Social Hallucinations

What's the New Customer Worth?

Interesting infographic based on a few studies, which focus on customer acquisition, retention and attrition rates. It gives an insight into how much the acquisition of the new customer costs.

Read more on Flowtown

Utility = Laziness

In the world of information overflow and lack of time to process everything that hits us, this app may seem a great invention. TLDR is an online application that can turn long articles into short summaries. Just paste the URL of any article into TLDR.it and it will summarize the article for you.

Great utility tool. It may save you time...but it allows us to touch only the surface. Shallowness? Laziness? Can't we really find the time to read and explore in depth the issues that interest us? 

The utility tools seem so exciting as we believe they make life easier and faster...but aren't they make us lazier?

Via PSFK

Technology Epitaph is Useless

The latest Chris Anderson's article in Wired on the death of web was rather provoking and caused quite a stir.

What always surprise me is the easiness with which we kill things around and present them as useless. Like we discard old clothes, we try to discard the technology. We've already tried to kill radio, TV and print. All three are still living and doing quite good, but the way they are used has changed.

As history shows, technologies evolve and being shaped by people and their needs they can coexist and merge.

There is some pinch of sensationalism in the way of declaring web dead. Alexis Madrigal from Atlantic responded to Anderson's article: "What's Wrong with X is Dead".

"From the vantage point of the present, it may seem that technologies are deterministic. But this view is incorrect, no matter how plausible it may seem. Cultures select and shape technologies, not the other way around, and some societies have rejected or ignored even the gun or the wheel. For millennia, technology has been an essential part of the framework for imagining and moving into the future, but the specific technologies chosen have varied. As the variety of human cultures attests, there have always been multiple possibilities, and there seems no reason to accept a single vision of the future." (David Nye, Technology Matters)

Killing the web seems like the attempt to simplify and feel more in control over the complex and unpredictable world of people behavior and interactions - choosing a single vision for the future. It is tempting to have a single vision, because it is more manageable and controllable but world keeps on evolving into plenty of parallel and intersecting paths.

There is no need to write an epitaph when nobody died.

Harvest Insights Through Observation

Via Indexed

Dictractions foster creativity

It was good to read this article in Wired:'How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive' that breaks the army of voices who present how distracting Facebook and Twitter can be and how much loss they generate for companies. This is just a one side of story as "social networks are particularly well suited to stoking the creative mind"

 
From my own experienced being focused for 8 hours on power points slides or excel sheets doesn't take me really productive. On the contrary it imprisons me in the fast tracks of routine thinking. There is nothing more inspiring than sharing thoughts with other people, finding impulses from completely different and not really connected with the problem you are working on sources. Our minds need to be kept fit and challenged to work properly.So stay connected and never stop exploring, sharing and learning. Play. Create. Share.

Photo by Adrian Wallet

The 6 types of ideas

via Tom Fisburne 

Do We Really Have to Meet?

Meetings are nice but are all they really necessary? It is very valid question on Monday morning and calender full of meetings. Sitting in meetings is often a nice time - waster, break from work where you sit and...nothing really happens except of talking. 

How to change the meeting culture and cut down the unproductive hours of just sitting and talking. Here are a few tips from Seth Godin

1. Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length?

Schedule meetings in increments of five minutes. Require that the meeting organizer have a truly great reason to need more than four increments of real-time face time.

Require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don't, kick them out.

Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious.

If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.

Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.

The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.

Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.

If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later.

It is a good way to start the new year at work, the year that is about doing the meaningful things. 

via Tom Fishburne

Models are Problematic

Image by ~jjjohn~ via FlickrPeople love models, especially when they’re big, complex and quantitative. Models make us feel safe. They take the uncertainty of the future and break it down into neat, bite-sized equations. But here’s the problem with models, which is really a problem with the human mind. We become so focused on the predictions of the model - be it the cod population, or the risk of mortgage derivatives - that we stop questioning the basic assumptions of the model. (Instead, the confirmation bias seeps in and we devote way too much mental energy to proving the model true.) It’s not just about black swans or random outliers. After all, there was no black swan event that triggered this most recent financial mess. There was simply an exquisite model, churning out extremely profitable predictions, that happened to be based on a false premise.
- Jonah Lehrer in Dangerous Models

Unscrew America

No plans for the weekend? Get some work done and help to unscrew America. Great and funny website.

