January 2012
1 post
Why I work in advertising - A reflection from 2011
I have worked in advertising for almost 4 years now. After graduating from uni I started out doing an internship at a small little agency in Malmö, Sweden and then worked a short and intensely rewarding stint on the client-side at an architecture firm. From these experiences I determined that agency life was where I wanted to be and that strategy was where I wanted to go.
After recognising the...
November 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Thought: our industry is an echo-chamber, not an...
Recently I heard a industry colleague, a smart one, make an interesting comment, “If we are all reading the same blogs, the same sites, attending the same conferences and talking with each other, aren’t we all developing the same skills and knowledge”.
While we were talking about hybrid skills, it triggered a different train of thought, one of the state of marketing competency...
In another galaxy: 2 weeks using the Samsung...
After being one of those iPhone owners bagging out Android, I decided to see what it was like to live with a Google phone. So after 2 years of Apple, I popped out my sim and slipped it into a Samsung Galaxy sII. My initial reactions when using it were of “allmän förvirring”, a Swedish term we use at the office to describe a type of ‘general confusion’, for when things that...
October 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Lesson: Recruiting like a start-up
Recently I have been getting more and more involved in our agency’s recruitment. While not in the management team, I think I have learnt something critical for when I, one day, have to build my own team.
Your next recruit should be better than the last.
Start-ups have pretty tough recruiting policies. While they offer unique opportunities and attract talent, they are small and...
September 2011
3 posts
Swedes are getting professional
Over the past 10 months, more and more Swedes have signed up for LinkedIn. Especially with those working with Marketing and PR.
Source: LinkedIn Advertising Targeting Tool: Dec 2010 & Sep 2011
Does creative have to equal new?
Too often digital work’s creativity is evaluated against the criteria of ‘NEW’. And this is often linked to an application or use of technology.Many articles have been written about marketers’ and advertisers’ obsession with shiny new objects. But why is it that ‘never been done before’ becomes the review mark. You might as well not have a brief or...
Branding the new way, starting with a manifesto
At the moment I am working on the rebranding of our own agency. Perfect timing given I have finished a few books about less traditional but arguably better ways to build brands that connect. Based on an ideology.
A brilliant tool for expressing one’s ideology is a manifesto. A public notice of your principles, your purpose or intentions.
So I started with my own brand: marekting
Below is...
August 2011
3 posts
“If it’s not just a bit scary & stressful, it’s not quite...”
– Me
“Don’t trash-talk. Jargon is rubbish. So don’t recycle it.”
– Me
Lesson 42: The keys to career success
A few consolidated ideas and learnings from some great books I have read over the last 12 months.
July 2011
7 posts
Thought: The world through filters - Instagram...
While on our holiday in Italy last week, I tried on my girlfriend’s sunglasses. As I looked out over the third town in Cinque Terra, Corniglia, I said, “everything looks like a 50’s latin film”. That same feel and vibe that her coloured lens produced no doubt inspired Instagram and Hipstermatic to introduce light and colour filters for mobile phone camera apps. But I hate...
Lesson 41: Cultural Branding Strategy
I have for a long time felt there was something wrong with traditional marketing thinking. Some brands fail, some brand’s breakthrough and become part of our psyche. Why? The book ‘Cultural Strategy’ by Douglas Holt & Douglas Cameron was an ‘ah ha’ moment. It simultaneously organised all my thoughts and improved my understanding of brand strategy by providing the...
Lesson 40: Tips for junior job seekers
I love the job search process. I know it’s rare and some might even say sick, but it’s true. It’s a rich personal development experience where you meet lots of new interesting people and spend the whole time talking about one of my favourite subjects - marketing - not me :) (I am not that self-involved). And while it’s been a while since I have been job searching, I have...
On Vay-Kay & Out of Office
I am currently baking pizzas in Italy. So if this email isn’t a pizza order, I am afraid I won’t be able to address it until I return on the 8th of August. Happy summer! ===//=== Jag är för närvarande och bakar pizza i Italien. Så om detta inte är en pizzabeställning är jag rädd att det måste vänta till den 8e augusti. Trevlig sommar!
Thought: Irony and social media
I like irony. It’s a powerful way to make a literary point. To communicate a stark imbalance. To reference and commentate culture.
So here is a brief commentary on the brand culture of social media:
Today I decided to tweet at @sj_ab (Swedish Railways) to get some customer service. It turns out they don’t do customer service on twitter. Their tweets just forward me to ring...
“A planner is like an iPhone. Once you get one you wonder how you could have ever...”
– Appreciated words spoken in a client meeting by @emilsalonen
Lesson 39: The idea wolf pack: Creative, Creative,...
Forget the idea of planners being the one-man wolf-pack. It’s time for us to join the creative pack.
