News Update – Best of the Day

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Just some weeks ago, I have been talking about the idea of replacing loyalty cards by social networking customer service to drive customer engagement. Now, the New York Times has extended the idea by the integration of location-based advertising using Foursquare… and of course replacing loyalty cards by social networks activity and mobile apps. The idea seems to be moving from trend to standard…

Often the question comes up which brands are the most valuable in the world. Millward Brown’s Optimor BrandZ Top100 Most Valuable Global Brands report gives us some insight. The key findings…

– Google is the most valuable global brand worth $114 billion (2nd is IBM with $86 billion, 3rd Apple with $83 billion, Microsoft was fourth with $76 billion.
– Social Media is a winner: Facebook has a brand value of $5.5 billion. Use of social media was a key trend across many of the successful brands this year, i.e. HSBC’s Expat Explorer online community.
– Strong brands such as Samsung (80% growth in brand value) and Starbucks (17% increase) are evidence that businesses with strong brands recover from adversity faster.

Heineken commercials know how to dive into the hearts of their main target group. “Men with talents” is another fantastic example after their “walk in fridge” idea… Sorry ladies, but we man love it!

Investor Ron Conway talking about social web trends

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The well-known investor Ron Conway is talking on Techcrunch about the main trends in the social web industry: “real-time data” and “the web becoming more social (evidence in Facebook and Twitter)”.

It is interesting to listen to his view on the business and vision about the changes of Facebook. In the interview, he agrees that we are entering the age of Facebook. It sounds like a bit like a commercial for the leading social networking platform. “Everything you need is there. It is the universe.”

Do you agree?

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News Update – Best of the Day

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Human resources embraces social media for their busines purpose but needs more resources. This is the essential finding of a study by ochrehouse, a recruiting outsourcing company. 82% of HR professionals now use social networking as part of their attraction strategy. The study makes clear that less than 30% of HR professionals have a dedicated resource for social media. 45% admitted to not having a formal social media strategy in place and only 23% measured its return on investment.

It seems that social shopping is on an all time high on the web. And some clever people have just launched their Mertado platform that “rather than try to integrate social features into a retail site, it’s offering a store that’s actually built on Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect, and it’s looking to use the social graph to its advantage.” Read more on Techcrunch…

Although it is still quiet, the main sports brands are getting ready to heat up the emotions for the World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Nike launches an online viral campaign by Wieden+Kennedy for some new soccer boots. The idea behind it explains Pierre Janneau, Art Director, Nke Football: “Mother Nature doesn’t understand the ‘perfect pitch’. We wanted to demonstrate the many faces she might show during the tournament with a graphic illustration of how pitch surfaces unexpectedly evolve during the course of a game.” In this viral, you can tell FC Barcelona’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic has got the right grip for the ground to succeed with a great finish. Lovely futuristic idea…!

Vom Kulturwandel zum Chief Culture Officer

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Manche mag es nerven, wenn im Social Web permanent die Rede vom Kulturwandel ist. Andere leben diesen Kulturwandel, erfinden neue (Job)Titel wie den Personal Web Manager. Grant McCracken benennt in seinem (nicht mehr ganz neuen, aber sehr aktuellem) Buch eine moderne “Stabsstelle” in Konzernen danach: Chief Culture Officer.

In seinem Buch (und im Kleinen in diesem Videointerview) geht McCracken darauf ein, wie Firmen den Chief Culture Officer finden sollen, um weiterhin an vorderster Kundenfront den Puls der Zeit zu erkennen, und wie Kunden Marken mitgestalten können.

Die Person des Chief Culture Officer kann es derzeit sogar in unvollendeter Form schon geben. McCracken bezeichnet diese Personen als “Cool Hunter” oder “Guru”. Eine Art Visionär, dem es aber noch am tiefergreifenden Verständnis für den wandelnden Kulturanspruch fehle. Dieser dreht sich darum, was der Menschheit wichtig ist und was sie für ihr Leben benötigen.

Persönlich finde ich seinen Vergleich des alten und neuen “Marketing-Auftrags” interessant.

Alt: “You load up the canon. You come up with a simple message. You say it as often as you can, as load as you can until the dimmest person in the world understands that’s…”

Neu: “That’s just irritating for everyone. What we want instaed is something closer to conversation. And the buzz word that people are now usinmg is the social co-creation. If you want a vital animated brand, if you want to bring in people like this guyin the spot we just saw to help co-create that brand (…) so what you do is you send them of.”

