I saw this viral for Red Bull and they once again delivered a great Guerilla-stunt. I can’t really describe it, but check it out and give us your opinion.

I must say I like their sense of humor. Out.

Mark Mawson is a photographer who came up with a technique to photograph ink in water, called Aqueous.

By varying the kinds of paint who, he succeeds to get different results in the tank. One of the most difficult parts is the speed, because the shapes last only a split second.

The essential part is to be fast because the shapes only last a split second in the water before fading out.

Check his website for the other Aqeous pictures. That he is a versatile artist you can also see in the portraits and the fashion pictures.

I felt an amazing vibe, it was social, met some new people and had some good laughs. Although, as I said in my previous blogpost, Ghent has already a long tradition of gathering on the graslei, this was a first on the Sint-Pietersplein. A square which is seemingly often forgotten and maybe underapreciated because tonight, it provided a great setting.

Normally more pictures will follow.

Thanks to everyone I had a chat with tonight and… Out.

MonkeyLectric Video Pro bike wheel light display

In the meantime… keep thinking out of the blog.

(Through Geek and Poke)

You can’t think off a situation or it probably happened to somebody. Some of them are extremely hilarious, others are just embarassing and sometimes you just feel for the person, because maybe the same thing once happened to you. It’s cool just because of this, because you can connect with people who’ve had an even worse day then yours or who will show you some sympathy by agreeing your life is f*cked. But watch out, people can also say, you’ve got it coming. Check the site or follow them on twitter.

Check it out and gives us your most favourite fmylife-quotes.
This is one that gave me a little smile, imagining how embarrassed this person felt after she fell.

In the meanwhile keep thinking out of the blog

But now we have MC Hammer, “Can’t touch this”

Through Boskabout. Check out his blog.

Now what is this botellon all about? Botellon is an offline happening which starts online, initiated on social networks as Facebook. I told you before that 2009  for me will be the year off synergie between offline and online. This happening is a perfect illustration of this. We’ve had Young Scum and Twunches. We know these, but what is now botellon? Apparently the word botellón is an augmentative of botella (bottle) so the literal translation would be “big bottle”. In the ’90s this phenomena arose in Spain where people got out and drank there big bottles on the street. In Spain it is an integral part of their nightlife where on Saturday night people gather before going to nightclubs and discos. In 2004 a botellón in Sevilla attracted 70.000 people.

The event is spread by word of mouth and through social networks. Now we’ll have our own botellon in Ghent on the 24th of June. Offcourse Ghent has always had a tradition with nightlife gathering. The infamous Graslei will remain one of the most fascinating places from may till october, as it is a place where students and young people meet on warm evenings to have a drink and ocassionally to take a dive in the water. Now the Sint-Pietersplein will be the center of Ghent for nightlife gathering.

Out of the Blog will be attending and hopes to meet you on the Sint-Pietersplein, so give a us a hands-up if you’re going and we’ll have a botellon.

To which point turns the debate: Twitter is for me all about authenticity. To know someone on the other end of the line is, really who he clames he is. And whether you’re a celebrity, or a company, or just good old you, authenticity remains the key. I suppose people also demand a certain level of authenticity in the people you follow, or is it irrelevant? I only except this from newschannels, where I deliberatly follow their newsfeed.

What’s your opinion? Feel free to comment.

With thanks to @barbaraverbeeck.

They are calling themselves “a guarantee for pop songs bathing in melody, atmosphere and rhtythmic edge, dressed in trench coats of mystery.” To some extent I can find myself in there.

I discovered some info on this blog, Big in Belgian, which talks about belgian Rockmusic. Furthermore I’ve noticed they have made some video’s about the making of their first album. You can find these video’s along with the video of their first single on their myspace.

For me they have heightened the expectations for the album, and i hope they will be able to deliver the level of this single. I’m genuinely looking forward to the release.

In the meanwhile… keep thinking out of the blog.

The last presentation of the day was from Egbert Jan van Bel he is the author of several books, f.i. crappy customers, and came over as an enthusiastic, driven speaker.

First he talked about what marketing is to him. The quote: “Marketing is a competence” is one I will remember. For him every entrepreneur needs some marketing or he won’t survive.

The starting point for his new study was the thesis that customer satisfaction equals customer value. He wasn’t sure of that and therefore wanted to study the subject, digging back to what customer satisfaction and customer value means by definition.