sustainability, ecology, unscrew America

100% Green and Social Fitness

The new fitness centre was opened in Copenhagen - Hello Fitness. It is 100% green - the training takes place in nature. It sounds enough appealing to me! Sports should be exercised outdoors. There is nothing worse than smelly and dampy gym. The Hello Fitness combines the nature with the community. The idea is to create the feeling of support between participants extendend to online community. There is always someone you can exercise with, there is always someone to support you in your efforts. Fabulous idea and the it costs only ca. $20 monthly, which equals one pizza and DVD. The choice is yours :-)

You can also become fan of Hello Fitness on Facebook (it is in Danish only)

Emotions in social advertising

There is no recipe how to create the effective social campaigns. Measuring of social campaign effectiveness is also difficult and rare. Social advertising is too important to be left out to chance.  Measuring recall isn’t enough. Effectiveness of social advertising should be measured on three levels: motivation, engagement and recall.  The higher is the motivation and engagement; the better is effectiveness of advertising in terms of generating the change.

Attention is scarce, Sex is wanted

Today, social advertising shares the same problematic as the commercial advertising:  dull sensitivity, immunity to advertising messages, scarce attention, increasing clutter and choices. Advertisers are forced to use nontraditional and sometimes controversial means in order to get through with their messages.

There are more social advertising that uses humor and sex in the fight for viewers attention. 

Read more on emotions and social advertising in my column on Talentzoo.com

Tags: social advertising, emotions, public service advertising, social ads

Happy Easter - The Abundance of Links

The Wisdom of Steve Jobs

35 Ways to Stream Your Life
If Facebook and Twitter aren't enough...

The Future Revolutions
The end of consumers service, self service takes over and other changes. Btw thinking of self service brings McDonalds into my mind. I do still believe good service is something that is crucial in any business.

Save the Earth
Set your alarm and wake up!

Leadership vs. management
How to win with good leadership? Turn your values into preferred behaviors.

Future Trends in Advertising by Ben Hourahine from Leo Burnett in London



Great commercial from Schweppes - slow motion creates pretty arty effect.



Amy Winehouse is fantastic singer and no matter what how descent bourgois gets incensed by her lifestyle, Amy seems to become a significant fashion icon loved by teenagers and designer like Fendi and LV.











HAPPY EASTER!

Interesting Links & Ads and a Quote

The Advertiser Addictionary
Learn what SINK is. Funny and creative definitions of marketing jargon.

Social Media Super List
For overview and inspiration

The Ultimate Guide To Networking With Bloggers
How to make a great impression, and create an amazing relationship with a blogger. My idea would be to never forget that bloggers are people.

Promoting Gmail in Russia - advertising
It gives quite a feeling of what beta is.



Google Hot Trends
An hourly update of the most Googled terms.

Forget PowerPoint: 13 Online Presentation Apps
Don't need to add anything

And great quote for this week:
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most" (Mark Twain)

Tags: links, advertising, trends, google, social media, bloggers

Do the Green Thing!

I feel like staying green this week. Green makes me happy and I'd love to make you and Earth happy too :-) All you have to do is join Green Thing website. It's just an easy, monthly thing, it is a community that makes it easy and enjoyable to be a bit greener. Every month you'll get a different Green Thing to do. All you have to do is do it. This is exactly the micro change I wrote about yesterday. There are lots of cool videos, you can make friends with people who think green like you. You can see how much CO2 savings you made.

October's Green Thing is Walk Once and in order to make your walk even more enjoyable, you can download cool  walking tunes and walking words written by a talented musicians and writers. You put it on your iPod and listen to as you walk...and you can't stop smiling!

Tags: green, environment, micro change, green thing

Weekend Stuff

Here is some pretty interesting and funny links for relaxing weekend with laptop and good Internet connection with a cup of warm tea, good music and warm blanket.

RedFruit farm is looking for manager :-). Great website, especially the movie introducing you to the job.

Talking about jobs. Meet some very innovative engineers.

Dontclick.it. Interesting and addictive project.

Most influential gadgets in the history.

And a bunch of cool ads from YouTube

Great presentation of Nissan Rouge. Roughly speaking, I know what this car can on the road. Besides good creative execution.

I  love "The Science of Sleep" movie for it is dreamness. Watching this movie is like being in a dream. Now, Michel Gondry used his expertise in science of sleep for Motorola and made a Razr commercial.

Sensual advertising from Korean Airlines. Beuatifully done. It expresses softness, sensuality and makes you feel safe.

This is not a commercial. This is the piece from the real life. Tony Blair should be thankful and happy to get so much love.

Tags: links, advertising, dontclic.it, gadgets