Uncategorized | Thomas Wagner

5 answers about 2010

So after Rob started one of those memes that I actually find kind of interesting, Petar aka Niko Herzeg tagged me in his 5 answers to 5 questions about 2010.

It’s actually harder than I thought to come up with one decent answer to these questions, but I’ll give it a shot.

1/ Best single thing [personal &/or professional] you did/achieved in 2010.

Whenever ‘professional’ comes up I have the nice and cosy ‘I’m still a student’ excuse that I can hide behind, so let’s focus on the personal part.

To answer the question with the best single thing and still get two things into this, let’s call it “leaving the comfort zone” (and I hate that phrase). The two things that fall into this category? The Great Football Giveaway in Tanzania (please donate a ball and spread the word if you think this is a good idea) was my first time in Africa, the first time I went somewhere without there being another Austrian/German speaking person there (in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Canada, Spain and Hungary, there always were colleagues or friends from there), and the first time without actually knowing anybody personally before meeting them at the airport at the destination. The project also included my first fundraising party and my first rent-a-location party in Vienna. It was one of the best things I ever did in my life.

The ‘other thing’? Writing myself into the same academic group as she was in, getting to know her, finding her truly amazing and actually demonstrating interest instead of finding a lame excuse for not being around her. Best decision in 2010, period.

2/ Most shameful thing [personal &/or professional] you did/achieved in 2010.

I’m bad with this kind of stuff. I think I didn’t do many shameful things this year (unfortunately?), but there’s one thing I’m not necessarily proud of and it has something to do with commenting cynically on a – in my eyes – propagandistic facebook status update from someone who once was a friend and now thinks censorship is alright if somebody dares to criticize Austria’s hypocritical social democrats. Austria got two 8 year old twins, who then were deported to the Kosovo, out of their bed at 6:30 or something, by policemen armed with machine guns. It was filmed by activists and then the social democrats, who are the strongest party, have the president and the chancellor as well as the mayor of Vienna, and who also voted for the tightening of our immigration laws had the nerve to blame their coalition partner – the conservatives – for what was happening. – I made a cynical comment on a facebook post and it apparently ended an already fading friendship. Still not sure if it was the right thing to do.

Appart from that it’s a shame that I haven’t met my personal deadline for my bachelor paper … and that I had to go to the washroom to puke during a brunch with friends and partners who drove 300 km to see me.

3/ Ad industry scandal or scoundrel of the year.

The Future of Advertising. Apart from that the planner story that everybody thinks of anyways … Oh, and seeing a lot of people that are very talented being wasted in or not hired by agencies.

4/ Your overall rating for 2010 out of 10. [1 = shit / 10 = showoff]

8.5 – brilliant year in almost every aspect. Would have been a 10 if I had managed to finish my bachelor thesis.

5/ What do you think will be the most overhyped advertising related subject of 2011?

There’s no way I could put this into better words so please do yourself a favor and read #5 from Andrew / Northerns list.

I nominate (leaving out those who have been nominated anyways …)

Bori

Hille

Michael (didn’t you want to start blogging again?)

Michaela

Steffen

It’s Future of Advertising Time Again. About the (Allegedly New) Crisis of Advertising.

So apparently it’s “The Future of Advertising” time. Again.

There’s a a Fast Company article with that title compiling interviews with a host of well-respected industry people circulating, that was as usual followed by a storm of retweets and opinions. While the arguments are all valid and interesting and while I certainly have an opinion about the topic myself, I immediately had to think of something I wrote in 2008 (in German) when I was analyzing the then darling of the advertising industry – ‘viral’ advertising – for my bachelor thesis. So because I still think it’s true, I thought it might be a good idea to translate the piece. Here is the trimmed down version:

One thing that concepts like ‘guerilla marketing’, ‘viral’ marketing or ‘viral’ advertising all have in common is a more or less implicit assumption of a crisis of advertising: ‘annoyance by advertising’, ‘flood of advertising’ and ‘avoidance of advertising’ are the commonly used concepts in the discourse.

