The one idea per day calendar has the 335 best ideas of last year’s edition and 30 empty sheets for next edition. #eenideeperdag
Category: Marketing
Music Stock Exchange Game.
The Music Stock Exchange is an addictive (betting) game in which people (the music fans) can buy stocks and shares in music band. The goal is to predict what bands will be flying high in the charts with their songs so the fans can make money out of their musical predictions while buying and selling songs.
ParkEasy: the social parking community.
It looks parking gets a lot of attention on my blog. This idea is all about helping others to find an easy parking spot. It works a bit like Uber but for future available (parking) space. When you are a member of the ParkEasy community, you check in your car wherever you park and notify ParkEasy when you will approximately be leaving your parking spot again. Another member of the ParkEasy community that looks for a parking spot in a certain area at a particular time gets notifications of the available ParkEasy spot that become free within a 15 mins timeframe. He can give a heads up that he will be arriving to take your place via the app.
It’s by code of the ParkEasy community that you only give our your parking spot to other members of the community. When the parking spot changes, ParkEasy community members both get rewarded with some transaction points. With those transaction points, you raise your profile within the community. Being a member of ParkEasy will become payable over time and when it is, any valuable member of the community will have raised enough transaction points to prolong their membership for free. The new ones start with a small registration fee to start and gain transaction points.
Airport market research.
I’ve been in transit waiting for my next flight. While waiting, I want to spend my time more useful or more to my convenience. I don’t mind people asking me questions about certain topics so I would engage with a service that has a booth where I can voluntary go to and answer their questions. In return, I expect at least a coffee or gift card to be used in the shops. International research will be a lot easier and richer if every airport embraced and facilitated this kind of service.
P-Health service checks your health.
With all those products and services monitoring your health nowadays, people become obsessed with the state of their personal health. P-Health stands for personal health service. It’s a service that aggregates all product and service feeds (health data) you have and use, analyses its reports and gives you feedback on a regular basis. A dedicated team of doctors and coaches is at your disposal to answer any question and makes recommendations to improve your health status. It saves time and buys expertise you don’t have and no tool can ever give. The objective is better health, the goal for P-Health is to make it happen with you in a unique, personal way.
The business model is subscription fee based for the monitoring with personal chats and (training) programs on a consultancy basis.
Modular floor furniture.
I was thinking about the Ireland rocks my dad and sister showed me after they had visited some whisky farms. I find it fascinating how erosion got to make this one giant rock shape so beautifully.
This idea is a dedicated furniture concept for Quinze and Milan where one of my palls is currently working. It’s a moving floor structure like the piles of this rock which forms the furniture you want. The material used should be firm, but soft (like QM Foam?) so it can the furnitures piles can form chairs, tables, sofa’s, a bar,… By rising from the floor, the elementary piles give support to each other.
With a dedicated app you can select what composition the room you want to have. A dining room? A living room? One living area can suddenly be turned in a different setup for multiple purposes. Also for events, a giant cube with top floor compositions is a guaranteed eyecatcher that everyone wants to visit.
I’d like to see this happen… So Bram, what are you waiting for? 😉
Conquer the beach: a marketing strategy
The idea is a simple as you just need to claim a part of the beach. By giving away printed towels, flipflops with footprints, parasols, …), you create such a visibility and positive vibe. I did it once doing it low-budget wen we were launching Simyo, a online and low-cost telecom alternative. The goal is to put your brand in a positive context (who’s not happy when at the beach?) and use pictures and video taken to further promote a summer campaign for a particular brand that want a sunny outlook.
E-commerce window stores.
This idea is a very viable one. The business model is to invest in brick shops in both main shopping streets and upcoming districts and fill them with goods from e-commerce stores. The goal is to create a physical presence for small-knows e-shops, create exchange points to touch, feel and see goods. Online a portal site with these trusted e-shops will be made. It increases the trust in buying online due to the trusted certificate online and physical presence offline.
The money comes from monthly fees these e-shops pay to have a presence on the portal and in these brick and mortar shops. I actually thought about it when I was thinking about the pivoting options for ZOYOKO. But the upfront investment is way too big for me.
