iPad head girl

Would this creep you out?

A new viral video promoting Cosmo's new iPad- only magazine for men. Cosmopolitain — of sex tips and dating quips fame — launched its first magazine for men, CFG: Cosmo for Guys. The magazine will not be gracing newsstands but will live solely on the iPad, available via the App Store.

iPad Head Girl walked  around Bryant Park in New York City. The helmet is made out of four iPads that plays video of each side of her head. As for the lady inside, she gets a live feed of her surroundings streamed to her glasses inside the headgear and in her purse there was a hiden camera.

Krivicka explained to NBC that Heart wanted to portray how reading Cosmo for Guys, a men's magazine written by women, was like "getting into a girl's head" or "reading a girl's mind."

"The execution was pretty simple and filming only took a day. After recording an actress visage from four different angles, the producers streamed the videos on the iPad, while the woman walked around with park. A camera and pair of video glasses inside of the box helped her see where she was going", said Michael Krivicka of Thinkmodo. "The whole idea is, if you're a guy brave enough to touch her iPad head, you'll be able to get inside it."

Check out how iPad Head Girl was made!

Timeline: A new kind of profile for people to tell their story

Facebook has rolled out a number of major changes, including a major overhaul of user profiles, new apps for playing music and watching video on the site, and social news apps.

Facebook has understood that now it’s all about making it personal and relevant. Facebook wanted to design a place where you feel like home because the place in Internet where you tell your story is really personal.

Millions of people have invested a lot of time in telling the story of their life on their profiles; it’s a really personal product so it should be customized as much as possible.

Before your profile was the first minutes of your conversation, basics, introduction. In 2008 Facebook introduced a completely new profile and by this point people were sharing so many things that the focus of the profile had shifted from just a few pieces of basic information that barely ever changed to all of the things that you have shared and done recently.

But "We are more than just what we did recently" said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckeberg. Most deep conversations that you get into, get into all different points of your life. And this is the point where Timeline comes.

Facebook is introducing timeline- a new kind of profile:

Timeline is the story of your life. It consists of 3 pieces: all your stories, all your apps and a new way to express what you are. All your stories are more visual, much more nicely designed.

What timeline does is it starts off showing all the stuff you have done recently and as you go further back in time, it starts summarizing and surfacing only the important things of your life.

You will see years and you can just use that to quickly get to any point in your life and see the content of that specific time period.

You can put in your timeline all of your apps and all of the stuff that you have done.

The best feature I personally like about the timeline is the "Map timeline view" where you can add the places on a map showing your friends where you have traveled and how much time you spent there.

Apps. People really want to use apps to express themselves. Now you can use apps to express as much content as you want on your timeline. Discover an apps from your friends timelines and use it to your timeline. So, what Timeline really means for you? The first is "self-expression," which means your friends will know a lot more about what you read, what music you listen to, and even what you cook. So no hiding, got it? :) The second is "serendipity," which means if you see a friend of yours has watched a movie on Netflix, you can click on that app in your timeline and begin watching it immediately from within the app. Faster, easier.

Watch a video about a new class of social applications on Facebook:

In timeline you can create a cover photo and profile picture stays as well. You can highlight some things on your timeline. You can control the content and people who see it. On every story on Timeline you can change the privacy by clicking on it.

Timeline is a new way to express who you are! It’s a great way to discover all the stuff that the people have done their whole life. All the stories of your life you will have on a single page.
Facebook automatically adds photos, status updates and life events from your Facebook history to your timeline, but you can also add photos and content from you past to fill out the “Way Back” section. You can add stuff everywhere you want in your timeline.

Facebook expects to roll out Timeline in a few weeks, but there you can see how timeline will look.  

Now it's all about sharing more, not less.

What this change means for business? Here's a very good article about it.

The evolution of long distance relationship

by Natasha Shine

Business with love

This Sunday morning I was reading the book by Robin Sharma and it's my pleasure to share his houghts about love and business.

"Business is in so many ways about love. Think about it. Success comes by treating your customers with love. Acclaim comes by doing your job with love. Market leadership comes with selling youe wares with love. If your customers only like you, you are vulnerable to losing them when a competitor with a cheaper producēt or a more economical service comes along. Why? Because you failed to emotionally connect with them.
But when your customers love you – because you have touched their hearts by the way that you occur in their lives- you become part of their extended family. You are now the part of their community. They become loyal. They tell the rest of the family about you. And they will take good care of you should times get tough.

