December 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Post-social visions
What’s next after Facebook? Facebook itself or something else?
First scenario: Facebook expands to a higher level and becomes THE Internet. You will chat, buy, hire, book, play via Facebook. This is what Facebook is trying to do.
Second scenario: Facebook makes some error, and we continue operating the same actions we do on Facebook on some other social network.
But do you really see...
4 tags
Anti-social
La strategia di diffidenza verso i social media di certe marche (e anche di certe agenzie) può confrontarsi con una notizia come quella dell’accordo fra Facebook e Heineken (come già fatto da Diageo in passato) per accedere in modo privilegiato a operazioni di marketing congiunto sviluppate sul social network, sperimentando insieme sulle nuove soluzioni; questo renderà difficile se non...
5 tags
Report PSFK sul futuro.
Estratti dei report di PSFK sul futuro del mobile tagging, degli acquisti, etc.
November 2011
1 post
5 tags
Audience, technology and the path to engagement.
AKQA showed this morning their way to get audience. The (advertising) crowd rumored that they didn’t presented any innovative media campaign idea, just apps and “editechnical” stuff.
But when they said that their Heineken application generated 90 minutes of brand engagement per user, this can’t make us think.
What media communication piece gets 90 minutes of...
October 2011
1 post
3 tags
Social Media: ipotesi di complotto?
Sono sempre stato un sostenitore dell’open source philosophy, dalla collaborazione, della circolazione delle idee con attribuzioni “liquide” dei diritti.
Ma proprio per questo, dopo l’adesione ai social network nella fase “comportamentale” (fornitori di un servizio alla persona in base a loro necessità) mi sento di riflettere sui social network attuali, più...
September 2011
1 post
6 tags
Music - Free with ads or free with expiration...
As far as I can see, there are two models:
Annoy your free subscriber with ads, forever
Keep the service free for a limited time, then count on the natural number of conversions when you will ask for a subscription fee; freebie hunters will leave for another service with the same model
Only time will tell what is the best. Anyway, music will continue to be free for some users
Read on GigaOm
April 2011
1 post
2 tags
March 2011
4 posts
Conventions that digital helped to break
What typical conventions in communication have been disrupted by the digital age?
Please add yours to my list.
• Communication is sequential (on a timeline or in space) • Communication takes place in a defined time/place • Message is decided by the sender • Response is absent or asynchronous
4 tags
Livelli di comunicazione
Si possono definire i livelli ai quali avviene “comunicazione” in un sistema informatico? Gli attori fra i quali avvengono gli scambi sono utenti diversi (attraverso la macchina), macchina-utente e anche macchina-macchina.
Io ho provato questa gerarchia, riuscite a integrarla, modificarla, o suggerire esempi illustri che hanno affrontato questo problema? Grazie!
Livello Macchina...
Giovani
Per fare la comunicazione digitale bisogna essere giovani… Ma non per il motivo che pensano loro (i giovani oggi vanificano il loro vantaggio competitivo bruciandosi i neuroni con la Playstation, sono privi di qualunque obiettivo, anestetizzano il loro interesse con non ho ancora capito cosa, sono multitasking del fancazzismo, dislessici, incapaci di scrivere in un corsivo da adulti, dotati...
7 tags
Professioni del digitale o digitale delle...
In questo periodo di transizioni e cambiamenti, la riflessione, anzi, l’esame di coscienza su che cosa vuol dire essere un “professionista digitale” è in continua evoluzione.
In principio era il web
L’inizio di tutto può essere considerato l’esordio del “web commerciale”; prima, la rete si “usava”, ma a parte chi la manteneva e la faceva...
January 2011
1 post
5 tags
L'album dei ricordi
L’album dei ricordi è stato il primo social media? O erano i bigliettini sotto il banco? Sicuramente l’album dei ricordi è stato un incubo per tutti quelli che ne hanno visto passare uno.
Quando quella compagna di scuola ti dava il suo, e tu, mestamente, ma con un sorriso di circostanza, lo riponevi nella cartella, dopo aver inutilmente cercato di non percepire l’aspettativa nei suoi occhi.
In...
December 2010
1 post
3 tags
Tablet(iPad)-ed Future/2: 1-1 = even.
In my precedent post I highlighted a “minus” about a future with eBooks. Today, going on in the reading of “Digital Advertising: Past, Present, and Future” (#csbook) , I have a “plus” to share.