Konzerne, die dem Kulturwandel einen Schritt näher kommen wollen, sollten sich das Video in Ruhe ansehen – und sich mal Gedanken darüber machen. Und idealerweise ihre Meinungen dazu mit uns teilen…

News Update – Best of the Day

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The privacy debate in connection with social networking and 2.0 software is sometimes misinterpreted. A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania shows that younger adults watch their private data, especially when companies want get hold of those data. The key findings are that…
82% of respondents ages 18 to 24…
84% ages 25 to 34…
85% people 65 and older…
refuse to provide information to a company because they thought it was too personal or not necessary.
The study result shows that young adults are clever enough to distinguish between private and private information. They still take care of their privacy in terms of credit card number, passwords, phone numbers, etc. On the other hand, they provide through applications data-entry for millions of companies for free. So, do they really care about their privacy as the headline suggests?

Finding a list of b2b marketing strategy ebooks is a challenge. THX to Jon Miller who created a fantastic list 16 relevant and high-quality ebooks end of last year.

Understanding the power of viral advertising is understanding the power of the social web. Good commercials will stay being a powerful tool in social networks. The brands can only profit from it… no matter if the commercial -like this one from Ford- is four years old. If it is cool, it will be valued good for a long time!

Study: Permanent change of passwords is a waste of time

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The last IT managers and their data and identity security topics were always a challenge for me to find another password instead of ‘iloveyou’ or a mixture of birthday numbers. The question is: Is this permanent change of passwords really as effective as possible and in favor of our security? One thing is for sure, if users have a password manager, they just need to remember one powerful super password.

The Microsoft researcher Cormac Herley now found out that the hype around passwords can be doubted. Herley states that users who ignore security advice are acting rational – and not lazy or stupid. Nevertheless, the study concludes changing passwords constantly is a giant waste of time and money. Plus: It makes the users no safer from identity thieves.

Herley resumes that a task requiring one minute per day from every working adult in the U.S. costs about $15.9 billion per year. Unnecessary security advice “treats as free a resource that is actually worth $2.6 billion an hour.” Does that make sense from a ROI perspective?

The strategy of thieves is not to go for dictionary attacks. These won’t break security. Giving away security credentials through phishing or keylogging is the most effective way. The main issue of the paper is the common requirement that users have to change passwords at specified intervals. Hacker that steal your password will be using it straight away – waiting is nt his tactic.

“Insisting that users choose a unique strong password for each (account) which they change often and never write down is clearly a large burden.”

Spot On!
How do you see this study? Is the mega password with the password manager he best option for security?

News Update – Best of the Day

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About a year ago, a Robert Hall study showed that 55% of CIOs don’t allow the access to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. This year’s study shows that the IT policies are changing to stricter guidelines…
– 38% have implemented stricter social networking policies regarding personal use of social media sites
– 15% have become stricter regarding business use
– 17% have become more lenient

Strategy& published its “Marketing Media Ecosystem 2010” report which sees a significant necessary change away from a “traditional marketer/client – agency – media company structure” to an economy that needs to change the pace of adopting new marketing tools towards a new marketer to end user relationship.

The key findings show the relevance of reference marketing…
– 88% agree the speed of marketing execution will become more important due to digital
– 80% believe insights into consumer’s digital behavior and related targeting will become more important
– 55% of users see consumer recommendation more important than pur brand knowledge
– 59% lack sufficient experience with digital/online media
– 51% do not have adequate senior support for digital

This commercial from Jack Rabbit Beer might be made for male humor. But it is more the chronology of the narrative time that makes it funny.

News Update – Best of the Day

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Those who see and embrace the modern social web world will understand the 7C’s by Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media Lab.

“Social media strategy fits inside a marketing (business, corporate) strategy, and is shaped by it. Social strategy fits outside business and corporate strategies, and shapes them. Social strategies are about rewriting the logic of the industrial era entirely, shifting gears in how we think, envisioning a broader, more powerful, more challenging use of social tools. They are about developing the capacity to understand an organization’s role in society, and how to play a more constructive one, wielding sociality as a source of advantage — by acting radically more meaningfully than rivals. Social strategies are about reinventing tomorrow.”

These words correspond as a long version format with the interview I have given to the Internet World some months ago (German only).

In order to improve your online sales tactics, here is a clear cut approach by TJ McCue how to improve your website sales efforts. He shows us some good and bad examples of online sales communication.

This funny insurance commercial from the Bangkok Insurance is excellent. It is showing the probability (0,00000001%) that your next unexpected accident or thunderstorm will not end without the need of an insurance company…