Microsoft Surface has been elected number 1 most brilliant innovations of 2007 by  Popular Mechanics

Friending is the next advertising. If I stole one of the subtitles from the brilliant Never Ending Friending study it's to emphasize Nielsen last findings on which advertising platforms are the most trusted by customers. The October 'Trust in advertising' report puts word of mouth recommendations number one on a list of 13 media ranging from traditional ones to online and mobile platforms (video and in-game advertising still have to make it to the list). 

78% of the 26,000 surveyed consumers report trusting other consumers more than anything else including newspapers, branded websites, TV and radio. As far as the online landscape is concerned, consumers online comments are more trusted than e-mails, search engine ads and online banners ads. 

The report brings insights over 47 global consumer markets, underlying their cultural differences in regards to their  trust in advertising.  Europeans are the less likely to believe in advertising, Danes being the most skeptical ones (the explanation given by Jonathan Carson from Nielsen Buzzmetrics being that in more developed markets people don't see advertising "as a conveyor of useful information" as its seen in developing markets). You could have thought that Latin cultures were the most influenced by WOM and consumer generated media. Yet, Asia and North America consider them both a more reliable source of information than Europeans and Latin Americans do. 

After months of thinking, dialoguing and writing, 'Join The Conversation' , Joseph Jaffe's second book was released on Amazon last week Sunday. Joseph did not only launch the book, he walked the talk from day one.  October 21st was just the "fireworks" part of the process. 

How could he have done differently when the content of his book is to demonstrate the power of conversation?  But he orchestrate brilliantly, exceeding his probably craziest dreams and making JTC in a couple of hours number 2 in Amazon business bestsellers category (when I looked it up JTC was down to rank 62 - still amazing for a young rather unknown author in a very niche market - no offense Joseph). 

Co-creation has not been restricted to book cover creation and the writing participation process  for ' Why are you so afraid of the conversation' chapter (free download here). The launch has more than anything else been a very participatory project, Joseph calling on October 21st to spread the world, buy a book and post a review, be it on Amazon, blogs or the Facebook group he created to promote JTC. 

How he did it practically is very well summed up in one of the Imedia connection newsletters or his own Jaffejuice blog.  To wrap it up here,  he skillfully combines a couple of the social media tools he's been using for some years or months: a wiki , a blog,  tweets, a Facebook group, chats on Skype and video chat on ooVoo etc.

You probably think the most important part in this last sentence was the name of the tools and you're excitedly taking notes? Wrong.  The crucial point was ' .. he's been using for some years or months". Because if Joseph did succeed to leverage so vividly his community power on a Sunday day to spread the word about his book,  it's because he took the time to build strong relationships with these people - some of them going so far as buying a couple of dozen each.  This is where the power of conversation lays.

The process is not new though (to name but one, Waiting for your Cat to bark? released in the summer 2006 made it to number one on the Wall Stress Journal Business Bestseller list with just the same technics- except maybe for the videos  and real time chat uses). However, launching products without traditional mainstream media is one of the biggest opportunities of Social Media use. While there's no silver magic bullet there is definitely recurrent efficient technics to use. ROI dubious marketers still out there? Case made. Well done Joseph !

Ever wonder how to make money on Facebook? or how Facebook can help you make money on your site ?   Here's the answer suggested by the WOMMA news: "social networking sites may be a useful Internet Advertising tool", helping getting qualified traffic to online retailers. The last study done and commented by Hitwise reveals that hugely popular sites like Facebook are the best contributors to drive visitors to internet stores. eBay claimed 31,4 of its traffic is coming from Facebook and the like. Facebook is even going one step further with a new application called Business 3.0 enabling brands to directly sell their products on Facebook (link to the application).

