Paul Isakson is talking about the product being the new media on his blog. I agree completely.Product development and branded utility driver consumer recommendation – and this is the new mass comms.

You dig?

/Baek

It has become a tradition on the second day of New Media Days to begin with a round of political media spokesmen from the leading Danish parties. Usually this leads to a very vivid and entertaining exchange of opinions.

Unfortunately a lot of them cancelled the last minute. Instead there was a discussion among the political spokesmen Ellen Nørby Thrane, Venstre and Mikkel Dencker, Dansk Folkeparti with Chris Mottes, Deadline Games, Stephan Stephensen, Mingoville and Christian Peytz, Foreningen af Danske Interaktive Medier. If you can call it a discussion… there isn’t much to say, nothing new to add.

Except from the spokesman from Dansk Folkeparti who felt the need to share that he is also into new media, he heard about the phenomenon Facebook and recently made a profile. Not very impressive coming from a media spokesman.

Let’s hope the rest of the day will be more rewarding!

// iben

So New Media Days kicked off with an extremely viable David Weinberger, the author of the bestseller Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder

Change of media is not the change of content it’s all about interconnectedness and sharing. YouTube might seem to have taken over the traditional broadcast content. But content is not the heart of the internet, people build and share but what really counts is the connection between people, says Weinberger. We love connecting with each other!

Content might be the focus but the connection is the heart of it – who get’s to see it! In fulfilling this need metadata plays a huge part and it’s going through an important change. Basically metadata allows people to connect ideas.

Being messy is a good thing
In the real world mess is bad since it’s impossible to find stuff. On the Internet metadata is about being messy and allow people to tag pictures, texts and movies as much as they like. Because you never know what will be of importance in the future or right now to one person. Metadata is also a very democratic way to let people organize stuff on the internet as it fits into their lives as opposed to the real life.

Weinberger uses the example of how to sort your CD’s. So your girl- or boyfriend might want it alphabetically and you like it sorted by genre – only one of you ‘wins’. On the internet tagging the CD’s and sorting them through playlists you get to sort it based on different parameters and in the end share it and there you go: One huge interconnected playlist!

// iben

…i know the blog layout is all fucked up. i think firefox hs changed something in their setup. i’ll have a look at it with my digital wiz on friday. we’ll also have a look at a brand new skin. it’s starting to look a bit last decade:-0

/baek

A life without the Facebook would be pure evil in the 21. century.

/Baek

Google just launched a new tool called YouTube Insight.It’s a free tool which makes it possible to record where, when, what time etc. the films on YouTube are being watched. This offers new insights into geographic factors and peaks thus enabling greater insights into behavioral patterns. 

/ iben

Watch Product Manager Tracey Chan introducing YouTube Insight here:

The world is constantly changing and future scenarios need to change with it as its happening. Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, 2007 by Mark Penn, is a great source to some of the insights that we need.

The book captures the smaller trends that go unnoticed or even ignored. It highlights areas such as everyday life, leisure, relationships, and politics. Learn about new trends in dating, so-called extreme commuters, old new dads and lots of other insights into human complexity and variety. The book is based on statistic analysis but Penn really understands to bring all the numbers to live.

Bill Gates, Tony Blair and President Clinton are among those who have listened carefully to Mark Penn. He played a big part in Bill Clinton’s election campaign inventing the term “Soccer Moms” covering the group of middleclass women living a domestic life, picking up their kids from soccer with basic concerns regarding their kids’ future, education, safety etc. Addressing these concerns convinced this group to vote for Clinton.

Facts:
A microtrend can be defined as a small but growing group of people who share an intense choice or preference. One percent of the nation, or 3 million people in the US, can create new markets for a business, spark a social movement, or produce political change. The equivalent in Denmark would be approximately 55.000 people still a size that could be interesting both from a socioeconomic, political and marketing perspective.

/ iben

In the spirit of New Years’ we here at Digital Vinyl continues our outlooks for the year to come.

Ann Mack and her team of trendspotters at JWT have uncovered 80 things we should be looking out for in 2008. The list includes; Facebook suicides – (we’ll, some of us has already seen this one coming, right?), and my own personal favorite; the rise of Nigerian cinema..that’s gonna be an interesting experience. Sadly, we are already down to 79 –no. 51 on the list Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto is no longer with us.