Planning sometimes feels like a solo job. The analysis and thinking work is often more time and cost efficient when done by primarily one person. Classic tasks like developing strategic platforms and writing creative briefs has, however, in my experience produced the best results when...
May 2011
1 post
Lesson 38: Biases in mobile statistics
Scenario:
You hear someone in a meeting shout out an impressive statistic like ‘45% of people use the Internet on their mobile phones’. And then a week later you read on Mashable that mobile Internet has grown to 25% penetration. And then an iPhone app development company emails you stating that iPhones fill 50% of your customers pockets. And then you start wondering, who to believe...
April 2011
4 posts
Thought: Patting myself on my back
A year ago I interviewed for what is now my current job at Mobiento. The fun-est part of the whole process, which started with a Twitter exchange with @tobiasbard, was the test brief I was handed. A brief that required me to show not only my strategic and planning thinking but also some creativity thereafter.
The proudest part of my response was the insight I identified that would make a...
Idea: Crowdsourced Randomness
Lately I have been thinking about creative inspiration.
Writing a great creative brief takes a lot of the limelight when it comes to inspiring creative work. The issue however is that some great ideas can come from non-creatives. But non-creatives haven’t the training or experience to get the ball rolling.
So how do you get that first kick or push? I have been working with our CD to put...
Lesson 37: Return on Effort
Emails represent a big part of our working time. Reading and filing. Forwarding and Replying. CCing and Trashing.
So I started wondering, with all the effort that goes into writing & reading emails, what is the return.
The results below are based on a calculation: Project Budget in KR / Email
Where emails are the number of emails SENT, RECEIVED and CC’d involving my work...
March 2011
5 posts
EVALUATION TABLE: A guide to help you decide...
With all the talk about Facebook Pages and a prevalent willingness to rush to create them, Charlotte and I sat down and thought about the Pros and Cons. We then set them all out in a table where a quantitative method can be used to evaluate and compare which path you should take. Thanks go to Emil Salonen for the methodology.
Download the PDF here.
Created with @lottisg
Lesson 36: The 90 day sprint
The 90 day sprint is my second post and continues my line of thinking regarding work/life balance.
Swedish workers are blessed with long vacations. I myself have 27 paid days off a year. Very generous by most standards.
But unlike most, I don’t save them up to take a long vacation in one big whack. At the same time I have had comments that it “seems” like I go on holidays a...
Lesson 35: Study your audience like Lady Gaga
LADY GAGA
I am fascinated by her.
I enjoy her music - it’s easy to party to pop. But what I think is so interesting is how she is so smart with connecting with and influencing her consumers.
There are blogs that love her.
There are blogs, like this one, that bash her for stealing all her looks from others.
But what I have always thought was that she gets it.
She takes ideas and...
February 2011
2 posts
Thought: Who holds the balance of power?
The holy grail of the working professional is work/life balance.
But the problem is, just like the grail, it is a myth. Folklore that creates a sense of something to search for. Something to dedicate one’s life to.We change jobs, firms and even countries in search of it, following the mirage of job descriptions filled with promises and cultural stereotypes.The worst part is that it...
January 2011
3 posts
Lesson 33: The Awareness Fallacy
AIDA is wrong. The focus on awareness building should be replaced with a focus on driving action.
Below is a presentation of how I am now approaching briefs in 2011. Inspired by a few great digital thinkers from Australia (Adam Ferrier) and Sweden (Leon Phang).
Lesson 32: The ROI on Apps
Mobile and web application development is running hot right now. But is much of the investment in apps producing results that are full of hot air? With so many brands getting into the app space, especially on Facebook or iPhone, it’s a question that every agency and brand should be able to answer unequivocally.Was this project effective? Was it an efficient investment of marketing budget?
...
December 2010
2 posts
Stats: Professional & Social Swedes
LinkedIn is an amazing social network. Brilliant for building personal brands, strong for building professional networks and often under utilised for B2B and B2C communication.
While the hype-spotlight remains focused on Facebook, Twitter & Foursquare, LinkedIn has been quietly innovating. They’ve changed quite a lot, adding recently:
more app support
more stats for premium
a...
Thought: Årets & Sveriges lataste copy
My first post in Swedish.
Jag tittar lite på reklam måste jag erkänna. Det är inget konstigt när man jobbar med det. Jag läser (eller har läst) en del böcker om Brand Positioning och har jobbat med strategiplanering nu ett par år. Och här och där skriver jag även copy, ofta för att skapa rätt känsla för någon annan att utveckla vidare.
Allt detta betyder att jag bryr mig lite för mycket...
November 2010
6 posts
Lesson 31: The C-Word
The C-word in Swedish business is Consensus.
