sparking curious mind

Am avut de curand o polemica cu un client in care el sustinea ca exista brand-uri ideale, si doar acele brand-uri pot avea succes.

Eu nu cred ca exista branduri ideale. Ideea face parte dintr-un sistem de gandire pre-digital, unde posibilitatile de constructie a brand-urilor se limitau la un set de instrumente inguste. Potrivit acestui mindset, se poate spune ca unele marci erau mai potrivite decat altele pentru a face cele cateva lucruri pe care marketing-ul ti le permitea. Dar astazi, in era post digitala, acest lucru nu mai este valabil.

Inainte existau un set limitat de oportunitati si toata lumea a trebuit sa forteze brandul lor in aceste mici cutii de instrumente de marketing in scopul de a comunica si a se conecta cu audienta. Acest lucru nu a facut bine pentru multe brand-uri si se poate spune ca existau brand-uri ideale sau mai putin ideale in functie de care se potrivea mai bine la instrumentele disponibile. Azi - exista o oportunitate de marketing geniala pentru toata lumea - atat timp cat market-erii sunt interesati sa o descopere.

Astazi este mai mult vorba despre înţelegerea marketing-ului prin prisma valorii companiilor (ce valori oferă, in ce context si cum?), decat incercarea de a potrivi marketing-ul intr-un set predefinit de unelte.

Prin urmare, un brand ideal este un brand care exploreaza, care gaseste instrumentele cele mai potrivite contextului lor (situatiile in care produsele lor sau brand idea furnizeaza valoare), pentru audienta lor şi pentru organizatie. Si inţelege ca marketing-ul este o parte a experientei de produs sau de utilizare, nu ceva ce ai adauga la sfarsit doar pentru a spune oamenilor ca produsul este disponibil.

Nu exista brand-uri ideale, ci doar strategii geniale.

Tarantino’s talk is not just the fuel of his movies: it’s the engine, the wheels and most of the frame. It’s where the real dramatic and philosophical action takes place. The gunshots, car crashes and torture scenes are punctuation.

Great rant about Tarantino!

"The second assumption is just as dangerous: it is the dangerously linear assumption that the best way to build a brand is to set out to build a brand. I really don’t believe this. I think if you set out to build a great business, you’ll stand a fair chance of building a great brand. I am not equally confident that someone aspiring to build a great brand will build a great business." - Rory Sutherland

BMW a lansat o noua platforma de comunicare la nivel global. Imi placea mult "Pure driving pleasure". Parca era mai aproape de spiritul brand-ului.
Dar, cum spun chiar ei: "Is very important how you make people feel, but is more important what you make".
Si ei fac masini incredibile.


Pentru mine "Joy" de la BMW este clasicul 507. O bucurie de masina. Sper sa reusesc sa conduc una o data.

Exceptional! Dragi ieseni, colegi publicitari, anul acesta dulcele targ a avut reprezentare la Cannes!
Dupa cum vedeti in imaginea de mai sus, este vorba de agentia Christi Leon. Marturisesc ca nu am auzit pina acum de ei.
Va transcriu mai jos minunea de script cu care s-au inscris. Observati ca nici topica limbii romane nu o stapanesc, ca sa nu mai vorbim despre creativitate, care lipseste cu desavarsire.
Enjoy it!

I've been away for a week. A much deserved vacation. This year we've been to Bulgaria, in Albena.
The main criteria was the price and the vicinity to Romania. This way we were able to take our 10 months daughter with us.

I didn't have high expectations beforehand. To my surpreise, the Bulgarians have a decent tourism, with clean beaches, good accomodation, great food, smilling people and beautiful scenery.
It was great!

Unfortunately, although Romania has a great seashore, I don't dig the quality of the service and the prices they have. It's a rip-off!
So, until there will be significant improvements in the quality of services, I'll never go to Romania sea resorts.
And for all of you willing to visit Romania, I'll recommend to go to the mountains or up north to visit the monasteries. You'll have decent accomodation at good prices and beautiful scenery.

Australia’s world cup soccer bid is heating up ahead of the official submissions in 2010. Starting with a very cool video showing people playing soccer across the country in all sorts of beautiful places.
This is one of the elements of the campaign to come. The campaign's website is an clever comms platform where, among other things, one can play and eran points for Australia's bid.
As they say, football dares to dream. And I salute and support aussie's bid.

Pentru lansarea Renault Logan in Columbia, Publicis a dezvoltat campania "Legea Atractiei" cu trei executii diferite.








Agentie: Publicis Colombia/Publicis CB
Productie: Rhayuela

It has indeed been an eternity since I put forth enough time and effort to comment on our fascinating world. For that, I can only offer an apology to the few people who flick back from time to time.
I’ve been wondering, “has anyone even noticed?” I mean, with so much stuff being written every day and seemingly less and less time available to just casually “browse the web,” who would notice, much less even care, if another blog just sort of fell by the wayside?

The reasons for my long hiatus are both personal and professional.
Nine months ago Mara Cezara, my beautiful daughter (picture above) was born and came to make my life a constant source of wonders and happines.
In the same time, I had to take care of my new professional endeavour which is Wunderkid, a small, creative agency with big ambitions. We've been doing well lately and I'm satisfied with the way things go, both internally and externally.

So, I decided today that not only do I have the time to speak softly but I may even find the time to shout about a few things. I would like to take this blog in a somewhat new direction. It will include anything and everything that we can think of. Probably, I'll post more in Romanian.

I look forward to jumping back in…

Stefan a facut o lista de cuvinte dacice si le-a postat in Wordle. In spirit Apolod'or!

Am facut un nou spoof pentru Adfel- Grand Spoof!

De data asta parodiem Coca-Cola Train si Cava D'oro. Totul plasat undeva in anul 106 i.Hr.




Aceeasi echipa care a facut celebrul Budai Beer. Plus Alex asociatul meu de la Wunderkid, care s-a ocupat de productie si filmare.

Ave!

For many years Beck's have been supporting young talent and showcasing the established artists by offering them to use Beck's label as a canvas for their work. Artists whose designs appeared on Beck's bottles include Damien Hurst, Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons, and many others.

2008 saw a beginning of partnership between Beck's and the Royal College of Art, which resulted in four promising RCA graduates having their work put on Becks' Canvas.

photos source

The four successful Beck’s Canvas artists are:

• Riitta Ikonen, 27, who is studying a two year MA in Communication Art and Design at the Royal College of Arts and graduated last month.
  
  
• Tom Price, 26, is an alumni of Sculpture (2006) who received a First Class BA (Hons) Sculpture degree from Chelsea College of Art in 2004 and currently works from his Brixton studio.
  
  
• Simon Cunningham is an alumni of the MA Fine Art, photography course (2007) who lives and works in London.
  
  
• Charlotte Bracegirdle, 34, is an alumni of the Masters degree in painting (2006). Originally from Devon, Charlotte spent seven years applying to art schools across the UK before accepting a place at the RCA.

Consumer-based brand equity goes far beyond just the trigger communication. It comprises the long-term market benefits for the company from customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, caused by positive brand imprinting of customers. The latter is achieved through the net effect of a brand-conscious marketing strategy, product/service usage and word-of-mouth effects. Advertising is but one part of the whole process.

From the consumer perspective, the three fundamental building blocks for building brand equity are a) brand/name awareness, b) perceived product quality image, and c) perceived "extended brand image".

Awareness is necessary as a base for good brand management, because without awareness, the two - holistically perceived - image components can otherwise not be "hooked in". As a cardinal rule, it is important that both the perceived product/service quality image and the perceived extended images are distinctive - and synergistic! A not very distinctive commodity-quality-like product (or service) is difficult to brand. A brilliant luxury-quality product with a weak "extended image" is equally difficult to market.

Fun with Wordle

• Internet use stretches ahead of TV amongst youth audience
• 16-24 year olds now spend 10% more time online than watching TV
• Uplift in online driven by rising use amongst silver surfers and digital women
• Internet users on average spending nearly 12 hours per week online and nearly a third (29%) spending upwards of 16 hours online
• Internet users access the internet 5.5 days per week
• Social networking sites now visited by 42% of internet users
• 8 out of 10 Europeans connect to the internet via a broadband connection
• For the first time ever, 16-24 year olds across Europe are now accessing the
  internet more frequently than they are watching TV
  
• 82% of this younger demographic use the internet between 5 and 7
  days each week while only 77% watch TV as regularly (a decrease of
  5% since last year)

Aflu ca anul acesta Pangea Day va avea loc si la Iasi.
Evenimentul se va desfasura, incepand cu orele 21:00, in sala Azur de la Casa de cultura a studentilor organizat de Alex in parteneriat cu OSSEI si Lecupo.

Pangea Day este un proiect care are ca scop realizarea unei experinte comune care sa uneasca toata populatia globului, pentru o mai buna intelegere a oamenilor si a problemelor lor.

