jonathannausner – Seite 12

A few days in the mountains

August 17, 2008 by Jonathan

I spent the last few days with Heidi in Alpl, which in the center a rather remote valley in upper styria named the „Waldheimat“ (ca. Home in the forests). They were not joking about the forests there. There really is forest, forest and forest (but no cellphone reception)
We stayed at a Wellness/Family hotel and enjoyed the calm, the clean air, the massages and the sauna. We did some walks (in the rain), picked wild berries and mushrooms. Perfect days to relax.
And today we finished off with a hike on top of the Raxalpe. (The images are from that trip) Great weather (not too hot, not too cold) and a great view (as far as the Neusiedler Lake and Hungary).

Osama loves..

August 13, 2008 by Jonathan

While Austria is preparing itself for yet another election filled with xenophobic campaigning, I stumble across this at Mark Earls‘ Herd Blog:

Osama loves
Channel 4 does a little online/interactive/online campaign that tries to give people a differentiated look at Islam and muslims. The idea itself is simple: they are looking for 500 Osamas around the world to tell who they are, what they do and what they like.

Osama from Indonesia loves Mangas. Osama from Nigeria loves Playstation. And I share my interest in Astronomy with Osama the Imam from the UK. Who knew?

This is great. It involves people. Makes them do something. As Mark points out it is a textbook sample for a modern campaign. But more important, this campaign lets muslims portray themselves, instead of being portrayed by hatemongers on soapboxes.

Austria could use some similar campaign these days. We need more human faces and the realization that we have more in common than what separates us in to break through the label of „non-integration-willing foreigners“ (bad translation of a bad term) and whatever that may suggest. But that would be an entirely different post.

They still need around 400, so if your name is Osama, or you know an Osama, join in.

Back.

August 4, 2008 by Jonathan

made with Lego Digital Designer

Ok. I am back. Been a couple of weird months. With a load of work. I finished a project that enables a brand to make direct mailings available for order for their independent dealers. For two markets with multiple languages. Great for dealers who cannot afford agencies and designers to create mailings and great for the brand to get all those independent dealerships to speak to their costumers in one voice.
A promising opportunity that sadly did not work out. New opportunities.
Holidays. Rest and good news.
However, blogging should become a habit again.

This is so sad.

August 4, 2008 by Jonathan

Sometimes you get a feeling that advertising hates little kids. Why else would anyone do this?

via Consumerist

Testing blogging with my iphone

Juli 23, 2008 by Joniphone

This is my first test post with my iPhone. I love this thing. It is gorgeous, simple, multi-purposeful and fast. I type faster on it than on any other pda.

Photo, anyone? Yep. Piece of cake.

Apple’s Interface Design drags all apps along: they are simply what you need. No more, no less.

Brand tags

Mai 14, 2008 by Jonathan

Noah Brier has done a small website with a great, yet simple idea. Brand tags simply collects tags and comments for brands by users entering the site and then displays the tag clouds. More than 100.00 people have tagged already giving an interesting look at all the brands on the site.

I always thought that tagging and tag clouds or web 2.0 things like tweetclouds are great tools to analyze and display the results of interviews and focus groups. What works with brand tags on the larger scale can be done for single client, too.

A look back: XBox

Mai 14, 2008 by Jonathan

This is a presentation I did at school back in 2003 at the University of Oklahoma. It is outdated but I still believe it is a great example of how to build up an argument for a strategic decision.

I have to stress that we made this before the Playstation „Mountain“ commercial that won the Cannes Grand Prix 2004. „Mountain“ actually could have been based on this presentation, except here the technical potential would have been stressed.

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Stay true.

Mai 9, 2008 by Jonathan

via Flickr by Greencolander

I ran into this the other day: Kevin Proudfoot talks Intimacy It is just a short list/summary which I found to be a pretty a good reminder of the golden rules of establishing meaningful communication with consumers. I believe there is no way around them:

Let the person know you’re thinking about them. Consider the user.
Talk directly to them. Eye level.
Enable and encourage them to be themselves. Let people reflect themselves.( (i.e. customized Nikes)
Avoid schizophrenia. Find one voice.

And then this washed up here and reminded me of the one rule to rule them all:

DO. NOT. LIE. Reminder: It’s the age of the internet, if you are not honest, it will resurface as certain as a celebrity sex tape.

What will be the implications for the Dove campaign should it really be the case that their images were heavily retouched? Other than disastrous? I mean, doing EXACTLY the opposite of what you claim to do. What were they thinking?

This does not mean I am fully convinced by the story, but the damage is already done because the Ogilvy PR person was not quick enough to say „WTF?! Who is this guy?“. „We have to check..“ sounds more like “ I am not sure what to answer. Please stand by till I have made up the proper lie.“ This is a symptom of an inconsistent story and in an interrogation room Dove would now be screwed.

I remember this story of an retiring politician (as incredible as it sounds, I think that was the case): he was praised by colleagues and the press that he never forgot a name, a commitment, a discussion or a face. When asked how he archieved that, he answered: „Oh. That was easy. I never told a lie.“

It is true. If you find an honest tone and message, communication will be easy. You will know what to do, what to say and you (or your press spokesperson) won’t have to remember all the lies you told.

Ford feeds monsters

Mai 1, 2008 by Jonathan

Claim says: „Now with more space for humans“. Well, let’s just say that this is one way to illustrate that the Ford Ka has lots of space inside. I like it.

Via Nerdcore

Fast Strategy Event

April 29, 2008 by Jonathan

Did something interesting in my lunch break today. I teamed up with the Planning4Good AllStars who were competing at IPA’s FAST Strategy event today.

Ok, explanations first: Planning for Good is essentially a club of Account Planners all over the world that tackle strategic problems for good causes and non-profits. Members include Gareth Kay, Planning Director of Modernista!, Aki Spicer of Fallon, Mark Earls (author of Herd) and many more notable names from the Plannersphere.

Anyways, Mark Earls was team leader of the Planning4Good AllStars (him, Jon Leach, Chris Forrest (The Nursery) and Ian Tait (Poke & crackunit)) to work on the brief as the P4G Allstars, one of three teams competing in the three hour battle for the title Fastest Strategist.

Mark additionally called – through the power of the Internet! – the combined brain power of Planning for Good people who could spare the time. So my lunch break was 30 minutes of furious typing, reading and searching at once, trying bring in as much thinking, ideas as possible. The Brief was about creating a strategy for a dog owner’s registry in the UK.

What I learned today (apart from „30 minutes is not much time“) for doing strategy in a team online and fast:

kick off fast, don’t wait for suggestions, have influencers just throw starters
keep the team updated of what you are doing, ask questions constantly
choose the platform wisely. wetpaint is good for a wiki, but maybe twitter would have been better for this fast event. Communication felt slow both ways.
give directions once you feel where you are heading, this will organize the herd instead of dispersing the effort.

Mark Earls posted that they just made second place. Bugger. Still was fun.I hope I can see the presentation they gave.

Apropos, presentations. In my Vodpod there is a splendid presentation Mark Earls gave at the ARF conference in New York (via Gareth Kay). He talks about Word of Mouth, decision making in our connected lives and how to best influence those processes. Intriguing stuff. I think I will get his book.