to. wa.- walking on the insight road (and not halfway there).

I have mentioned before that a lot of people in Vancouver tell me about the quality and importance of B.C. marijuana and how the laws or rather their enforcement is lenient compared to the US and Canada’s east. I think I also mentioned that on the other hand alcohol laws and their enforcement are extremely strict compared to those in Austria. So I was already kind of used to seeing the reverse image of Austrian culture: people smoke weed in public or at concerts where there’s a strict “no tobacco” policy, people get arrested for drinking or being drunk in public.

Anyways, when it came to April 20th I was still stunned by how different our two cultures deal with the two drugs. April 20th or 420 (4-20) is a (supposedly) global counterculture holiday to celebrate the use and demonstrate for the legalisation of marijuana. It obviously never made it to Austria, a country where April 20th is more related to the birth of a rather unpleasent historical figure.

So - how would you expect this counterculture holiday to look like? Secret private gatherings? Think again.

(Nope: I do not have original video material as I was not downtown …)

Please take a second to imagine a demonstration like that in Vienna, preferably 1st district.

On the same day, maybe remotly connected in terms of ideology, I agreed to attend a bluegrass concert. The Yonder Mountain String Band was in town and I got some insider information that they would be absolutely amazing live. And they were. (Music starts at 1:40)

Wenn man von der Nutzung der Werbung für interpersonelle Kommunikation spricht und wenn das Konzept der Viralen Werbung darauf aufbaut, Werbeerfolg durch interpersonelle Kommunikation nach der Rezeption zu erreichen, dann liegt es nahe, zur Erklärung einen Ansatz der Kommunikationsforschung heranzuziehen, der es zu besonderer Prominenz geschafft hat. Gemeint ist der 2-Stufen-Fluß der Kommunikation und sein so oft zitiertes Ergebnis: „[…] ideas flow from radio and print to the opinion leaders and from them to the less active part of the population“ (Lazarsfeld/Berelson/Gaudet 1955 [1944]: 151; Hervorhebungen im Original).

Was aber ist das für eine Studie und welche Schlüsse lassen sich heute daraus für das Konzept Virale Werbung ziehen?

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The folks at the IDEO Lab are kindly sharing their experience at EON Reality’s immersive 3D room.

You can see technology in action in this little video. Read their blog post to learn how it works.

Amazing 3D immersion technology from IDEO Labs on Vimeo.

Looking at this, the amazing video razorfish has recently released, showing their surface, gestual interface physics simulation (emerging experiences) and recent augmented reality research makes you think about the endless possibilities the combination and fine-tuning of these technologies are going to offer in the near future.

Levni (Lev) Yilmaz creator of the “tales of mere existence” with his take on procrastination, at a time way before the word became common in german speaking countries.

At the very end of our intercultural training for my exchange semester in Canada, the professor showed us a little video to loosen up and cap our session.

We had talked about culture and intercultural communication in general before, about Austrian an Canadian culture in particular and we had even discussed about some “strange encounters” between Canadians and Austrians. We had heard lots about the “Britishness” of Canadian culture, and how it is different from the US in some way. And still, when we watched the video (which is from 2000 by the way), we had really no clue what it really was about (or “a boot”).

Almost four months and some Canucks games, pints of (not very well-tasting) Molson Canadian and “intercultural interactions” later, I feel like I know a great deal more about Canada. (more…)

Ein Großteil der – vor allem betriebswirtschaftlich orientierten – Werbeforschung, beschäftigt sich mit der Frage der Werbewirkung, also damit, was die Werbung mit den Menschen macht (vgl. Buttle 1991; vgl. die Modelle in Kotler 2006: 884, Schweiger/Schrattenecker 2005: 6 und 12, Fuchs 2007: 499). Die Rezipienten werden als Individuen gesehen, die den auf sie einwirkenden Reiz „Werbung“ aufnehmen und verarbeiten (vgl. Buttle 1991: 4, Mick/Buhl 1992: 317). Der Kontext der Rezeption wird nicht oder nur am Rande berücksichtigt.

Dieses Modell der Werbung kann aber zum Verständnis viraler Werbung aber aus zwei bereits angeführten Gründen wenig beitragen. Zum einen (more…)

Nach der Beleuchtung der Hintergründe und Gemeinsamkeiten all der “heißen” Marketing- und Kommunikationskonzepte - vom Mundpropaganda-Marketing bis zum Branded Entertainment -, kann man sich nun die Frage stellen was die Kommunikationswissenschaft denn eigentlich zur Klärung der Problemstellungen beitragen kann.

Dabei drängt sich zuallererst die Frage der Zuständigkeit auf. Fühlt sich die Kommunikationswissenschaft eigentlich zuständig für das Thema Werbung?

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