Drugs boxes: what’s the upside?
It’s a legit question, I believe. Every time i’m ill, every time I take a drugs box out of our medicines cabinet, it seems that I always open it on the wrong side. That’s just what you don’t want on that particular moment. You’re miserable enough.
So a ‘What’s the upside?’ arrow indication like they do on courier packages should be obliged. You could state that for educational purposes (you cannot take drugs without reading the manual), the upside always keeps the manual. First time user? Open the box from the upside. In other occasions, you would open the downside because that’s where you are. Or vice versa. Depending on what behavioral therapists and psychologists say.
Social Bargain Hunters.
Whenever you look for something, someone else can find it cheaper, definitely. Social Bargain Hunter is a P2P market place where people can add what they want to buy, where they will buy it. Then it gets challenged by the social bargain hunters. It’s not about the right price, it’a about the best price. A social bargain hunter looks for the best (read: cheaper) deals. The difference between the original price and the found price is shared between the publisher of the loot and the hunter who has found the best deal. A percentage is kept by the platform.
This means you can start to make money by shopping. A woman’s wet dream, no? 🙂
Nespressoup.
Royco Minute Soup from a tiny machine with the water temperature just perfect and pads with all kind of soup flavours. The model works. Perfect for the workplace and even for home. I would buy it. And I would try out all soup tastes…
How legends are created.
A documentary series in which the documentary maker tells how legends are created. He reveals the real story of how communication, publications, facts,… are all brought together and how storytelling creates legends. Since media exists, legends are created. Whether these are historical sites that get too much honour in comparison with others, communication and the way it enforces itself is a weird phenomenon. Every analysed legend gives some powerful insights that can be reused for marketing purposes. Also the discrepancy between what people believe that happened and what really happened is possible a way to visualise the documentary storytelling… A legend in the making…
Possible topics:
- Mozart
- Ché
- Stonehenge
- Yeti
- Lam Gods
- …
Choose-a-side chess.
I am fascinated by chess. It’s simple but brilliant. I only play it rarely. Once every few years to be more precise. But I love the board, the pieces, and i do love design variations of the chess board. The idea of today could be brought back to school when I tried it for the first time, or to my granddad who played against me when I was ill and stayed at his home, or that time in Lille where they played chess in some kind of open air hall between old books, comics and posters. We were at a coffee bar and we though it would be nice to just have a board where you could only do 1 move per coffee. But once you choose a side, you are that color. Basically, you sign up to a color and move a piece. Via chooseasidechess.com you can now follow and discuss the history of the game, but also discuss the next move that would make it win the game. But than again, only people who come in the bar, drink coffee can make a physical move on the board.
The Happy Pills & Patches; Alcohol dope. #oipd
Probably not my most political correct idea per day: Pills and patches with alcohol.
Alcohol is the #1 (and legal!) hard drugs in the world. Patches could help addicted people to systematically lower their daily/hourly doses.
Alcohol pills on the other hand could be the new party hit. A pill tablet, sparkling or still, with several alcohol tastes. The only thing you need to add is water.
Happy pills parties! Wiiiii!
Triesikstie: virtual war rooms & standup meeting rooms. #oipd
Triesikstie offers an extra service to Google Hangout and/or Skype whereby you can add a virtual room to a conference call. This virtual room can be filled with images, presentations, documents, etc that need discussion. Or these documents can be used as the input for a brainstorm or just to keep track of the daily progress in SCRUM or agile working environment. You can dress up the room and indulge your customers, partners or co-workers in an unique remote virtual collaborative (marketing) experience.
Triesikstie only costs $1 per room per day and offers unlimited user access.
Restø å gøgø; the travelling chef. #oipd
A (tv) show about a chef that travels the world to less developed places in Africa, Asia, America to do some food education. Everywhere he goes, he asks for ingredients (he has a suitcase with tools and spices) and delivers a culinair experience (meals) in return while giving some advice on how to make most of the ingredients.
The crown jewel of FMCG: the bag of chips. #oipd
One of the all time great FMCG designs is without a doubt the crisps bag. It’s amazing how good the design of a bag chips became over the years. Not only is it functional (freshness of the chips), it triggers almost all of the senses.