Say ‘design’ and people think Rams, Ives, Eames. Say advertising and they think Cillit Bang.

… Russell Davies wrote in his blog in 2008. And he’s certainly not wrong. However, people’s attitude towards advertising is a bit paradox. While advertising (in general) provokes exactly the above mentioned reactions, advertising (in particular cases) is often remembered with joy, as Zurstiege (2005: 26ff) shows in his research. While zapping and DVRs lead to growing pains for advertisers, there are hundreds of ads on YouTube with thousands or even millions of views. [At the point when I wrote this, there was no Old Spice or Write The Future to refer to but only a Gorilla playing the drums.] All this approaches like ‘viral’ advertising, ‘viral’ marketing, guerilla marketing and whatnot tried to fulfill their effect by packing themselves as an “entertainment present” (Zurstiege 2007: 143) and to therefore counteract advertising avoidance and advertising annoyance.

I believe if you want to be successful in the world of viral, you need to play by the rules of entertainment, not the rules of selling.

(Kevin Roddy 2006)

Entertainment, however, isn’t exactly a new approach. All along, at least in theory advertising tried to bring outstanding things to the consumers’ eyes. This is – after all, what led to the aestheticisation of advertising through the employment of renowned artists in the 19th century in the first place (Zurstiege 2007: 22f).

Leaving advertising annoyance and advertising avoidance aside for a second, there’s of course also a lack of trust in the effects of advertising. As a representative for this part of the discourse who’s better to quote than Philip Kotler:

The average American is exposed to several hundred ad messages a day and is trying to tune out. TV advertising is losing its effectiveness because of growing advertising clutter, the increasing number of channels, the availability of zapping mechanisms, and reduced watching of television by certain groups. The result is that marketers must consider other methods of getting consumer attentions.

(Kotler 2005)

This chain of reasoning – information overload, explosion of channels, media use – is found in pretty much every introducing statement of pretty much every alternative approach:

Because of an increasing amount of media and advertising, DVRs and the changed media use, even more since the rise of the internet, we need new methods to solve the crisis of advertising.

That’s how it goes. And be it online-advertising, PR, event marketing or the much quoted ‘integrated communication’, all of them are united by the fact that they lay claim to the leadership role in clients’ marketing budget. [And the same may be said about ‘transmedia’ and ‘crowdsourceing’ and whatever other approach …]. But while information overload might partly explain the development of new approaches that aim at media content spreading digitally, even this isn’t a new phenomenon. What we have institutionalized as ‘information overload’ and ‘advertising clutter’ already had a name in the 19th century: Schilderpest (‘signboard plague’) (Zurstiege 2008: 129).

Advertising was finished from the outset. [“Die Werbung war von Anfang an am Ende.”]

(Schmidt 2004: 53ff)

The accusation of lying, the persistant suspicion of manipulation, the ‘sensory overload’ and the identity crisis because of the supposed incapability to produce socially and culturally relevant outcomes (cf. Schmidt 2004: 54), are all derived from the social functional system advertising itself. [It’s in it’s DNA, if you want to say it like that.]

Advertising produces scarcity of attention by achieving attention. Advertising needs bad advertising to stand out with good. Advertising – as a system – necessarily produces its own problems and solves it by adapting to changing social conditions (ibid. 73f). Advertising – and this is also shown by the appearance of ‘viral advertising’ [insert buzzword here] – lives on new problems which can then be opposed by the creation of new and differentiating approaches (ibid. 74). The crisis of advertising [and therefore the question about it’s future] isn’t new, but an essential part of the system, the permanently repeats itself under different circumstances.

