Zentation

Finally, an innovative way to view a PowerPoint-based speech because it shows both the speaker and the slide. Developed by Zentation.
Featured speech is Guy Kawaski's 'Art of Innovation'. A must see.

How to kill innovative ideas

It's one of those weekly meetings, the usual suspects in the room, except for the new hire. And the eager employee comes up with an idea that interrupts the flow of your meeting. Unfortunately, most new hires will encounter one of the following answers:

"We tried this before. The client doesn't go for it."

"I don't think we can handle this."

Why is this?

Especially weekly meetings are a breeding ground for unneeded efficicencies and re-establishing order. And, at the same time, kill ideas and demotivate everybody in the room.
Yes, you had time to go through your whole agenda and didn't waste anybody's time.
But you might have killed the spirit of a new hire and made sure that an idea (potentially good or potentially bad) was killed.

Instead of dismissing an idea, why not build your new relationship on these ideas?
Maybe this idea will not work out and you used 5 minutes of your time to think it through? But you showed interest in the ideas of your employee and started a conversation that will last throughout your relationship.
Is there even a choice?

Audi TT promotion

Audi launched the new Audi TT and utilized Realise Studio to project this stunning, promotional piece up onto buildings. The combination of virtual windtunnel, beautiful colors and animation makes for an engaging piece.

Hoping for Phase 2

Fedex launched a new campaign that drives consumers to Fedex Stories, featuring online videos of FedEx employees telling stories how they have helped customers.

They want to create a global and, at the same time, personal brand image of their service offerings.

The stories are engaging, interesting enough to keep me around for a while and made me click on another one to find out more.
The Flash execution is sub-par, takes way too long to load and their abandonement rate must be extremely high.

I like the tagline “Shipping is Global yet Personal” but wish they would have offered the opportunity for consumers to share their experiences, maybe even talk about and connect with the FedEx employee featured in the videos.
How about a Phase 2?

Quote of the week

"All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself."
- Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"

Are we getting lazy?

Marketers face the same challenge than consumers: Too many choices, too many options, not enough time.
We still tend to throw our brand efforts on any platform imaginable and hope something will stick.
Instead of engaging with the Flickr audience, we upload a few product pictures and pray for a good outcome. The same thing is happening on YouTube, mobile applications and emerging media.

Mass reach is not that easy anymore: TV is still the weapon of choice but consumers don't receive all their messages on the couch anymore: They get them in bed, in the subway, at work, in the restroom (yes, that happens, too...) and wherever they find time to be distracted.

Broadcast companies no longer have the privilege of conveying messages to people sitting 10 feet away from the screen. They must now meet the marketplace on cell phones, online, and via other forms of mobile content.

Sure, passive consumers will be around. But the number of active consumers are increasing daily.

So, what to do?

Think about the platforms you want to utilize. It's not enough to get people there. You have to get them engaged. Be relevant. Immerse them into an experience. Experiential Marketing is not an option. It's the only way to go.

Photosynth

In this astounding video from the last TED Conference, Blaise Aguera y Arcas from Microsoft Live Labs demonstrates Photosynth.
Basically, it's a technology that displays images only in the amount of pixels your monitor can handle, allowing you to view a gallery of thousands of images all at once, and zoom into them instantly, even if they are 30 megapixel.
The other part is demoed as "Notre Dame". Searching for it in Flickr, the program takes every image of the landmark and made a computer composite of it. You can seamlessly view everyone's image of the cathedral, and see where they took the pic in relation to the cathedral, all in one huge 3D interactive map.
You can discover it yourself here.

This reminds me of a thought experiment that I came across on Wired:
3. Searle's room
A man sits alone in a room. Someone slips paper with Chinese writing on it under the door. The man doesn't read Chinese, but with a set of instructions he's able to manipulate the symbols and respond. To an observer, the man appears to understand the language. Philosopher John Searle devised the scenario in 1980 to make a point about computers. CPUs, like his man, lack comprehension and thus can't have humanlike intelligence.

