Though I finished the whole thing pretty much two months ago, I haven’t had a chance to publish it since. Now here it is, though unfortunately written in German. I’d like to summarize the key points in English in the near future. So stay tuned for this abstract.
If you happen to download and read the attached German thesis, I’d very much appreciate dropping me a line or two and sharing your thoughts with me. Feel free to share my thesis but please adhere to creative-commons.
This presentation outlines a new approach to advertising that diverts from the old unidirectional communication modell. It not only concentrates on phenomena like the Web-2.0-hype, but tries to encompass the broad picture. Michael Zorn – S&F’s planning mastermind and advertising messiah – truly delivered a remarkable and insightful piece of work. Well done!
From what I can see, there are 3 forms of consumer-collaboration when it comes to branding resp. advertising. They are organized according to an increasing consumer-involvement.
Participation: The consumer participates within a clearly defined framework which is set and controlled by the company. Collaboration is initiated by the brand owner and channeled towards its goals. A subset of this category would be the idea of user-generated-advertising.
Commenting: The consumer reacts on the company’s branding and is actively involved in discussing the brand’s meaning.
Appropriation: In the sense of Alex Wipperf?ºrth’s concept of a “brand hijack” the brand’s meaning is actively constructed by the consumer, mostly without the company’s knowledge and sometimes even without the comapny’s approval. As Bernard Cova and the academic discussion of postmodern marketing showed, this process can be observed within communities that are either constructed around the brand itself or a joint field of interest.
Though I always considered user-generated-advertising as a rather desperate attempt to apply the user-generated-content-mechanism to marketing, Apple and TBWA\Chiat\Day will air a tv-spot that started off as a student project in the U.K. It shows that collaboration between users and companies works as long as it is a controlled process. I think that the idea behind the Citizendium project reflects this notion: In an attempt to further improve the sometimes shallow and incorrect content of Wikipedia they are trying to excert some control over amateur collaboration. By introducing expert supervision they establish a controlling instance and quality management.
I think that the same principle applies to the Apple case: User generated advertising is not about solely putting the consumer in charge, but rather about collaborating with him so that both – the company’s and the user’s knowledge background and abilities – complement one another.
?¬¢‚Äö?ᬮ¬¨¬? is a rather cool image bookmarking service. Just like del.icio.us is for ordinary bookmarks ffffound.com lets you share images that are linked from other places on the internet. As they are still in private beta registering is only by invation for the moment but I’m really looking forward for them opening up for the anxious public.
Right now the service only presents a limited but nevertheless impressive collection of pictures, that are perfect for the occasional metaphorical comic relief in presentations. I hope they can keep up the quality of bookmarked images: So far it’s mainly due to the fact that only a few selected people are allowd to post such as the folks from eBoy or Russell Davies.
A statement about the status quo of education at universities: What if studying meant collaboration? How can networking be applied to communicating knowledge and skills? What would be the education model for the next hundred years? A very timely statement on education and a fascinating visual presentation of the involved problems. Thumbs up!
Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.
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RT @corinnajaensch: RT @faris: thanks! RT @edwardboches: "Rather than ideas that are content, have ideas that create content." 18 hrs ago