Sources:

Davies, Russel (2008): on the goodness and badness of advertising
Kotler, Philip: Advertising vs. PR: Kotler on Kotler.
Kotler, Philip/Bliemel, Friedhelm (2006): Marketing-Management. Analyse, Planung und Verwirklichung. 10., überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage. München [u.a.]: Pearson Studium.
Roddy, Kevin (2006) in Leonard, Devin (2006): Viral Ads: It’s an Epidemic. In: Fortune. New York: 2. Oktober 2006, 154. Jg., Heft 7/2006, 61.
Schmidt, Siegfried J. (2004): Die Werbung ist vom Anfang an am Ende. In: Die Depression der Werbung : Berichte von der Couch / Berliner KommunikationsFORUM e.V. Sebastian Kemmler … (Hrsg.).Göttingen: Business Village, 53-77.
Zurstiege, Guido (2005): Zwischen Kritik und Faszination. Was wir beobachten, wenn wir die Werbung beobachten, wie sie die Gesellschaft beobachtet. Köln: Halem.
Zurstiege, Guido (2007): Werbeforschung. Konstanz: UVK-Verl.-Ges.
Zurstiege, Guido (2008): Der Konsum Dritter Orte. In: Kai-Uwe Hellmann (2008): Räume des Konsums: Über den Funktionswandel von Räumlichkeit im Zeitalter des Konsumismus. Wiesbaden: VS, Verl. für Sozialwissenschaften.

(Guido Zurstiege and Siegfried Schmidt are renowned professors for communication, media and culture in Germany and among the few who have specifically focused on advertising.)

Master Thesis Topic (update)

After getting a lot of useful comments (thank you!) on my initial brainstorming on possible topics for my master thesis I cut them down to three and handed in a description of three very broad topics, all with some more concrete research questions: (1) ‘Post-Postmodern’ Uses of Brands and Media?, (2) ‘Continuities from Propaganda Theory to Planning:’ and (3) Reception and Usage of ‘Transmedia’ Narratives.

So here’s my translated description of topic (1), that I handed in before leaving and which has got a strong endorsement from the prof while I was in Tanzania.

‘Post-Postmodern’ Uses of Brands and Media?

According to Holt (2002) there are two relevant branding paradigms in the 20th century. The first is called “Modern Branding” and was based on a domineering, cultural engineering approach. It was dominant until the 60s, when the ‘creative revolution’ around people like Bill Bernbach appeared.

Marketers made no pretense about their intentions in these branding efforts. They directed consumers as to how they should live and why their brand should be a central part of this kind of life. Advertisements shared a paternal voice that is particular to this era. By contemporary standards, these ads appear naive and didactic in their approach. This paternalism reveals that, at the time, consumer culture allowed companies to act as cultural authorities. Their advice was not only accepted but sought out. (Holt 2002: 80)

This modell – now being popularized by the TV series Mad Men – was inspired both by Freudian psychoanalysis and the scientific approach to advertising and persuasion at the time, provoked rising resistance in the 60s, with books like The Hidden Persuaders and other critical analysis appearing on bookshelves. With the increasing professionalization of the industry and knowledge about the branding paradigm more and more entering the public sphere, the public opinion was increasingly directed against the supposed manipulation of the individual.

Branding could no longer prescribe tastes in a way that was perceived as domineering. People had to be able to experience consumption as a volitional site of personal development, achievement, and self-creation. Increasingly, they could not tolerate the idea that they were to live in accord with a company-generated template. (Holt 2002: 82)

In reaction to the creative and anti-commercial countercultures of the 60s – and with that at the time when interpretative approaches started to challenge the predominant stimulus response thinking – a new branding paradigm emerged. Holt calls this paradigm “Postmodern Branding”. In a postmodern consumer culture, the role of branding would emerge from the supplier of a cultural blueprint – “How should I live?” – to supposedly authentic, cultural ressources to be used for the identity projects of consumers who strive for independence from paternalistic and authoritarian corporations.