Not sure if this thought experiment still applies. Can't computers become self aware? When does consciousness occur?

Update

According to RAIN, the web and database servers of SaveNetRadio.org have been overwhelmed by the response and all switchboards in Congressional offices all over Capitol Hill are tied with concerned Internet Radio listeners.

Keep it going!

Save Internet Radio

A huge part of the Internet will go silent today, as many online music broadcasters shut down to protest a plan that will dramatically increase the royalties they pay to recording companies and musicians.

Just like the opposition from the NAB to the merger of XM and Sirius, the record labels try to keep some of their power intact by building huge walls, trying to keep innovators our. Sure, Yahoo!, MSN and other major players in the streaming business have big wallets to keep their operations profitable. The vital part of the streaming industry, the small companies with 100-200 listeners will be the big losers. That's the real problem and I will call my representatives today to share my opinion with them.

If you want to support this cause, please get all detailed information here.

Hiring is a conversation

The everydotconnect blog writes about hiring being a conversation and how your blog is your resume.

I would go further than that: A resume is a very flat depiction of yourself. A blog gives everybody a much broader idea of who you are. But I don't see a blog only as an extension to a resume: It's also a great opportunity for companies to find out who they work with when they hire a new agency. Sure, we already google everyone before we meet them. But, more and more people tend to go to Technoratio to see if anybody is talking about this person and this person is talking in the blogsphere.

There might be a day when blogs replace resumes.

Being unreasonable

Just read this on Doc Searl’s blog:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw

I always considered being called unreasonable as a compliment.

Many of the greatest people in human history were unreasonable: Einstein, Willy Brandt, Martin Luther King, Le Corbusier...the list is endless. They were considered unreasonable because they approached problems from a different perspective. They didn't accept the Stauts Quo. They didn't go with the flow.
They thought differently.
They took chances.
And they didn't care what the majority thought about them.

How willing are you to take chances?

Start drooling

The iPhone Guided Tour is up. Enjoy.

The slow death of Mass Media

40 years ago, an advertiser could spend a few million a year and reach almost 85% of the audience.
That model died before the Internet came along - 300 channels and video tapes started the trend of not being able to reach the majority of people with a small marketing budget.

Today it costs you at least $25+M for a week to reach maybe 50% of the audience. Most likely you're fooling yourself into thinking that you actually reached them. Meanwhile, they are busy on youtube, flickr, email, bittorrent, itunes and gazillion other sites. And when the computer rests next to them, they are busy watching DVD's, playing Xbox games, fast forwarding through commercials and they are very competent in avoiding you.

Sure, it's still possible to reach 85% of the market and get your brand out there. If you're new to the market and want to utilize mass media, better have your checkbook ready: It will cost up to $250 million just to get your brand really noticed.

There was once a pipedream that most of the money will move to digital media because that's where the people are. And it used to be easy because they were on Yahoo!, MSN, Google, MySpace. Even these times are ending rapidly.
The time of Internet mass reach is about to end. We saw the exodus from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook. And that's just the beginning. Mass sites will be part of each media plan but the real game is in high quality niche targeted options. Combine this with a relevant message that can be spread, linked and shared, and you have a winner on your hand.

Idea Videos

Cullen, a preschool teacher in California, records in her spare time Idea videos on YouTube.
Such a beautiful idea to share her passion for teaching with the world.
I can especially appreciate her work since we are raising a 2-year old and any inspiration is welcome.

Thanks to Tom Peters for this tip.

What if all shopping was like E-Commerce?

This question is being posed through a series of videos, produced by Elastic Path, an e-commerce software developer in Canada.

When living the 2.0 life, we tend to forget how clunky, unsatisfying and unfriendly the user experience can be.

Sunday's New York Times article should have been a wake-up call for all 2.0 Kool-Aid drinkers: Growth in online sales are dropping, Internet fatigue might be setting in and retailers have put a lot of effort into improving the shopping experience.
There's a lot of work ahead.




http://www.getelastic.com/crazy-ecommerce