- Sight: I don’t have to explain this. The graphic designs on bags of chips are among the most colorful and squeakerish. If there was a price for most colorful corridor in shops, the one with bags of chips would win it.
- Hearing: The opening with a little ‘plop’, the crisping of the bag are just the prequels to the moulding in your mouth. Everyone has some kind of good memories to chips. Mine was that my dad bought me a little bag of pickles chips after swimming on sunday mornings.
There are, at least, if not more, people who hate the sound of chips. But that’s only when someone else is making the typical bag of chips sounds. I believe it triggers the nerves in the brain that provoke jealousy. “It’s all fine, expect when I’m not enjoying them…” In a cinema for instance. - Touch: The biggest progress has been made over the last few years in this area. It’s not only on how a bag looks like but also how he feels like when touched. It’s touching a bag that makes you decide whether you buy it. Do you prefer a silk touch, or the plasticy one. I believe structure prints made out of adaptive, sensitive materials could be the last thing that improve the touch experience.
- Smell: I don’t think the bag of chips can do more other than to keep the scent and aroma of the chips in the bag.
- Taste: Why can we only eat the contents of a chips bag, and not the chips bag itself? There must be a way, right? If I was sent a Belgian newspaper to put in the oven and eat it…
Where Lays innovates on the traditional bags of chips, Pringles decided to revolutionize the way chips are packed. For their chips roll packs, there is certainly more innovation growth potential.
Mibike.com – A stolen bicycle service. #oipd
The idea of today is a service where you can add a picture of your bike, describe the obvious, secret and hidden characteristics and go out biking without any problems.
Whenever your bike is stolen, you press a panic button. It registers where you are and you send a lost and found message to fellow members in the neighborhood who look out for your bike, together with you. When someone spots your bike or gives the tip that lead to retrieving your bike back, they get a reward.
It’s a freemium business model where it cost nothing to register your bike (potential marketing: make pictures of bikes yourself and add a card with unique code so people can just register more easily), but the use of the panic button cost you 5 euro. You can also take an insurance for your bike. For 5 euro a month, you are delivered a second hand bike in perfect shape when your bike has been stolen.
Should work in The Netherlands and cities with a bike-crazy population (student towns).
Branded boxes for e-commerce. #oipd
You can compare it with sponsored placemats, but for boxes.
It’s no secret that e-commerce initiatives are popping up faster than the sun in the morning. It’s also no secret that many of those initiatives don’t reach the end of the day. The logistics part of business is for most startup e-shops a pure cost without much added value for both the e-retailer and their customer.
(publicity announcement: Except the one from our ZOYOKO shop…)
The idea of branded e-boxes is a solution that helps starting e-commerce business to get free packaging they can use, but also to other e-commerce business’ to do marketing and get their awareness and acquisition of new customers up at affordable rates to an interesting customer segment (namely people who already buy online).
Why business communities fail?
Businesses don’t realize what communities are all about. They don’t understand what the social digital revolution is all about. Business let their marketing and/or IT department experiment, throwing lots of money at it without a clear vision on the benefits for the company.
Business communities fail because they put their business upfront and not the community. Value for the business does not equal value for the user. That’s why even well-build communities don’t gain traction with its users. Too much whistles and bells make communities too difficult to understand. Users will come once, say “waaaw” and “too difficult” and never return. Relevance for the business can only be achieved when they feel like stakeholders in their company whose opinions really matter. Off course, it’s not only about user opinions. It’s the conversation that creates value for both, the users and the company.
The technology is indeed important but it’s only a means to achieve the goal of the community. In fact, it’s so easy to set up an online community but that’s just like seeding a lawn —lots of watering and fertilizing has to happen next. Having a dedicated staff to continuously search ways to inspire and engage other business employees to actively participate in communities can be a tremendous benefit.
So, when a company understands that the focus on communities is not technologically driven but socially driven, perhaps they shouldn’t spend all their money on the technology creating communities happen but more on an acquisition & retention strategy. A community only gets as big as the passionate users who engage in it. Only 5% of the Wikipedia users are responsible for more than 50% of the contributions. All users benefit from it.
