This was the viral marketing of yesterday, advertisings painted by hand on the walls of houses. They can still be seen in Great Britain and France – remember Guiness is good for you or Du… Dubon… Dubonnet. But they are disappearing fast, largely as a result of property development and demolition, but also because the colours are fading away.
Ghostsign - Peugeot
Ghostsign - Taverne Suisse
Photos by Hans G. Anderson
An article in Creative Review states that there are efforts under way to photograph, research and archive the last survivors of this fading advertising medium. Have a look at the archives.
We would very much like to contribute to this movement; so if you have photos of ghostsigns, pleas share them with us.
And by the way. Back in the 80’s we saw a commercial for Dubonnet. The film showed the painting of a wall sign on a farmhouse. It started when the painters arrived in the morning and you could follow what the farmer and his family made all day long and in the afternoon and the sun set the painting was ready. Everything was very romantic. If you have a copy of this film we would very much like to see it.
In the mean time, here’s a video of a modern version of ghostsigns being painted in N.Y.
In a European invitation to tender, Cordovan was recently commissioned to fill the post “Digital Marketing Manager” for Cisco’s Nordic markets. Fredrik Rittberger from Cordovan Marketing was offered the job after a long and tough scrutiny. The assignment is now full time. The description of the assignment says for example:
- Manage the Digital Marketing program areas such as Central Publishing Interface, Content Strategy & Metrics, Social Media & Communities, Traffic/Drive-to (SEM & Online Advertising), Virtual Events, Engagement & Lead Generation.
- Partner with theatre Digital marketing and country marketing teams to develop an integrated digital marketing strategy for the countries.
- Support the country marcom teams in execution of all online programs and activities developed by theatre Marketing Communications teams or country teams.
- Act as site strategist and producer for the country cisco.com websites in their geography, maintains a holistic overview and strategy for each site.
Cisco is one of the largest, most innovative and most profitable IT-businesses in the world. Near to 90% of all network traffic goes through some type of Cisco equipment. The collaboration between Cisco and Cordovan started in 2002. At that time however, Cordovan was Adera.
This morning when I got to work, I wanted to update my status but to my surprise and huge disappointment, Facebook was down. I checked several times with no luck. Facebook was still down.Frustrating! Then I remembered a post from Social Media Examiner regarding addiction to social media. Hmm. Time for social media detox?
Retrevo recently conducted the study “Is Social Media a New Addiction?”. The study asked social media users questions such as when, where and how much time they spend on sites and services like Facebook and Twitter. And it seems a lot of people show real signs of addiction. Just take a look at this chart.
According to this Retrevo Gadgetologystudy, social media is a threat to the morning news shows as 16% of social media users say that this is the way they get their morning news. The fact that iPhone users stand out in this study, shows that easy access also contributes to the addiction, which is shown in the chart below.
So, is a social media detox needed? What do you think? Are you one of those tweeting from the bathroom?
OK, got to go. Need to see if Facebook is up and running again.
/ylva.
I know, I know. Another post on how great social media is… but I can’t help it. Why? Well, because studies show that consumers prefer to work with businesses that have a strong social media presence. And here are some facts, from the Social Media Summit site to show you just that:
Social media use on the rise: More than 71% of businesses plan on increasing their use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs in 2010, according to the 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
Mass consumer adoption of social media: With more than 400 million people on Facebook and more than 1.2 billion Twitter updates in January 2010 alone, these are numbers you just cannot ignore.
Small businesses are dominant players: Small businesses are cashing in quickly on social media. Surprisingly, half of small businesses using social media say lead generation is its top benefit (Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010).
Social media drives search engine optimization: The top three benefits of social media marketing are (1) generating more exposure for the business, (2) increasing traffic to websites and (3) improving search engine rankings, according to 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
Watch this video with Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examinerwhen he explains why social media works in a down economy and invites you to the Social Media Summit:
What do you think? Is this just a hype, or is it really the revolution everyone talks about? Turning perspectives upside down and really making the customer king…?
We learnt today that we will lose a great team, and we wish them all the best. Our journey will continue and we’ll need new bright colleagues to join us in building the Cordovan of the future.
What constitutes the Cordovan of the future, then?
Well, we want to be the best change agency there is. I.e., we use communication as a driver in brand revitalization and change processes. Our overall idea is to work with people and organizations in parallel to what is communicated to customers and others. Our assignments can cover anything from implementing a new strategy and a new way of working to the launch of a new product or a new sales channel. Digital tools and channels are becoming increasingly more important to drive change towards defined targets.
Interactive tables that change depending on what you put on them, a tweeting tree and 50 million networked devices talking to each other. An all communicating world with broadband: a smarter world. This is Ericsson’s vision for 2020.
