If there is a company that can be seen as a true innovator in the field of online advertising, it will definitely be Uniqlo. Uniqlo is Japan’s, and in the mean time Asia’s, main clothing retailer. Best to be compared with Zara or H&M.

It seems that out of the box, out of room and even out of the building thinking is the starting point for each Uniqlo online campaign. A couple of years ago they drew attention with Uniqlock a widget streaming images of Chinese dancers. At the end of 2009 they brought a new campaign again challenging competition and innovating the field of online advertising.

To support its end of the year promotion where they gave away lucky tickets in store, Uniqlo created a banner campaign that distributed lucky tickets literally everywhere. They created a blog widget containing a button, when consumers pushed the button the images on every website changed into lucky tickets. The winning tickets received a price. Despite this, bloggers were given incentives to put the widget on their website. When a winning ticket would be obtained through their blogs they received a present as well. This resulted in a lot of bloggers putting up the banner for free.

You can already imagine the great results this yielded.

Again this comes to show that online advertising and banners are still in a premature phase. Nothing should be taken for granted and everything should be challenged. Or how in this field creativity can be seen as a strategy. Plus it seems to become a golden rule that you can’t expect to get any benefits from online advertising if you don’t give anything back in return. Uniqlo understood this by offering presents to both consumers and bloggers. That is why marketing has to evolve into a service and why the Internet is so well equipped to support this.

Last Thursday I attended the Seth Godin talk organized by Flanders DC in Antwerp. Whenever you have the change to listen to someone that important I think that it is crucial to blog about it. or to say in the words of Mister Godin himself: “everyone should blog, maybe no one will read it but just the act of writing is important.”

On this blog we usually try to do something different. We try to find new content or look deeper into a phenomenon. OK point taken we don’t always manage to succeed in doin that but it is our core belief anyway. This post however is going to be different. I am just going to be giving my opinion on what I heard and saw tonight. You could see it as rather roughly pouring out my brain in order to give you my impression of the evening.

I think I went to the venue on Thursday with moderate expectations. I mean we all follow mister Godin his blog, read his books or catch up on him true secondary articles. So what could he possibly add to all those things we already know about him and his vision? I wasn’t at all expecting that I  hear something mind blowing that would change the face of marketing for decades to come. I mean those people expecting that from a mere presentation might rather try sitting at home waiting for lightning to strike in order to get enlightened. However what I did expect was mister Godin taking a closer look at marketing and what the true implications are of the newly shaped environment we find ourselves in today. Maybe something on how a truly innovative supply chain can look like or how push advertising can become more of marketing as a service pulling consumers in.

That was basically the mindset I was in. You could call it open but expecting.

Seth Godin started off by immediately warning all of us that we wouldn’t be getting a practical map that would lead us to the road to success. Pretty normal I guess. I mean the guy is just coming to talk to us not inventing the next best thing after the Internet. However it kind of shaped the atmosphere of him being able to say everything he sees adequate without thinking about some practical issues. Next the standard talk started on how the world is changing, consumers aren’t listening, we have been shouting at consumers, … . In order to get those who have been sleeping under a rock for the last decade up to speed. Once that was done mister Godin continued on how we have to rethink our businesses and on how we should focus on the extraordinary. He calls it the fact that we are all geniuses. To quote mister Godin:

“A Genius is someone who does things differently.”

Ok fair enough but it is here that the talk started to shift towards a motivational speech. We should pursue every idea because that one good idea will eventually make up for the hundreds of bad ones. While doing so we have to try to not give in to our “lizard brain”. Or to clarify the caveman piece in our brains that controls our most basic functions. It is this part that controls fear and in being a genius we should overcome the fear in that small part of our brain. by doing so we can come to the next part in our evolution, a new revolution. After starting off as hunters, farmers, workers it is now time for us to become artists.

This was roughly the scope of mister Godin his presenation. Afterwards some highly appreciated time for Q&A. I must admit that mister Godin  took his time in answering several questions. Although no truly critical in depth questions were brought to the stage and so Seth could often cut it with some good one liners.