Therefore, business should realize that top down implementation isn’t the right way to implement a business community. Just guessing what the community should do, it won’t work. You will have to empower the business employees and all business lines to define your community proposition. When launching a community small and simple with the single intent of letting members tell you how to grow it bigger and better, and not by guessing, you stimulate the conversation in, over and about your business. Unlike most business processes, communities don’t work when people are obliged to participate in them. When you touch the right nerve, users will be willing to give you all the information you need to be more efficient, productive and loved… When you ask them to participate and they see business owners listen to the comments on business products and processes so they get improved, your community will flourish.
So how can you gain traction with your customers? Hold a couple of rules in mind:
1. The focus of your community is people. People with a voice that want to be heard.
2. The focus of your business community should be collaboration & co-creation, not only information.
3. Don’t spend all your money on technology but also on people running the community.
Activation & retention are the two main objectives of these passionate people.
4. Business owners should listen, participate and use the information to improve business products and processes.
Convergence in an advertising 2.0 context.
We create as many contact points with the consumer nowadays because we want to sell stuff. Contact points have one objective: lead the consumer into a buy while using the different channels in a smart way.
Channels are convergenced when they offer the next keywords to the consumer:
- Relevance
- Context/Situation
- Creativity
- Dialogue
- Affinity
It is important to take context into account. Context can be defined as time and place. It’s not because you are using much channels that these channels are properly used. In advertising, most concepts are translated linear to the different channels while it should be done vertically per context. What you should do is maximize the advantage of each channel independently using the typical characteristics of this channel. We all know that ATL is about impact and visibility (awareness) while Mobile is at the opposite side of the marketing landscape because is personal, contextual and offers interactivity to the individual.
There are 4 kinds of convergence:
- Convergence in time (personal, work & family time amalgamates – there is no clear difference anymore)
- Convergence in place (ubiquitous connectivity – we are connected everywhere)
- Social convergence (we are social beings and always available)
- Commercial convergence (client relations and commercial transactions are part of our lives)
In the WebNu, we don’t push communication but try to start a conversation. We communicate whenever it’s opportune for the individual. The consumer needs to have the feeling that he’s in control and he chooses whether he wants to interact or not.
As the mobile phone is the ultimate medium because we are naturally addicted to this medium, context is becoming more and more relevant in advertising. Context defines your content.
It is vital to understand that brand communications should be coherent. The different channels reinforce each other. The content should be adapted to each specific channel. It is crucial! This seems logical and easy but in fact, in a convergence world, it isn’t. The boundaries of channel, media and content are insecure. How would you describe someone who is watching TV via the internet on this cell phone?
The only way success can be achieved is when the brand works efficient and organized and proper objectives are set.
Advertising 2.0
I read an article today in a paper where the tasks of a marketeer are explained. These were the five tasks:
-
Lead generation
-
Increase client loyalty
-
Client happiness
-
Marketing accountability
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Product & services innovation
Perhaps I am a bit ambitious but there is a solution to it. Here are some steps that respond to the tasks of a marketeer.
In the WebNu, you always have to take 5 steps:
- Establish your brand (be findable)
- Demonstrate your brand (be exiting)
- Challenge with your brand (create connections)
- Offer relevance to the customer (turn connections into relationships)
- Offer products & services in a relevant context (sales)
You can not expect from a customer that he stays his lifetime exclusively with your brand but your brand can have the best offer (product or service) at a certain time. If you are not connected to this customer and you don’t have a meaningful relationship with him, you can’t make that offer. Marketing’s responsibility is larger than just advertising. It should be lifecycle information management of your customer base. This insight, well used, creates opportunities for business innovation and transformation.
While saying this in the WebNu, a company needs to prepare itself and make the shift using enterprise 2.0 tools and an advertising 2.0 spirit to gain a competitive advantage. Integration of your business is crucial and should be built from a customer obsessed perspective; the empowered customer.
Whazzup? + Get the glass!