Postmodern consumer culture has adopted a particular notion of authenticity that has proved particularly challenging to marketers. To be authentic, brands must be disinterested; they must be perceived as invented and disseminated by parties without an instrumental economic agenda, by people who are intrinsically motivated by their inherent value. Postmodern consumers perceive modern branding efforts to be inauthentic because they ooze with the commercial intent of their sponsors. (Holt 2002: 84)

To produce these ressources in a distanced and commercially disinterested way, five branding techniques – also made public by Klein 1999 and Frank 1998) have emerged over time: (Holt 2002: 83ff)

Authentic Cultural Resources
Ironic, Reflexive Brand Persona
Coattailing on Cultural Epicenters
Life World Emplacement
Stealth Branding

All of these techniques however, are confronted with substantial contradictions. Ironic distance has been imitated without end and is now outdated, stealth marketing is getting more and more aggressive and reaching its limits, marketers are running out of counterculture content to tap for their campaigns as the authenticity market heats up, consumers are increasingly peeling away the brand veneer and “collectively, postmodern branding floods social life with evangelical calls to pursue personal sovereignty through brands” (ibid.).

For Holt these phenomena (published in 2002 – before ‘social media’ even existed) pointed to an expiration of the postmodern branding paradigm. Whereas brands in the future would still have to offer authentic and relevant resources, authenticity won’t not be conveyed distance the brand from a profit motive, but through a role that Hold calls ‘citizen artist’.

So brands will become another of expressive culture, no different in principle from films or television programs or rock bands (which, in turn, are increasingly treated and perceived as brands). […] Postmodern brands have little value in this new consumer culture. Because they rely so much on the cultural work of disinterested others and work so hard to deny that the brand itself stands for anything by itself (for fear of being tagged as cultural engineers), postmodern brands lack an original point of view that they can claim as their own. Rather than take a free ride on the backs of pop stars, indie films, and social viruses, brands will be valued to the extent that they deliver creatively, similar to other cultural products.

The citizen part on the other hand is concerned with the socially responsable behavior of corporations and their brands, basically answering the question of what is behind the brand veneer.

This topic and Holt’s only superficially covered hypotheses give rise to a lot of questions that might be covered in a master thesis. (Not all in one of course …)

What – to people – is authenticity in advertising and marketing communication? How is it operationalized? What are expectations?
How does authenticity translate in regards to aesthetics – from user-generated content to brands using a documentary style?
How does the use of digital, social networks (‘social media’) have affect the ‘corporate cool machine’ as described by Holt in the postmodern branding paradigm. Is his hypothesis regarding brands being used in the role of citizen artists true? Or, more concrete: which range of uses of original, authentic and creative brand content can be shown? And in regards to the ‘citizen’ part of the hypothesis: do people really look behind the brand veneer and if so, how?

Frank, T., 1998. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, University of Chicago Press.

Holt, D.B., 2002. Why do brands cause trouble? A dialectical theory of consumer culture and branding. Journal of Consumer Research, 29(1), S.70–90.

Klein, N., 1999. No Logo: no space, no choice, no jobs ; taking aim at the brand bullies, New York, NY: Picador.

Mad Men – AMC. Mad Men. Available at: http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/

Master Thesis Topics (beta)

When I said I wanted to go to Tanzania for the Great Football Giveaway, I knew this was going to be in the middle of my last winter term and I knew I’d miss one session of each my classes – including the master thesis seminar of my communication and media science MA. This is basically the last class of the program and is designed to prepare us for conducting the masters research and writing the thesis, give us some exposure to profs (that’s not that common here). However, for a lot of administrative reasons, 4 weeks into the semester we haven’t had a class yet and the first class will be held in a 3-hours session while I’m out there giving out footballs. So instead of me missing the third 1 1/2 hour session, we have until the 7th to deliver a 1-2 pages description of our topic and I won’t be there at the first session held.

Now as always, my problem is that I have more than one rough topic in mind. Some of them are advertising related, some of them are media usage related, some of them are historic and some of them are related to internal organization. So here I am, trying to get to one topic.