Women: “What if I only have 10 minutes in a job interview to convince them I am an artist?”

Seth: “don’t apply for that job!”

After leaving the room a colleague of mine was still thinking, feeling a bit disappointed that the real content behind the subject wasn’t touch. He decided to approach mister Godin to ask the more in depth question whether there is still a place for market research within his framework.

The Godin answer was simple: “None existing. Only trust gut feel.”

I just had to include this little quote because it shows the lack of a deeper reasoning on the subject. Writing off market research as bollocks doesn’t really fit with my view of the marketing landscape we are confronted with today. If any I personally feel that market research is getting more relevant because of all the changes we are going through.This was more or less the tone of voice of the entire evening in Antwerp.

 Seth Godin is a very clever marketer with insightful ideas. I think that anyone who has never had to opportunity to be introduced into the world of marketing the last 5 years was truly amazed and felt the urge to stand up and really be that artist. Those however knowing a bit more and taking into consideration the multitude of aspects that come into play when talking about marketing didn’t walk away with a lot of new insights.

Truth be told mister Godin wasn’t really challenged and was served a very easy crowd. Most of them happy to see the legend in the flesh.

I had a good night, I was entertained, my expectations weren’t really met none the less I still believe Seth Godin is an intelligent and remarkable marketer that has a vision he wants to share. That is a good and valuable thing!

I was just browsing through the book "Consumer Behavior; 2010" by Washington and Miller. The book gives a forcast on how future gerenations will look like. Plus they give a funny overview of the top future jobs. So if you are planning to enrole in college you might first want to take the following in consideration:

Top jobs by 2020

• Artists, writers, poets

• Global headhunters

• Knowledge management advisors

• Nano-bio entrepreneurs

• On-demand supply-chain designers

Top jobs by 2025

• Anti-hacker specialists 

• Gene engineers 

• Personal identity finders 

• Personal privacy advisors

• Reality interactive TV producers

• Robotic psychotherapists

Top jobs by 2030

• Anti-terrorism technicians

• Climate change forecasters

• Customer knowledge mining specialists

• Health performance enhancers

• Holographic game developers

• Hydrogen marketing managers

• Nano-manufacturing agents

• Poets

• Renewable energy entrepreneurs

• Solar fuel developers

• Space market planners

Great to see that poets will survive 2025 to flourish again in 2030. Bummer though that being a marketer will never be a top job!

I came across a nice TEDtalk by John Gerzema, the Chief Insights Officer at Young & Rubicam and author of The Brand Bubble.

(If you are unable to watch this video go to the TED website)

Ok I know there are a lot of familiar things in there. But the key takeaway of this TEDtalk is of course the renewed focus on consumers. Not in the old meaning of buying machines but in the post-web2.0-revolution-credit-crunch meaning of the word consumer. What that meaning today is? Well we’re not completely sure. Those who say they know are just talking about one piece of the puzzle. Truth is that as marketers we have to rely more and more on our anthropological skills. Because that is basically the only way that we are going to find an answer to the question “who are today’s consumers”. John Gerzema brings one piece of the puzzle to the table in this TEDtalk. But there are so many people, marketing guru’s, semi-marketing guru’s, social media preachers, community experts and a dozen of other fancy titles contributing to the dialogue that it is becoming harder and harder to see which pieces fit and which don’t. What I remember from John Gerzema is that he believes consumers will lead us out of the crisis. Ok fair enough but isn’t that the only way an economy can come out of a crisis. More important however is the point that John Gerzema makes by saying that business not only have to provide value but VALUES. Something I like to call marketing as a service. Give consumers something in order for them to give you something. It sounds so simple and it’s one of the cornerstones of inter-human relations. However marketers often forget that a company-consumer relation or a brand-consumer relation isn’t actually that different from inter-human relations.

So to conclude, nice TEDtalk and definitely something to think about. Thanks for a piece of the puzzle!     

