The Berlin School Blog: Professor Robert Weisz on the Need to Manage Emotions

The Berlin School Blog

Emotional intelligence, that is the degree to which the business leader is able to understand and manage emotions effectively in the workplace, is a key success factor in leading creative teams and organisations in today’s business world, according to Professor Robert Weisz, faculty member at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.People have four basic emotions; fear, anger, joy and sadness. When under stress, these emotions are triggered impact our effectiveness. When our emotions are in balance we are content, creative and productive and in a state of growth. On the other hand, when out of balance we are in a state of survival. The role of the creative leader is to manage the emotions effectively in order to create an environment conducive to growth and creativity.

The Berlin School Blog: Professor Robert Weisz on the Need to Manage Emotions

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Robot Conducts Symphony - Advertising Lab: future of advertising and advertising technology

AP: "Honda's ASIMO robot conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as it performs 'Impossible Dream' during a concert in Detroit, Tuesday, May 13, 2008." Watch video (if you can get it to play past the pre-roll).

Robot Conducts Symphony - Advertising Lab: future of advertising and advertising technology

This is just for fun. But I love robots. And a few minutes before I die, I want my brain embedded into one of these Sony pups!

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MediaPost Publications - Mobile Feedback: Screenvision Launches Cinema Polling - 06/05/2008

Screenvision is integrating interactive polling via mobile text messages into its pre-show advertising. Depending on its success, the interactive polling, set to debut in the top 10 DMAs around the middle of the month, may eventually extend to Screenvision's High Definition digital network of approximately 7,000 screens; altogether Screenvision reaches about 14,000 screens, when analog theaters are included. The first advertiser to associate its brand with the poll feature, Verizon Wireless, is sponsoring polls about the audience's musical tastes. They will then be calculated via a live feed, with the results instantly displayed onscreen in the form of a bar chart.

MediaPost Publications - Mobile Feedback: Screenvision Launches Cinema Polling - 06/05/2008

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YouTube - Shell Game Interactive Video

YouTube - Shell game hard - Straight from Google Labs. Notice the Google t-shirt in the background. This is a very good development for engagement in online video.

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Geeky. Very Geeky.

The MySpace Intervention

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Ooyala: Backlot

Ooyala Backlot is a video management platform that gives you control over the delivery, organization, analytics, and monetization of your online videos.

Ooyala: Backlot

This is the player used on Bebo. Very nice interface. Great visual experience. Need to look into its promise of analytics etc. Note to self: Read this later.

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Habeas Study Confirms Strong, Ongoing Demand for Email in Direct Marketing, Mobile and Web 2.0 Applications

"Far from being eclipsed by Web 2.0 and other emerging communications methods, consumer expectations suggest that email will be the workhorse channel around which future online communications will revolve," Cahill continued. "This tells us that email will be as central to online commerce and communications in the future as it is today. Organizations that build trust with consumers by implementing forward-looking online reputation management strategies will differentiate themselves and gain a long-term competitive advantage by establishing themselves as a trusted online brand."

Habeas Study Confirms Strong, Ongoing Demand for Email in Direct Marketing, Mobile and Web 2.0 Applications

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MediaPost Publications - Top TW Exec Promises Net/TV Will Converge - 06/03/2008

The long-ballyhooed convergence of the Internet and TV is coming, perhaps within the next year, according to the top executive at Time Warner Cable.

TWC will soon offer a device--a wireless cable modem--allowing the Internet to sync up to the big screen. And further "network everything in your home," per CEO Glenn Britt, although details were not provided.

Britt said Friday at an industry conference that "the idea that the Internet is separate is going to very quickly go away--you're going to get everything on whatever device you want." He noted that Apple TV has been an unwieldy "first step," and in general, it remains "pretty hard" to bring Internet streams to the TV.That, he said, will change in no more than two years. "It's going to be very easy," he said.

MediaPost Publications - Top TW Exec Promises Net/TV Will Converge - 06/03/2008

That's some big talk. Does TWC have enough credibility for this to hold up? Isn't TWC about to be spun off by the mothership? Meanwhile, yesterday a DM piece dropped in my mailbox at home -- it was from AT&T for U-Verse. Welcome to the new Cable Wars. This is just beginning to get interesting. Then again, will a recession dump all over this party? Will millions of Americans simply cut the plug and adopt rabbit ears for their shiny new HDTVs?

