what should you do when you single handedly keep 90% of all gossip websites in business, when the state of california considers you an alcoholic and a threat to all security guards that work in hotels. Would you consider a rehab for your celebrity brand / self? (and yes even persons can be brands). Lindsay Lohan, recently single she thinks, handles it by starring in a campaign for online relation site eharmony. In her ad she admits that she is a little crazy. As if you hadn't read about it she states. Lohan is thus aware of the fact that everybody can post whatever they want about her, reaching perhaps millions of others. She can't control it, but she can join the conversation herself. And so she blogs about her life on her myspace, takes on this campaign and presents herself with a lot of humour. A positive way to handle your reputation online ?

During my internship I was working round this phenomena called digital signage/narrowcasting. Up to that moment I didn’t knew much about it, but after exploring what the possibilities of this new medium where and what was already done in for example The United States, U.K or The Netherlands I wondered why the Belgian market for digital signage was still so underdeveloped.

It’s understandable that retailers and advertisers are afraid of the high investments and there aren’t enough studies on the ROI of narrowcasting. There’s also not one exclusive business model, which will lead you too success. But beside these uncertainties, it’s crystal clear that narrowcasting has the potential to become an adequate advertising medium. It’s a fact that more than 70% of the shopping decisions are made in the shop, so with digital signage the advertiser can reach the consumer on the right place, the right moment with the right message. As a marketer you must be a fool to ignore such an opportunity, right?

For months now I’m looking to find that one store, that one location where digital signage is used to its fullest. Yes, there’re quit few attempts, but the medium is in most cases used so wrong that the retailers can’t benefit from it. Misplaced screens and weak content are the most occurring mistakes. Keep in mind content is king, putting up a screen doesn’t mean you’re narrowcasting. It’s what’s on that screen that will attract the consumer.

And yes, I plan to continue my quest …but for now you can enjoy one of the many narrowcasting possibilities

Wishing you all a happy easter (by means of this funny Zaini Koffi ad from Leo Burnett)

Advertising to get more advertisers. This is what the VAR is doing. The VAR controls all the publicity of the Flemish public broadcaster. What you see below is an advertisement by the VAR in "de standaard" a popular Flemish newspaper. The advertisement says what a great investment it is to advertise on one of the most popular Flemish radio stations "Studio Brussel". It is a bit disturbing that it seems difficult to find advertisers who are willing to advertise on such a popular radio station.

Crisis anyone?

Campaigns using fear appeals as the main proposition have been around since the early days. "You should bring your suit of armour to the blacksmith twice a year or you will die on the battle field", it might have sounded during dark ages. Ever since fear appeals seem to appear from time to time. Especially when we take a look at prevention campaigns. Currently in Flanders two new campaigns are playing the fear appeal card. This first one is by concerto and warns people about the dangers of crossing the railway.

Less harsh and a lot funnier is the campaign by Boondoggle that aims to warn young drivers about reckless driving. They do this by urging people to send an early last will to their friends that have the image of being crazy drivers.

But does this all work? Are people listening in the end or is it just as we see with virals. People know the image but they don't know what they have seen (read: the anatomy of buzz by Emanuel Rosen).

First of all a fear appeal is really a threat of something that might really happen to you in a given situation. Traditionally it is said that a fear appeal has to be moderate otherwise the consumers might be so upset that they block out the message. This is the so called "fear arousal threshold". This threshold is based on four components: the severity of the threat, probability of its occurrence, coping response efficacy and self efficacy. The fear appeal works best when the threat is presented first and the information needed to cope with the threat second. When fear should occur then viewers will pay more attention to the coping information. So far this seems a golden situation for an advertising campaign. But when all four of the components of the fear appeal are high then people show less interest in adopting the additional information. According to me this might actually be the case with the railway commercial. The possible threat is presented really strongly. Next to this it's one of those case where people think "that doesn't happen to me" so they don't really reflect it on themselves. On the other side we have the early will case by Boondoggle. Here the threat is less present but I think the eventual message might be stronger. So it is very much possible that people really stop and think about it.

