Jun 29, 2012

Presentation secrets



Presentations are important, but it's more important was they consist and how you present it. It's not necessary there to be a long presentation, but a good one. 



I don't like the bullets, the presentations with more than 30 slides and a lot of text. There have to be a clear and inspiring story (let me repeat: story, not bullets and 10 sentences on a slide) and a man, who to present it from a heart.

Here are the five most essential secrets to a great presentation by Susan Weinschenk:
    1. People learn best in 20-minute chunks.
    2. Multiple sensory channels compete.
    3. What you say is only one part of your presentation.
    4. If you want people to act, you have to call them to action.
    5. People imitate your emotions and feel your feelings.
And here is the respective video. Enjoy it!


Br,
K.K. 

Image Source: morguefile.com 

Jun 28, 2012

Cindy Gallop


It's not just an advertising consultant. It's Cindy Gallop

Enjoy it!


Have a great day.
K.K.

Jun 27, 2012

When "being social" becomes just a modern thing

I adore the social campaigns, because:  

1. they give a chance the world to become a better place  
2. they try to make people think not only for themselves  
3. they are not about money. They are about help  
4. they reveal the good in the people.

Today when you say "social campaign" people understand ad campaign, using social medias. But there was a time, when by "social campaign" people understood "campaign for a social cause". There was a time, when I was very excited about this kind of campaigns. I’ve even published a material on this issue years ago. Then it became a “modern” thing and it was not the same. The ad agencies start to make social campaigns pro bono for NGOs not because they care for the world, not because they could make the world a better place. They make them because the social campaigns provide the opportunity to be more creative and to participate with the campaign materials in another creative competition for a creative award. Isn’t that sad – to use a social cause, in order to receive some creative award for your ad agency, and not because you want to make a good change in the world?

In a time, when it’s so modern to be socially engaged, there are not so many social ad campaigns, which could grab your attention. But here is one of them, which is really touchable and straight to the point. In fact, it’s not the typical social campaign. It’s an ad campaign with a social element, which makes you wanna be a bit better person.

This wonderful project is developed by the South African ad agency Metropolitan Republic and the goal of the campaign is to underline how everyone is welcome at Wimpy restaurants. Just everyone, even the blind customers. And here is the video case about the Braille menus. Enjoy it!


I love the sentence "if you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change". 

So think about the little change, which you could make today.

Yours K.K.

Image Source: morguefile.com

Jun 26, 2012

“Love me or leave me” is not a slogan for the ad industry


Few days ago there was presented a study at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity about the brand health of the ad industry and why people stay or leave.

This report was created by advertising agency Deutsch LA working in conjunction with the American Association Of Advertising Agencies and in the survey took part 1,500 advertising professionals. The report is titled “Ending the Agency Talent Rotisserie.”

And here are some very interesting results of that survey:
  • According to the survey, 25 percent of ad people don’t love the business they’re in.
  • When asked to describe their ideal job, 83% of respondents say it should have better compensation. 69% say it should have a good work-life balance. 
  •  Compared to other industries, the advertising people see themselves as creative (89%), extroverted (83%) rule breakers (72%).
  • 69% say their ideal job would have better work/life balance, but in fact the number one reason people left their agencies to take a new job was growth opportunity, at 52%. Meanwhile, compensation came in third at 38%.

Advertising has freedom-loving people that want to create their own destinies, but a work environment that feels hampered by internal processes”, describes the survey.

And here are very interesting charts from that survey as well:

 
 

Are you happy, where you are? If not, make a change.
K.K.

Image Source: morguefile.com 
Charts and Survey Source: AAAA

Jun 12, 2012

"They say, money doesn't buy happiness. Wanna bet?"


Steven D. Levitt  and Stephen J. Dubner are the authors of the book “Freakonomics, which is about the hidden side of everything and becomes a real best-seller. 

After the amazing book, there’s a movie as well and here is its trailer. This is something worth seeing.


And here is a wonderful presentation by Steven D. Levitt about the new musings on the economics of everyday life, based on his latest research. Enjoy it!


Love and be loved.
K.K.

Image Source: morguefile.com

Jun 11, 2012

What a PR nightmare - can't believe it!


There was very "interesting" event last week. And I still can’t believe, that this has happened in real

The event was the Norwegian Developer’s Conference, where Microsoft announced the updates to its Windows Azure cloud computing platform. The video below presents how this was celebrated in Norway with women dancers to a song, which included not only drug references, but also the “incredible” statement “The words MICRO and SOFT don’t apply to my penis.”

In the front of the stage there is positioned as well a monitor, displaying the text of the song, where in addition to the sentence above is added the text “or vagina”. Do you believe it? I still can’t.

I don’t see any style in this event at all, any choreography of this "indescribable" dance, any concept or creative idea. I don’t see a joke either, because even the jokes have style. And I can’t believe, that the subcontractor for this event and the local representer of the client have agreed to even do this.

And here is the video, but please don’t blame the bad cameraman’s skills – the camera is shaking, because the person, who filmed this video for sure could not stop laughing.


Have a nice day and do all in style.
K.K. 

Image Source: morguefile.com

Jun 6, 2012

"Rational man is a myth"




Tom Asacker studies and writes about the marketing concept of belief - how to discover it and how to actualize it.