So, I’ll keep going to Starbucks. I love the place. And if you ever want to find me, , I’ll be the guy tucked away in the quiet corner, sipping on a grande soy latte with a smile on my face and joy in my heart- feeling the love."

Turkcell live competition on Twitter

Turkcell Turkish telecom company made a campaign with an aim to promote their new smart phones with mobile internet and wanted to create awareness and buzz among the heavy internetu sers.

Turkcell created live competition through Twitter. The competition had the smart phones at it's core.

They made a gift box and put the smart phones in. Then they covered the box with post-its. Using a live video feed, they asked the twitter crowd to unpack the box by tweeting what was written on the post-its using our hashtag #turkcelltweet.

There were also other gaumes participants could take part.

Finally, to win the phone, the participants had to get their mesage re-tweeted by a famous celebrity.

Results:

Campaign was active for 7 days, 3 hours per day.

8 days in the trending list of Twitter.

56'734 tweets with a hashtag #turckcelltweet were generated.

Your own museum exhibition

The Intel application takes all of your data and formats from your Facebook profile when you connect with it and turnes them into an exhibition. The exhibition features your pictures, most frequent words you post, links, location, videos, people you connect most and other things of your digital life on Facebook.

I found different opinion in some blogs about this campaign. One of the comments: "An image of my sister appeared directly next to a dead friend, followed by a co-worker making a goofy pose. Later on a snapshot of my current girlfriend was juxtaposed next to an old flame."

Or a comment like this one: "This campaign leaves a negative association with Intel brand in my mind."

If you think it’s a bit strange, remember that you are the one who is putting all this info on your Facebook profile, not anyone else.

Well, I really enjoyed this visualisation. Create and explore a visual archieve of your social life. Try it, you will be amazed! 

Click here to experience it youself!

LIVE mega billboard against agression

Public service employees in the Netherlands face aggression and violence on the streets more and more often. Onlookers unfortunately do not intervene often enough when they encounter a situation like this. A live interactive billboard in Amsterdam and Rotterdam is used to place people in a similar situation witch confronts them with their inactivity.

They used live, interactive billboard to confront people within their INACTIVITY by literally bolding up a mirror to them.

Passers by were filmed on the street and they saw themselves live on billboard screen in a similar situation. This ir sone by adding a layes or previously recorded bluescreen film.

Interactive ads are changing the world of media. This is because attention is one of the most important commodities. This example transform the consumer experience throught the power ot their interaction.

First ever animated Tattoo

This is something that has never been done before, the first ever animated tattoo. Paris based tattoo artist realised his first animated tattoo on June, the 16th.

Streamed live on Facebook, users accessed his mind through the Human API, shared his thoughts and influenced the design of tattoo. They integrated QR code indide the tattoo, which after the scanning with a phone, played an animated piece to complete the tattoo.

What is behind it? This is a Ballantine's scotch whiskey social campaign which celebrates original minds and to do this they have made a series of live streaming events where Facebook users could influence the creativity of an artist in real time by giving comments and their suggestions on Facebook.  

More than 50,000 views were generated on Facebook in two first days.

McDonald's Pick n Play

An example of using new technologies in a new way by using interactive bilboard in an outdoor campaign.

The aim of campaign is to give people an extra fun reason to visit McDonald's. How did they do it? McDonald's used a large digitals billboard an created an challenge which offers to play a game. The game has eben controled by using smartphone.  People could interact with the screen without having to download any applications.

How it worked?

People who were passing by and who wanted to play this game, had to visit picknplay.se with their smartphones.

Phones GEO location verified that they are in the game area.

They had to choose his favourite a product from McDonald's.

Player had to use a touchscreen of smartphone to play a game and follow the game real time on the screen.

If they won this game, they won their favourite product from Mc'Donald's.

Watch it:

Nowadays it's all about people.
This is a nice example of emotional egagement, it's always an added value for a brand. Interaction helps to build a loyalty as well. While customers are playing, they are self experienced and it helps to feel them closer with the brand. People want to be involved.
It's also important to remember that the human being should be in the center of communication, not the brand itself.

Catching people attention means catching their eyes and McDonald's with this billboard is definetely using this strategy.

Colour sensitive interactive billboards

Colorfull example of interactive communication through digital environment.

IBM launched its smarter planet agenda a broad campaign acknowledging the importance of intelligent systems in the world today. In the retail industry, for example, consumer data around something as simple as color can have massive implications around shipping, inventory and, ultimately, overall sales.

This interactive billboard is a simple and engaging virtual demonstration of how a smarter retail system can work. The message is that a smarter supply chain responds faster to customer preferences.