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Lifestyles Condoms Aim for the Funny Bone

Lifestyles Condoms new series of online videos entitled Noah and Baron Talk Man Sh*t. The Webisodes, posted at www.lifestyles.com, run three to five minutes and depict American stand-up comedians Noah Starr and Baron Vaughn as they venture across Europe.

Lifestyles is looking to inform consumers about their product both by using humor and with open discussions about sex. "The Noah and Baron videos embrace the idea that safe sex can be fun sex at the same time," said Carol Carozza, vp of marketing at Lifestyles Condoms, Red Bank, N.J. "Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls, but safety and open lines of communication should always be top priority."The video shorts are representative of Lifestyles Condoms' advertising theme, "What's yours?" Agency AMP, Boston, handled production, which took place in The Netherlands, Sweden and Slovakia.

Lifestyles Condoms Aim for the Funny Bone

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Video Insider » Blog Archive » As Recession Ensues, Will Most Advertisers Default To Easier-To-Justify TV Buy?

This year’s upfront selling season seems to have come with its own wrinkles that haven’t exactly continued the pattern of the past few. Instead of the continual devolvement and advertiser mutiny that we’ve seen in the past couple of years, what seems to have occurred is exactly the opposite — advertisers returning to spend upfront dollars, despite continued network ratings declines and further ad skippage.

This seems to be happening for several reasons. First, those same advertisers that held out in years past wound up paying even more in a scatter market that produced windfalls for select broadcasting and cable networks last year. Strike or no strike, they had to advertise somewhere — and the scatter market strategy wasn’t exactly value-priced. Not so sound a strategy for this year, it seems.

Second, we’ve got a ratings mess — complete with everything from program ratings to C3 ratings to average live commercial ratings — even to exact minute ratings. From the creative sidelines, it seems like there’s a free-for-all of buying criteria out there that makes locking in a TV CPM upfront… well, a lot less free for all.

Third, and perhaps most significant, is the acknowledgment that we’re headed towards a deeper recession — leading most traditional advertisers to forgo the whole “shift to digital” trend and simply fall back on the ol’ tried and true TV schedule that they figure will at least keep retail sales going and maintain their brand health measures in this uncertain economic/election year into next.

If you’re an advertiser, put all three factors together and you’re left with fear and control as your buying motivations. Which is not exactly a great place to be if you’re reliant on an industry in as much chaos and entrenched thinking as the agency business is. Combine the two dynamics and it’s not exactly a setup for guerilla-like innovative planning and gutsy creative execution either.

The real challenge for us agency folk is, instead of just taking the money, we should be out there helping lead the more enlightened advertisers to see that more inventive digital and enhanced TV programs can actually out-engage pure impression-based models based on effective frequency if they’re crafted correctly. That means demonstrating how to leverage the digital channel as more than just a vehicle to top off television awareness measures with rich-media banners. It means showing how we can truly immerse consumers in deeper, richer storytelling that is driven by their TV buys and helps activate more trial and sampling, e-couponing and sales results than simply telling the same old brand health measures and purchase intent story.

In these recession-facing times, those who lean into digital by going way beyond the brand site and rich-media banners is one way to separate the marketers and agencies on offense… from those just playing awareness defense. Even the networks themselves, notably ABC, NBC and Turner, have leading-edge, robust custom digital program offerings to help augment even the most defensive TV schedule with tremendous online engagement opportunities.

Meanwhile, if you’re like most agencies feeling the pain of marketer CFOs freezing or cutting budgets while they move to keep cash on the balance sheet and take a wait-and-see posture until Q4, your answer isn’t “wait and see” before you can truly judge whether the digital shift is continuing to expand. The answer is for us all to go on offense and prove why a more engaged consumer is more valuable than a mere impression.Otherwise, for most marketers, the move to digital will simply amount to Searching for more answers… and keywords.

Video Insider » Blog Archive » As Recession Ensues, Will Most Advertisers Default To Easier-To-Justify TV Buy?

A hearty "Amen, Brother" to Alan Shulman for this. Many factions among agencies and their clients are looking for a bail out like the early 00's dot com melt down. They can go back to all TV all the time while wagging a finger at the Net. However, I truly think the jury's still out. The recession may not run deep(er); what if we're in the second or third quarter of a get-along-hum-drum kind of economy that'll last for years? What then? Or what if a back-to-TV backlash simply doesn't work? The fall out could be severe. The winners few. And the losers might shock us.

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Live ad by Honda designed to keep viewers tuned in - International Herald Tribune

Live ad by Honda designed to keep viewers tuned in. This is live, at 14,000 feet, over Spain," a man shouted over the roar of the wind, as he and a group of fellow skydivers plunged toward the earth near Madrid. Before deploying their parachutes, they created human formations spelling out the letters H, O, N, D and A.