JWT’s list of 80 Things to Watch in 2008, in alphabetical order:   1. Africa (foreign investment and development in)
2. Antibiotic backlash
3. Assisted marriage
4. Beijing 2008
5. Blue replacing green as the environmental movement’s color du jour
6. Brain exercises
7. British actress Keira Knightley
8. Carbon tax
9. Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang
10. Classical musician Gustavo Dudame
11. Climate sightseeing
12. Continuation of comebacks (Indiana Jones, The Cure, etc.)
13. Cooperative consumption
14. Couch surfing
15. Country branding (Oman, Indonesia, etc.)
16. Designer Phillip Lim
17. De-teching
18. DJ Tiesto
19. DNA-based exercising
20. E-clutter (and e-clutter consultants)
21. Eco-fatigue
22. E-mail etiquette
23. Facebook suicides
24. Fashion label Vena Cava
25. Foreign government investment (e.g.China, UAE, U.S. companies)
26. French President Nicolas Sarkozy
27. Game 3.0 (gamer-generated global gaming)
28. Google’s Android
29. Gossip Girl
30. Gphone
31. Green weddings
32. Higher education online
33. Hip-hop’s Retro Kids
34. Humbling of the hedge fund manager (anti-excess post sub-prime)
35. Hybrid taxis
36. Indian actress Deepika Padukone
37. Intellectual luxury
38. Investigating ingredients
39. Japanese designs (Tsumori Chisato, Uniqlo, Muji, etc.)
40. Kitchen appliances as new power tools
41. Lifestyle curators
42. Lipstick trumping lip gloss
43. Manga-inspired clothes
44. Mobile technology explosion
45. Mobulimia
46. Music as awareness driver; concerts and other residuals as cash cow
47. Musicovery (music tailored to moods)
48. Myanmar
49. Nollywood (the rise of Nigerian cinema)
50. Outsourcing to Ukraine (and other Eastern European countries)
51. Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto
52. Pantone’s 18-3943 (blue iris)
53. Pets in the office
54. Prius homes
55. Radical transparency
56. Radiohead repeats (name-your-own-price music)
57. Recycling into fashion (Nau, Gary Harvey, etc.)
58. Selfless as the new selfish
59. Sex and the City, the movie
60. Shiny Toy Guns (the band)
61. Skiing in novel spots Kashmir, Japan, Greenland, Russia, Korea)
62. Single men saying no to sex
63. Skype sex
64. Smart Cars in American cities
65. SNS (social network service) brand communities
66. Spanish actor Javier Bardem
67. Staycations
68. Sturking
69. Tequila as the new wine
70. The N-11
71. Third screen (the mobile screen) rivaling the first screen (TV)
72. Trans-ertainment
73. U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson
74. U.S. presidential election
75. Vicarious consumption
76. (Video) Gaming Olympics
77. Virtual gifting
78. Wannabe young Internet entrepreneurs (a.k.a. Mark Zuckerberg)
79. Weak dollar/strong euro
80. Women juggling men.

Happy New Year, everyone. See you next year. I will take on my Ski gear and hit south trying to test whether tequila will be the new wine, or not. Cheers.  //Flinck 

The good thing about the years coming to an end, is that you’re always more enlightened than you we’re when the year started. Today it’s time to take a look of what happened in the world of brands, communications, trends and businesses in the year we are leaving behing.

The bright bunch from Contagious Magazine has done a Most Contagious briefing of 2007. They write in the introduction:

“If you began 2007 thinking that wikinomics must be a group of Hawaiian mathematicians, that an API was some kind of repetitive strain injury and that laser tagging is the latest crime prevention wheeze from the Greater Manchester Police, then don’t worry. We did too.”

There’s some great reading in there, so if you didn’t already know, now is the time to really understand what happend when you we’re hit by the technology train in 2007.

 Merry, merry..

 /Flinck

2007 is coming to an end. What would be more perfect than taking a look in the crystal ball of the buzz. I fell over this interesting buzz’in forecast, I thought I’d share with you. So now there’s no excuse for not beeing in the buzz in 2008.

Merry christmas everyone.

/Flinck

“Search moptimization”

Yes, that’s “mop,” as in to clean up. This is the increasingly common, if not essential, brand practice of attempting to clean up negative search results against general or specific brand-related queries. For many brands, particularly in the consumer electronics category, hostile CGM (define) is beginning to fill, even dominate, the organic search shelf, a zone that we all know has an unmistakable impact on the awareness and trial of new products. For many brands, the mopping process can take two to three years (often longer) and heavily depends on operational and product, rather than marketing, decisions. Dell, for example, still has lots of “search moptimization” to clean up Jeff Jarvis’s two-year-old mess, though it’s worth noting its customer service blog and IdeaStorm initiatives have already helped mop up or reroute some of the venom.