It's a great experience based on what people are wearing. It's a real virtual demonstration! Check it out!

Shadow Art Installation

Newcastle Brown Ale's Shadow Art has debuted in San Diego's (The heart of the club life), the Gaslamp district, now through the end of September.

Using only a single light source and thousands of real-life Newcastle Brown Ale bottle caps, two well-known New York shadow artists have partnered with Newcastle to bring to life a 128 square foot shadow sculpture. Check out the video above to see how the project was brought to life.

Amazing!

Bring physical world to life- Zappar app

Zappar application is a free app available for IPhone, Ipad2 and Android devices. The aim of the app is to open up another dimension where the posters/books/images/objects comes to life. It change posters into an attractive and interactive dimension.

How it works?

find the image or object that is Zappar powered. Open the app, put it in front of the object, wait few seconds till the object is registered and bring it to life.

Let's see some examples.
Zappar app used for a book called "Fantastic Mr Fox".

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 interactive poster.

Great example of PHD media agency. They used Zappar app to in Cannes Lions advertising festival 2011 to introduce the campaign "Advertising moves on" where PHD representatives talked about the future of advertising industry. PHD created 30 different posters and powered them with Zappar app.
At the end of campaign  Zappar app was downloaded more than 5800 times. See the case study below.

Interactivity nowadays is crucial to effective communication. Interactive advertising has a potential to increase the quality of comsumers decisions, increase customers satisfaction and get them involved. In this case it is easier to promote trust and of course it helps to stand out in a crowd. It plays also an essential role in increasing engagement and motivation.

Polly Cochrane, SVP of Marketing Warner Bros Pictures UK commented, “Zappar opens up a whole new way for us to think about our marketing campaigns. Posters become engaging and interactive media channels where we can bring the stories behind our films to life in a truly immersive way.”

Click here to find out more about Zappar app. 

Varbūt vēlējāties sameklēt: reģistrēts

New old stuff- magic QR code

Whats is a QR code?

It's a quick response code, which consists of  black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. It's basicly a 2 dimensional barcode. You can read this code using your smartphone. All you need is to download a free QR code reader and then use it when you see a QR code. You need to open the application and put your phone in fron of the QR code and make a picture. The code contain information. Once you scan the QR code, it will bring you to a website, show a message, a video, photo, calendar events, contact info, email address or even a geolocation information.

QR code is a way how you can combine offline with online enviornment, so it's a great option how to bring offline world more live and attractive.

QR code have been created in 1994, in Japan, so why they are becoming really popular only now? Thats because popularity of Smartphones is growing rapidly these days.

Let's see some examples how QR code has been used.

Here you see a billboard of Calvin Klein consisting only from a QR code. The message of a billboard is "Get it uncensored". When snap the picture, it brings you to the latest Calvin Klein 40 second video ad. After the spot plays, you can share the code on Facebook or Twitter. One more good thing of a QR code is that you can measure the effectiveness of a billboard (which was a huge problem before).

Jessica Stuart, producer and entrepreneur, sported a very unusual dress at the 15^th annual Webby Awards. The QR code was printed on her dress. The event celebrates distinct work on the web, and Stuart definitely showed her innovation and uniqueness. Stuart won two awards for a video she created for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the dress she wore was printed with QR codes that played the video when the the codes were scanned by more than 100 of those attending the event, by using their smartphones. Here you can find more information about it.

Diesel have introduced QR codes in their stores which enable you to “Like” a product by scanning a QR code which then posts to your Facebook wall. Watch a video below. 

And here you can see also other ways where to put and use a QR code:

And if want, here  you can generate your own QR code and download the QR code reader, turst me, it's very very simple! http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

Oh, buy the way, in the introduction QR code photo I left a message for you! :)

Facebook into ExcellBook

"How can we bring stupid into the smart world?"

Diesel "Be Stupid" came up with a downloadable application for Mac and PC, that makes Facebook look like a Spreadsheet. And your boss will never find out that you are actually sitting in Facebook. Instead- it will look like you are really into your job, working with an excel, writing some really difficult sales report but at the same time with a smile on your face. Nice!

For the ones who don't know, the official Be Stupid Philospohy!

You can download the application at http://www.bestupidatwork.com

Lacta Facebook application

See how Lacta, the leading milk chocolate brand in Greece, managed to grow its Facebook page into the most popular of any brand in the country, through a Facebook application that enabled users to express and share their love.

