First aid for a failed viral

First aid for a failed viral

The ad you never should have made

Have you heard about Shazam? If you own a smartphone you probably have. And you probably know exactly what Shazam does, right? One more question. Have you ever seen an ad for Shazam? I haven’t, and I’m guessing a lot of people haven’t seen one neither. Shazam is a service so simple it doesn’t need advertising

Since it’s birth the advertising industry has specialized itself in selling bad products through advertising, where today they actually should be specialized advising companies how build products that advertise their selves. 

If we want ad agencies to be relevant in the future we need to convince brands to help with the R&D of their new products. Instead of hiring agencies to invent a brandpromise and advertise across media old and new, hire agencies to help building a product or a service that doesn’t need a promise, nor a USP.

When reading Mel Exon from BBH post on ‘Agencies Moving Upstream’ I ran along this quote:

Mel proposes some steps we can take to move more upstream in a client’s business starting at an execution level, moving up to strategy (where most of the agencies stand today), further up to R&D ending up in Venture Capital, where agencies are no longer hired, but an actual partner in developping the business. 

But do we belong as far upstream as Mel suggests? We do. In this video David Pogue, tech columnist at NY Times, points out where brands fail to build products or services that fail. Not because they lack innovation, but because they are built from a technological point of view. 

What are your intentions?

via www.slideshare.net

Modern brands that really get what lives with people today already know they should be authentic if they expect consumers to engage. Modern brands know they should go beyond the promise and proof what they stand for.

But consumers are smart. Just as much as people were wary of brands (s)talking through old skool mass media, people are still on their guard when brands act. Brand behavior is not about getting your act together, but it's much more about defining what you stand for and making sure it fits your brand character. People aren't stupid, they know when you are greenwashing. They know when you are trying to gather personal information to spam their facebookpages.

This presentation contains a very insightful quote:
"Remember, consumers don't judge authenticity based on actual behavior but, rather, the intention behind it."

City of Mechelen has the best e-government website!

Recently Boondoggle did a thorough overhaul on the website for the city of Mechelen. Hooray for Mechelen (and Boondoggle)! Mechelen ended up first in the Web Monitor ranking. All websites of the local governances in Flanders and Brussels were evaluated on 7 indexes: