Account Planning in Austria: I am Number one.

I still can’t tell whether this is a good or a bad thing.

So I want to search for account planners in Austria, maybe find agencies that have planners and planning departments. What to do? Start up the Google engine and type in “account planning österreich” and here is the result in unretouched screenshot glory:

And ranked at five: me. The link actually goes to a report I wrote for university about my exchange year at the University of Oklahoma (where I had my first real exposure to account planning).

So the first Google results for “Account Planning” bring up an Account Planning Workshop in April (for which I have signed up already) and then me, some guy who tries to keep in touch with Account Planning in his free time. What does this say about the state of Planning in Austria?

I mean, face it, the largest non-network agency Demner, Merlicek & Bergmann calls Red Spider for planning duties when clients request it. And the general quality of advertising … oh well, let’s not get into this.

But there is a handful of planners in Austria. FCB, TBWA and other network agencies have planners. One sent in a reply to Heather LeFevre’s Account Planner Survey 2007, there is one Austrian in the Plannersphere (but he works in Hungary), none found at LinkedIn, one at Xing (German equivalent to LinkedIn). I haven’t checked StudiVZ yet, but it can’t get much better.

* The search results are bound to change: I will add some posts about planning things I did in the last half year or so in order to fortify my spot at the forefront of Austrian Planning.



April 3, 2008 | Filed Under Account Planning | Leave a Comment 

APSotW Winning entry: Me. Yay!

This week started with a pleasant surprise:
Rob Campbell posted Paul Colman’s reviews on the presentations for the assignment on Extra gum. After short disappointment because I wasn’t able to identify my presentation from the feedback (see whole story here) it turns out the winning presentation is my entry.

To sum this up in short: Extra is the everything else gum of Wrigley’s. The brand is spread out to appeal to everybody, and also the vehicle for new products. My recommendation was to define Extra by leaving innovation to a new brand, and putting focus on Extra as functional gum that aids concentration, focus etc.

Personally, I knew that this would taken two more slides, but ten was the limit. I REALLY would love to see Assignment “I”: “Mental Hygiene” is perfect, sums up my positioning thoughts much better. In fact, I would love to see all the other presentations. It was always great to see where all the other minds went.
BIG Thanks to Paul and Rob for taking the time to a look at the work.

But, alas, back to work. The new assignment is up already online.

Hm, I can’t help it, but I still have a suspicion that there has been an error and Paul Colman will ask me to return my price.



März 26, 2008 | Filed Under Account Planning, Output | 1 Comment 

How to build a Chocolate Easter Bunny

Here is a little something I made as an Easter Surprise for Heidi: a giant easter bunny-robot. It is not rocket science, really. Just a whole set of chocolates of all sorts and kinds. Pick a bigger piece for the body, something on top for the head, two long things for the ears, two round things for eyes, one ball for the nose. Assemble all with hot glue. Ta-Da. Joy.

DSCF2387.JPGDSCF2388.JPGDSCF2391.JPGDSCF2390.JPG



März 25, 2008 | Filed Under DIY, Output | Leave a Comment 

Herr der Ringe Konzert

Herr der Ringe Konzert in der Grazer Stadthalle

Gestern waren wir beim Herr der Ringe Konzert in der Grazer Stadthalle. (Die Eintrittskarten waren Heidis Weihnachtsgeschenk für mich) Die Warschauer Sinfoniker spielten Howard Shores Soundtrack für die Filmtrilogie. Es gibt nur wenige Dinge, die besser und kraftvoller klingen als ein 200 Personen Orchester. Sehr schön.



März 21, 2008 | Filed Under Diary | Leave a Comment 

My Soup is delicious.

my soupOver the last couple of days I have been playing around with Soup.io.
Soup can collect all the things you find on the web or post there yourself. For one, Soup really makes it easy to keep ahold things that you just happen to see when venturing through the web. Too many times I just didn’t have time, didn’t properly, forgot and lost interesting stuff. Of all the web things I have seen, Soup comes closest to an online scrapbook.*
And Soup is also great to share all the things you create on the web, as it also can grab the feeds of Flickr, Slideshare, Youtube, Vodpod etc. and collect them in your soup, creating a stream of your web life. This can also be great for brainstorming, data collecting and information sharing in a team.

Take a look at my soup here: thenausner.soup.io
And, as of today, soup will regularly be served on the sidebar.

*Until I finally get ahold of a ffffound! invite. But then again, Soup cab automatically collect your ffffound! images.



März 20, 2008 | Filed Under Improving | Leave a Comment 

New Maps Of The World

Via the Creative Review Blog I found this interesting exhibition at the New York MoMA: “Design and the Elastic Mind” running February 24–May 12, 2008.

This exhibition highlights many projects small and large where design made data legible, turning it into information. And sometimes into objects of breathtaking beauty. Like the image above: Barrett Lyon’s map of the internet from 2003, The Opte Project.

Too bad I will not be in New York anytime soon, but there is an excellent and extensive online exhibition available. If you are in any way interested in visualization of data you should absolutely positively check it out.

View the online exhibition here. (does not work with Safari, use Firefox if on a Mac)

There are so many awesome things to be found. I hope I will have some time later today to browse through the site.



März 19, 2008 | Filed Under Input, Visualization | Leave a Comment 

Songs in Charts

Songs as information design? Here is a wonderful new thing to do with piecharts, flowcharts or other diagrams: turn song lyrics into visualized information.

SONG CHART is a Flickr Group that has originated from preserving a Live Journal meme. Many of these musical infographics posted are just brilliant. I love this simple idea:

Friday Im In Love The Cure

They are pure genius when they not only catch the lyrics but also the character of the song, like this one:

Around the World Daft Punk

More here, check it out: Flickr Group: Song Chart

I figured this would be a could drill and I added a couple of charts myself. But I couldnt help wondering what Tufte or Maeda would do for this.

heinztocotronic biginjapanlovewilltearuspart yellow

via Fontblog



Februar 26, 2008 | Filed Under Input, Output | Leave a Comment 

Hello Elky. Hello Spreadshirt-Shop.

I had planned this for longer and now got into do-mode. I just finished a T-Shirt Shop (via Spreadshirt) with the first motive (also the result of a little drawing session over the weekend). It was about time. There is a link on the left…

thenausner apparel

 

Hello Elky

 



Februar 21, 2008 | Filed Under Improving, Output | Leave a Comment 

We can sell them anything. ANYTHING.

I have just started a new category: From Hell. This will be dedicated to showcase the highlights of Austrian advertising. It was sparked when I walked through the supermarket of my choice when I ran into this: Aha. Arnold. Prominently placed before the exits.

 

 

 
 

Wow, an Ahnold endorsed product…this must be good… Styrian Power… awesome! What could this be?

The secret recipe behind Arnold’s muscles? Steroids?

 

 

 

 

 

An Apple? Just how stupid do people believe consumers are? Pay 1 Euro for one apple, while two metres away you can get 2 kilos of the same natural, Styrian apples probably even from the same farm for 2 Euros. And some Ahnold packaging will make people do this? 

WHO believes this? Who of the marketing people responsible would fall for an offer like this themselves? Why is it that the conviction still persists that advertising can just TELL things and whoever hears BELIEVES them? Why is there nobody to stand up and say: “This will not not work. I would not buy this, you would not buy this and we know it. What leads you to believe that people in stores are any different?”

Are Powerpoint slides and business suits of advertisers that intimidating?

This is for real. They even have a website, but I am not going to link there. http://www.arnoldapple.com

 

Edit: A week later that thing is gone. I can only hope they went bankrupt.

 



Oktober 21, 2007 | Filed Under From Hell | Leave a Comment 

APSotW Assignment Feedback

Gareth Kay, planning director at Modernista!, posted his feedback on the last assignment of the Account Planning School of the Web. There were 6 entries discussing Mr. Clean and Gareth has taken the time give useful critique to all. Brett and Hayley were named winners.

Here is my entry:

 

  

And here is Gareth’s feedback:

Visually I think this is the best presentation and kept my interest levels up - good way of showing competitive clutter, etc.  I like the implicit call for brand humility.  But here I had a real problem in understanding your recommendation - I see the issues you raise but don’t get a sense of what the recommendation is.  What are the things you would recommend the brand to do? Just saying make better product is not the answer.  Some seeds here, but I would have loved to have seen the flower.

Yeah, when I put the finishing touches I pretty much knew this was not complete. I guess it is a limit of the format: 10 slides without any written coming with it. You just can not add everything that swings between the lines.

The recommendation really is that Mr. Clean should try become part of the process of cleaning. Right now, people spend more time with brooms, buckets, cleaning cloth than any cleaning detergent. The P&G Swiffers of the world come with those special brooms, while Mr. Clean just handed out a license to a broommaker in the US to produce Mr. Clean branded cleaning utensils. So you see what caught my attention.

I figured that a “New Formular!” would not really help. But a brand that would start saying “We work to improve cleaning!” and does everything to relieve us of the nuissance would have impact. Instead of that magical thing out of the bottle that never cleans like on TV, Mr. Clean should become a strong, physical support. Does that make sense?

Thanks very much to Gareth for taking the time.

 

 



September 23, 2007 | Filed Under Account Planning | Leave a Comment 

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