“Wombagging”

This exercise tries to protect, or sandbag, your brand from negative or undesirable word of mouth (WOM). This could include anything everything from buying negative keywords on search engines to putting videos on your Web site featuring your CEO begging for patience and forgiveness. For some companies, wombagging might even include employing staffers in defense of bad buzz. But again, all this falls into the defensive branding arena, not outright promotion.

“Friendiligence”

This will become very popular in 2008. It involves the extra layer of due diligence on friend requests on Facebook, MySpace, and all the me-too social networks popping up here and there. Friendiligence will also dial up as marketers oversaturate the social networking space with fan sites and more. Is this a real friend offer, or is it spam? Trust me, we’ll all ask harder questions, and some friend lists will start to shrink.

“Converstations”

Brands now have multiple entry points for meaningful dialogues or conversations with consumers. These are essentially converstations. Brands fully immersed in CGM or social media may have dozens of conversations, from the consumer affairs interfaces and toll-free numbers to the corporate blog. They all matter, and every brand manager should know his or her converstations.

“Social mediation”

This is the process of rethinking or renegotiating certain advertising, marketing, and communications practices as a result of user backlash. What took place with the Facebook privacy backlash was essentially social mediation, and Facebook’s own groups served as the third-party arbitrator between disgruntled users and Facebook (the company and policymaker).

“We-bargaining”

A close cousin of social mediation, this is a bit more centered on brands and companies seeking peace, appeasement, or a lesser sentence with consumers when they screw up (particularly with viral, WOM, or CGM campaigns). It’s a tough exercise, because it typically pits a brand against the wisdom of the crowds. Richard Edelman did a very good job of we-bargaining after the controversial Wal-Mart blog incident last year. He was open, forthright, contrite, and resolved to fix the issue.. So, too, was the CEO of JetBlue when he posted his apology to YouTube.

“Greenlashing”

Woe to the marketer who over-claims or over-promises benefits on the green front. The market’s just too transparent. Sites like TreeHugger, now owned by Discovery, are part of mainstream consciousness these days, and smaller green skeptics will vet out a green imposter faster than you can say “carbon neutral.” As the number of do-good green blogs increases, you can expect even more greenlashing about brand missteps in this area. Mya Frazier of Ad Age deserves credit for firing the first big warning shot against marketers’ bows on what she calls “greenwashing.”

“Shamsparency”

Don’t get busted buying shills or engaging in unsavory activity. Just don’t do it, or the forces of shamsparency will catch up with you. It happens all the time, and firms in the CGM monitoring space (like my own) make it easier to uncover the imposters. My recommendation: avoid this term at all costs, and write the WOMMA ethics code on the whiteboard 30 times.

“Credlining”

Credlining is when consumers sift the good from the bad, the credible from the discreditable, and publish a scorecard accordingly. When protesters of Facebook’s Beacon feed effort started posting lists of Facebook’s advertising partners, credlining was in play.

“Facelifting”

This is the process of taking a hard look at traditional conversational touch points (“contact us” pages, feedback forms, surveys), and slapping on a friendlier, more empowering face that the usual run-at-all-cost one. Brands must think harder about the sincerity and believability of the invitation. How do you make consumers feel important and valued?

“Blog groveling”

This is the already-getting-old process of sucking up to bloggers and key influencers to try, test, or sample your new product or service. Usually it involves hokey headlines, repetitive phrases, and an unmistakable hint of desperation.

“World War 2.0″

Face it, the battle lines are calcifying around Web 2.0. Ambiguity reins supreme on “Who owns the conversation?” and “Who owns the influencer?” Sure, we all talk a mean game of cross-functional harmony, but war’s already erupting between the brand and IT departments, the PR agency and the digital agency, and, most important, consumer affairs and everyone else. Did I forget to mention legal? Top executives, meanwhile, fancy pitting one against the other in the impatient name of just getting it done. Expect to hear much more about World War 2.0 in 2008.

“MicroTubing”

This is what’s happening in TV and video development. New content forms are proliferating and appealing to smaller audiences. Small publishers, even mom-and-pop players, will continue to make inroads into the video publishing zone, many getting snatched up by brands and publishers for ongoing content.

“Lipsmacking”

This is process of talking trash about brands, services, or goods, usually with a digital trail.

(With the courtesy of The Official 2008 Web 2.0 Buzzword forecast)