Yes we have the first ever social drink! And who else than Vitamin Water would be the brand to create a drink socially. The new drink is called connect and is the result of a competition run on Vitaminwater’s Facebook page. Consumers were invited to design their own flavors. They could do this by voting on the most talked about flavors or make a flavor themselves by combining several others and putting that one up for votes. The new flavor is a black cherry-lime combination. The packaging of the connect vitamin water is also a tribute to facebook. It carries the Facebook logo ad descriptive text, using references to untagging, friend requests and photo stalking. One of the people who helped in creating the connected flavor was also granted a grant price of $5.000.

              The new connected Vitamin water flavor

So basically a good sample of marketing as a service. You can create you very own flavor. But the other side is much clearer of course. Using the consumer as a resource. Coca-Cola, who bought Vitamin water from Glaceau in 2007, not only gets free market research but also directions on the implementation of that research in combination with loads of exposure. So you see R&D, marketing and advertising is getting very closely related today. As it should be of course. Although I don’t think any R&D department would be very happy with this job of monkey see monkey do.

Steve Nash as the Vitamin water endorser

Duval Guillaume Antwerp (DGA), a Belgium based advertising agency, has developed a viral campaign for Alfa Romeo in light of January’s European Motor Show in Brussels. Alfa Romeo’s tag line in this campaign is that they have the lowest price. To really demonstrate this point DGA claims to have put an Alfa Romeo billboard at the lowest point of the world, 11 kilometers below the ocean surface.

DGA says that they had to do a campaign like this because people don’t notice price led advertising. A point that is very much true in the specific small car segment Alfa Romeo is competing in. However I am doubtful whether a 6minute viral and a micro site (www.expedition147.be) are the way to go with price-led communication. In my opinion it is just trying to figure out a nice way to make a viral without wondering if a viral is indeed the most appropriate channel to reach your target group. Without a doubt DGA is a very creative advertising agency they might however want to rethink the effectiveness of this campaign. I think that there is a lot of follow-up needed to turn this viral into a good campaign.

By the way I hope they didn’t really go through the effort of lowering a billboard 11km beneath the sea level.   

Great piece of marketing as a service or rather marketing as it should be.

All you need is soap, a towel and a public place where you can find water. Now you are ready for some serious guerrilla showering.Who knows it might just be the next big thing during the summer. Two guys in Ghent already gave a good example.

Guerrilla Bathrooming from Bart Dewandeleer on Vimeo.

In the picture bellow you see a church in Brussels called “OL Vrouwekerk van Goede Bijstand”.  Besides a wandering tourist now and then nothing special you would think. Even when you enter there is nothing striking. But there might be a small triptych drawing your attention. It is not at all big and is hanging one of the pillars just inside the church. The funny thing is that inside the triptych there is a video screen. This screen shows water and a Jerusalem-like background. If you approach the screen and get really close a man carrying a child suddenly appear walking through the image. My best guess is this man would be Mozes (as far as my biblical knowledge is correct). The man and the child keep looking at you as long as you keep standing in front of the screen. Once you back away they walk out of the image.

I thought this was great. I spend at least 10 minutes moving up and down towards the screen to see the man and the child appear. One thing is for sure I’ll remember this event and the church for a long time. What strikes me though is the fact that a small church in the center of a town has the creativity to use interactive narrowcasting (or at least a biblical form of it). Why don’t I see shops using this in their shop window and in store as well. It can’t be because it is too expensive if even the church can effort it?

With the fallback of television ads we seem to rely more and more on online media and especially social media to close the gap. But let’s not forget the social media myth. You have to breach through a giant amount of clutter online competing with 5000 other messages daily (because that is the amount of messages assumed people are faced with on a daily basis). On the other hand with a carefully placed screen and a sensor this church was able to make a real impact. Online media are not the holy grail. Most searches people perform online that really lead to an outcome are most often triggered in the real world.  

So applause for the “OL vrouwekerk van Goede Bijstand” in Brussels!!

Check out the triptych for yourself below.

Jesus is narrowcasting from Bart Dewandeleer on Vimeo.