Ok, I cut off the subliminal self-promotional message now. Don't see any toadying here but a subtle-free wink to Microsoft's last commitment to the advertising business with the yesterday official news of our agreement with Facebook, a $240 million investment for a minority stake (1,6%) in one of the most successful 3-year-old companies ever. The deal makes us their exclusive third-party advertising platform partner, meaning we expand our one year advertising relationship on the US network to a global partnership,  reaching out the 60 % of the platform users living outside the US. And of the new 250,000 users registering every day. Socialization of the internet requires innovation. We share with Facebook a common vision on the future of computing, advertising and the democratization of the web.  Innovation in the advertising will answer the advertisers' needs on the platform. To be continued.

Interesting feedback from from ZD net blog:

Speaking about product placement in video in my earlier posts, here's a good case-in-point coming from Advertising Lab. Forget about Loch Ness production, Toyota teamed up this time with World of Warcraft to create a new kind of 30 sec TV ad: the 30sec in gaming video spot, featuring its Tacoma model

The ad is also a very good example of how a brand can and should leverage UGC successes to build right on campaigns. Toyota did it with parodying one the most famous WoW characters Leeroy Jenkins and his now history unfortunate ‘Let’s do this’ battle prompting unexpected call using the original plot with a completely different outcome.  The buzz is spreading quite fast among gamers and social networks, making it a double worth WoW story. More than 400,000 downloads on day 1, over 1 million viewings in the first 48 hours, and elected to be showed on TV. Like it or not, agree they probably made a better job this time at targeting a niche of would-drive Tacomers.

Cocorico. Cock-a-doodle. Twice is indeed well-justified. The first one to congratulate Belgium - my home country and still one Big Small country the last time - to have turned its local Best Of Advertising Awards - of which I remember a fantastic experience last year as president of the jury - into a more European-focused and US-inspired MIXX awards . Along with the record reached by online ad spending during the first months of this year - more than 131%  for Q1&Q2 compared to 2006 - it seems like a new online creative wind is blowing over Belgium. Let it blow - and let the planning follow accordingly...

The second one for self congratulations: at the same MIXX awards Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions won a Gold Award at the same MIXX awards with the 'Bring the love back' video. Kudos to Geert Desager who made this happen. It's the first time MDAS is being rewarding with a marketing and interactive excellence price. And the honor is great, to be recognized by our peers as the most creative and effective campaign in the Brand awareness/positioning category. Since its release last May, the video got more than 170,000 views. Not bad for a B2B campaign. And since Scoble just discovered the video last week - although he totally misses the point on this one - forecast more buzz around it in the coming days. 

Gold was shared with Boondoggle' s Singing in the shower campaign. I love it. It totally speaks to the age of conversation between brands and consumers, to  the platforms that allow that conversation, it speaks to the brand characteristics. Well-deserved. The same category rewarded the 'Rent a wife' campaign. The fact that the campaign had to be stopped by a Belgian court decision did not prevent Emakina to win Bronze. The website  campaign and the videos were removed a few weeks ago but you can still view a few screenshots here and read more over the campaign there . In 3 weeks time, the site received 600,000 unique visitors and the video was viewed 100,000 times.

Prophet and its Unite for Diabetes campaign won the Best European campaign awards. If you're curious to see more on creative cases made in Belgium - and if you read French or Dutch-  check the links for the rewarded campaigns here. Also: don't miss Jealous computers - great job from These Days for Nokia which won Gold in the best use of Interactive Media.

And yes - for all those asking there will be a Bring back the love sequel - all in preparation (and not even sure I can even mention here but there you go).  

An amazing avalanche of press coverage (The Times, Media Guardian Online, IHT.com, CNN.com, Telegraph.co.uk, Foxnews.com, Brand Republic.com, Eurogamer.net to name a few - and... Pravda). All covering our latest & most recent ingame advertizing deal.

UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the surveillance arm of the intelligence services, will be the first spy agency to use ingame advertising for new recruits. The ads will appear as billboards in games including Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent. They are life served on PC's and Xbox 360 consoles connected to the internet. In this way the GCHQ cab reach out to the potential recruits that it wants to search, “computer-savvy, technologically able, quick thinking."  The new candidates will be working as software experts in the signal intelligence and information assurance and will be far away from Bond-like exploits. 