 Facebook page

Ikea desktop organizer

Ikea has come up with a desktop application that allows you to finally stop the chaos on your desktop and let you organize e-folders on your desktop as it were a set of Ikea shelves.

"Jus like Ikea's furniture, the Ikea e-folder set has to be assembled by you: it consists of background picture with an Expedit storage unit and an icon set made of Ikea's very own organisers" the agency say.

"Once you set it up, you can put order to chaos on your dekstop".

So, the main idea od this app is to replace the boring folders which are all the same into a stylish virtual documents.

The idea is great, but it's a bit difficult to apply it in reallity. I tried it. Takes a lot of time, wish to be it a bit simplier. And when I finally organized it in a way of shelf, the next day I turned on my computer, more than half of the cute e-folders dissapeared.

This application created a lot of buzz on social media, but when people tried to aplly it in reallity, a lot of comments were like these ones: "I'm way too lazy to customize to this extent, but the idea is great!" or "Yep, it's a time suck, but it's fun".

The desktop application is not yet available in English. If you still want to try it out, you can download it here.
Tips to organize the desktop.

Advertising agency: Laboratory Ideas/Laboratory Digital, Budapest

A new green file format

In this case the format is the message.
"The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don't need printing out – then simply save them as WWF." See the website and download the file format.
Just a few days after the campaign was launched, the WWF was THE topic of conversation in the news, in tweets and on blogs across the world.

The WWF Organisation is one of the most important environmental organisations in the world. For 50 years the WWF has pursued one goal: to rescue the rainforests.


Results:
After just four weeks, the website had already welcomed 200,000 visitors from 183 countries.
The software had been downloaded over 30,000 times.
Over 10,000 friends on Facebook.
Cannes Lions 2011, Best Use of Other Digital Media in a Promotional Campaign, Gold.
Company: JUNG von MATT AG Hamburg, GERMANY

Statement without having to say a word

How could they get Americans to question just how far they were willing to go to be safe?

A mettalic ink that displays messages on the scanner screens at aisport has been developed. The message was about US Constitution that protected American citizens against unreasonable searches. So whenever an airport  agent peeked at a traveller's privates, they would be confronted by the very law they were accused of violating. It was a way to make a statement... without saying a word.

It was an idea that needed the internet to spread fast, to thrust itself into the center of the debate. They leveraged social media, PR and used earned media to their advantage to spread the word.

Watch the case study video:

Results:
Within hours the media picked up on it and the press coverage exploded.

The website 4thamendmentwear.com received 1,205,397 million hits on the weekend of launch.

The website received over 3.4 million hits less than 3 weeks. 

4th Amendment Wear sold out of the first run immediately.

Cannes Lions 2011, Best use of Social Media Marketing in a Promotional Campaign, Grand Prix

Company: 4TH AMENDMENT WEAR

How ROM chocolate challenged patriotism

This campaign made chocolate ROM the first brand that had the courage to test and play with people’s national ego on a national scale. With their new campaign they took away something people were taking for granted: the national flag from the most traditional chocolate bar-Rom.

They were sure that although  young Romanians tend to be negative about their country, their patriotism returns when challenged.

Results: Became Romanian's most popular chocolate bar with 79% increase.

Grand Prix in Cannes Lions 2011, Category: Best New Product Launch/Re-Launch or Multi-Product Promotion at Retail
Created by McCann Erickson Romania

Canon "Photochains"

This integrated campaign, is designed to create a new form of social networking, based on sharing the inspiration behind photographs.

Created by Leo Burnett Sydney

Levi’s „Cheeky Little Idea”

Levi’s game enabled by online and mobile interaction. Pairs of Levi’s have been released onto the streets of Sydney and Melbourne worn by Levi’s representatives.
Users pieced together clues released on Twitter to locate the jeans and can win a pair by asking the wearer „Are those Levi’s?” The wearer than has to drop their pants and give it away.

How did it look like in reality?

Results in 6 weeks: 1450+ followers on Twitter

300 000 + reached through retweets and @replies.

Interactive Ikea catalogue

A good idea to let people personally promote your product! Sometimes you just need to use existing social media platform functions to engage with people, create buzz effect and let them personally promote your product.

Your customers are not stupid

"Walk on water viral campaign"

The brand: Hi-Tech Infinity. Product: waterproof shoes

When I saw the video on YouTube “Walk on water”, it seemed to me pretty amazing and a super cool way to promote water resistant shoes.  

