Some minor issues

As announced previously, Fantasy Interactive just launched their new blog: think Swedish.

They developed the blog software themselves and called in Propod. Seems they release it under beta soon.

It’s written in Flash or Flex technology, and baselined “Media Blogging”, indicating it will be reach media enabled all the way. The blog is looking very stylish.

To get an introduction I suggest you read the words of David Martin himself, he sets the path for a new FI. Interesting read. Good luck guys!

Still beta, so I got some feature requests: rss (gimme please), trackbacks, technorati integration, SEO, possibility to embed their media player in other blogs (youTube like), ..

As announced on Multi-Mania last Friday, Nicolas Lierman just released his Google Analytics Apollo widget on These Days labs.
Just installed it, and it work great. There are some things that can be improved though, most important for me the possibility to switch accounts without having to log in again. But anyway, it’s an early release.

I know Nico has lots of plans with it. He’s writing a complete reporting tool in Apollo. This is just the first bit he releases. To make this work he wrote an AS 3 API on Google Analytics. Pretty amazing stuff and more to come. Clever.

Good Video. It’s a campaign for Kickers.
Read about in on contagious.

I love social networking sites, but to be honest I don’t use them that often. The only one I use frequently is LinkedIn (see my profile and connect), which is more business orientated.
I got an account on orkut as well, never used it intense.

So why facebook, why now? I knew it exists before I was able to get an account (only open for US students). So why now: because I wasn’t able back in the days, and I forgot about it. So why facebook. Basically, because I read the interview with Mark Zuckerberg in FastCompany’s previous issue. You can find a copy online, seems complete (good strategy FC!). It was an inspiring story. It’s about a guy who believes in what he does, and who identifies himself with his product (like FI). It’s about chance, vision, brains and guts. Don’t forget the guts! It’s about believing. I decided to give it a go because Mark decided not to sell his company for 1 billion dollar! I want to support this decision, show him it’s the right one by building on his numbers.

So if you’re on facebook, you can at least become my friend (search for the company “These Days“). I’m pretty pathetic with my zero friends for the moment

Attended the Multi-Mania conference in Kortrijk yesterday. Great event and great speakers.

My personal highlight of the day was definitely the short chat I had with David Martin, Fantasy Interactive‘s CEO.
For me this company is like an all time favorite. I remember, back in the days, we used to look at the RoadRunner flash portal as an example and a new standard. So many years later (5, 6 ..) the website is still standing.
To give you one particular example.

I talked with David about the design/development distinction. Everybody in the industry knows there is a gap between creation (concepts/designs) and development. It’s a natural gap, which is also enlarged by scope issues and change requests. But for years now FI seem to control this gap. All things they deliver are as perfect as they could. David named a few reasons:

- They don’t work with deadlines. They’re in the position to pick their clients, and work with the most possible care.
- Their motto is “quality over quantity”. It has to be perfect. That’s why they are in this position in the first place, because they aim higher than everybody else. A litter lower the competition is killing, but they rule their universe. A real blue ocean strategy indeed.
- You have to make sure all people involved feel they own the project/product, so they put maximum effort to make it the best they could.

I invented a FI baseline (slightly based on Google’s “don’t be evil”):

DON’T COMPROMISE

So I’m sure these guys keep rocking, and I definitely want to keep in touch. I think we can all learn from them and make our own methods and processes better. I know the business isn’t completely comparable. For instance These Days is much more of a marketing firm. We do campaigns, we obviously can’t live without deadlines. And for me personally, this is one of the fun parts. Rushing, making it work, getting things done.

They’ll launch their blog on Monday, so keep an eye on them.

David, nice talking to you.

About 2 weeks ago I wrote Feedburner would be an interesting Google acquisition. Yesterday I learned Google actually bought Feedburner. Wow, good prediction!
For real, it was a wild guess. Obviously I saw the buzz in the blogosphere last week, but at the time of writing my mind was clear.

Claudio pointed out this news in the comments of my previous post. See the TechCrunch post here. They paid $100 million. Not bad, but in my mind the value is even higher.

In the same comments, Philippe, who’s a Microsoft employee, tells he’s more stirred by the Feedburner acquisition than the DoubleClick acquisition. I can truly imagine! Buying DoubleClick is brute force, buying media reach. Buying Feedburner is more subtle. It’s about added value. The latter will improve Google’s product range.
Also not most of the buzz last week was about contextual ads in rss. This is a nice possibility, but not the one that crossed my mind first. In my mind the best part is the integrated blogging approach: measurement, rss, video (youTube), ..

So it’s time for Microsoft to make the next move
Let the battle over Technorati begin!

BTW: I switched to a feedburner PRO account yesterday. By incidence before I heard the news. We’ll see how it evolves and how great the pro package is.

As I finished the 8 new marketing questions, it’s time for a round-up.

Philippe Deltenre, Media Strategist at Microsoft Belgium, created a list of 8 questions traditional advertisers tent to ask while entering the new media space. I decided to answer these questions myself, and just finished the last question today. Kudos to Philippe and Kris Hoet (Philippe’s colleague at Microsoft) who managed to get a global audience with these questions.

You can find Philippe’s round-up at his blog.

This was the list of questions, each linking to my answer.

1- How far should I go in the dialogue with the users? Can I accept controversy on my website? What moderation level is acceptable?
2- Is online advertising making sense without a decent website?
3- Are there examples of 2.0 initiatives made by traditional brands that went totally out of hand?
4- How can impressions be compared to television GRPs?
5- How intrusive should I be? (expandable formats, videos with sound on by default)
6- What does interaction rate (only available for rich media formats) tell me about the impact of my campaign?
7- Does the long tail change anything to the way I should communicate with my target group?
8- Why on earth do people use sites like second life?

It was a really interested experience. I loved thinking about it, and writing about it. Now, let’s go for the next challenge

Still 1 question to go in the new marketing FAQ: “Why on earth do people use sites like second life?”

Phillip finished the faq earlier, you can find his answer here, and an overview of all his answers here.
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Vorige zondag was er een debat over youTube op de 7e dag.
Aanleiding was een filmpje dat enkele misnoegde reizigers online geplaatst hadden. Misnoegd want ze kregen een boete omdat ze hun reductiekaart niet bij zich hadden (of zoiets). Ze filmde het gebeuren, gaven er commentaar bij en monteerde geweerschoten op het einde. En uiteraard heeft België niet meer nodig om weer op zijn kop te staan.

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Face it: measurability implies 9 out of 10 short term thinking. I understand the average CMO will choose a solution where his/her own effort will become clear over a solution that’s better for the brand but can’t be measured as a personal intervention.

This is wrong.

We don’t need ego-trippers, we need smart people thinking on the long term, making decisions that will benefit your brand not only now, but especially in 5, 10, 20 years.

The truly great brands made this investments. I’m thinking Apple, Nike, BMW, .. who’s tactical actions most of the time support long term goals: brand image.

Luckily smart people are around, like John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing (excellent blog) who approaches this subject by telling us we should planting seeds for the future. John turns this seeds in C’s: content, connection and community. These are the areas marketeers should work on al the time.

Good marketeers know this, and know how to make this their mission in the company.