Pe 10 mai, 2008 oameni din intreaga lume se vor uni pentru a trai o experienta comuna: vizionarea gratuita de filme create de intreaga lume pentru lume.

Mini site interactive pentru Foltene. Din aceeasi campanie despre care vorbeam anterior. Amuzanta si in ton cu pozitionarea. Well done!
Fetelor, intrati si vedeti daca stiti care este remediul potrivit impotriva caderii parului. Testul aici

Commercial for the new station wagon by Dacia/Renault. Made for the German market the,
TV Spot starring Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-Tung, Karl Marx, Lenin, Martin Luther King, Rosa Luxemburg, Ho-Chi Minh and Mahatma Gandhi.

"We are all advertising, all of the time. Even the priest, with all his or her fervor, is advertising God." - Paul Arden

The former executive creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi and author of the bestselling title "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be.", has died aged 67. Good bye, maestro!

originally uploaded by

Research suggests that sticky ideas share six basic traits:

1. Simplicity. Messages are most memorable if they are short and deep. Glib sound bites are short, but they don’t last. Proverbs such as the golden rule are short but also deep enough to guide the behavior of people over generations.
2. Unexpectedness. Something that sounds like common sense won’t stick. Look for the parts of your message that are uncommon sense. Such messages generate interest and curiosity.
3. Concreteness. Abstract language and ideas don’t leave sensory impressions; concrete images do. Compare “get an American on the moon in this decade” with “seize leadership in the space race through targeted technology initiatives and enhanced team-based routines.”
4. Credibility. Will the audience buy the message? Can a case be made for the message or is it a confabulation of spin? Very often, a person trying to convey a message cites outside experts when the most credible source is the person listening to the message. Questions—“Have you experienced this?”—are often more credible than outside experts.
5. Emotions. Case studies that involve people also move them. “We are wired,” Heath writes, “to feel things for people, not abstractions."
6. Stories. We all tell stories every day. Why? “Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation,” Heath writes. “Stories act as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.”

boomp3.com

boomp3.com

Fetelor, este un fapt medical atestat ca mai mult sex nu duce la orbire, ci la cresterea mai rapida si mai lucioasa a parului ;)
Mai sus, puteti asculta doua spoturi radio spumoase facute de Headvertising pentru Foltene (tratament anti-caderea parului).
Deci baieti, daca va cade parul, folositi Foltene. Fetelor, daca aveti aceeeasi problema, sexul este remediul. Preferabil cu baietii cu incaput de calvitie. Confidence boost! ;)

Aflu de la amicul Ciprian de desfasurarea primei conferinte dedicata mediului online la Iasi. Nu pot decat sa salut si sa incurajez initiativa. De buna seama ca voi prezent avand in vedere vorbitorii, unii dinte ei buni prieteni.

Deci, ne vedem pe 18 aprilie la IMTO! Începând cu ora 9 , la hotel Astoria din Iaşi.
Doar 170 de locuri disponibile, asa ca eu zic sa rezervati din timp. Chiar merita :)

Brand: Zertifikat
Client: Kober
Agency: CAP
Branding and Strategy: Grapefruit

The pinkest protest, ever!

Smart, creative and to the point!
Great stuff!

Take the test here

With the launch of the new model, Sandero, Dacia unveils its new brand identity.
As speculated, it is a combination of Renault, Nissan and Dacia, which appeals to a younger audience.

This year’s “World’s Best-Designed Newspapers™” are:

• Akzia in Moscow, bi-weekly, circulation 200,000

• Expresso in Paco de Arcos, Portugal, weekly, circulation 140,000

• Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Frankfurt, Germany, weekly, circulation 320,000

• The Guardian in London, daily, circulation 355,750

1. Products are made and owned by companies. Brands, on the other hand, are made and owned by people … by the public …by consumers.

2. A brand image belongs not to a brand – but to those who have knowledge of that brand.

3. The image of a brand is a subjective thing. No two people, however similar, hold precisely the same view of the same brand.

4. That highest of all ambitions for many CEOs, a global brand, is therefore a contradiction in terms and an impossibility.

5. People come to conclusions about brands as a result of an uncountable number of
different stimuli: many of which are way outside the control or even influence of the product’s owner.

6. Brands – unlike products – are living, organic entities: they change, however imperceptibly,
every single day.

7. Much of what influences the value of a brand lies in the hands of its competitors.

8. The only way to begin to understand the nature of brands is to strive to acquire a facility which only the greatest of novelists possess and which is so rare that it has no name.