Watch the video:

 

Guys are talking about inspiration and if you believe in your dreams you can do everything. They are engaging the audience in a very emotional level by  touching values and saying that "people want you to think in a different way and this sport allows you to push yourself". It gives inspiration! They speak about the product as well, but it seems very natural thing to do after the words: “Me, my boots and I”. They are giving the tips how to do it and the most important tip they mention is believe in yourself.

After seeing this video, I thought  it’s a very creative viral video.  The engaging part is also cool. They developed the site where you can play a game, get the highest score and win a pair of Hi-Tech shoes.

Check it out, that's the good part about this campaign.

And then I started to read comments below the video and I found out more negative than positive replies. Thousand of comments like “Busted”, “I’m skeptical”, “guys, this is legit!”, “Fake so fake”, “fuck you guys i broke my leg trying to do this”. People didn’t believe in it. I still couldn’t decide my position when I found „Behind the scenes” video which was made 2 weeks after the buzz campaign was launched.  

 

I was so disappointed! The brand lied and afterwards they laughed about the customers.  They easily admited that the only purpose was to make their brand famous. In the video they  laughted about the values they spoke in first video and that’s a big, big mistake from a brand positioning point of view. First it  made me belief in something, but afterwards laughing. They said that it was just for fun and they wanted that the people think about Hi-tech in a different way.  Well, now they for sure I think in a different way, if before didn’t think anything about this brand, now I think negative. I don’t believe it really helped the brand.

It forgot a very simple and true rule: „Your customers are not stupid!”

Special thanks to my amazing teacher Filippo Selden for sharing this video!

New talent available!

A message for you:

I'm open for a challenging job wherever there will be a position that will meet my passion and abilities. If you need an excited and educated person, who has an international approach to things, speaks English and Russian, and is learning Italian as well, don't hesitate to contact me.

Specialities I'm interested in:

Social Media planning

User Experience Strategy

Brand Strategy

Brand Engagement

Market research and analysis

Communication Strategy

If you want to find out more about the projects I have done, my experience and recommendations from people I have worked together, you are more than welcome to visit my Linkedin profile: Click here.

Thanks to everyone, who helped me and made this video go viral, the perfect job has been found!

Tongue named Morgan case study

Do you know what a tongue cleaner is? It's a gadget to clean tongue, preventing bad breath. Here's a super cool example how to make this weird gadget interactive, engaging and popular among social media users. 

The brand is called "Orabrush". The main channel this brand use to interact with funs, is their YouTube channel.  Every week the brand publishes video series (in a diary format) with the main character called Morgan. Oh, by the way, Morgan is a life-sized tongue and now it's already his 39 week on air.  

In most of the videos you will not even see the product, but what you find is Morgan in different adventures situations. Here, check them out!

Morgan in his diary talks about people he met in different situations, his observations, feelings and concerns. The language he speaks (both, verbal and nonverbal) is so good and funny, that you have an impression as you would listen your best friend talking. Morgan also interacts with watchers by asking them questions and funs with pleasure answer them in comments below the videos.

The other very good thing they do and I have no clue how they did it, is that on their website you can find plenty or reviews in a video format made by costumers. They are talking about their experience with tongue cleaner, they film how they received the package from Orabrush, they describe product features, show how to use it and why it's worth to get one. 

This whole communications seems so easy, that it's definitely the key factor of it's success. It's all about simplicity of the story told. This brand really understand the rules of social environment which are: listen, engage, be real and have fun! 

My dear friend, Morgan, I'm waiting your next diary spot!

P.S. Did I ordered tongue cleaner? No, well...not yet. 

The ugly true about viral videos

Or the new tactic to make videos stand out from the crowd. 

Not a long time ago Internet was full of articles about viral marketing tips. Most of them talked about how to go viral with your video and make it noticeable and attractive. To go viral seemed to be pretty easy; you just had to follow some rules which were and still are more or less the same: the video should be short, funny, compelling and entertaining. in some cases educational. But the most important tip was and still is that it's all about emotions. The creation of video was the key factor of its success. Time changes and now the creation of it is just a start to reach audience. Why? Because now the war about getting attention is growing enormously. Web has changed the way people communicate and now it's all about interactive dialogue. If there's a successful dialogue, you get clicks, raise brand awareness, increase traffic to your website and if you are really lucky- you increase sales. 

