Facebook isn’t a trend… get over it!
Posted on 20. Mar, 2009 by Tom.
This post is originally posted on Who’s Reading Anyway?
I don’t really have anything against trendwatchers… if I could make money by telling people what they already know, I wouldn’t complain. Recently a lot of items came up telling people Facebook is the new trend, or Twitter is the trend of 2009. That’s not really true is it?
Facebook isn’t really a trend, it’s just a hype. The reason why Facebook exists… that’s the trend. The growing need to identify yourself, to pull yourself out of the crowd and scream: “This is me!”. Ever since the world got smaller and communications got more easy, people needed a way to distinct themselves from their peers. That need to identify yourself is a huge opportunity for marketers, it means that if you can find a way to reach them at an emotional level you can keep them, make them yours, loyal and ever-buying.
The use of Facebook is just an illustration. It shows how people desperately look for short-term solutions for long-term answers. Trends are something that evolve… slowly. It’s not something like Facebook that pops up one day out of the blue and answers to a certain demand.
Most people try to find ways to monetize hypes, while they should be finding ways to monetize trends. Riding the Facebook train is easy, it’s already there, but it’s not you. You can’t really call it ‘trendwatching’ when it’s something that’s already there. Trendwatchers who think that ‘Facebook’ is the trend spend days, weeks, months thinking about how they can use it to profit from it. By the time they do find it, there’ll be a new Facebook around. Watch the Kevin Kelley presentation again and wonder… do you really think that technology will give you the time you need to identify and utilize these hypes? By the time you find them, someone (your competitor) is already working on a new one!
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ROCK+ROLL marketing presentation and bibliography
Posted on 20. Mar, 2009 by Tom.
As promised, the English version of our presentation. Remember… it’s a very visual presentation, maybe we’ll find the time to record something so the presentation makes sense. Click the visual and you’ll be redirected to SlideShare. Feel free to download if you want to.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PASSION
· Constantin Brancusi, wikipedia biography.
· All the passionate people we had the pleasure talking to.
TALENT
· Gladwell, Malcolm (2008). Outliers. London: Allen Lane Books. (Amazon)
· Pink, Daniel (2005). A Whole New Mind. Why right brainers will rule the future. New York. Riverhead Books. (Amazon)
· Pink, Daniel (2008). The adventures of Johnny Bunko. New York. Riverhead Books. (Amazon)
CREATIVITY
· Arden, Paul (2006). Whatever you think, think the opposite. London: Penguin Books. (Amazon)
· Claxton, Guy (1997). Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind. How intelligence increases when you think less. London: Fourth Estate. (Amazon)
· Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. (Amazon)
· McLuhan, Marshall (1960). Explorations in Communication. Boston: Snow Carpenter Beacon Press. (Amazon)
· Pauling, Linus (1986). How to Live Longer and Feel Better. Avon Books. (Amazon)
DESIGN
· Godin, Seth (2007). Meatball Sunday. London: Piatkus Books. (Amazon)
· Heath, Dan (2007). Made To Stick. London: Random House Books. (Amazon)
TRENDS
· Everything about communities: FreshNetworks blog.
· List of emotions
RESPECT
· “Let’s try something different, let’s start telling the truth”, Bill Bernbach
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First ever ROCK + ROLL marketing presentation
Posted on 20. Mar, 2009 by Tom.
Big kick-off day today… first ever ROCK+ROLL MARKETING presentation at Artevelde Hogeschool Ghent. It was great to test our presentation before a large audience and experience some feedback of what we were doing. It might sound like the biggest cliche around, but we were nervous as hell to stand before you.
Award for best question asked: “Don’t you think you’ll scare people away by that (ROCK+ROLL) kind of marketing?”.
Basically… we hope we do, because we don’t like the other kind. It should be fun. You’ll be doing this stuff for 40 years… you’d be an idiot if you don’t love what you do. Find ways to make it fun. And if it doesn’t, it’s not the right place for you (or the right profession). And there’s no shame in that… just find your way to have fun, to make it ROCK+ROLL.
Anyway, as promised… the slides, download them here… it’s a Dutch version. The English version will be up tomorrow. (We’re still new at this speaking and uploading stuff, so give us some credit) If people are interested. We’re going to make a very very short version of this presentation for Barcamp Antwerp called “How to screw things up at Kursaal Oostende”.
Don’t know what Barcamp is? Google it!
Don’t know if there’s still room for you? Google it!
Because we know you have plenty of other stuff to do, we’ll do some things for you. The next few days you can expect a bibliography of this presentation with some excerpts. Our biographies (should be fun writing them) and a short history of Kursaal Oostende. (very short) If you need anything else (except one of us taking your finals), you’ll find out that we’re very approachable, contact us anytime.
Thought of the week: “There’s no such thing as having a bad idea, there’s only having no ideas.”
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