Graduation day, a lot of social but hardly any mobile

Yesterday, we experienced the graduation of Digital Communication students. I forgot how many there were but the organization had to split up the group into two. Otherwise the ceremony would have taken four hours or so. The mentors of the graduates were instructed to speak only two minutes at the most. Fortunately, most of them stuck to the rule.
I had only three graduates but due to the fact that Erik Hekman had left for Mexico the other week, my list extended to an odd ten in total (it didn’t taken me twenty minutes, though).

Tagged with: graduation, crossmedialab, social media, mobile, dc,

Kids marketing conference

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,

Politicians and Twitter: are they aware of the possibilities?

It already seems an eternity ago that former Prime Minister Kok took an e-mailcourse on public television. At this moment, you can’t think of a politician that isn’t active on the internet. Only a few days before the national elections, it’s rush hour among politicians in social media. It seems like a politician without a profile on Hyves, Facebook or Twitter, in advance has no chance of winning votes. What is the value of social media for politicians and citizens? What audience is reached? Is the gap between politicians and citizens getting smaller? Are there differences in activity between the politicians? How will the activities continue after the elections?

Tagged with: policy, elections, politicians, twitter, social media,

Social Media afternoon

Thursday the 21st of April the Crossmedialab hosted the 3th Somere Social Media afternoon at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. Somere stands for Social Media Reseach. Somere focuses on investigating the design, implementation, usage and effects of social media. It ranges from young people and marketing to internal corporate communications. Its main roots are at the University of Twente and a lot of students from the University of Twente doing a thesis on social media participate in Somer. Also companies such as Sogeti and the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht participate within Somere.

Tagged with: somere, social media,

Unpredictability

As I’m writing this blog I’m looking out my window. I see grass and think: ,,aaaah, Fresh air, nature..” minutes after that I realize that it is not. This is manmade nature. Nature is not something we want to have outside my window. Nature is unorganized and unpredictable. So we cultivated it and brought a small part of manmade nature between four walls, so we can enjoy nature without the nasty side effects like bugs, rodents, mud and unexpected tree trunks we can fall over. That last case by the way is never our own fault, somehow it’s the tree’s. We’ve cultivated everything to such extent that we banned nature from our lands. We let it on there in tiny controllable bits; we don’t like to be surprised by an unexpected flower.

Tagged with: realism, nature, unexpected, social media,

The role of involvement in social media marketing

Last week, one of my friends shared a TV commercial on Facebook. His advice was: “Don’t miss it. It is really cool.” I pondered why some would change the TV channel to avoid watching the TV commercials while a friend of mine encourages his social network to watch a TV commercial on Facebook. It seems that he acts as a spy for the producer of the commercial. I know that he does not work for this company. But the question is what drives him to share this TV commercial with his social network?

Tagged with: involevement, social media marketing, social media,

Pandora's Neocracy #4, mobile conventions and education

VPRO (Dutch public broadcasting member) wishes to position itself as a taste community, interacting, participating, broad- and narrowcasting both DIY and prescribed content through any given media. Ergo, it positions itself as a full Monty crossmedia media brand that will incorporate any given media as log as it reaches its target audiences and – this is rather important – those audiences reach each other as well. Rising star on its firmament is mobile. During the VPRO’s presentation at the Mobile Convention in Amsterdam today, VPRO’s Erik van Heeswijk, editor in chief of the digital department, gave a stunning example. I am really sorry I haven’t got the film yet about the crossmediality of the particular example of ‘Beagle’, VPRO’s contribution to the Darwin year. This is a true crossmedia concept with blogs, a mobile site, 1050 minutes of quality TV, radio, print (both specific publications and their TV guide), etc. They also make use of third party media like Youtube, Hyves and LinkedIn. This production must have cost quite an amount. But fortunately, Van Heeswijk replied my question whether he is obliged to share their gained knowledge and expertise with the society – as VPRO is doing this great work with public money, say tax money – with a full YES. In fact, he added, he would like to encourage this. (I’ll give him a ring next week.) Mobile, as he mentioned will become a key devices through which people will look, listen, interact and participate in his community of taste. That’s one way of looking at will is going on and what will happen in the future regarding mobile.

Tagged with: convergence, convention, crossmedia, mobile, social media,

Social media an other diversion?

A discussion with a student about social media and internal communication prompted me to write this blog. The use of social media is becoming more and more popular in the field of internal communication. Huib Koelemans, one of Holland’s specialists on internal communication just published the book Twitteren op je werk. His slideshow on this theme has been downloaded more that 2300 times in three months, his book is becoming quite popular. And when you start looking around you find a webinar on the theme by Channelship, an article on social media and enhancing engagement etc. etc. Too much to mention.

Tagged with: internal communication, social media,

Those good old fax machines

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,

This is cool!

Have you noticed the Content Marketing Playbook, 42 ways to connect with customers? I discovered it on Junta42. There is more fun stuff there by the way. But this is really cool. You want to know which media you might best use to spread your content and don't have the time or energy to really study all the different types of (social) media and what there pitfalls mights be? Take a look at this small booklet. You can download it for free, so why not.

Tagged with: social media,