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    • World Cup 2010: I am ready

    I prefer to watch the video above without sound, theme songs were never a strength of FIFA Worldcups. I am in the mood for some football – especially after this last season with Cup title for Sturm Graz, St.Pauli and Newcastle United back in their highest leagues – and I have my Vuvuzela app, I have my app for real-time complete statistics of every game. Barbecue is scheduled for this afternoon. I am ready.

    As for predictions, my tips are always spoiled by my preference of sentimental underdogs like Denmark, South Korea, Australia or New Zealand. All teams that have the same or less potential compared to Austria and still regularly perform better. I always rejoice when they annoy the big ones (Denmark 1992, DEN-BRA in 1998, AUS-ITA 2006, Korea 2002).

    And then there is England. The team that must avoid penalties at all costs, or practice them for four years in preparation. And in this tournament they must not lose another player. How thin exactly the side is on some positions showed painfully in the first half of the Japan game. You will need all the luck in the world. Fingers crossed.

    Looking at the BBC Team Tracker (highly recommended) I fear the worst for all of my supported sides. Some big ones will have to fall in the first rounds to make this interesting.

    Ke Nako! It is about time!

    • Juni 11, 2010
    • Diary
    • comments closed

    Persuasive Presentation

    Take a look at this video:

    Nick Vujicic is a total inspiration.

    You see, I have been thinking lately about persuasion. Especially the really complicated kinds that go deeper than selling stuff, but touching people and changing their attitude (about themselves or important issues). I believe there are many people out there who tell these kids exactly the same things as Nick, they probably use exact the same words, but their words could never as resounding. Why is that, I wonder?

    I have written down some thoughts about this, but it needs more thinking.

    Why I want to work in Planning

    Great news in my mail today: I have been accepted to the Miami Ad School Europe’s Account Planning Boot Camp in Hamburg. The program will start in July.
    I am super-excited about this opportunity and about being able to see St.Pauli play in the German Bundesliga again.

    One of the questions posed for the application was: “Why do want a career in Account Planning?”. Here is what I wrote:

    First, because it is the field that makes the most difference in advertising. My perception is that the outstanding work of the last years was only possible because it had a firm strategic foundation.

    Second, it will be the most challenging and exciting discipline in advertising. We are just at the beginning of the digital age. The maps of human behavior and communication will be redrawn. What a great time to be an explorer!

    And third, because I hate being bombarded with lame, irrelevant and meaningless advertising. I want to change that.

    On a more personal note, I have been excited about account planning and it’s practice since I studied it at the University of Oklahoma. It never let go of me. I kept myself informed and took courses. What I learned I put into practice at my job with DMS, but never worked as a planner.

    I am applying here because I want to turn a hobby into a career.

    PR 101: How to place yourself on the map

    So you are the President of a country whose name sounds like a veneral disease and everybody expects you to wear an iron mask and green cloak. But nobody knows that you exist nor where your obscure European country is actually located.

    So you have tried everything: you brought the Chess World Championship to your capital in your position as the President of the World Chess Federation. You introduced mandatory chess lessons in schools, but still nobody really remembers you, your republic nor heard of a chess child prodigy…

    Here is what you do: You go on television and tell everyone you have been abducted by aliens.

    This is what Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, President / Economic Dictator of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia did. And – Wow! – it worked. Because now I know where Kalmykia is.
    In case you are interested, too: Kalmykia.

    • Mai 15, 2010
    • Weird, fun, video
    • comments closed

    Only Freaks have no Guns (in Afghanistan)

    I just read an interesting piece in this month’s Geo Magazine about the U.S. Army’s HTS (Human Terrain System) program in Afghanistan. The HTS recruits ethnologists and sociologists and brings them to the war theatre to better understand the tribal cultures of Afghanistan.

    Somebody figured out after four years (the HTS started in 2006) that it might be useful to listen to and learn from the people there what is important for them, what motivates them, how do they earn their living, what they want and what they need. Turns out it unravels actual insights into Pashtun communities, helps to understand why some sympathize with the Taliban and how to win them back.