As I work in the advertising industry, I follow quite some blogs about advertising. Regularly, I see something which is so good, I have to send it out to everyone in the office. Some like it, others don’t. So, I’ve decided to post the coolest stuff onto this blog for those interested.
I take my writings on WebNu pretty seriously. I regret the fact that I don’t have time to research my current 4 writings on WebNu. I have to finish up some jobs @ DDB before I’ll take up a new challenge @ Grey. Also, I have to prepare a speech on web 2.0 and how that could be interesting for marketers. And last but not least, I have a wife and dog… They also need some affection from time to time 😉
But enough about me, here’s a game I really enjoyed. It’s one of the best online games ever made; Gettheglass. The experience created here is worth every second of loading time. So hang on & enjoy!
Here you can see how it’s made.
The medium wás the message, WebNu is about the conversation.
I remember well. My teacher media, Erik Meganck, told me in 5th grade all about Marshal McLuhan and how his famous quote “the medium is the message” did evoke a big discussion in our classroom. He didn’t however tell us much about the “global village”, and that’s something that, even today, I regret. But one thing’s for sure; I found his lessons (among) the best I’ve ever had.
But back to the famous quote of McLuhan: “The medium is the message.”
I believe it’s not about what you are trying to communicate but how it’s communicated. His statement was made when mass communication media was just taken over by commerce. There was no conversation possible what-so-ever. The message was send to everyone in the hope someone picked it up, tried it and, in the best practices, told a friend to do also. Only messages that were very good reached a form of storytelling. Advertising evolved form information to seductive infotainment.
Times have changed. The conversation is the most important driver of web 2.0. Comments on blogs, messages on profiles in social networks, etc. have no other purpose than to share thoughts on a post, personal interests or a particular theme that the writer covers. Enterprises that spent millions at advertising should embrace this principle. They need to see their consumers as customers who co-create. Customers nowadays are empowered and could make or break your brand or product. A customer is someone who is a producer, user, participant, member & critic at the same time. Targeting a customer with even the simplest message isn’t so easy anymore. But there is a solution for this. That needs a shift in the enterprises’ mindset. Start a conversation with your (potential) customers?
A conversation can mean a lot of things but in fact, it’s dead simple: Connecting with people creates empty relationships, conversations between people creates meaningful relationships. Communities are built this way. In a commercial point-of-view, these relationships are underdeveloped, not fully exploited. Enterprises have a lot of connections but they should turn them in relations. A good conversation is not easy to create. It just happens, like all good things in life. When the quality of your message is good, it will be noticed. It will engage people to comment and help you forward with constructive criticism. Therefore offer your customers an experience. The user experience will reflect on your brand and/or products. Both positive as negative is possible. But your engagement will give you an advantage in cases of doubt.
Starting a conversation needs engagement from your part. But the conversation will soon become your legitimation of trustworthiness. It’s all about the conversation. So start today.
Do you think I’m right?
Jeff Raskin Quote
“As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product.”
Realtime Generation in UK: Logicalis Study
The web now generation is coming!
What’s Web 3.0 ?
Google CEO Eric Smidt has a definition for web 3.0 and it’s not so bad. ;o)
He calls web 2.0 a marketing term, which it obviously is!
He said that while Web 2.0 was based on Ajax, Web 3.0 will be “applications that are pieced together” – with the characteristics that the apps are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, the apps can run on any device (PC or mobile), the apps are very fast and very customizable, and are distributed virally (social networks, email, etc).
See his answer here:
Long + short vid.
Here’s a video featuring editors and reporters from the Wall Street Journal, Wired, TechCrunch, Seattle Times, and Seattle Post Intelligence discussing how entrepreneurs should pitch the press.
And here’s a video of my most favorite show on the web! They just made a new one telling us all about social bookmarking. Yééééh!
Dave Winer knows what Gordon Summer knew for a very long time…
Lock-in and the web, day 2
Friday, August 3, 2007 by Dave Winer.
Every day I dish up a number of topics, it’s never clear to me which, if any, people will find interesting. Yesterday the topic that got the flow was lock-in and Web 2.0. There were times when that topic would go over everyone’s head, but today it’s much on-topic, as people commit more and more of their creativity to a life sentence behind bars in a Web 2.0 startup’s data silo.