Live ad by Honda designed to keep viewers tuned in - International Herald Tribune

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Search Engine Marketing | Austin, Texas | Apogee Search

Apogee Search uses proven techniques, powerful Web analytics tools, and a deep expertise in statistical evaluation to generate solid, measurable results at every stage of the search engine marketing process.

Search Engine Marketing | Austin, Texas | Apogee Search

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Yahoo's BrowserPlus is a Game Changer. Finally! - Silicon Alley Insider

BrowserPlus is a browser plug-in unlike any other. As most of you know, a Browser plug-in allows you to add functionality to your browser that it is not built-in. For example, the most popular Browser plug-in is Adobe's Flash Player.The reason BrowserPlus is significant is because it is really the plug-in to end all plug-ins. The idea is that once you have BrowserPlus installed, you can install different feature modules as needed seamlessly and without restarting your browser. Right now, installing plugins, while not exactly painful, is enough of a speedbump that, outside the Flash Player, getting people to install them is fairly hard.

Yahoo's BrowserPlus is a Game Changer. Finally! - Silicon Alley Insider

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Enterprise Adoption of Web 2.0: It's Happening - ReadWriteWeb

If you're a business who has been ignoring the Web 2.0 trend and the spread of social media: look out, the tide is shifting and you're about to be left behind. The rise of social media didn't happen overnight, the power of the internet to unite people, the ubiquity of broadband, the rise of Gen Y, the development of new technologies for socializing on the web - all of these things and more have led to the rise of social media. And this new force is affecting change in the way that companies do business - now and for many years to come.

Enterprise Adoption of Web 2.0: It's Happening - ReadWriteWeb

The lead of this article seems a tad harsh ... or overly hyped up. Nevertheless, the message is clear. Social media for business and, duh, consumers is quickly reaching maturity -- or as I prefer to say around the office and with clients, it's becoming "normal."

Other examples of formerly "techie" activities that have reached normality:
- Getting email on your wireless device; the Blackberry is normal while the iPhone is superbly normal
- Browser plug-ins; Flash is normal
- Digital photography on both ends - a digital camera and web-based sharing/printing apps; Flickr is normal
- GPS; does everybody give their TomTom a pet name? (Ours is "Jane")
- File sharing; iTunes is normal; with Miro and legal Napster, P2P is normal
- Blogs; the Huffington Post and Maya's Mom are normal

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Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media To Release Interactive Web Content

They are preparing to launch new interactive web content (with an emphasis on the interactive part) and are doing a bit of a road show to see what Silicon Valley thinks of their ideas. I had a chance to see some of the content and hear their monetization strategy. And while I can’t say much yet, this is clearly going to be really entertaining stuff. Advertisers in particular are likely to flock to the platform.

Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media To Release Interactive Web Content

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MediaPost Publications - New MRM Chief Creative Reveals Plans For Agency - 06/02/2008

"In most big markets, MRMWW is already a full digital shop--the U.S., UK, Germany, China. If you look at Microsoft and Intel as examples, they already spend most of their marketing dollars on Web and digital efforts. As for the rest of our clients and surely for new business, I guess the question is not if, but when."

MediaPost Publications - New MRM Chief Creative Reveals Plans For Agency - 06/02/2008

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Fantastic 3D Visualizer Plug In for Firefox, IE and more

PicLens | Immersive Views Across the Web

PBwiki Makes Wikis for Business

Case Studies

The Financial Times is the world's leading source of securities pricing and financial information, providing news and information to over 1.3m people in 140 countries. In addition to the daily paper publication, the Financial Times includes a pan-European network of national business newspapers and online services as well as a strong portfolio of magazine brands, websites and events targeting specific areas of the financial world.

murketing » “Buying In”

"Buying In has vast social implications, far beyond the fields of marketing and branding. Most importantly, from the policy point of view, it obliterates our old paradigm of companies (the bad guys) corrupting our children (the innocents) via commercials. In this new world, media-literate young freely and willingly co-opt the brands, with most companies being clueless bystanders desperate to keep up. Consuming and interacting with products has become the new turf for the identity politics game, stirring the kind of savage feelings previously reserved for matters of ethnicity and class. I really don’t know if this is good news or bad news, but I can say, with certainty, that this book is a must-read."
– Po Bronson, author, Why Do I Love These People?

murketing » “Buying In”

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