So, how to bring audience to your video, because most of the time the audience is not aware of it, so no dialogue can be started. The magic words are- you need to seed your video. You can hire agencies who are working to get traffic to videos. They will send your masterpiece to online influencers and publishers on the web. They build a strong relationship with a certain number of online distributors in a different range of areas. Agencies place your video on top blogs, social network and video sites etc. Video seeding is like a combination of Digital PR and word-of-mouth marketing. They are also taking care about titles, tags, descriptions and search engine optimization to get sure that your video gets the much organic traffic possible. 

most of the time agencies offer guaranteed number of views for your video and creativity in this case doesn't play an important role. You will get your guaranteed views anyway, but you might be loosing your brand credibility. So, in terms of budget it's important to find a balance between these 2 things- video creation and seeding. Now they are going hand in hand. 

Let's make an experiment with a stop motion video I just made. It's pretty much following the rules of engaging video; it has a good content and credibility (I hope). I'm a quite active social media channel user and I will place the video on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Blogspot and in the biggest social networking website in Latvia- draugiem.lv. Let's see and make an analyze how many views I will get in one week time and from which channel is coming the biggest traffic. In general, statistics is not inspiring; experts say that 95% of videos places on YouTube, doesn't reach 500 views. Let's hope for the best! Click here to see my masterpiece!

Twitter birds are liars

How reliable is Twitter as a source of information, especially when other media channels are sleeping?

Twitter itself is saying that they are without a doubt the best way to share and discover what is happening right now. Well, I must agree about the way to share and “right now” but "discover"  thing should be improved with words  “discover what is happening right now in the mind of users fantasy”.

Let’s take an example. 19 of December. The elections of Belarus president where Alexander Lukashenko won. the things what happened after the elections in short: 

Thousands of opposition protesters in Belarus have tried to storm the government headquarters, following the country's presidential election. A lot of people injured, because demonstration broke out in the capital city of Minsk in support of opposition presidential candidates. It happened because Alexander Lukashenko has been declared the winner, but the opposition claimed that the result was rigged. Interesting note: European Union promised to give 3 billion euros to Belarus, if the election will be held in democratic way. More about the protest  read here.

While all the media kept silent, the social network Twitter made an awesome buzz. Hundreds of new tweets every minute wrote about the situation in Minsk. All the main information channels was waiting something. One of the most popular tweets was: „CNN, BBC, Euronews WHERE ARE YOU?! Yes, Korea is tense and yes, it's snowing, but the big story is October Sq, Minsk, Belarus.”

On that time it was the only source of information to understand, what is happening in October Square. From this point of view, the Twitter really showed it’s power, when the other media channels are slow or unwilling to broadcast the happening. One very popular tweet of that night was: „The entire value of Twitter is not in tweets like "I'm Valerie, I was in a toilet ", but manly in such kind of moments.”

At the same time the main information what was retweeted the most was that there are tanks all around October square and 4 people are already killed in Minsk.” These messages created mistrust in my mind, because there was no prove- is it true or not. Hundreds of people retweeted this information and spread all over. 
Next day when finally news channels started to give an information about this happening, nobody talked about tanks and killed people. Why? Because it was lie. Anyone could write down whatever come in mind and spread it, because the attention for any information about this event was enormous. Those twitter users who didn’t understand the tweets in Russian but wanted to know what is happening, asked to translate these tweets in English. More and more misleading information came out. Another interesting thing. While this buzz in Twitter happened, immediately a fake profile of the Belarus president was made, where "he" gave "his" opinion, which again was immediately retweeted.

So, how really powerful is twitter in such kind of moments when people are the journalists and tell the news? The bright and really amazing thing is that you can get these news immediately and from the person involved in the happening, but from the other point of view, they have the opportunity  to manipulate and spread untruth information. I don’t say that the news channels doesn’t do, but I think it’s more about hiding the information or telling the half true. In Twitter case the lies are more brutal.  

My Starbucks idea- success or failure?

"My Starbucks Idea" is the site of Starbucks where Internet users all around the world can register and post their ideas about how to improve Starbucks business, than vote for other Internet user ideas, leave comments and see the implementation of the best ideas. The point is that customers know better than anyone else what they want to improve  in Starbucks.

The idea is really simple- you as a customer post your idea, then other Internet users will vote if they like your idea, their comment your post, discuss it and if your idea get a lot of attention (votes), Starbucks will implement this idea and Starbucks will improve customer satisfaction.

It’s a good and clever point to listen your customers and threw listening get their involvement and their ideas. Internet users discuss them, comment, say their opinion. When they post their idea, their spread this message to all social networks they are involved and Starbucks get a lot of attention.

 In this way Starbucks also implement the idea Starbucks is all about experience, it’s not just a cup of coffee. They have created this feeling into customers minds that they are the 3 place between work and home.