An ugly word that should never be used. It triggers disgust in some and resonates with others. So why is Consensus an ugly word? I’ll start by describing the business culture I am used to. In corporate Australia, roles are defined. Responsibility delegated. Accountability held up. Asses kicked where necessary. Praise endowed when deserved. And...
Thought: What is effectiveness?
Effectiveness is creativity.
Creativity is effectiveness.
Thought: The Cr-app
Being 50% of an “iphone-media-type-couple” means a lot of time is spent in app-world. But my and Charlotte’s app-world is one filled with many ‘huh!s’, ‘WTF!s’ and ‘Oh, whatevas’. Too often our tv-watching / app-store browsing / blog reading evenings create high expectations on what our iphone playmates will deliver us. Yet with every failed...
Thought: Brands without purpose
A position. Critical for brands to communicate a unique value they provide consumers. Its the core of a branding campaign. Its the foundation that supports a product campaign.
But looking around Stockholm, and Sweden, I get this feeling like something is lost in translation. Not for me to understand what the ads are about, but rather the brand’s understanding of the market and consumers...
Lesson 30: The Inverse Creative Brief
I work at a creative digital mobile agency. This means sometimes we do creative concepting for mobile-centric campaigns across multiple channels. Sometimes we do straight production for creative agencies. Both work. Both are great. But then there is the third type of brief, the anti-brief, or as is perhaps more appropriately, the Inverse Creative Brief that comes in now and then.
To...
Lesson 29: Mobile Strategy Optimisation. Thanks...
Google analytics, and Omniture, provide an excessive amount of data to mine through. Hidden in the matrix of visitor numbers are some gems - insights that can help you learn about your users for planning your mobile strategy. Here are two.
Insights from a desktop website for Mobile Planning:
Where you don’t have a mobile optimized site or an application, you still have access to some key...
October 2010
3 posts
Thought: The difference between critique and...
a co-authored post with @lottisg
Often you ask a co-worker for some feedback or for their opinion on a piece of work. Sometimes it is work or ideas you have produced yourself, other times it is other people’s work that has come into your inbox.
The point of you asking is usually to get another perspective. But often what comes is not necessarily another point of view, but rather...
Thought: An app should only have one function?
We have a lot of discussions around how iPhone apps should be developed, and that they should have only one function.
I think it’s interesting how while we (those discussing this) agree in principle on this ‘principle’, UX and Planning define this ‘function’ in different ways.
UX seem to have a narrower view of function, defining the App as ‘doing one primary...
Lesson 28: The Chicken & The Egg: What comes...
While working with Media and Creative Agencies I have been increasingly considering the the old tale of the chicken and the egg… the ‘which comes first’ question. In this case it is whether the media drives the idea or the idea drives the media.
Where brands don’t have a relationship with a creative agency but rather use their media agency as a one-stop shop, they tend to work...
September 2010
5 posts
Thought: Where do you get the best clicks in...
*a very non-specific comparison of Publishers vs Facebook vs Mobile for illustrative purposes.
What is extremely interesting is the great discrepancy between online media (banners specifically) effectiveness in generating clickthroughs to a website or landing page.
So why is it that mobile banners have a higher click through rate than desktop banners, those run through publishers, blog networks or...
Lesson 27: Brutually Simple Thinking In...
Brutually Simple Thinking (BST) methodology is a planning tool I came across and was learning when I worked at M&C Saatchi / Mark in Melbourne.
At its core, its about creating communications that are impacting and effective through their simplicity:
‘It’s easier to complicate than to simplify’
+
‘Simple thoughts enter the brain quicker and stay there longer’
...
Lesson 26: Growing accustomed to a product/brand
Some products rock. You see it, feel it, or just get it straight away. But many brands and products are maybe a little bit more ‘roll’ than ‘rock’, and take a bit of time to understand or grow accustomed to before an appreciation for the product is formed.
OK GO is a great example of helping the world at large grow accustomed to their music and become a fan.
...
Embedding Widgets for blog promotion
Interestingly, lately I have been considering how embedded widgets as a tool used with blogger outreach could take your site to your blog partners, rather than driving traffic away, thus keeping the bloggers happy with visitors staying put but brands happy with eyeballs and clicks on content.
And now, in the midst of my thinking, I came across a ‘embed this code’ to win a ticket to...
Lesson 25: 8 brief answers to mobile marketing...
After three months working at Mobiento and in the mobile game, I have some answers to my pre-start ponderings…
+ Mobile SEO
1. What are the differences in search patterns, keywords etc of mobile users? I have hypotheses here that spelling mistakes factor higher, as do shorter search queries.
What I find amazing is the number of searches that Google registers coming from Mobiles and the...
June 2010
2 posts