9. The study of brands – in itself a relatively recent discipline – has generated a level of
jargon that not only prompts deserved derision amongst financial directors but also provides
some of the most entertaining submissions in Pseuds’ Corner.

10. It is universally accepted that brands are a company’s most valuable asset; yet there is
no universally accepted method of measuring that value.

11. The only time you can be sure of the value of your brand is just after you’ve sold it.

12. It is becoming more and more apparent that, far from brands being hierarchically inferior to companies, only if companies are managed as brands can they hope to be successful.

13. And as if all this were not enough, in one of the most important works about brands published this year, the author says this: “Above all, I found I had to accept that effective brand communication …involves processes which are uncontrolled, disordered, abstract, intuitive … and frequently impossible to explain other than with the benefit of hindsight”.

by Jeremy Bullmore, WPP, 2001

"We live in an increasingly uncertain world, where the tools that served us well for so long no longer do. Technology isn't sufficient; we can't simply add features to attract an audience. There is no more efficiency to squeeze out of our operations, nor defects to remove from our products.

How do we deliver great products and services in an uncertain world? The thing to keep in mind, not just in the abstract, but truly and viscerally, are your customers and their abilities, needs and desires. When you do that, when you truly empathies with the people you serve, you'll realize that for them the experience is the product we deliver and the only thing they truly care about." - from "Subject to change - Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World" by Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, David Verba

Study reveals that a very small group of consumers who are not representative of the total U.S. online population is accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behavior.

Starcom, Tacoda and comScore’s “Natural Born Clickers” findings suggest “the click is dead” as go-to measurement of effectiveness for brand-building display advertising campaigns. The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public.

Judging a campaign’s effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not be representative of the target audience.

Ben Hourahine, UK Leo Burnett’s Future’s Editor, has summarized 8 trends that cumulatively see this year as being the one where people see a real change finally hitting the mainstream; where the industry wakes up to the power of the community and starts to understand the value of branded utility.

Mass is back (Say hello to the Swell Society)
The power of mass culture will be back in 2008. At the turn of the year online downloads were included as part of the UK Christmas pop chart for the first time ever. This trend of online popularity being institutionalised shows that mass appeal will once again define marketing attitudes. Where once the watch-words were fragmentation and micro-targeting, Google, YouTube and Del.ici.ous are new gauges of mass appeal, a fact marketing will wake up to this year. The goal is the same; reach a mass audience, the difference is how to achieve it. Say hello to the Swell Society. How do you create ‘swells’ in pop culture when the audience is not necessarily captive and waiting in the first instance? How do you make sure that your film or viral grabs a spot in YouTube’s top ten guaranteeing the attention of millions? The marketing means maybe changing, but the objective is the same.

Community Commerce
Community connections will become more central to business practice in 2008. Retailers will seek to bring the community further inside the store, with more coffee shops, banking services and pharmacies within supermarkets. On top of this, a revolutionary development in the relationship between commerce and society will take place this year, when Sainsbury’s opens a police station inside its Fallowfield store in Manchester . On the other side community connections are being used to create new businesses for established brands. The Sun newspaper online bingo community was set up in 2005 and is now the biggest Internet game in the world . From an experimental brand-stretch three years ago, the community is now News Corps biggest digital cash cow . Expect to see more established brands following suit this year. You never know, we may see Bisto using its family connections to become the new Butlins in 2008!?

Screen Saturation
2008 will see the explosion of screen-based media, with screens on the side of buses, in petrol station, supermarkets, the home and the pocket. While the medium may remain the same, the reach, context, audience and role of the media will be tweaked. There will be more broadcast screens than ever in 2008 and things are only going to get bigger: According to Sharp - the electronics manufacturer - the average television screen size will be 60” by 2015

Gender Reversal
More women in work and the increasing role played by men within the family will see marketers change their focus this year. Three years ago the Office For National Statistics discovered that women outstripped men in UK further education enrolment , which means most will be graduating this year and looking to enter the work force. Men’s interest and investment in the family will continue to rise as well, morphing the gender balance and changing the advertising context. In 2008 expect to see more and more campaigns aimed at women at work and men in the home. With gender differences diminishing, new forms of identity will be emerging in 2008.

