Unlock your world?

By Niniane Veldhoen on 26 April 2011

I don’t get it… Foursquare or feest.je for that matter. I really don’t get it. My housemate gets it. I see him ‘checking in’ all the time. And he gets all excited when he finally is the major of Crossmedialab again. The smile on his face rises, he almost starts jumping around. The face of the girl he kicked of the major-thrown isn’t so happy no more. What is the fun of checking in at the same location every day? Going to work and checking in at work, so your friends know you’re at work? Where else would you be.. Or checking in at stefs (the school pub) every day.. to let your friends know you’re in a bar, every day? I don’t get it. 

tagged with: foursquare, location based services

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What's on?

By Niniane Veldhoen on 23 January 2011

A typical Monday evening at our house: matthijs and I both tired of our first workday of the week, and still not totally recovered from usually a full programmed weekend, our bellies round from a lovely meal either one of us could have prepared, sitting on the couch, fighting over the remote.

tagged with: boer zoekt vrouw, de wereld draait door, succesfactors, tv, research

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Creative or not? That’s the question.

By Niniane Veldhoen on 27 October 2010

At every marketing event for at least the past 5 years you hear marketers telling you to use social networks in you marketing campaigns. This because you have to join the conversation, hear what everyone has to say about you, create your free fan base and most important: let your fans promote your brand for you! But they never tell you how to do that..

tagged with: pink ribbon, ikea, facebook, social media, Marketing

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Some things are better left the way they are..

By Niniane Veldhoen on 8 September 2010

This summer I went to France for holidays, doing a little road trip with some friends. Half way through our vacation we came in a very touristic place called Vallon Pont d’Arc, famous for its caves. I can tell you that when a city is famous for something, I want to see that something, so we went to the touristic information office and got a list of caves to visit in the neighborhood. One cave caught my eye, because it had a multimedia tour, so (of course) I was immediately interested and curious what that would be like. Did they manage to find a way to make a cave visit a greater experience by adding different kinds of media? I wanted to check that out!! The folder said that is was a three star cave.. I didn’t know they gave stars to caves, but is must be good then, you would think..

tagged with: bear, tipp-ex, youtube, cave, multi media tour

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Kids marketing conference

By Niniane Veldhoen on 15 June 2010

On the second of June I went to the kids marketing conference in Amsterdam. An interesting day about how to reach the young target Group of 7 to 14 year olds. After a group of dancers opened the conference room, Paul Sikkema (general manager of Qrius) started the day introducing us to the First speaker: The 14 year old Rutger de Quay. Rutger, winner of the ‘Dutch Bloggie’, is known for his weblog www.koekjesfabriek.com. He writes about the stupidities he comes across in everyday life. Besides his blog he is probably the youngest twitter addict with over a thousand followers, in his own words, probably all housewives and seniors. (And after this day probably some marketeers as well.)

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Only 14 years old, but already a very clear view on social media and especially how not to use it. He described how his life revolves around his smartphone and criticises the way companies use social media, he doesn’t mind to be bothered by brands, but there has to be a very clear ‘what’s in it for me’ message, otherwise he thinks it won’t work. His down to earth funny way of speaking was a good start of the day.

After Rutger gave us an insight into the world of a 14 year old social media addict, Paul Sikkema presented the latest kids trends. According to Qrius, kids still prefer playing outside (especially with a waveboard) over playing inside (behind computers or television), but there are more and more children entering the world of social media (habbo, hyves, youtube). The number of mobile phones under these youngsters is increasing as well, often second hand from their parents. For the near future Paul expects more digitalisation, awareness for target groups will become more important for companies and the Corporate Social Responsibility will increase. 

Marieke van Heeswijk (general manager Disney channels belenux) talked about Generation XD (8-14). A generation brought up in a world of prosperity, internet and mobile. They are ‘easily wise’ because they have an easy access to information. They use new media faster and more often. They believe children don’t make a difference between the computer, laptop, ipad or iphone. For children these technologies are the same, they just have a different size screen. Children consume what they want, when they want it and where they want it. I would love to see the research they did on this topic.

A very enlightening story was the one of Rutger Verhoeven (Blink uitgevers). They managed to evolve the 90 year old magazine Taptoe into an awesome crossmedial concept, Taptoe mysteries. Knowing that children divide their media time amongst more and more different media nowadays, seeing their sales figures drop, they had to do something to give their magazine a new boost.
What they knew about their target group: they like to play outside, they like to play inside, they watch tv, they like online games and.. they hardly read print..
So they did more research, in a very enlightening way. They observed. For days they were in schools, observing from the back of the class. They went home with the children, spending days with the children, talking, asking questions and having fun. They were looking for, how they call it, key insights.
The main key insights were: Children want to belong in a group, they don’t want to stand out. Children don’t have an identity yet. It’s girls against the boys, and they want schoolyard material to show off with. And in relationship to the magazine, boys answered: ‘there needs to be a hot chick’.

tagged with: taptoe, generation xd, kids marketing, social media

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I am Niniane Veldhoen, and I am addicted to Mafia Wars

By Niniane Veldhoen on 14 March 2010

A few months ago, I discovered the fun off facebook. I have had an account for years, but I was never active. I was a big fan of hyves, so I didn’t really need facebook. I only used facebook to keep in contact with my friends from abroad. It wasn’t until two of my colleges asked me to join their mafia gang on the social game ‘mafia wars’, that I started using facebook daily.

tagged with: mafia wars, social games, social network sites, hyves, facebook

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Those good old fax machines

By Niniane Veldhoen on 11 February 2010

This week I took another trip down memory lane. I was cleaning out some boxes at the attic and came across a bunch of old faxes. It drove me right back to when I was about fifteen years old. Me and my girlfriends used to spend evenings faxing to a group of friends living on the other side of the country. My dad always used to wonder why the fax machine was out of paper, again...

tagged with: privacy, social media

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There's something about cell phones..

By Niniane Veldhoen on 14 December 2009

I remember the good old days. The days without mobile phones. The times where there was just one telephone in each household.. I remember my mam calling me: ‘Nien.. Tineke on the phone for you!!’ And then I would chat with my friend and make an appointment at what time we would meet where. We would always meet under the big clock and I was always on time.

tagged with: cell phones

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The fun begins

By Niniane Veldhoen on 9 June 2009

The research on mentality has lasted for a year now. After reading lots of papers, trying to find out what mentality really is and trying to determine six basic mentalities to come up with a segmentation tool to name one’s mentality, for me the fun part really begins now. We’re going to do some experiments. The gut feeling we have is that the mentality of a person is kind of similar to the mentality of the brand he or she prefers. So now we’re going to put that gut feeling to the test with a few experiments.

tagged with: mentalities, research, branding

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