Tom Asacker believes that: 
  • "What you sell is not important. How you do it, is what becomes important, because everybody is doing what you do, but they are not doing it how you do it."
  • "The value in the value proposition is the value in the customers' experience, not the value in the product. It's the experience, that must be differentiated".
  • "Rational man is a myth. As long as you play a rational game, you will not stay in business."

The material today is an extraction of his best thoughts about marketing and advertising. Enjoy it!



Have a great day.
K.K.

Image Source: morguefile.com

Creativity/ cont.

And here is a short version of the material from this morning. In this excerprt John Cleese outlines the "5 factors, that you can arrange to make your lives more creative":
  • Space - “You can’t become playful, and therefore creative, if you’re under your usual pressures.”
  • Time - “It’s not enough to create space; you have to create your space for a specific period of time.”
  • Time - “Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original,” and learning to tolerate the discomfort of pondering time and indecision."
  • Confidence - “Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake"
  • Humor - “The main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.”
Enjoy it!


Br,
K.K.

Jun 5, 2012

Creativity


I like the 1991 lecture of John Cleese in the material today, talking about the model of the creativity, including two modes of operating — open mode (where we take a wide-angle, abstract view of the problem and allow the mind to ponder possible solutions) and closed mode (where we zoom in on implementing a specific solution with narrow precision).

He believes that: 
  • “Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.”
  • “We need to be in the open mode when pondering a problem — but! — once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it. Because once we’ve made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness.”
  • “To be at our most efficient, we need to be able to switch backwards and forward between the two modes. But — here’s the problem — we too often get stuck in the closed mode. Under the pressures which are all too familiar to us, we tend to maintain tunnel vision at times when we really need to step back and contemplate the wider view. This is particularly true, for example, of politicians. The main complaint about them from their nonpolitical colleagues is that they’ve become so addicted to the adrenaline that they get from reacting to events on an hour-by-hour basis that they almost completely lose the desire or the ability to ponder problems in the open mode."
  • "This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious."
Enjoy the awesome lecture!


Create your day and live it.
K.K.

Image Source: morguefile.com

Let's talk about...

He said:
“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”

“If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.”

“Only with absolute fearlessness can we slay the dragons of mediocrity that invade our gardens.”

Here is a brave interview with George Lois, who is talking about the design and presenting his book. Enjoy it!


Have a great day.
K.K.

Jun 4, 2012

Online advertising

Continuing the subject from this morning, here is an interesting video material, which is an intro to online advertising. Enjoy it!



Br,
K.K.

Jun 3, 2012

European online advertising sector


Image Source: morguefile.com
According to IAB Europe’s annual AdEx Benchmark survey, Europe’s online advertising market grew 14.5% year-on-year to a market value of €20.9bn in 2011, while the overall European advertising market – excluding online – grew just 0.8% in the same time period. 

Head of Advertising Research at IHS Screen Digest and author of the research, Daniel Knapp explains, “Advertising markets are in general very susceptible to changes in the macroeconomic environment – in other words, in an economy where we have the European sovereign debt crisis, high unemployment and cutbacks in consumer spending, we would expect advertising spend to suffer disproportionately as it did on most media in 2011. However, online enjoys a number of unique attributes that have protected it from this effect.

The ROI-centric search format has the highest growth rate of 17.9% in 2011. However newer formats including video and mobile helped lift the value of Display ad spend, coming at 15.3%.

 
Innovation and diversity have driven the outstanding growth of the European online advertising sector, which now accounts for over 20% of total advertising spend. With one in every five advertising Euros in Europe being invested in the online medium, it’s clearly a vital part of the region’s economy”, explains Alain Heureux, President & CEO IAB Europe

The report includes market size and value information for the full membership of the IAB Europe in 2011 including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Russia, Spain, Slovakia, Serbia, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The data represents the calendar year 2011 January-December.

Have a wonderful Monday.
K.K.

The "magic touch" of the advertising agencies




Madrid launched its bid for the 2020 Olympics this year with a logo, which presented how "magic could be the touch" of one advertising agency on a really good in fact design.



The original design was created by 22-year-old Luis Peiret, who is a graphic arts student from Zaragoza. His design of the logo was chosen in a competition by Spanish Olympic Committee. Here it is.

Original logo design by Luis Peirets, via elmundo.es

The script of the original logo says M20, but then comes the agency, called TAPSA (according to this report), which one modified the design in such a way, that:
  • there was included an incorrect accent on the "i" of Madrid
  • there was removed the black color of "Madrid 2020"
  • the  logo looks like "20020", because the agency trimmed the bottom of the design and this leaded to the visual confusion.
And the end result is:
Image Source: madrid2020.es

What do you think - how "magic" could be the touch of one advertising agency on the original work of one designer?

Wish you a nice day.
K.K.

Image Source: morguefile.com

Jun 1, 2012

Product design




There are so many products all around and each of them has its own history, its own design. Yes, we're living in a material world. But what stays behind each product? It's a long process of researches and desinging.



In the video today are presented 3 aspects of product design:
  • building quality
  • humanism and sustainability 
  • future of the product experience.

This video is not about the design, it's about the design with values - the design, which is timeless. Enjoy it!



Have a wonderful day.
K.K.

Image Source: morguefile.com