Good to see that it becomes clear that with our in-gaming ad offer from Massive in over a 100 titles we offer innovative solutions to reach out to specific & captive target audiences in an innovative way. Why not include it in your marketing mix ?

How can we marketers make sense of the constant fast-paced changes linked to the digital endless possibilities we’re being confronted to? That’s a chronic question I often try and address and that’s precisely the question avenueA/Razorfish aimed to answer in its recent Fast Forward : designing for constant change study - download it here.
Among the 13 essays written by the agency designers round the world and conceived to be conversation starters on how emerging medias are evolving and their impact on the users’ behaviour- working both way actually-, the one entitled ‘Video killed the internet Star’ caught my eyes. People who assist my recent speeches know that Video – and its strong ability to change the digital landscape- is one the component I recommend to follow closely, especially from a Social Media perspective. And the key findings of the report highlights the main reasons to do so:

• video is one of the best components enabling today’s consumers to personalize their digital experience (besides creating and publishing their own recorded content, people are offered through videos sharing portals a contextual ecosystem where they can interact together, using best practice SM tools like commenting, rating, reviewing, sharing, videoing back, tagging, etc.)
• online videos watching affect offline consumption (primary within the entertaining industry but not only): 85% consumers have watched a movie preview online before going to see the film at the theater
• with 4 billion minutes of human time devoted to watching videos on YouTube every month (that’s roughly 1,000,000 video views per day), video highlyl deserves the 3rd killer ap denomination after e-mail and search, achieved only with a minor 40% broadband access penetration rate in the States and between 15 and 35 % in Europe.

And if you think about the fact that only roughly around 1% internet users are creating content and that YouTube videos’ monthly growth is 1M new uploads, you’ll get a glimpse of what lays ahead.  The study also suggests various ways to monetize online videos like pre and post-rolls, ads displays and sponsorships. But it fails to mention one which will fairly grow in the coming months: product placement. Records already offer the best of non-strategic /non integrated exemples: the obvious Mentos videos generated a 15% increase in product sales (Mentos, not Coke that is...). More on this later. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for directing me to the study.

Oh and on video : yesterday we announced a deal with ITV for internet coverage of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, the hit reality television show. The deal gives us the right to give our users access to clips and content from the next Celebrity series.

Let's throw it up here - have received the link 5 times over the last 2 days - so let's share it to give a light note just before the weekend.

I do like this cartoon a lot. But looking at it I can't help thinking: they X-rayed the wrong organ. They should have gone for... the heart.  Who said loyalty was a mind-only question? Loyalty is also sometimes an unconscious phenomenon and originates from very irrational reasons- that is, very emotional ones. Make your customers' world a better place -help them be a better spouse, worker, friend...- without talking to their mind but head directly for the center of emotions, their heart.  Play more with emotions and less with rational.  Add value to your consumers' experiences and you'll establish mindshare through heartshare. (And yes, experiment more with Social Media because emotion is key component to it.) Thanks to Church of Customer for pointing to Tom Fishburne and his Skydeck cartoons. I saw the Power of WOM a long time go but never checked Tom's site before today.

Definitely worth keeping in your inspirational box.

" Ca va sans le dire mais ça va encore mieux en le disant". This typical Belgian common phrase stated the fact that sometimes things so obvious they don't need to be mentioned yet benefit to be spoken out loud. So it goes with this article from iMedia Connection echoing a component of Social Media I often stress when doing recent presentations - and where we also get most questioned. "Social media equals Kids, right?". Not ! 

Social Media is no longer a kid's media. Sure enough besides Generation Y, you also find not only the Boomers but also Generation Jones, the 'mature' online adults aged 50+, who are definitely taking over social networks.  A year ago already, Nielsen/Netratings announced numbers showing that prevalent age groups for major social networks like Youtube, Facebook and My Space were between 34 to 64 years old.

Despite the fact teens found it "super creepy when adults have Facebook profiles", when Facebook opened access to its social platform, it took only 9 month for the population's profile to change from 0% to 50% non- students.  And today Generation Jones has its own platforms where they can friend together and take brain games and quizzes to extend their life expectancy without having to be kindly despised by youngsters.