45% of the people could not name any positive occasion they had with a company. This offers two options:

1. There weren’t any good experiences.

2. They weren’t motivated to think positive about certain experiences.

To think positive, let’s hope the first option isn’t true, or you would’ve probably noticed it on some blogs and in your client service.  But you can’t often speak of a satisfaction of the customer in this case, if you can’t recall ANY positive occasion.

Egbert Jan van Bel states marketeers at getting, the right message on the right moment. But marketing is more than this, it is to sell the right product to the right person. This is what creates customer satisfaction.

Because marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. According to the Definition of Marketing by the AMA (in the meanwhile the definition has been updated)

As opposed to the definition by Kotler, which is outdated to him: “Marketing is the management process that identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer requirements profitably.”

Concluding from the research in 60 countries, he gives us twelve observations/ tips/ advises.

1st: Go Brand yourself.

everyone starts to look alike and there are less A-brands. This gives you space.

2nd: Change your USP(Unique Selling Point) to a UBR (a Unique Buying Reason).

Volvo changed from “we are the safest” to “we bring your family home, safe

3th: Promise and deliver:
Make sure you take your customer serious and he will take you serious

4th: What’s your focus?
If you make a proposition, make sure you’re able to come to your end of the deal. This will give you reputation and loyalty.

5th: Manage expectations:
An average 86% of your customers is satisfied with the service of their previous supplier. This isn’t logical, but he changed and he isn’t going back to his previous supplier, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to convince him.

6th: Fight the competitor not the customer.
When people are angry it is because the wrong products where there at the wrong moment. Virgin mobile went in against the stream by being more expensive then the competition. But they were better and they won. Nobody believed it was possible but the competition was pissing it consumers off and it came so far they were prepared to pay more.

7th: Focus on the customer
Every company is saying this, but Egbert Jan van Bel showed a pretty example. INEAS created a car-insurance for women, because they are better drivers (they drive safer, have less accidents,…) so it was cheaper for them to get an insurance. They went in against the clichés and really focused on the customer.

8th: Be honest and be transparent.
Don’t charge the fee, google is charging you for your advertising, through to your customer. (this was a true example, where he was charged for the advertisement they made on Google.)

9th: Change your budget allocation.
In times of crisis, budgets are changing. But what will you do with your budget? To act adequate, mesure the effect your marketing efforts had. This will give you the opportunity to react when your budget is changed.

10th: Focus on accountability
Your point of interest has to be: earning while learning. Learn from your investments and react to the effect it has.

11th: Go for contemporary marketing.

Go from a value chain to a value circle. What is the value for the customer, but also what is the value of the customer for the company. Clients who make you lose money don’t exist, you create them. Maybe states Egbert Jan van Bel you just have to let them go. You have to ask yourself the question. Is it still worth the effort that they are my clients?
To get to a value circle, you have to start from your brand to certain triggers to a dialogue. A trigger is the right message, the right client, the right channel, the right moment. But this is simply keeping an eye on each other and when something moves on the other side, there will be a reaction. A dialogue is a more intense relation between a company and their customers. This dialogue will get you to the value circle.

12th: Move from Old to New School.
Instead of selling the brand start managing the consumer. Give the right product to the right consumer.
This were the twelve tips Egbert Jan van Bel gave along. Concluding he stated that he couldn’t say that customer satisfaction always creates more profit. But you do have to create a customer value as pointed clear, above.

I hoped Egbert Jan van Bel would give some more numbers on research he had done, but all to all it was a very instructive day. There weren’t any groundbreaking insights but the presentation was very good and he had a nice way of talking. He caught the attention of the public and told a story (which is something to applaud).

I hope I was able to give you a good overview of this last presentation of the day.

Thanks to Proximity BBDO and AdNerds for the student seats. I believe every event should consider giving away some student seats. It’s a great opportunity for students, to be able to attend such an events, and a place where they often learn some insights which they don’t learn at school.

I will make a blogpost in the near future about students at your event.

I will be attending iMinds on tuesday the 12th of May @ICC in Ghent. Mail me if you are planning to attend and we can have a little chat over there.
In the meanwhile keep thinking out of the blog.