So, this in my opinion is the success part of the campaign- perfect engagement with customers and personalized communication. Then where is the dark side? I made some research and found a lot of articles about the failure of this campaign. “My Starbucks Idea, despite receiving over 75,653 ideas, has only implemented 315 ideas to-date, an even more miserly 0.4% of the total.” The negative aspect is that they are claiming to be a company which are listening their customers and get the input from them. At the same time it’s clear that they actually don’t use it. It’s like a cheating, because they actually implement the customer ideas which they already had in their minds. Here you can read about it. So they declare that they have implemented customer ideas when actually, they haven’t. So you get a feeling of cheating and  create some kind of gap between customer satisfaction and customer expectation.

In conclusion, my opinion is that in terms of social marketing campaign, it’s a success, the way they promote their website and their brand idea is great, but from improving business from customer research is a failure. Customers are not stupid. And I don't mean here the "Diesel" stupidness. I hope that kind of stupidness is inside of all of us!

Pepsi refresh the word

 OR "engagement with customers  nowadays is the key aspect of success"

I want to share a good example how to use the social media towards  customer engagement- „Pepsi”  campaign called "Pepsi refresh project". The idea of this campaign is to look for the ideas of people and businesses that will have a positive impact on society and get  these ideas awarded. The total amount of money "Pepsi" is going to spend are 20 million dollars. It encourage people to think about how they want to change their community. Who wins? The ideas which have the most votes from Internet users.  "Pepsi" spread this message using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, website and Youtube with the aim to involve and engage customers. 

Of course, "Pepsi" still need to go a long  way to reach the amount of the audience like their main competitor- "Coca Cola"- on Twitter "Coca Cola"'  has 3 times bigger audience and on Facebook- 18 times than "Pepsi". 

It’s a good example of social media use and how the company „work” and show their vision- „PepsiCo's responsibility is to continually improve all aspects of the world in which we operate - environment, social, economic - creating a better tomorrow than today." At the same time this vision sounds very modern, so I'm not sure they haven't came with this vision now, to get an idea into customers minds about "socially responsible company", because that's the hot topic now.

Anyway, they have gain a lot of good things with their campaign- the number of fans  is growing, they are getting more and more ideas how to make the word better .They see what people are concerned about, which are the most popular topics, they are engaging with customers and what is not bad at all- they are showing their attitude towards a better life. 

The only thing I’m a little bit confused is that I don’t see how this campaign goes together with their previous one, where they used expensive testimonials to advertise their brand. Now this idea about making the word better place for me is like a contrary with the things they did before. For me they are like saying: „Hey, instead of paying a huge amount of money to Britney or Timberlake, we donate this money for the aim of better world." 

But anyway, good job Pepsi, I like your new attitude! 

Website of Pepsi refresh project 

Successful Multibrand stratergy case in Pharmaceutical company

 or "Sometimes the most unbelievable strategy works the best"'

When company launch a new medicine or new formula, they have patent protection for 15-20 years.  At the time company has their patent protection, they are the only player in the market and it means a very good profit for company. But what to do after the patent date for the product  has been expierd? A lot of other competitors copy this product. In that case there are 2 options. It’s time to develop new formula, because it’s the fastest way to get profit for the company or the second- to fight with competitors and try to get the biggest market share as possible. But, how to get a good market share if there are more than 50 players?

I had a wonderful lesson with Andrea Tomasini which has worked in pharmaceutical industry for a lot of years and he said that the strategy he applied and let him get the biggest market share for his pharmaceutical company, is the multi-brand strategy.  

Multi-brand strategy refers to a marketing strategy when 2 or more similar products of one company are putted under different brand names. It is based on principle that if the first brand has became successful, than the company develop the second brand without a lot of expenses. Also a very good advantage is to get a bigger shelf-share and leave little share for the products of competitors. It also gives possibility to generate different price and quality gaps. Because as we all know, customers are like prostitutes, going from one brand to another one. So this is a good strategy to “fight” with customers who are not always loyal to your brand. The worst scenario of multi-brand strategy  is cannibilization. 

So, how multi-brand strategy works in Pharmaceutical company?

From my great teacher experience, he launched 2-4 brands which was actually the same product  inside. He made different positioning for each brand, and there was one person of each brand who took responsibility for this brand. Also he never forgot the Pareto principle.