And even more good news: adults social networkers are also said to be more educated, higher income and more affluent audiences than the online adult population. So if your audience is Mr and Mrs Jones, be sure to check the examples John Gray is listing.

It's been a week ago now since we spent time in Paris at Imagine07 - but after that I spent some time in the French office and in Rome, and yesterday I participated into the launch of Zed Digital in Belgium.

If Imagine07’s objective was to shift the perception of Microsoft in the industry from a software-only company to a  media company focusing on online advertising, the message delivered in Paris to more than 600 clients from 17 European countries, has also reached both international press/newspapers and bloggers. Thought it would be interesting to give you a quick read :-)

International Herald tribune: "Microsoft looks to become major player in ad world" -  "Steve Ballmer, vowing that Microsoft's $6 billion plunge into the ad business two months ago was not just an experiment, said Tuesday that advertising would become 25 percent of the software company's business within a few years."

Business week: "Microsoft as Media King? The software giant sees its future in advertising and mobile and is taking the message to Europe—and to Google and Yahoo!"

Collaboration marketing from James Cherkoff: "It's An Ad Platform, But Not As We Know It"

Also a first: first time that MSFT European event was broadcasted on Twitter, thanks to McLeod. Interesting Twitter feeds from Mcleod: "Thoughts on conf so far: "Madison Avenue, you work for Redmond now." - “Note to bloggers: MSFT is starting to see itself more and more as a media company. Get used to it.” - "Ad agencies are CRITICAL" to digital advertising success, according to MSFT. Official" - "Note to gapingvoid.com commenters: The "Microsoft sucks" and "Microsoft is evil" conversations are genuinely uninteresting to me". Believe me, I am glad somebody else wrote those lyrics.

With a couple of days to go the excitement is building for our EMEA event Imagine 07 in Paris on 2nd October - a confirmed delegate list of over 600 senior decision-makers from across EMEA and a fantastic line up of speakers from Microsoft and the advertising and media industry. 

I am honoured to host this event and welcome this big crowd. Also extremely excited to hear from the speakers who all are experts in their fields. Our CEO Steve Ballmer will deliver the Keynote: Microsoft’s vision for leadership in an evolving market. Chris Dobson will open with the MS vision for advertising followed by Brian McAndrews who plans to share his perspective on the aQuantive acquisition and what it means to our customers. Derrick Connell will then share our vision for the future of search.  Ivan Pollard, Partner at Naked Communications then takes the stage to talk about media neutral thinking in an always-on, all-in one world and this will be followed by an interview by Chris Dobson with Tess Alps, CEO of Thinkbox where Tess will be asked to consider what convergence means, what challenges the TV industry is facing; how these changes are affecting consumers and her view on what advertisers want from TV now and in the future. This will be followed by a session with Terri Richardson, Group Marketing Manager from Microsoft TV talking around what MS are doing in the IPTV space and how Mediaroom is powering new types of advertising.

We also welcome Marc-Henri Magdelenat, CMO Screen Tonic, who will cover the rise and rise of the small screen – the quality of mobile marketing communications and how you can best target customers on the move. This is followed by an engaging session on Entertainment: The Evolution of Engagement with Jeff Bell, and a client presentation from Stephen Hunt, Head of Media at Paramount Pictures UK where he will deliver a case study on the hugely successful Transformers launch.  I'll then lead a lively panel and debate on Telling stories in the digital age: the relationship between creativity and technology. Fantastic panelists from leading creative agencies have accepted our invitation: Ajaz Ahmed – AKQA, Jonny Vulkan – Anomaly, Winston Binch – Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Hamish Pringle, Director of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) plans to look to the future and consider what advertising and agencies will look like in 10 years time. Our last external speaker of the day is Martin Lindstrom – best-selling author and leading online brand strategist. Martin is going to look at what the brand builder needs to do to make meaningful contact with ‘Generation Tomorrow’. Our VP EMEA John Mangelaars will close the day with his vision for EMEA.  All set to go. Have a great weekend in the meantime. 