Special thanks to @musx and @grapplica

Yesterday I was at the Relationship Marketing Congres of the Belgian Foundation Marketing in cooperation with Proximity BBDO. I arrived at noon and was just in time for the Social Media Café with the students, who were invited through the Student Seats. The purpose of this café was to give some people from companies the opportunity to talk with some digital natives, as my generation is often called.

For me this chat was instructive, but soon it slided into a discussion between the most geeky ones and the less geek people, who were still interested. It seemed, it went over the head of the less tech-savvy people, but all to all it was instructive for me personally.

The discussion was pulled to other themes around social media, but a lot of people from the companies seemed overwhelmed by the theme.

Maybe it might be an option to work in a kind of speed-dating system. Here can maybe interact on a more personal level en address your questions more directly to students and youngsters. Then off course it is the challenge to find the digital natives who can think on a strategic level and are able to think out of the perspective from somebody else.

In the meanwhile keep thinking out of the blog.

Special thanks to @musx from @AdNerds and @grapplica

I can’t give you an answer and I won’t try to do this. But I believe a trend can be taken in mind. 2008 was the year of facebook, 2009 will the year of twitter. These two tools are particulary handy when you want to go viral, together with youtube and vimeo amongst others. This isn’t a blogpost about virals, but i want to point out, which virals come across and the motivation behind these virals.

We saw an uprise in flashmobs as commercial with the most notorious ones, the flasmob in Liverpool station, the single ladies of beyoncé. This had succes, because people were amazed, including, by the experience that was given to the unexpecting viewers and the coolness of it.

What we are seeing is that off-line events are given a second life (what’s in a name) online and this happens simultaneously. At events there are backchannels where you  post your toughts, videos like those mentioned above are spreaded viral, but why specifically those ones?

In the meanwhile you also notice that connections online tends to a strengthening connection off-line and new friends that are made. For example Young Scum and other initiatives offline. What do we notice, in the meantime thoughts on the event are being twittered.

Most recently there was the ‘hey Jude‘ from T-Mobile at Trafalgar square. Now why does this, scores so high i believe? I believe it is because you see a sense of belonging that was given to the 13500 people on Trafalger Square. I believe that sense of belonging gives us a certain envy and catches our interest and call’s to certain emotions connected to this sense of belonging.

For me, 2009 will be the year of the synergy between offline and online. What do you think about this? And what is your motivation to share video’s and pictures?

In the meanwhile keep thinking.. out of the blog.

We have seen the challenge between CNN and Ashton Kutcher, and we have seen Oprah Winfrey join Twitter. At this point she already has 379,802 followers (and counting).

While we look at the democratisation of the internet, we see that now it’s creating opportunities for us to interact with people we couldn’t contact before, because we knew, a letter, a phone call, an e-mail,… wouldn’t reach them. Now we have the ability to interact with these people who are admired by thousands/millions of people.

Now the real question comes: who is behind the twitter-account? We know Stephen Fry does his own account, but in other cases we often don’t.

The biggest stupidity was performed by the Belgian singer Natalia, with the twittername nataliamusic.
What’s my point here: I keep wondering why her name is Bob Savenberg, who’s her manager? Is it her manager who is twittering? Is he pretending to be her? Is she twittering and did he just make the account?

I’m confused and don’t believe the autenticity of the account. So in my opinion the account is burned.

So my advise to her and her manager: “Be true, be open, or get out of social media.”

In the meantime.. Keep thinking out of the blog.

In other cases some guys realised this is the time to make a statement and strengthen the message the product sends out to your own audience. But also to strengthen the image percieved by a greater audience. With the automotive industry in pieces there is suddenly one manufacturer who does something remarkable.

BMW states in this ad:
” It’s not about the economic situation, it’s about vision.
The new BMW 7. A statement.”

BMW took a risk, but in my opinion it pays off. To send out a message where you are true to the message your products always sends out, you strengthen the image percieved by the audience.

Driving a BMW 7 in times of a financial crisis is as much as saying: “F*** off financial crisis, can’t touch me!”.

I wish to congratulate the people who decided to run this ad in these times. They showed some real ‘cojones’ and that’s much aprreciated in times of crisis.

To the Brands: take a risk, make a statement and keep thinking… out of the blog.

Windsurfing is about being one with your equipment and the forces of nature, wind and water. For me it’s one of the most fullfilling things to do, if I want to clear my head. Although i am by far, not as good, as this guy. Let’s hope this young man has a bright future ahead of him. Windsurfing is a small sport, but watch and enjoy. For me this clip was a little holiday in my head.

