On September 13 2011, the Foundation for Scientific Research on Commercial Communication (Stichting Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Commercieele Communicatie SWOCC) celebrated its 15th anniversary in style, by organizing a symposium.  Its stated goal was to flood the participants coming from academia, advertising agencies and marketing departments with scientific insights from communication science. Unusual for a scientific meeting, it was held in Dutch, except for one apologetic (German) speaker who spoke in English. In practice this meant that the line-up of speakers was exclusively recruited from the ranks of Dutch universities, several of them still working on their PhD.  It was organized in the debate centre “de Rode Hoed”, beautifully situated on the imperial canal (Keizersgracht) in Amsterdam. 

Yesterday the new batch of graduate students pitched for a place in the CrossmediaLab graduate program. There was some sweat, some anxiety and some stuttering, but all in all the students did good presentations. But now! Now the work starts, sculpting the students into researchers is a painstaking process. I know, I once was a graduate student at the crossmedialab. Frustration, tons of literature and blank sheets of paper (that always seem to be winning the staring contest) are just a couple of the things waiting for them. But as I recall from my own time as a graduate student at the Lab, I learned a lot and I had a lot of fun.

Last week Fastcompany published two articles on the use of neuromarketing during the 2010 elections. It seems by the way that the Republicans aren’t that conservative. They were the ones using it! But as usual they are not admitting they are using this technique. Too controversial, it might seem socialist…

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..

I visited the congress on trends in youth marketing (www.kidsenjongeren.nl) last week in Nemo, Amsterdam. Quit interesting. The congress took two days but I only visited the second day because the topic of the second day, youngsters (teens), has my interest, more so than the very young kids. As usual, a score of presentations and workshops overloaded the day. So, what have I learned? Well, again like almost always, if you are critical, not that much. The topics dealt with during the day were ‘as usual’ and not a word was spoken about crossmedia, apart from the numerous citations that teens are multi-tasking. And again, generation Einstein was not just mentioned as the capturing of our crossmedia savvy younger generations, it still seems to be a sort of religion for youth marketers. Hmmm.