Consumers should be taught to learn how to become better storytellers if they want to participate in ads creations. Briefly summed up, this is the recommendation Denise Lee Yohn professes on iMedia Connection. Sort of Ok OK what she says but this 'we as pros do better' attitude would make me cringe if not done on purpose. I hope. I hate patronizing. Amongst other things the brand marketer states that common people's creation " ..better be good work" , that 'the brand should dictate the strategy' and that " the objective is not to make people laugh".  I see all that. But wait a minute: laughing is one of the strongest emotions advertisers are trying to trigger. So let's rephrase the previous: "If we're going to be seeing more work from ad directors at all, it better be good work" :-) There have been far too many mediocre ads heralded as great ones and unfortunately 'novelty' is not some excuse we can give them. I'd like to answer with the following recommendation, stolen from the excellent 'I am the media' from FutureLab. Alain is a fair guy and I am sure he appreciates the Allow me to copy some of its material here.

While Denise is still wondering "if the average Joes who enter ad contests are as capable of creating work as great that produced by experienced and trained ad agency creative directors", I suggest you take a look at the recent Deloitte's video contest I mentioned last week. Yes I think they can make an ad. At least something that I care about, that is fun & memorable, that i can easily tell others, that makes my conversations more interesting. They exist.

The last two days I spent in Düsseldorf at the OMD, thé Online Marketing fair for Germany. It's been my fourth year at OMD and I thought it was funny to see how the exhibition & congress have evolved, very much following the same turbulence and growth path as the new digital world itself. The number of participants has grown over 10.500 from 6.500 or so last year. And the quality of presentations & customer connections was nice.

A new term is being coined by John Moore from Brand Autopsy  (It might have been used before but it's the first time I read it labeled as such): EGM is the word and stands obviously for Employee Generated Media. Moore is pointing out to a freshly published new book, written by Gates. Not our Bill but Gill, firstname Mickael. Gates Gill is the author of How Starbucks saved my life, his own story relating how he was offered a $10,50/hr job as a Starbucks Barita after he'd been fired by the ad-agency he'd been working at for many years as a Creative Director and failed to develop his own business consultancy. Starbucks made his mantra 'Less past more future' more than a daily prayer. Without any preconceived strategic communication plan from the brand, this vibrant testimonial will surely add to the already -and well deserved- sacrosanct reputation linked to Starbucks (funnily enough, customers who bought the book on Amazon also bought Mother Theresa: Come Be My Light'. (That one deserves some additional research)  Besides being a clever way to make sure the brand eventually engages with the new social media opportunities (by encouraging employees to lead the way), EGM seems to be the new fad to touch Generation Y.  More and more companies, including the Big Four are leveraging on EGM to recruit new employees. The most common media is video. The reason why? Video enables brands to connect and engage with their audience on an emotional level. Recently Deloitte successfully launched a Festival Film to stimulate employees to actively participate in recruiting new employees. The theme: ' What's your Deloitte?' generated an amazing 370 submissions, posted on the company's intranet - and YouYube for that matter. Take a look at winner number 2 entry, staging what it's like to be a Deloitte client service Superhero.

Unbelievable this is not a professionally edited one. Maybe an idea for Telenet customer service ? I'd vote for Dorien :-)

PS: Was thinking about the HR conference European Employee Engagement Conference - Transforming engagement strategy into action, soon in Amsterdam on 28/29th November. I wonder if EGM will be addressed.

Once in a while it's great to see good initiatives around Social Media. Forrester's most known bloggers, Li and Bernoff, are responsible for this one. Li and Bernoff are the initiators of a new industry awards, the Groundswell Awards, inspired from the name of their excellent blog.
The Awards' specificity? Reward - and spread the word about - Social Media initiatives taken by brands and non-profits. On a worldwide level. Any idea on the number of entries they received? About the number of beers the smallest possible bar in my fantastic home city of Leuven offers on a bad night. That is precisely 78. While 78 is still a a lot of beer to drink, even for an average Belgian (let alone German) beer drinker - it looks pretty gloomy as far as Social Media submissions are concerned. Don't rush to participate though, entries are closed.