I drew a comparison to the explosive end of copy protection in the 1980s, but that’s just one of many examples of the endless cycle of the tech industry. It’s why we have booms and busts, it’s how we achieve growth, how we shed layers in spring, and grow new fur in fall. Lock-in, it seems, will always be with us, if only so the users can express their independence by deleting it. 
The first time I saw explosive deconstruction was in the late 70s and early 80s when the personal computer rose out of the ranks of hobbyists. I came of age in a university that only had mainframes in the early-mid 70s. I graduated and got a job in the timesharing industry, where we rented out computer time on our mainframes. At the same time, in New Mexico, of all places, another direction was being explored, the idea of a fractional horsepower computer, where each person would have their own machine all to themselves. This idea had legs, big ones.
A few years later, after learning Unix in Madison, I had my own computer, a 64K black box running UCSD Pascal on top of CP/M. Then I got an Apple II, an Apple III, an IBM PC and off to the races. A boom. But the boom got extra lift from the arrogant denial of the titans of the mainframe and minicomputer eras. Had they embraced the change instead of resisting it, the boom would have been much softer. But that never happens, or so it seems. (Bill Gates swore he’d not fall victim to it, but he has, over and over.)
So when people give reasons why lock-in is forever, that’s just part of the transition. I also remember how the web got started, and how many people thought it wouldn’t work (I was one of them, btw, but not for long). This time the lock-in is not in the computer, although that’s starting to happen again (the iPhone is a great example, but it’ll be a short-lived product, I think, kind of like the Apple III or the Newton). It’s not about base-level networking or content or presentation formats, that’s been settled too (HTML and HTTP and RSS). This time the lock-in is about identity.
So if the past is a guide to the future, how will identity deconstruct?
It’s simple. A vendor will come along and they’ll store your identity but give you complete freedom to move it where ever you want when ever you want at no cost. They’ll make it easy to do so. And they’ll get rich doing it, if they want to.
“People come back to places that send them away.”
It’s the basic trust proposition of the Internet. People will only trust a service that gives them complete freedom to come and go as they please. Further, they’ll want to come back if you send them to cool places. It’s why people like Facebook today, and why they’ll be tired of it tomorrow, if it only sends you to places within the Facebook silo.
If you look back to all the booms, they’ve all had that quality of freedom for everyone to do whatever they want. It’s always that way with creativity. And you know the cycle is about to end when everything is controlled, when there are few outlets for creativity. When you wake up and sit down to work and don’t feel like doing anything. That’s when it’s time to start thinking about blowing something up.
Sting: “If you love someone, set them free.”
“Wong, Mister Wong…” he said.
“Social bookmarking service Mister Wong unveiled their English version today from the closed beta, and starts a contest for a new logo due to accusations of racism.”
Good way to turn negative attention into a positive awareness project.
Insites research
Insites Consulting issued a press release today highlighting some of the results from their annual Belgian Media Mapping research. The agency surveyed over 23 500 surfers from 14 European countries.
Belgium surpassed the European average in internet penetration. About 5 220 000 people are now connected, or 60% of the total Belgian population older than 15. This is a 3% increase in 6 months. Remarkably, wireless internet has grown from 15% to 40% in just over 2 years.
Northern-European countries generally have the highest internet penetration figures, with Sweden, Denmark, Norway and The Netherlands topping the list. Countries with the lowest penetration rate include Portugal and Greece.
E-mail is by far the most popular activity – this goes for all European countries -, next to online banking and routeplanning. The research agency also noted that listening to music and watching videos online is on the rise. Gambling on the internet is not popular at all around these parts: only 4% of Belgian surfers have acknowledged that they had placed an online bet at least once this year (compared to 48% in Germany and 40% in Sweden).
If you’re interested, you can gather more data from Insites’ eScape Reports (free registration required).
Etsy Garden: a place to watch our ideas grow
You have to check out Etsy Garden, their approach is the best one i’ve seen so far.
webnu 