1) Use and Reception of (Post-Postmodern-)Advertising

This is basically inspired by Douglas B. Holt and his cultural research into branding and advertising. Holt stated in 2002 that there are 5 contradictions that contribute to the end of postmodern branding and that give rise to brands as citizen artists. He then goes on to hypothesize about a spectrum of brand and media uses that people would resort to. Now this topic is obviously huge, could use some empirical research and might be tackled from a lot of different perspectives but I’m not quite sure which one might be the most interesting and fruitful approach.

Subtopics of this bigger area of interest might be:

Building upon my bachelor paper an inquiry into the specifics of reception and usage of recommended/forwarded ads
An inquiry into the use of reality aesthetics in marketing communications (everything from user generated content to documentary)

2) Reception and Use of Cross-Platform Narratives (with a focus on gender)

I would have written transmedia here but as it’s the last thing sucked dry by the industry I’d rather stick to cross-platform. I find this topic quite interesting for a while now but it has never been a research focus of mine and it’s never been one of my institute. Still, something that Dan Hon said at TEDxTransmedia re-ignited my interest. He basically asked us to imagine what it would have looked like if Amelie would’ve gotten the “transmedia treatment” just like Heroes, Lost and all the geeky or more “male” franchises. And that prompted me to think about how the realities of cross-plattform narrative use and reception actually looks like, away from industry hype and glory.

3) Play and Abductive Thinking

We all know IDEO and are well-aware of the gameification hype so there’s no need to use a lot of words here. I’ve had a fairly interesting theory seminar about organizational comms last semester and also read a bit into organizational culture, management and organizational thinking styles. I think that play(ful communication) and abductive thinking might be something worth looking into from an empirical and theoretical perspective. But this is still very, very raw.

4) History lessons: Propaganda Theory vs. Planning in a Convergent Culture

Basically a look into historic developments and continuities. I had a very, very interesting lecture about the history and theory of propaganda last semester and have developed a strong interest into the relationship between conceptions of men and theories. Looking at the “perfect product claim”, social media etc I think a theorizing look back in time might be fruitful. But then again that might just be liking to sound smart.

So in case you’ve read this until here, if you’d chip in a thought or two that’d be much appreciated. Does it all sound like BS? Is it relevant or interesting to you? Has it been done before?

China in a picture – a little help for Rob needed

So far Rob helped me out with all the however-annoying questions an aspiring junior can possibly ask. Now he’s looking for visual representations of China and is asking for our help.

Post an image that best embodies China from your point of view. And mention whether you’ve been to China or not.

He is usually very generous with his thoughts so this should be interesting, plus, as Andrew said, planning type people need to stick together and help each other. Andrea and Andrew already did it and you can too.

A representation of China then: Well, for whatever reason my first thought was rice. Somehow I seem to store countries pretty close with food. I think it is rather normal to form pretty strong associations to the food in countries where you’ve lived for a while. You spend a lot of intimate time with food and – as pretty much every mainstream dish of every country is available in every metropolitan region – “true” “national” food somehow turns into the representation of the larger concept. And becomes essentially a no-go anywhere else. Vietnam is Bánh cuốn, B.C./Canada is Salmon/Sushi, Nicaragua is Gallo Pinto, etc.

I haven’t been to China and I know embarrassingly little about it so my shorthand was rice. They invented it.

But then again, Rob wasn’t asking for my mental shortcut but for what I think best embodies China and there my best shot would be something like that:

A nice one for all kinds of projections one might have.

Darren Robson, great football giveaway

via youtube.com

The Trouble with “Cultural Mapping”

I recently read an article at contagious (hat tip to Sebastian Garn for sharing) about Amsterdam Worldwide claiming to create better global campaigns because they are using a scientific method of analyzing cultures – which they call Cultural Mapping. That tool they cite is Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, which basically says people – or cultures – are different in the dimensions Power Distance; Individualism; Masculinity and Uncertainty Avoidance.

While I certainly agree that being culturally relevant is important, if not the most important aspect of brand management and communication, I do find a bunch of things interesting in that story.

