Making sense of life, & communications, online & offline
Archive for February, 2011
Hollywood 101 for Marketers
February 27, 2011
#UsBlogs week 4 theme: “What we learn from the movies”
To understand what we can learn from the movies, we need to first break down a movie into its constituent elements;
- An idea – All good stories start with ideas and a movie is no exception, the screenplay is everything.
- Cast, crew & production – Getting the right skillet on board can help in ways that you couldn’t even start to imagine.
- Marketing – Finally you need to get the word out, to get those proverbial ‘bums on seats’.
- Distribution – Sure it starts in the cinema, but after that there is still DVD, TV and all the licensing.
So More >
Are digital agencies the new dinosaurs?
February 27, 2011
I was asked to answer the question ‘Are digital agencies the new dinosaurs?’ in this week’s Campaign ME – check out my answer below and those of my industry colleagues in the attached.
Digital is no longer a microsite or a banner ad, digital is everywhere and in everything – look at interactive TV, digital billboards and magazine subscriptions on the iPad. Agencies are evolving too and the term digital agency has lost its meaning – many of the original pure play web agencies are finding that their strength is in production as ‘traditional’ agencies are evolving their own positioning to truly More >
T- Shaped on Twitter, and in Life
#UsBlogs week 3 theme: “How to Build Your Offline Klout?”
Online, the klout score is measured through a combination of different variables to measure reach, amplification and network score – when we take these offline we start to see how T-shaped people are a clear winner to building clout.
True Reach: Driving reach offline is more difficult without the platform of the web, in our day to day lives it is the extent to which our message can reach those around us – hence the ability to be published or speak to large groups can drive it and this seems to come down to papers and books for More >
Synchronisation and Convergence
I wrote a while ago about the use of that ugly word integration within the marcomms community, for too long we have bandied this word around to basically plaster the same key visual across a multitude of different media channels. With the massive growth of the web, digital and social we are still experiencing the ‘we must be everywhere’ phenomenon but brands are starting to understand that different media and different forums serve different purposes.
This is where the concept of synchronisation is starting to take hold as brands determine how they can synchronise different engagement and More >
Everyone needs skunkworks
February 10, 2011
In this day and age everyone, every company, every organization that believes in ideas needs skunkworks – not only agencies, but above all agencies since their whole business models relies on the creation of ideas. I have long been in awe of BBH Labs (@bbhlabs) founded by Mel Exon (@melex) and Ben Malbon (@malbonnington) in 2008; in this time they have become experts in anything cool and have potentially reinforced the already strong position of BBH as a thought leader in the communications business.
Why skunkworks?
Ideas and innovation have always been the key to
More >
Agency Future – The Results
February 5, 2011
For those that follow both my blog and Twitter feed (@LexBZ), you will know that one of my favourite topics is the evolution of the agency model and how this is developing in different places around the world. Aaron Bateman (@Aaron78) has spent a year travelling, interviewing and journalling many of these new models on his blog Agency Future and the results are out.
It’s great to see that some of the agencies we see as really hot are surfacing in his research: Made By Many, BBH Labs, Co:, Antidote to name a few – and also that no one really has the scientific answer and that it lies more in More >
Best Social Media Campaign of the Year
February 3, 2011
by LexBZ
in Social Media
I was asked to choose my favourite social media campaign of the year for this week’s ‘Communiquestion’ in Communicate Magazine:
The Ikea Facebook campaign (not because of my Swedish heritage) because of its ingenuity and simplicity. Instead of building an app, they used the existing functionality of the platform to connect people, the brand, and their products. Such a success that Facebook has tightened up on these campaigns since then!
Read the full article here.