For those of you who have been fortunate enough to visit or live in Asia, you’ll no doubt have been amazed at the pace by which the architecture and construction is progressing. Each property developer wants to “out-do” the last by going higher, embracing out-of the ordinary shapes, putting huge holes in the middle of their buildings (feng shui driven), using the most cutting edge materials and integrating the most innovative features. In my eyes Beijing is very much a different city to what it was just a year ago: Maybe I’m not as observant as I used to be, but every time I come to Beijing (which is normally monthly) it seems brand new skyscrapers have risen from the ground – and they are astonishing in every way. It’s a tough job recognizing where you are.
March 2007 Archives
The first-ever African Experiential Marketing Summit takes place tomorrow, 15 March, in Johannesburg, South Africa. I'm pleased to be speaking on behalf of Jack Morton Worldwide. The conference is organized by EXP, a South African agency that's very committed to developing understanding of the value of face-to-face among marketers in the region. I'll be speaking on experiential marketing and its power to generate word of mouth advocacy. More from Johannesburg soon!
I just heard about this new...site? service? trend? social networking phenomenon...called Twitter. Self described as A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM or right here on the Web!
Not really sure what to make of it. Apparently you create a profile and log on, then essentially IM even your most trivial daily happenings for review by...well, by anybody. I see that John Edwards (the candidate) is "twittering" his daily calendar. And a lot of folks at the South by Southwest (aka SXSW) conference are way into it -- that's how I heard about it, via the SXSW blogs.
Interested in your comments. To paraphrase David Letterman: Is this something? My mind is spinning around the effects of this on word-of-mouth, interaction at live events, etc. Is this "flash mobs 2.0?"
. . . well, while some global marketing studies may beg to differ, the absolute truth is because brand practitioners have long been struggling to deliver satisfying results via the 'Word of Knee' methodology.
Adidas launches an ambitious and visually stunning multimedia campaign this month in which atheletes ranging from Gilbert Arenas and David Beckham to a grade school soccer team reveal defining moments or experiences in their lives. Centered around the the theme "Impossible is Nothing," they express these experiences through their own artwork (some are stick figures) which is then animated to tell their story.
I learned a lot last week at the first--and certainly not the last--African Experiential Summit, held in Johannesburg and organized by EXP. As someone who's passionate about the value of experiential marketing, but who comes at the field from a US and western European perspective, it's fascinating to learn more about the factors that make face-to-face marketing an even more appealing proposition in Africa. These include the premium placed on trust and authenticity, which play well to experiential; the receptiveness to grassroots and community-based marketing; and differing levels of media penetration, especially for TV and the Internet. I heard a lot about sponsorship and activation, including terrific presentations from South African marketers at Coca-Cola and ABSA Bank. There was also lots of excitement, not surprisingly, about the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which South Africa will host--the first African nation to do so.
I have my doubts about Second Life, especially for BtoB audiences. To me it seems like a place for virtual hooking up, and though I have heard of a few interesting uses for it tied to offline activities I am not yet sold on it as a venue for impactful dialog.
That said, there is a real experiential quality to Second Life that is beginning to impact our thinking. We're starting to talk with many of our clients about virtualizing their events. This doesn't necessarily mean creating an SC type environment that replicates the live event, but it does force us to think creatively about how an online experience should be accessed by event attendees and those who are unable to attend.
What should that experience feel like? We are still working through that and I am hoping to have some interesting case studies to show off in the coming months :)
Three news items caught my eye this week. First, Microsoft has released the Xbox 360 Elite that supports HD and has 120 gigabytes of storage. Can a laptop (or mobile phone!) with a terabyte of memory be far off?
Second, Yahoo! has announced that their email customers now have NO LIMITS on their email storage. I guess the 2 GB limit was just too constraining for some. Now you'll never have to throw away any email. Heck, you can even keep your spam for all eternity.
Third, IBM announced a new, tiny optical transceiver chipset that can move data at speeds up to 160 GB per second, which is eight times faster than previous optical components. Yikes! 160 GB per second. So you could fill up your Xbox 360 in under a second.
Imagine the world we'd live in if the advances made in computer technology over the past 2 decades had been applied to transportation. Maybe GM would now be marketing a car with unlimited mileage. Or maybe we'd have a bullet train so fast that it's essentially a teleport device.