First of all, it’s not like Amsterdam Worldwide has uncovered an academic secret. This is one of the most cited theories ever. According to Google Scholar he’s been cited 8810 times and from what I’ve been told at the university, even ahead of guys such as Jesus or Karl Marx. I think I heard it alone 5 to 10 times in my bachelor. Of course, it’s not like they are saying they use this model exclusively, but I still find it strange that an agency runs an article about something everybody who ever did an intercultural training has heard of before.

Then of course, using this model – just as any other model – doesn’t guarantee anything. It’s a model to not forget cultural dimensions but I think it’s not that good of an idea to base roundhouse-kick-like generalizations upon it or to expect ground-breaking “insights” from using it. I just think that focusing on a smaller group of people and finding out something interesting about them is more important than matching communication with a top-level insight about what is modeled as mainstream culture. (I always try to keep in mind that there might be bigger differences between Austrian IT-ers and “blue collar” workers than between IT-ers from Austria and Slovakia. And let’s not forget gender issues, age and other stuff.)

Last but not least, the research Hofstede has build his theory upon has been heavily criticized. It’s pretty old and it was done only with IBM employees at the beginning – IT people not exactly being the most representative sample group. Also, for example for Austria it concluded that we have among the lowest power distance score worldwide, meaning

“[…] people expect and accept power relations that are more consultative or democratic. People relate to one another more as equals regardless of formal positions. Subordinates are more comfortable with and demand the right to contribute to and critique the decisions of those in power”.

Power Distance

Now the intersting thing is that this is totally against what Austrian common sense would tell you and what researchers at my university found out, and it can only be interpreted and understood if you spend some time thinking about Austrian history and culture. What this dimension doesn’t tell you is that “Austrians” do like to complain about their bosses, don’t respect them too much and do think that their politicians, doctors, intellectuals and whoever else aren’t any smarter or deserving than “we” are. This, however, is only true if said people aren’t in the room. Once they are present the generalized “we” very much focuses on academic titles and job titles, hierarchies and power. So “Austrias” have a pretty much schizophrenic relationship with authority which my prof reasoned is because of some 1000 years of monarchy and bureaucratic state. “Cultural Mapping” won’t tell you this. And neither will it tell you how second-generation immigrants have appropriated this into their lives.

I like theories and models, I just think one has to be careful using them.

A look at Nokia on the long road back to glory

(This post contains a bunch of personal stuff, post-rationalization and opinions – typical planning bollocks -, just so you know. If you make it through the text there’ll be some nice videos though.)

First, some background. I always liked Nokia. When I was a teen, as far as I remember Nokia was a synonym for modern times and a cosmopolitan view of the world. They were not exactly on the cutting edge of everything but compared to the likes of Ericsson, Siemens and others, they were symbols of a connected global world. I got my first phone when I was 14, a blue Motorola that somehow looked like an egg, and then a pretty flashy panasonic that my dad wouldn’t use anymore. But my first real mobile was a Nokia 6210. It was the phone I used to text my girlfriend back then – first love and all. I think it was able to store a bunch-load of texts, which was obviously a plus, considering all the important teen texts that were not to be deleted.

There was no doubt that my next phone would also be a Nokia, though I’m not even exactly sure which one it was, with all the number combinations they used. I only remember that it was one of the first ones with a color screen – that unfortunately also didn’t last very long. Then however, I became unfaithful and jumped on board with Motorola when the 3G version of the Motorola Razr came out. It was the smallest 3G phone available, the RAZR was the coolest shit around and I gave in (contrary to what most people think of themselves, advertising works fine with me). Over in Vancouver I picked the cheapest phone available, which coincidently also was a Motorola with the same crappy software.

