My marketing diary

Last time I checked my e-mails at hotmail, I found interesting “news” when I logged out.

Ashton Kutcher, posted a picture on his Twitter page (twitter.com/aplusk), where Demi Moore’s bottom in a white knickers can be seen. They were at the wedding of Bruce Willis in the Caribbean and Demi straighten Aston’s suit while wearing a bikini.

His comment on this picture: ‘Shhh, don’t tell wifey.’

As I’ve seen this; I thought it it can’t be real. Somebody is just joking and this picture doesn’t show Demi Moore. And I couldn’t believe that celebrities spend their time twittering. But I was curious and did some research.

I found so many celebrities, which have a twitter account. Some examples are:

Jimmy Fallon
Former Vice President Al Gore
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
Britney Spears
Jon Favreau
Coldplay
John Mayer
Billy Bush
Shaquille O’Neal
Mischa Barton
Jamie Oliver
Lance Armstrong
Lily Allen
Katy Perry
John Cleese
Lindsay Lohan

and many more…

And another person who is apparently also twittering is… you can’t imagine… the queen.
A Westminster Abbey spokeswoman said:

“We’ve got a new web manager in her 20s who is very up to date and it was her idea to start ‘twittering’.

“The impetus behind the idea was we thought it would be a really good way to reach out to a new audience.

“It’s just another tool in terms of getting people interested in the Commonwealth Observance.”

As it serves a purpose for the queen I think as well for the celebrities above, twitter is a good tool to get in contact with their fans and as well to promote themselves. They can choose when and if they want to be in contact with fans and as well it is a possibility to be in contact within a certain distance and without being in a situation of getting overrunned by screaming teenagers or nerving paparazzi.
But I found as well some information about hacked or faked accounts, which are these of Miley Cirus, Barack Obama, Ewan McGregors. This shows that the people behind such accounts are not necessarily these which were assumed to be. And it can have a negative impact on the people’s reputation; due to the fact that faked messages were send in the name of celebrities.

You want to know how the story of Ashton and Demi ends?

Demi posted back, ‘He is such a sneak and while I was steaming his suit too!’

In this post I want to write something about building communities and why the Web 2.0 can be a vital part of this. And another point is, how this could be beneficial in marketing.

Of course, everybody knows networks, like Facebook, MySpace, bebo, Linkedin, Twitter, blogs and many more. I am in Facebook, since a few months. A few weeks ago, I entered the group “LEEDS FLASHMOB!!!!” They describe a flashmob as: “It’s a sudden gathering of people into a crowd that does something unusual for a few minutes in unison and then disperses.”

You might think now, what are you talking about!? And what has this to do with Web 2.0 excepting the fact of mentioning Facebook. Read on…

Another definition is: Flash mob – a work of situationist art whereby individuals communicate over the Internet in order to come together as a group without warning, perform some random, pre-defined action intended to disrupt and confuse the people nearby, and then disperse. (Ford, 2003)

There the word internet comes in. The internet and especially the Web 2.0 is an optimal way of distributing messages. Its speed of communication and the availability is the advantage. Furthermore, it is great tool to reach people all over the world and to create a community.

Back to my example, I have been in the city centre, where the happening should take place yesterday (14^th of March 2009). But there was nothing. As I had a look on the Facebook group afterwards, most people where disappointed, because they are complaining about the bad organisation of the flashmob. I went there, because I was curious, how or whether a flashmob works. I have always been fascinated by such events, where a community of people, who don’t know each other, come together and be part of something. This gives me goose bumps. Nevertheless, the example of this community event fails its purpose. I don’t know, why this happens, but I think it can’t be the failure of the distribution of the message. Everything seemed to be clear and they have reached 2,428 people, which is enough to perform a nice flashmob. I think the humans behind the flashmob group failed in the implementation.

So, this was just a negative example, what I experienced regarding a flashmob. Nevertheless, there a a lot of positive examples, which could be find in the web.

As well very few companies already organised flashmobs in order to create an attention catching campaign to get their message across and furthermore to promote their product, service or brand.

Here an example of T-Mobile, it was produced for a commercial, but still creates an atmosphere of community among visitors and flashmob performers:

There have as well some flashmobs been in McDonald’s, where each person ordered a cheeseburger at the same time.

Such events often create huge media coverage and can create a we-feeling between a company and its customers. Therefore a flashmob can be considered as tool of promoting a product or brand.

Whilst I was surfing through the www, in order to do some research for university, I finally come to YouTube. Normally I would say YouTube should not be mentioned in the same sentence with university. YouTube is definitely not an academic source for research. But have you seen how many videos exist on YouTube, which can help you to explain and understand some topics very easily.

Then I did some research on this education on YouTube and I found some real life lectures. Some had a length of approximately one an a half hours and was a class, which was recorded in a university room. There is as well a university, the Pitzer College in the United States, which had some problems that the course is officially accepted, but a faculty curriculum committee approved the online course, after they got information about the intellectual challenge and the demands the students have to meet.

To be honest, I wouldn’t take an online course, because I am still sceptical and I think a video shouldn’t and can’t replace a book or a lecture in university, but it is a great tool to catch up things or to repeat the lecture.

Certainly, the question of the reliability of these videos is important. Everybody can tell something, the question is about the accuracy. But in general I think, online lessons can be beneficial and shouldn’t be talked down. The Web 2.0 offers more and more possibilities for development, and as could be seen that there are universities, which operate mainly online. There are some series of lectures available and if once found a reliable source, it can be very attractive to listen and watch. This is especially favourable, for people who want to enforce their personal development and have no time to take an educational course.

I am curious about the further developments and innovations regarding the Web 2.0.

Referring to my last post in the “PR & New Media” category, I talked about the death of print media and the growth of new media. Despite the fact, that the new media is growing, it has certain points of attacks. Concerns about the quality and reliability of this media are apparent.

Have a look on this video, the response of Media Re:public.

Is it the future ?

As I surfed the web I came across the following poll at MarketingWeek:

I think it is very interesting how everything is changing… the media goes more and more in the Web 2.0 direction and brings a lot of consequences. For marketers it is especially relevant I think, because companies have to consider such changes and keep up to date with their business to use the best media possible for their purpose. Ok, back to the newspaper, the Web 2.0 related to marketing could be my next topic.

So, I was curious about the results of this poll, therefore I selected the answer, what I thought might happen.

According to this research most people, exactly 80%, think is that the newspaper will stay alive. Only 20% think that the internet will overhelm newspapers. What do you think?

I voted “yes”.

I still believe that newspapers and other print media will not die, but I am not 100% sure how well they could stay alive. Due to the fact, that until now, we have still many older people who are not taking advantages of the internet, they are fine. But and increasing number of younger people, which are called the Gerneration Y or e-Gerneration (spend around 1/3 of their life online, which is approximatley 23 years (Cameron, G. T., Wilcox, D. L., Reber, B. H., & Shin, J. (2008)) start using the internet for more and more reasons.

It is already and will be hard for newspapers to get a high number of readers, when in some times, all generations on earth are able to surf the www. Newspapers have to rethink how they could be promoted. Maybe it is not anymore the typical, basic reason of gaining information that attracts the reader. Instead I think it is developing more and more in the direction that a paper gets a luxury good and it is bought to enjoy reading.

Philip Meyer says in his book “The Vanishing Newspaper” (2004), that the newspaper era ends around the first quarter of 2043. I hope I will be there when it happens.