Hasta La Creative!

Here’s an interesting use of outdoor advertising. Engaged in a epic price war with the competition, German do-it-yourself store OBI hooked up with Jung von Matt which create billboards with a unique goal.

Answering the question “Why promote things that make our homes more beautiful, with advertising that makes everything look uglier?”, Jung von Matt created billboards by actually renovating sections on run down buildings near OBI stores.

The boards demonstrate what can be done with OBI products in real world scenarios people can understand. And the billboards permanently beautify the area. Instead of making it uglier with price-war messaging.

If you didn’t have reason to be in Cannes longer than a week, perhaps now you do. Well, as long as you’re active in the health space. The first ever Lions Health will take place in the Palais des Festivals, Cannes, France, 13-14 June 2014 and will welcome to the stage a speaker line-up that will include some of the most awarded creatives in healthcare and top marketers from around the world.

“Seminars at Lions Health are designed to explore how creativity can help transform the sector”, says Louise Benson, Lions Health Festival Director. “Thought leaders and industry experts will take to the stage to showcase great ideas that push boundaries, deliver fresh insight and thinking, and lead the debates that drive communications in the industry forward.”

Additional speakers who will share their expertise with the audience include:

Jim Stengel, Former Chief Marketing Officer of Proctor & Gamble and author of Grow, and Digitas Health creative chief Alexandra von Plato, discuss how a new generation of creative leaders will transform healthcare marketing as we know it at their session ‘Building an Inspired Organisation Now – PHCG’.

Rich Levy, Chief Creative Officer, Draftfcb Healthcare; Jill Weingarten, VP Senior Recruiter of Greenberg Kirshenbaum; and Megan Miller, graduate of S.I. Newhouse School of Communication will reveal why it’s more alluring than ever for the brightest talent to apply their skills to improving global health.

Lakish Hatalkar, Novartis OTC New Growth Opportunities Franchise, General Manager and Jeremy Cohen, Edeleman’s Europe & CIS Chair for Business and Social Purpose, will explore using creativity to build a responsible brand by applying science, innovation, communications and creativity expertise to society’s biggest health challenges.

Chris Duffey, SVP and Group Creative Director of Sudler & Hennessy, with guests including Google’s Katie Erbs, Head of Rich Media, Northern and Central Europe, will discuss the complexities of marketing health messages through mobile due to the sheer scale of devises being used by physicians, patients and consumers in the ever shifting landscape of technology. They will demonstrate how clear, creative ideas can cut through the confusion and deliver engaging mobile experiences that improve healthcare outcomes.

The first Lions Health Festival, offering two-days of content, inspiring screenings and exhibitions of all the latest healthcare marketing communications from around the world, as well as networking opportunities, will culminate in the first Lions Health trophies being presented to the winners at a dedicated awards ceremony taking place in the Palais des Festivals in Cannes on Saturday 14 June.

The show, to air on NBC in May, is the latest example of media companies’ rush toward splashy awards events that bring waves of social media chatter.

Despite slow sales and a shrinking market share for its e-reader, the bookstore chain says it will release a new color tablet this year.

Basé à Kaikoura en Nouvelle Zélande, l’artiste Ben Foster nous offre des sculptures d’une incroyable beauté. Jouant sur l’équilibre des formes et des mouvements, ce dernier sait utiliser l’espace autour des œuvres pour mettre celles-ci en avant. Une sélection de ses travaux est à découvrir dans la suite.

Imagine if the entire world was your sales force. Imagine that any time, a potential buyer of your product or services was “in market,” one of your current customers told them about you – in a very positive manner. Talk about real-time marketing. What if you had an army of “friends” who were telling their friends about your products and services? Sound too good to be true?

It’s already a reality for many big brands that are reaching out to customers who can influence their potential prospects’ buying decisions, and they are recruiting them as a lead generation channel. Customers are a great source of leads. So are employees. And so is anyone else who could influence a buyer’s decision. Every brand has people that will advocate on their behalf. As we used to say at IBM – “all you have to do is ask”.

Smart brands are starting to ask. They are inviting customers, employees and 3rd party influencers to become part of a community that drives leads on behalf of the brand. There are many good reasons why I think this concept will quickly proliferate and transform how brands generate leads.

1. It works – at scale. Leveraging assets like customers, employees and influencers is just smart business. Almost all the pundits agree that buyers are being influenced more than ever by friends, family and people they trust. Reaching out to the crowds of people that know and trust you makes good business sense. They are very connected, have a loud and trusted voice, and they can reach their friends easily and often on your behalf. We know of brands that have registered over 1 million of their customers into a channel that drove over almost 2 million leads to the business.

2. The leads are better. When a friend or influencer talks, people listen. We know that brands have much less control of their story and image today than in years past – before social, digital and mobile channels transferred power to consumers. Consumers and influencers are now in charge of the story. Research has consistently shown leads that convert as a result of a referral from a friend or influencer are more loyal to a brand, spend more and stay longer – they are pre-qualified and ready to buy by the time they reach your brand.

3. It drives corporate productivity. Leveraging “social assets” dramatically decrease customer acquisition costs. At the most basic level, social channels extend a brand’s sales force (with zero overhead) and they solve one of the biggest challenges brands face: knowing when a potential buyer is in-market. This community is always on and continually active – making referrals, amplifying products and promotions, and posting positive information about your brand, freeing up internal hours and reducing time spent identifying and nurturing prospects.

It’s not important what name you give to this community. You can call them influencers; you can call them advocates; you can call them professional lead generators. Ultimately, you should think of them as a sales and marketing channel. Once you build this channel, you will realize that they can do many other things on your behalf including creating and distributing content and amplifying marketing messages.

Customers, employees and influencers are the fastest growing sales and marketing channel today. By utilizing the latest in social marketing software and technology, business leaders can mobilize this channel by creating and leveraging their social relationships to generate great leads and drive new business.

This contributed article was written by Dick Beedon, founder and CEO of Amplifinity.

Lenovo shocked the technology world late last month when it revealed it was to acquire Motorola Mobility from Google, so we visited the Lenovo Booth at Mobile World Congress to discover what is in-store for Lenovo and Motorola.

The “networking” session went on pretty solidly into the night after day one of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but Weve’s commercial leader, Nigel Clarkson, has shaken it off to report back on day two.

How many people watched the second season of “House of Cards” on Netflix? The volume of messages on Twitter suggests the audience for the political thriller may have grown substantially.

Créée pour le project « Solo Houses » de Christian Bourdais, l’architecte Didier Faustino, basé à Paris et à Lisbonne, a conçu la « Big Bang House », une bâtisse futuriste et dynamique qui semble exploser au milieu de la nature. Elle devrait être construite à Matarrana en Espagne à côté de 11 autres maisons de vacances.