(Daniele isn’t paying me! I swear. But I like the book, to date)
Reading a book (a good one) you will always find at least two (or more) memorable sentences that...
November 2010
1 post
2 tags
Tablet(iPad)-ed Future: how will it change our...
Last week I finally bought my first e-book. Late mover: as a post-boomer guy grown up in a house full of books and a part-time librarian mom, I have my good reasons to be a paper books consumer.
But I decided to try: I bought Creative Social’s book for Kindle to read on an iPad. And I have got two first thoughts (OK, a first and a second thought) to share.
Reading on the iPad gives me the...
October 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Orientation issues in tablet device publications
The tablet revolution is here and, as often happens when a new technology opens up a field of application, designers seem to have erased their past memory.
When DVD menus rolled out, for example, they were tarnished with usability issues which were already been solved at the state-of-the-art of software and website interface design.
It looks like tablet publishing will be no exception. All the...
3 tags
August 2010
4 posts
3 tags
Creative Content or Production? This is the...
About Advertising Agencies, again.
Another warning about integrating digital expertise in the Advertising Agency.
Advertising Agencies were born as media space sellers; then they realized that more money could be done in selling what was inside that space.
They kept control on the content along the whole “Print” age.
Then came the TV age.
Production houses and directors started...
4 tags
Advertising Agency tale...
Little Red Advertising Agency
Once upon a time there was a dear little advertising agency who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by awards juries, and there was nothing that they would not have given to the child. Once they gave her a little riding hood of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else; so she was always called ‘Little Red...
5 tags
Digital Slaves?
JWT Acquires Digitaria Publicis Buys Digital Shop in Brazil Havas Takes Over Search Firm Acmic
Are digital people as slaves, traded to Advertising groups to use their skills for the benefit of their masters, without any credit and under total depersonalization?
Digital agencies are like tribal villages, with a treasure of culture and traditions but small or no relevance in terms of...
3 tags
The End Of Twitter
We all wish Twitter eternal life; but… what if Twitter should meet his final destiny the way other web services and applications did?
Here I present some possibilities. Chose the one you prefer.
Too many users.
Twitter dies for users overflow.
Evolution.
Another application with enhanced features takes Twitter’s place.
Sponsored Tweets.
The spread of sponsored tweets causes...
July 2010
1 post
6 tags
Copyright digitale
Tema: il copyright sui contenuti digitali.
Intervista a Gianmaria Donà dalle Rose su YouMark
Sono più di dieci anni che propongo al vento la mia visione per la soluzione del problema, solo che non avendo mai come interlocutori le persone che potrebbero fare qualcosa, nessuno mi ha mai detto se è una boiata.
Io penso che se il prezzo delle royalty sui contenuti da riconoscere ad autori e editori...
June 2010
3 posts
5 tags
A Cluetrain Manifesto for packaging?
We all have read and absorbed the Cluetrain Manifesto, or at least some article about it, or some blog post, or some 140 characters tweet!
In my opinion food brands should re-read it thinking about how packaging is approached. I think there’s a huge margin of improvement in being open, sincere and trustworthy in this field.
A small example is this case: Danish biscuit brands in a Carrefour...
3 tags
The Perfect Glass
If you have children, you must have wondered, while drying the table for the (…)th (Please insert the age of your older son, multiplied by 365, multiplied by 3 meals, multiplied by the number of your sons), why glasses are generally designed this way
(Glass kind courtesy of Blue Ginger - Milan)
…and not this way???
OK, OK, you’ll say: “That’s because it is...
4 tags
Let somebody else do it. It's their job.
My new house is almost finished, and the experience of moving made me wonder about this.
You can think of doing a move by yourself, essentially to spare money. But if you can afford to do it with professionals, you’ll agree about the reasons:
They have tools. Trying to do a job without the right tools is frustrating, annoying and also dangerous sometimes. Often, when you ask yourself why...
May 2010
6 posts
3 tags
Why "advertising" will never die
We spent the last two decades declaring that participated communication would be disrupting the way advertising is done. We rote learned the Cluetrain Manifesto (what’s the #3 thesis??) and said that no company without a transparent background and sustainable reputation would have survived. We assumed that, given the fact that people could retrieve any kind of information about the brand,...
3 tags
Please, don't do it. Not for us, but for yourself
Again for Advertising Agencies.
Please, don’t think that “becoming digital” could mean “hire digital people”.