Yesterday, we had the pleasure to receive Eric Kruse, Strategic Marketing Director at Ericsson, here Cordovan. He presented this vision to us and some of our clients.
Erik explained that they look at technological trends, social trends, demographic trends, environmental trends and then analyze what implication these trends might have in the future.
In September 2008, Stena Line began building the next generation of Super ferries that will be the world’s largest ferries in route traffic; Stena Brittanica and Stena Hollandica. The first super ferry will be ready this spring and will be running the Hoek van Holland and Harwich route.
Not only will these vessels increase the number of passengers, vehicle and freight units, they will also be built with an environmentally friendly focus. Being on the forefront is important to Stena Line, which also reflects how they chose to communicate this on the web.
“We build vessels that are pioneering in a number of fields and that are the world’s largest of its kind. That’s why we want a site that shows the vessels and the construction of them in a new creative and interesting way. I think that TheSuperFerries.com has accomplished that.” Says Dag Thyselius, responsible for PR at Stena Line.
Before creating the campaign site, the Cordovan project team identified a number of personas corresponding to the different target groups that would be interested in following the construction of these Super Ferries. The different interest areas emphasized on the site are:
- Building big (technical aspect)
- Smart construction and power thinking (environmental aspect)
- Enabling better service and comfort.
To illustrate “Building big “, we shot a film at the ship yard. We used Tilt shift technique to further underline the huge size of these vessels.
The choice of social media platforms was also based on the target groups’ different interests. This generated the idea of a social media engine, to keep track of “the Captain’s blog”, as well as information from Twitter, Flickr and YouTube (SuperFerry TV). This way, the user can follow the construction via real time updates from the different social platforms, all presented in a cool new graphical way.
Visit the site, explore the boat, interact! And please, let us know what you think.
/ylva.
I recently wrote that one of the trends in social media for 2010 was to be games and entertainment. The fact is that there are now at least 8 Facebook games with over 18 million players. In comparison, the game that’s ranked as the biggest online game in the world, World of Warcraft, has only 11 million players.
According to the Swedish news magazine, Fokus, here are the most popular Facebook games:
- 1. Name: Farmville.
What do you do: Grow plants on your farm.
Number of active players: 73,7 million.
- 2: Name: Cafe World.
What do you do: Run your own café.
Number of active players: 30,1 million.
- 3: Name: Happy Aquarium.
What do you do: Take care of and decorate an aquarium.
Number of active players: 28,4 million.
- 4: Name: Fishville.
What do you do: Basically the same thing as Happy Aquarium.
Number of active players: 24,6 million.
- 5: Name: Texas Hold’em.
What do you do: Play poker.
Number of active players: 23,7 million.
- 6: Name: Mafia Wars.
What do you do: Build a strong mafia family together with Facebook friends.
Number of active players: 22,7 million.
- 7: Name: Pet Society.
What do you do: Get a pet to play with.
Number of active players: 20,6 million.
- 8: Name: Petville.
What do you do: Basically the same thing as Pet Society.
Number of active players: 18,2 million.
Most of the popular social games listed above have a caring and nurturing dimension (taking care of plants, fish, pets and a family). The fact that the Facebook audience differs from the regular online players have made game developers adapt their games to fit this new target group. These social games are made very simple to get started with as a lot of players on Facebook have no or little experience from TV or computer games. They need to be rich in awards and news in order to become popular.
This flexibility and constant flow of new stuff is probably the explanation to the quick success of these games. For instance, only a couple of days after the earthquake in Haiti, a special white oat was made available for purchase. The profit the game developing company behind Farmville, Zynga, made from selling this oat was sent to the earthquake victims.
The possibilities of engaging users on Facebook are huge. This is also relevant for companies who have Facebook Pages, i.e. relevant, interesting or plain fun applications make the users come back. If you haven’t already, also reed: Why should companies be present on Facebook?
According to Global Language Monitor, Twitter was the hottest word 2009. An automatic analysis program was used to find out the most popular English word on the Internet. The same method was used to find the most popular name, Barack Obama, and that “The King of Pop” (Michael Jacksson’s nickname) is the phrase that best characterizes 2009.
According to the Swedish magazine, Språk, Google’s top list over the users’ search words is another good method to find “the word of the year”, then the list looks like this:
1. Michael Jacksson
2. Facebook
3. Tuenti (a Spanish speaking network site)
4. Twitter
In Sweden, the most popular search word is Facebook and Spotify is the search word that increases the fastest in popularity.
A bit of pop, social media sites and the US president… 2009 in a nutshell.