For each brand there was only one responsible person, so that made this person get in love with the brand. Of course the brand managers were "fighting," also inside the company, but the clever strategy influence this ""fight" in a positive way, because they felt a very high responsibility for their brand, so to escape from too big competition inside one company, Tomassini gave the same investments for all managers. And the most important thing he did- he never played with price. Price for all the brands (for the same product) was exactly the same. Tomassini: “The innovation, in my case, consisted in setting up an organizational structure and culture that maximized the opportunities offered by the market at the less relevant cost.”

He gave the same investment for every brand manager to develop the brands and what is more interesting- he gave the freedom them to choose, which would be the best activities and strategy for each brand. So you may think that the Internal Competition could make you lose focus on the market, but in some cases it really works. Also the decision about the price is quite interesting. If we are taking other example like Procter and Gamble, they are also making very successful multi-brand strategy by putting different prices and quality, but this Pharmaceutical company case is different, because there was no price strategy., the price of all the brands was the same. And there was no case in A. Tomassini long year experience, that the multi-brand strategy would cannibalize the first brand. Never. And that is really incredible. And what makes the whole story more appealing, is that with every case launching a new brand for the same product, he always succeeded taking away  a big market share of their competitors, but never from their own brands.

This in my opinion is a very good case to study from and to keep in mind that sometimes also most incredible and even unpopular decisions might work and make you the leader in your market.

Read more:

Positive and negative aspects of multi-brand strategy

Multi-brand strategy

How to work in a group

This article is about my experience and thoughts about this hard job- working in the TEAM. It’s about how person should or shouldn’t act with their group members.

The moral of the article is that never, never forget that you are a human first and only then (or in the university- you are trying to be) the professional in your field.

My experience and observation

In my IED experience I have worked in 3 groups with different people and also I have observed have other groups are working and I have absolutely different experience.

Advices to a better group work despite what I have experienced:

1. Don’t cut other people ideas just because it doesn’t go together with the strategy you imagine or it’s something you didn’t think before. Of course it makes you feel uncomfortable a little bit, because that means you need to come out from your comfort zone and maybe think in some other direction, so actually you are afraid a bit of this idea and you just don’t want to accept it because it makes you think again and look to your project from other horizon, but it can make your project better.

2. Don’t cut other people ideas even if you think the idea is stupid, because it’s only your perception and maybe it’s not the best one. Try to discuss it, develop it and you will see, it will lead you to a new idea! Try to understand group needs and characteristics, what every person of group can give. What are their strong characteristics which can be useful.

3. If you are not discussing ideas other group members’ advice, or you just cut them, they will be afraid to tell you something next time, so the whole climate in the group will be destroyed and they will not be able to give as much contribution they actually could. Listen, listen, listen! The climate in the group is essential important to succeed. There are always people in the group, who try to lead through creating a climate for fear, competition and that in my opinion is the straightest way to have problems. Try to lead by creating positive atmosphere.

4. Don’t be afraid to admit you are wrong, make joke on yourself. Group members appreciate person who admit his own mistakes because after all it’s a human quality and then other members of group will not be afraid to tell their thoughts, opinion, even if they are not sure about it.

5. When it comes to the presentation, let your group members talk if they want! Let them grow! (Come on, guys, it’s a school!) Not keeping the bad climate, atmosphere by not letting your member speak! Image how much energy you spend? If you are a member of a group (especially in the university) what gives you the right to decide- who will talk and who will not? You are all equal and if you can help your group member to grow- let him do it! And if before the presentation you say him: “Our asses are on fire because of you!”, do you think you will really help him to be the best on presentation after that kind of words? I have a big doubt. In every single step try to support your group member and let them feel your shoulder! And after- be happy if he did a great job, because you let him grow.

6. Sometimes students in university, when it comes to a group work, try to have a certain role. I absolutely agree in the group there should be a person, who is putting together all the ideas, like the responsible one. BUT- that doesn’t give you a power to decide, what you will put on the presentation and what not. You are just a secretary who put everything together not the person who gives the green or red bottom for your group member ideas.

7. The last but not least- humanity. I have seen some students are really punishing themselves because they are not use to be the “bad persons” who are trying only to tell their opinion and the rest one they don’t matter. I also was the bad person in one of my projects. That made me feel bad and I was so happy that I finished that project. So, the question is: “How to “fight” whit such kind of person? Why you need to be bad, to make them respect you?” I still don’t have the answer to this question.

Team success is usually the reason of combined hard work with the respect of your team members and that’s the key to success.

P.S. I'm not sure that the attitude I wrote is professional, but I’m sure it’s human.