    However, the most intriguing quote for me was this one:

    Many civilian ethnologists complain that their colleagues in combat carry guns. This would  contradict the scientific rule not to put opposites under pressure. These scientists obviously have never been in Afghanistan. A gun is the last thing that would intimidate a Pashtun. Instead, he will consider someone not carrying a gun a freak.

    Important knowledge.

    • Mai 7, 2010
    • People
    • comments closed

    The Days the Air Stood Still and Started Buzzing Again

    itoworld.com has published this amazing visualisation of the Northern European airspace returning to use after being closed due to volcanic ash. Due to varying ash density across Europe, the first flights can be seen in some areas on the 18th and by the 20th everywhere is open. The data is a mashup from flightradar24.com, openstreetmap.org and contributors.

    I am still wondering why there were so few flights to accumulate data to confirm or falsify the data of the models that predicted the ash concentration over Europe and were the basis for the airspace lockdown. I only heard of one flight over Germany. Do we know the data was right?

    Airspace Rebooted from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

    Sometimes I like Direct Marketing

    Sometimes there are moments that make me realize why I started to work in direct marketing. A few days ago I went to an optician to have my glasses repaired.

    I handed them the glasses, they checked customer data and I was told to come back some days later to pick up the repaired item. Not even five minutes passed after leaving the store I received this short text message (translated and paraphrased):

    Exclusively for YOU in April!
    FREE spectacle frame (max. €99,90)
    with your purchase of new glasses
    at your XYZXY store until 04/30/2010.
    This short text message = voucher

    Clearly, turning in my spectacles for repair had triggered the text message. If my glasses hadn’t been a sad little backup set, I probably would have turned back checked out the glasses at their shop.

      The Clutter, Visualized

      Dutch Design studio STUDIO SMACK has created this video to demonstrate “the immense scale of the visual bombardment” we encounter every day. Sure, in theory we have all heard the numbers of the many thousands of messages we encounter everyday, but what does it mean? In the video, all texts, logos, ads competing for our attention are highlighted white, everything else is black.

      That’s quite some clutter to break through and to paraphrase PSFK, it makes you think how visible advertising really is. (btw, the video is Creative Commons licensed, very useful for presentations)

      KAPITAAL from STUDIO SMACK on Vimeo.

      Via PSFK.com

      The Crowdforce is Strong in This One.

      I am not too convinced of crowdsourcing, more precisely, most of the ways I observed crowdsourcing in practice. Most of the times you get the feeling companies use crowds to get cheap ideas and designs. You know what I mean, first three get a small price and the company then picks a random design from the pool of thousands of submissions they got for free and now own.

      But Casey Pugh’s StarWarsUncut is a whole new set of awesome and it shows the way to make exciting things happen together with the multitude of creative people on the web. For StarWarsUncut the original Star Wars: A New Hope was split up into 472 parts of 15 seconds each. People could claim segments and submit their interpretation of it. All clips will be stitched together to make up a whole new experience of the classic. As of April 9, the team of StarWarsUncut announced that the movie is finished and posted the first trailer.

      Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

      I don’t know about you, but this looks amazing and exciting. So many brilliant ideas in so little time. I wonder what the full movie experience feels like, but I can’t wait to see the whole thing.

      There is also a five minute teaser available: Teaser here.

      What if Economists were in charge?

      I am a big fan of Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s Freakonomics, both book and blog, and their refreshing perspective on “the hidden side of everything”. Only recently they have launched Freakonomics Radio, a regular podcast which I recommend to everyone who is observing people and numbers.

      I just got around to listen to the last episode What Would the World Look Like if Economists Were in Charge? This speculative question opens another truly entertaining and informative podcast episode. I had to laugh out loud at Mart Laar’s description of his encounter with Margaret Thatcher. I found Stephen Levitt’s anecdote of his daughter at the end especially insightful, as it explains why negotiators (like lawyers) and not number people run the show in politics.

      Superfreakonomics is already on my bookshelf, but given my current workload this will have to wait until July i am afraid.