and the mouth to question him. Instead of listening and reasoning with them he just simply refuses to call them. I know these players can be a pain in their own right, but they are some of th best players we’ve got. He just wants a bunch of sheep who still idolise him for the footballer who he was and do whatever he tells them without being questioned.

Some of these mistakes have been made simply because it’s his first job as a coach so he can’t be solely blamed for making these mistakes, the KNVB have been idiots for appointing him in the first place.”

Two games into the tournament and I’ve been cleaning egg of my face for days. How wrong could I have been? We comprehensively beat the World Champions and gave the runners up a spanking. So without having been crowned champion’s just yet, we are already the best team of Europe by default.

Although I’ll never be a fan of the person Van Basten, I have to bow deeply to his greater understanding of the game I love so deerly, football. I was wrong, he was right. He said we should judge him based on the performance of his team at this tournament. So far we’ve played the number 1 and 2 of the world, the bill coming in at 7 goals for, 1 against - 6 points and finished winning the group of death after just two games.

We may not win the tournament. We may crumble under the pressure. But Van Basten has at least achieved one thing, he’s brought back the joy in watching Holland play. And for that Marco, I thank you.

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