The number of participants might not be high enough to collect many valuable insights but the Awards merit will be at least to draw - one of ?- the first Social Media Landscape for 2007. And try and determine the business value companies can benefit from entering the Social (Digital) Age. From the four entry judgements Li and Bernoff chose, business value - over innovation, audacity and authenticity- will be the key indicator of winnership for each category.  For the ROI centrics among us this is surely good news. Speaking about the awards' categories, I'm a bit dubious about the distinction they made. Bernoff explained that the categories  (Listening, Speaking, Energizing, Supporting, Embracing, Managing and Social impact) were defined to help companies approach the new media with the right questions in mind. Being the "why should I use these tools" and then "which and how?". I'm not sure whether his framework help them achieve this goal, nor do I agree when Bernoff assigns the Speaking category only to marketing purpose. In the conversation age of ours, it's the marketing duty to include all of them- except the one responding to internal objectives, the Managing category. Anyway: business value is definitely an asset Li and Bernoff master. Not only does their 'speaking' platform engage with their audience, but their blog also generates insights for their reports, provides content for their book,  and helps them promote their own event in Chicago next month. Kudoos Li and Bernoff, you get the moves :-)

I know what I said about Twitter a few months ago and how sceptic I was about the way it creates connections between people. Or better about the usefulness of the twitter twatter conversations going on. 'having my wax done' was the one I remember, for no particular reason though. Anyway, I still personally don't feel the need to create tweets to add an other means of communication to the ones I use today.  Right, I could probably use it 'privately' to communicate with my team while I'm traveling or to share instant thoughts and real-time comments on presentations I attend. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't feel the urge - nor the obvious added value to me - to do it now. Call it resistance to change if you want. Shit makes me feel old all of a sudden.  However, what I feel is that Twitter is indeed a very good example of the overhype but undervalue concept underlying the social media acceptance by brands.  As for all the new social tools, it takes time for marketers to grasp the meaning and the value they can add to it.  
But from what I've been reading these last weeks, it seems like savvy marketers are acquiring the maturity to provide this value. Not by using the platform as an advertising platform, but as a communication platform.  Twitter is achieving a new status in building relationships through 140 characters conversations. This last quarter, a significant number of large corporations jumped into the band. Jeremiah Owyang has recently mentioned a number of those initiatives, along with a 'to do' approach. Marketing Profs set up an account this month. The main brands' use is still clearly about pushing events and promotionals announcements. MSM companies and entertainment brands have been using it from a couple of months to promote their programs. Amazon delivers deals of the day tweets. Dell launched exclusive Twitter offers. IT providers use it as an extra customer service support.  But the real strength of the tool is to actively engage with the tweets brands' subscribers, the Followers. And this is beginning to happen. As Jeremiah stated 'Twitter is not for everybody'. It is probably the privileged playground of brands who are already committed to entering the conversations - wherever it happens.

Still once in a while stuff makes me smile :-) Read Armano's post on Questions for the Agency Executive. Even if your agency Account executive would give you some positive or genuine answers to these questions, it probably would not turn him or her into the Geek Marketeer in house role I talked about yesterday. Anyway, if your Agency AE is older than 30-somethings, better check it out.  In short, same old story really: people/agencies are developing/integrating services they're not familiar with because they don't relate to it, or think they won't relate to it - until they're required to. I can still remember conversations I had a few years ago with CEO's and marketeers asking why on earth they should have a website. And the moment I asked about Instant Messaging useage not 20% raised their hands - and that was on a symposium on... youth marketing ... barely 2 years ago.

The difference though between the late 90's and today- and the reason why it can't work any longer- is what Armano calls the digital immigrants vs. the digital natives. In 2007, interns in their 20ies are the new R&D opportunity for the agencies. They don't think in terms of media consumption, they breathe connections - be them live, mobile, digital. They can learn them - they are actually- how to walk the talk.