BEL 101Nick De Wannemaecker in SA (08-09)

In the meanwhile, keep thinking … out of the blog

To communicate better from brand to customer, facebook made some alterations last week. They have adjusted the pages, the groups. Apart from that they have integrated a new homepage, where you can see your friends activities twitterwise (see twitter).

It’s here they have failed. people dislike this new interface. Accordingly people have created groupes and pages like this one to ventilate their frustration:

Now the question I ask myself is: will facebook listen to their customers, who are obviously not satisfied with this new interface. The goal from the creator is to find 1,000,000 people who dislike the new interface.

while writing this post people kept joining the group. At the start at 21.50h:
the group had 301,705 members, by the end of the post, at 22.38h, the group had:

Now the question is: if it’s best to listen to the input of your users, will facebook listen to their users and adjust their look. Will the social media, who mainstreamed the concept of community, follow their community?

I don’t think so, but that’s my opinion and that’s another story of strategy.

Meanwhile keep thinking…out of the blog.

Cheers

Our company had to manufacture banners of countries. My specific job was to place orders as a client. I wasn’t part of the production, but was a witness of total incompetence of my co-students to deliver on time. My co-students weren’t to blame for this as they are all intelligent, but they were held back by function-description who obliged them to do these tasks. It took 14 minutes before my first order was delivered on it’s destination. As my demand for deliverytime was 3 minutes, I couldn’t satisfied as a client, obviously.

Off course this was an artificial situation and within the description of the tasks, there were several tasks that were totally inefficient or even irrelevant. The coolest part of the workshop was when we had to start thinking: “actually what are we all doing”. Through conversations with people along our manufacturingline we discovered some inconsistencies and things that were inconvenient for somebody else. At first these tasks seamed relevant, but they weren’t at all for anybody else. So they were a pure waste of time.

While analyzing the proces you had think outside of the box, and analyze every part, every tasks within the process so we would be able to create a certain flow within the manufacturing line. The most difficult part was to get everyone in line to restructure our work-environment, because we were putting changes through our company under time pressure. This gave some resistance,  but in the end we succeeded.

In the end we managed to produce a banner within 1’40” and so the demands of the clients were met. Okay we managed to meet our challenges, but the greatest lesson was learned along the way. Being on the road mattered as most as reaching our destination.

Conclusion: A very instructive morning with a great game, and some important lessons were learned along the path. Is lean mean? not quitely, maybe a little bit, if you don’t consider the consequences and different points of view. But in the end it helps to think about your bussiness with an open mind. And in times of economic crisis you want to be as effective and efficient as possible, but actually it is something that has to happen permanently.

And so remains: keep thinking… out of the blog.

Cheers and great thanks to Charlotte Sabbe for the workshop.

Because I am a regular visitor of IMDb and I have been able, to get all the information I wish to get, there, I chose to cooperate. IMDb gives the possibility to give a quotation on movies and series and enables you to get backgroundinformation you can’t find anywhere very easily. The quotations given to movies are in my opinion a good indication and there is also room available for subjective opinions on a movie or TV-show. For me, they created value.

And for this IMDb.com has since long been one of the sites I have been loyal to.

Follow this link and you can help IMDb.com with their survey.

http://bit.ly/CVdZ

Keep thinking… out of the blog.

Cheers

They have both in common you want to give certain insights on how matters work, to your audience. It may be in a different field, the goal is in both situations, a transfer of information and insights.

The difference is on the following stage, depending on the situation I use two systems.

The first system is inductive. Induction is used to ascribe properties or relations to types based on an observation instance. There are crows in the garden, they are all black. All crows are black. From several observations I conclude a general truth.

The second system I use is deductive. With deduction you take a general truth to conclude some general observations. All crows are black, there are crows in my garden. The crows in my garden are black. From a general truth I deduct sayings that count everywhere.

When I teach I prefer to use an inductive style. By giving the students several situations and observations I support them to find general truths by themselves. On the other hand, when I give a presentation I prefer the deductive approach. This is because I want to hand my audience a tool they can use in their work. It is true both systems can be used in both situations, but this is what i prefer in a general way.

When I teach I want to give certain insights also, but my main task is to learn students how to use information and what to do with this information. In this way education is really about arming your kids to handle information you encounter.

I want them to keep thinking… out of the blog.