Then back home in Vienna, after quite a bit of pondering and looking at what Nokia had done in the meantime, I decided against the N95 and for the iPhone. It was a hard decision (not real-life hard, but in the realm of products), not because I had anything against Apps or the product, but because already back then I hated the way that a bunch of idiots who had no idea of what Apple used to stand for, of technology or of the creative industries, were wearing their white headphones like a badge of honor, proudly showcasing their iBooks/Macbooks, bashing Windows and Linux and in general pray at the altar of Jobs. Don’t get me wrong, I always loved their OS and hardware but already then “The Great Product Claim” and the way that Apple’s smug “brand behavior” rubbed off to a lot of their now mainstream customers got on my nerves big time. The “I’m a Mac” campaign, while obviously catchy, made Apple look like a bunch of arrogant idiots.

I still bought it because back then, there was no comparable product experience in terms of touchscreen and applications. It just wasn’t there. But I do have the feeling that Apple, while building their ecosystem-empire and growing bigger and bigger, were constantly withdrawing from their “brand equity”, from the symbolic resources that shaped their public perception. Sure, that’s not going to bother them in the short term, because they can still sell this one device in all kinds of different sizes, but their success came – no matter how often Amir Kassaei repeats it – never only from the design and simplicity of “the perfect product” (that it isn’t and that doesn’t exist), but also from the symbolic resources it provided. Symbolic resources that went into the common knowledge about Apple because a bunch of nerds and hipsters from the creative industries were Apple, loved the OS, had the G4s, made their flyers on it and used it to DJ once they became to lazy to mix with vinyl. Think different and all.

Now, not so much anymore.

And so, while Nokia’s software was and is apparently crap for the last years and couldn’t remotely keep up with Android and Apple, and while they also neglected the symbolic parts for ages – I haven’t experienced anything that would make me feel a Nokia brand in Canada and also nothing in Austria for a while – they at least seem to have woken up. If Apple is moving away from their old heritage and Android is working on becoming the new mobile Windows, Nokia is in the strange position of being the challenger brand, while still being market leader.

This means that they simultaneously have to work on fixing their OS/App-store issues, but also work the edges of culture and their developers, the ones that Apple doesn’t give too much of a damn about anymore. And they have to continuously throw out millions of phones to defend their market share in the meantime. They have a chance to build what Apple built on one device and what Android is trying to do with all the different bloated brand versions of their OS, on a base of hundreds of millions of users of one brand who will trade up for smart-phones at some point. Think about it: if all the others are joining Android, and Palm and Microsoft more or less take themselves out of the game, why would you not be the third big guy in the market. (BB will always be business niche.)

Judging from what has come out of Nokia since the Nokia World, it seems like they at least get the symbolic part right and they’re working with different communities and developers to get their vision out there into reality.

Typical W+K brilliance, this is just lovely and puts different communities of do-ers and makers in the spotlight. DIY is a rich territory right now and you can break out every single project for different length features.

Sounds a heck of a lot like a hungry challenger brand. And that is a good sign.

How far away is ‘The Future of the Book’?

via vimeo.com

So everybody shared it by now anyways. Nicely done as you’d expect from IDEO. I think the first one is the hardest in terms of data analysis and evaluation. The second one could be built rather quickly and the third one is basically what Marcus Brown has been doing for a while now, but with budget, a design company and an iPad at his hand.

Growing up

Screen in the dark

This last few days have mostly been about heading west from Vienna to work on a brief with lovely guys and girls at an agency there. A couple of quite strange firsts for me. First night staying at a hotel for “business” reasons, which in my ears still sounds absolutely douchy (in relation to myself). First time “expensing” taxi rides from a train station to an agency. Haven’t done that before either, and feels equally strange. Could it be that at some point along these lines the day comes when people actually expect something from you because of all this?

I also learned how to get my telco to unlock tethering on my slowly fading phone (hat tip to Steff). I found out that I should read visa registration documents more carefully next time (hat tip to the guy who said njet). I learned that fundraising isn’t a very easy thing to do (which in turn teaches you a lot of things about advertising and “awareness” – ehem). And I learned that the 3G connection on trains here is quite horrible, which might be a good thing after all.