My everyday life is spent inside a digital agency that works both on owned customers and customers shared with an advertising agency.
What I can say is that digital can be faced at different levels; if an agency just needs digital execution, hiring...
5 tags
Why Advertising Agencies...
…keep on putting inside the ads (radio, for example) a whole bunch of information about the product? Did someone notice that visiting a website the user can reach plenty of additional info? Creatives, it’s time to concentrate on the idea! OK, I know, the legal lines, but the rest… engage the users, and they will reach for a goldmine of information simply going on line. You know,...
10 tags
Django is to Web...
A thought inspired by a post of my favourite catalyst @w2wai
Another flight of fancy from music to digital communication.
Django Reinhardt has been such a guitar hero as Jimi Hendrix was, but few seem to know it. How is he related to the Web?
Improvisation. Django was great in ad libbing. In the new for of the Web, “liquid” ability in reacting to the context is all.
...
5 tags
Paice vs Bonham. And a hint for creatives.
Why (in my opinion) Ian Paice, a drummer I really like, has not the same relevance in classic rock musicology than John Bonham, whom I consider the ultimate rock drummer? And why is it relevant for Agency creatives? (Compare here)
Paice has technique, more than Bonham in my opinion, even if Bonham is a terrific drummer. Paice is surgically precise.
Paice has fantasy, he repeats himself less than...
5 tags
The Praise of Flash
OK, so everybody is kickin’ Flash when it’s down? Mmmhh.. let’s see if we can do something. I don’t necessarily agree with all I’m gonna say, but it’s a useful brain training.
Why Flash is better than something else
Advertising
At present, Flash is still the standard for almost all banner positions. Could you imagine a CSS based banner? What about javascript...
April 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Why Social could kill Google
Being aged means having seen. And if you have seen, you can easily see in some events the reflection of the past.
I was there when Google changed our way to surf the web, making the now-famous white-with-the-coloured-logo interface the starting hub for almost everything we do on line.
Given the fact that in a non-social web data was the treasure, in the social web the treasure should be...
6 tags
Elogio del 10x21
Mi rendo conto solo ora che fin da quando ne imparai le caratteristiche dal mio primo Maestro e mentore Marco Vimercati, il pieghevole “10x21” rappresenta per me un punto fermo nell’universo, di maggiore importanza dell’esistenza delle macchie solari (e chi le vede?) o delle maree.
FIn da quando mi fu spiegato come piegare un foglio di formato UNI A4 in tre, tutto mi...
March 2010
1 post
4 tags
Perché le associazioni di categoria non servono a...
In Italia, sai che se entri in un bar non puoi chiedere un piatto di pastasciutta. Sai che se entri in un ristorante, puoi chiedere un pasto completo e bevande, negli orari di servizio. E se non sai esattamente che cosa puoi chiedere in uno snack-bar o in un caffè, sai che puoi consultare la legge sugli esercizi pubblici e farti un’idea.
Ma allora, perché se vado da un’agenzia di...
January 2010
1 post
4 tags
Classification of the "Big" Idea
(stub)
David Ogilvy defined the concept of “Big idea” in his writings about advertising.
In the years, the concept has been stretched, extended and discussed
and at present it bears also a “media neutral” connotation (an idea which works on integrated media is often referred to as “big idea”)
Assumed that, even if I don’t like using definitions based...
December 2009
1 post
3 tags
When perception is all
I know most of you will disagree in the beginning, but follow me in my mind trip.
Parties are sad.
Parties are the saddest events in your life. No other event is so sad.
Why I believe this? Because if you analyse parties from a theoretical point of view, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. A party occurs when a person, of a group of people, thinks there is something to celebrate....
November 2009
4 posts
4 tags
The Relativity of Roles Principle
This is one of the theories I developed in my life, that is to date proven to be true.
If it happens to you being a consultant, you sure have a customer. If you have a customer, the customer is a moron and you are the smart one. No way you try to demonstrate the preciousness of your advices, he will always come up with his solution, that is not only unprofessional, but often obnoxious.
Now, try...
5 tags
The End of Domains
The digital age carries with it another disappointing and disruptive consequence.
If you something about music (I barely do) you’ll know that in Western music (I mean the Western emisphere, not cow boys) melodies are built upon notes which are conventionally named upon their distance from the “root “chord (the fondamentale). This interval is all for our ears, it’s what...
The creative idea persistence principle
Have you ever experimented it?