Brand Guardians
The role of brands is evolving and will enter a new phase in 2008. With growing concerns over how to be healthy, safe and happy, mixed with a real confusion about how to achieve this, we will see brands increasingly attempting to take on a guardian role this year. Forward-thinking policies, honest brand ethics and a general ethos of wellbeing and comfort in one’s choices will be promoted by the most leading-edge amongst them. We have already seen the beginning of this trend with campaigns like Kellogg’s Bran Flakes’ ‘Three Step Program’ and Pedigree’s ‘Adopt a Dog’ initiative, but as public confidence and trust levels continue to waver we will see a lot brands striving for guardianship status, making this a significant trend in 2008 and, indeed, perhaps years to come.

The brands of the future will live out the interests of their consumers. Consumers will help brands make their own lives better. We will then know our customers better than ever and, in turn, they will trust us to use their information to create a better future for both.

IP Idols
Artists are grabbing control of their creative product. Intellectual Property (creative works – ideas, songs, movies, TV shows) used to be owned and licensed by studios, record labels and other commercial institutions, but we will see artists back in the driving seat this year. At the end of 2007 Madonna signed to the Live Nation label, giving her unprecedented control over her albums, concerts, tours, merchandise, websites, DVDs, sponsorship, TV shows and films. Other IP idols will grow in power and commercial clout this year. Simon Cowell has shown himself to be bigger than the pop charts by taking over the Christmas number one spot via a TV show. You may not like him, but you wish you’d thought of it. The man has taken over an entire industry through success in another sector, proof of the power of IP Idols, even over entire media channels.

The Data Awareness Era
In 2008 the public will be more aware of their data exposure than ever before and privacy concerns will be a defining issue in 2008. Until now the disarming novelty on social networks, like MySpace and Facebook has generally overridden concerns about the potential hazards of full disclosure. That could change this year. High profile data leaks like the British Government’s recent loss of computer disks containing child benefit records have raised awareness of privacy issues. As more employers and university admissions officers troll social networks for potentially embarrassing revelations on candidates, users may decide that it is better to leave the Saturday night snap-shots in their mobile phones

Expect this trend to accelerate with the introduction of GPS location based information, the explosion in online information storage and social networking increasingly reflecting real life…

Social Networks Get Real
Social networks like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace have been virtual playgrounds for some time, but in 2008 they will start to plug directly back into the real world. This year we will see social networks beginning to dictate everyday life, influencing who people do business with, which parties, movies and gigs they go to, where they meet and with whom. Accelerating the shift to life itself being organised through Facebook or MySpace, is the advent and take up of mobile social networking: 14m people did it in 2007, and forecasts suggest it could hit 600m by the time the Olympics hits London in 2012 . Allowing people to participate on the move; mobile applications will turn Facebook and the like from a method of meeting old school friends to a real time diary of their very real lives. Never far off the pace, Google is rumoured to be launching ‘Google World’ this year, using Google Earth as the framework, this is the Internet giant’s answer to Facebook and Second Life.

Social networks in 2008 will no longer be simply voyeuristic frivolities; they will help us participate in actual activities with our existing friends and acquaintances, in real life, with sunshine, colour, oxygen and everything.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the headline in the mailbox! God (Dumnezeu in Romanian) is now following you on Twitter!
What a relief. I feel so much protected now :)

Study finds that brand building is no longer a priority for marketers. The report, which aims to provide a timely insight for marketers to take a harder look at how their marketing dollars are performing, surveyed 3,000 marketers worldwide on a number of aspects of their role.

The report points out that driving customer demand has overtaken brand building in developed economies, such as the UK, Australia and the US.
Fournaise Marketing Group, one of the world's leading marketing effectiveness tracking companies, tracks both offline and online marketing effectiveness.

The report findings are not for the faint hearted:

• 65% of all marketing spend in 2007 had no effect on consumers.

• Estimated wastage rates varied from 45% for business-to-business marketers, through to 65% for business-to-consumer.

• Just one in ten of respondents have automated systems in place to track the effectiveness of their spend.

• Of the 55% of marketers who do track the results of their spending, 80% do so manually, spending hours capturing, compiling and analysing data.

• Questioned on strategy, 70% of marketers believe that short-term revenue-boosting and lead-generation campaigns are more important than long-term intangible brand building (15%). A clear indication that marketers are under pressure more than ever before to generate results.
  

• Tracking marketing effectiveness topped the 2008 wish lists of 35% of marketers, and made the top three for 70%.

Apologies for not blogging for quite a while. I've lost the tempo, been busy offline. I think it’s time to get my act together again.
I promise to recover my usual blogging pace during the week. Stay tuned!