Eventually fear appeals are very hard to implement and even harder to predict their success. I have my doubts about both these case but I sure hope they both turn out to be effective.

ChristianU2uber is a 12 year old boy that uses youtube to express himself and what he believes in. The boy says he believes in god and condemns gay marriage. He films himself taking all sorts of statements about this as if he were writing in a diary. In one of his post tittled is gay marriage right or wrong? he states that he used to be gay but is now very much into girls. These statements lead to a lot of comments including those calling the boy a homo. ChristianU2uber makes another post in which he pleads not calling him a homo :

What happens is he gets the full load. A little less than 5000 people start calling him a homo. Others take it even a few steps further and remake his videos and open up a facebook page called Angry homo kid which has already reached more than 1000 fans. In some remake videos they ask people to comment on the video because it will piss him off. The story seems to heading down cyberbullying lane but on a mass scale and all in the open. You might say the boy had it coming taking loaded statements and using the internet as were it his personal diary. But shouldn't we inform kids about the use of internet and the ways the cookie crumbles? And are the comments and remake video's still freedom of speech? Do you see this as cyberbullying on a large scale and should it be prevented?

LDV United/EC recently made a campaign to put the cyberbullying problem on the map:

Perhaps the christian story is just a hoax. I wonder .. when you take Ezekiel 25:17 (Pulp Fiction) as your favourite bible verse. Nevertheless shouldn't we take some lessons out of the cyberbullying campaign ?

MnM, the Belgian radio station that replaced radio Donna is trying to be an interactive radio. They take up the conversation with their listerners by all sorts social media like Facebook, Twitter and Netlog. But besides that it is also possible to co-decide on what music you will be hearing on the station. The music you get for this is mostly pop hits and more interesting 90'ties music. So maybe it's true that people listen to the music from their youth?

But let's cut to the chase. One of their online services called rate the hits gives you the oppurtunity to pass on which songs you would like to hear more, less or not at all. I tried it out and this morning I got a letter in my emailbox saying I won a CD by rating their hits. Since I hardly ever win things I was quite suprised and happy with this litte gift and reward. It gives people a little encouragement to keep on conversating with a brand.

For our very First blog post we are literaly taking a trip down memory lane. Because that is what Snatch did today. Snatch was originally formed to compete in the 2008 L'Oréal brandstorm (read our work and about us). Today, one year later we've attended the brandstorm finals at the free university of Brussels. Here the team that may represent the university in the national finals is chosen. Last year this event was the first milestone in the Snatch story. Last year 16 teams crossed swords during this stage. This year only four teams were willing to take on the challenge. And a challenge it is. We still remember the long nights we've spent last year crafting our presentation and strategy to try and reach perfection.

Despite the small number of teams competing it showed that all of them had put in their best effort and some very good ideas rose to the surface. This year's task is to develop a perfume for the Maybelline brand. Maybelline is a cosmetics brand and this would be the first perfume they would   launch. So you have several important factors to take into account. You are challenger in a market that is very crowed so it is essential to have a close look at your competitors and partially determine your launch campaign on what they are doing. You have to look for your own spot that has not yet been filled by other brands so it is all about positioning. Of course most importantly differentiate, stand out from the crowd in every way possible.

The eventual winner of this preselection and that from today follows in the Snatch footsteps is the team named SPOTT. There seems to be something about teams whose name starts with an "S" and that consists out of two girls and a guy. It has to be said that they were the best team today. Their big strong point is their solid concept that is perfect for a media neutral approach and  of course a strong concept ultimately results in a good promotion mix. It is this way that they were able to shake of the competition. Do they have the potential to score in the national finals? Of course they do but if we take a look at their fortune cookie it says:

"The sauce is right it just needs a little more seasoning for it to become a salsa"

We already wish them the best of luck and we are crossing our fingers for the finals!