If you’re a creative, and (especially these times) you are used to work with tight schedules, sure you must have.
It happens when you are called to challenge a new briefing when you still don’t have delivered another, or even if you just did, your brain is still grinding around that idea you had.
Even if ideas are most of all the result of that...
1 tag
Why "social media" is (twice) wrong.
First, because there ain’t some “social media” which are more social than other. Is Facebook more social than a site featuring Disqus? Google or a blog? Wikipedia or the NY Times? What we are living is not the rising of some or many “social media”, but the spreading of the “social” attribute in the web.
But the second reason will be more convincing.
...
October 2009
4 posts
5 tags
Direct Memes Tracking
I don’t know if it exists, probably yes; if not, it’s just another fantasy app YOU have too build because I’m young enough to think it but too old to build it.
Yesterday I had a call with one friend; we talked about an idea, that became a study to work on. I later wrote him through LinkedIn (because I wasn’t sure of his latest email address) and he answered me both through...
8 tags
A Bit Of Magic
Yesterday I had an inspiring talk with my brother, who is my Mycroft Holmes - only, less lazy - in the sense that, working he in the University environment, our debates on technology are often based on a less pragmatic and more theoretical level, and it causes in me insights that I wouldn’t have in the usual company environment.
Stefano had an mind-opening intuition considering the ways we...
1 tag
Share, if you love... yourself
If the philosophy of sharing needs further advocacy, here’s a point.
Sharing is for others and for ourselves. We make happy or grab attention from others, but we receive a reward ourselves in terms of reputation, etc.
I had a surprise when I understood another side of self-reflection of sharing, which I detected in myself analysing my behaviour.
Often (very often, since I have kids), I...
September 2009
1 post
5 tags
Cartelli Italiani
Qualche anno fa il Comune di Milano ha deciso di migliorare la sicurezza del passaggio sopraelevato chiamato comunemente “Ponte della Ghisolfa” (i milanesi DOC vi diranno che si chiama cavalcavia Bacula, il ponte è solo il primo pezzo) installando diverse telecamere lungo il percorso per garantire il rispetto del limite di 70 km/h imposto sul ponte. Trattandosi di un punto...
August 2009
4 posts
8 tags
YOUltimateRadio - Free Radio On Demand!
…In my dreams. Yes, because this is another fantastic Fantasy App (#4) brought to you by Nicola Rovetta alias woccia.
I’m not so aware, and too lazy to find out, about the problems of right clearance in matter of streamed music when it comes to “on demand”.
I think that, basically, if you have a model in which the user finds the song he wants, that’s a music shop...
5 tags
The Future
The Future - is it going to be the Western civilization decadence for some newcoming group or are we going towards a new level of evolution, leaving back profit economy-based society (Capitalism) and embracing a new Golden Age with the help of social responsibility, solidarity, social connection, with a new value chain not tied to financial profit?
Is it true that lies will be very difficult in...
Creative or not Creative? This is...
Considering recent acquisitions (last one, Razorfish) it seems that if you want to do interactive/digital communication you will have to do it from within a big advertising network.
And it’s good; I always thought there’s no interactive or digital communication, but only communication. But also, I always thought only digitally skilled people can do it.
I think every network has its...
8 tags
Scrotus Group goes shopping and finds Doublebubble
The giant of metaphorical communication, Scrotus Group, went on the market to find a strong digital partner and eventually found out Doublebubble was there waiting. The company, formerly listed on the NSE* as DBBB, recently suffered in revenues when some of their main deliverables exploded. “We specialize in bubbles, but not ordinary bubbles,” says CEO Angus Blaster “our world...
July 2009
2 posts
4 tags
Twitter Marketing - Bottom Up or Top Down?
If you’re planning to use Twitter for your brand, be sure to do it in the right direction.
If you think doing that kind of campaign conducted by asking people to tweet something with a specific hashtag for a reward, this is what I call a “Bottom Up” approach. From outside the conversation (“under”), you’re asking people to push something into the conversation...
4 tags
I sopravvissuti di Atlantide - 2
La Sindrome di Cassandra
“Non funzionerà. Non interesserà a nessuno.”
“Perché? A me interesserebbe!”
“Testiamolo. Vediamo se è così per il nostro utente.”
“Non ci sono i soldi per un test…”
“Quando, nel 1998…”
“Ma non siamo più nel ‘98! I computer sono più potenti, c’è la banda larga, allora accedevano...