I’ve been a fan of Hugh Macleod’s blog Gapingvoid for as long as I can remember, both for his marketing ideas as the cynical wit of his cartoons. This work of art, although not necessarily ‘beautiful’, rings very, very true:

I’m not even going to add anything to this. It captures perfectly how I feel about advertising. Think about it.

If you look at only one bit of media today, it should be this page of videos from the latest St. Gallen Symposium.

Unfortunately they don’t allow embedding the videos, but definitely watch the interviews with Morten Lund, Dominic Barton, and the talk by Kishore Mahbubani.

Happy learning!

When I saw that question on Facebook, posted by Roeland Reinders, my right eyebrow went up a bit. And judging from the comments, other people had a similar reaction.

But, you can all pull your pants back up: What Makes You Horny? is an event.

Let´s cut the crap.
The very best ideas … well … make you a bit horny. The best ideas ignite passion, make you tick, get you excited and get you turned on. Entrepreneurship is like sex, innovation like porn, lingerie like product design.

On the 27th of january between 12h00 and 18h00 we are gathering a selected group of creatives, artists, entrepreneurs, multinationals, venture capitalists and agencies in BoCinq, the hippest new place in Amsterdam, to share their thoughts on What makes you horny?

So hurry up and put your name down, I hope to see you there! Oh, and you have to promise to participate in some what, this is not one of those boring events where you just sit and listen to the talking heads.

And to answer the question, this is what makes me horny. And this, or even this.

For almost ten years I’ve been a fan and subscriber of Esquire magazine (the original, US version, not the weak surrogate that is the Dutch issue), and one of my favorite parts has been the ‘What I’ve Learned’ section. It has long been my personal ambition to write my own yearly WIL, and inspired by this amazing collection of kennedy lore and wisdom, I’ve finally sat down to do it. As a believer in the Kolb cycle, I plan to do this every year from now on.

2009 has been an interesting year where I traveled many parts of the world and spoke to more different people than ever before, and where I have been challenged professionally on several fronts, giving me hugely valuable experiences.

So, here goes, my personal take on 2009…

• 1) Relationships 2) Reputation 3) There is no three. In business, all else is subject to the first two.
• For all the deadlines in the world, creative work is never ‘done’. You simply run out of time.
• Wherever you go, the hotel doorman is the same guy. He’s ubiquitous.
• Most people have no clue when it comes to doing a presentation or telling a story. Most importantly, they don’t realize they’re the same thing.
• If you have the attention of their boss, few people will be caught using their Blackberries in a meeting.
• There is a big difference between old guys and young guys.
• “Yes” and “no” have to be used with the utmost care. While my general disposition is to say yes, I’ve learned to say no a lot more and spend my time on the yes-es more wisely.
• Room service was invented for lonely business travelers. Not romantic couples.
• Where I live, ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘creative’ are as much a social denomination as they are professions.
• Anybody can make a toaster toast. Very few people can make a toaster something you covet. (I’ve borrowed this one from J Mays’ WIL in the new issue, because it so perfectly sums up some of my own experiences.)
• The more serious someone acts, they more insecure they will turn out to be. The opposite is not always true.
• I’m not sure that whole ‘continuous beta’ thing is such a good idea for those of us not engaged in web 2.0.
• I always say my goal is to have my face on the cover of Time magazine. What I really mean is that I would like to build something bigger than me, something that will outlast me and have a positive impact on the world. In short, it’s not about me. Or you. It’s about us.
• Golf is a lot harder than it looks.
• I turn a suspicious eye to men who claim they “can’t stomach hard liquor.”
• Most people will find it difficult to gauge you if you don’t fit in one or two boxes very neatly.
• With all the new forms of communication we have, it seems that the real face to face meeting has become so much more valuable.
• I’ve become very good at ‘traveling light’. In the rest of my life the concept has achieved moderate success.
• It will be messy sometimes, but you can run a global organisation with a handful of guys these days.
• It’s easy to annotate and mark ‘important’ sections of books and articles. It’s a lot harder to revisit them later.
• The ability to stay calm under pressure is one of the best qualities you can wish for.
• Old Dutch cheese is the best. No doubt about it. Where does that leave the French?
• I’m not sure what politics are about these days. What people are saying is the same everywhere. What actually happens is quite different.
• The web changes everything. It’s easy to read that statement and look around you and accept it, because it’s so pervasive.  But you need to understand it  and think about what that means. It’s not about blogs or Google or email or Skype. The fundament is that the web makes the cost of publishing zero and the cost of attention very high. Everyone can build a shop on the web for free. But then again, everyone can’t. ‘The web’ should not be your focus. Your audience should be.
• I have a lot of ideas. And I’ve gotten used to getting weird looks. In fact, the more people oppose, the more right it seems.
• They say that innovators have to be patient and persevere. I never knew they meant this patient.
• I’m not sure most formalities and processes really do add much. It seems they’re merely a convenient pole to hide behind. Or it could be my impatience.
• My job is to make our product easy to understand for others. I spend very little time on spreadsheets or speccing advertising.
• I find it difficult to have the right amount of sleep.
• It’s really time we stopped using ‘design’ as an adjective.
• Before engaging creatives (or consultants) I will give the problem a try myself, if only mentally. I find this allows me to write a better brief, have a better understanding of the challenges.
• Looking ahead comes more natural to me than looking back.
• It’s a shame we don’t drink Champagne more often.

That’s that. Probably not an exhaustive review, but a very fun exercise for me. I hope some of these will make you think a bit. In the mean time, I wish you all an exciting and interesting 2010!

PS. An encore: Beethoven’s piano sonatas are more conducive to reflection than the newest Black Keys project, Blakroc, which is a very cool work of art nonetheless.

We all know those videos on youtube which show you the ‘evolution’  of web 2.0. We’ve seen all the retweets with animations about the impact of social media. And on youtube you’ll find a lot of user generated content about twitter and facebook in real life.

Finally I came across a presentation that give me the feeling, ‘yes this is what I mean’. A clear and logical view on old and new media for professionals. I don’t say you need to agree with the belgium author of the presentation (@netlash). But I hope you agree that It’s nice to see someone create a clear opinion about new media.

The biggest marketing hit of the last years would probably be Nestlé’s Nespresso. This concept grew because of its innovative character and a little bit because of  ‘Mr. Nespresso’, George Clooney.

But what does Nestlé have to do to keep this cash flow going on? A new character in its commercials like John Malkovic? Nice commercial but not the BIG next thing we’re all expecting from Nespresso.

But somewhere the boys and girls from Nestlé found their next big idea. People are now receiving ‘Facebook save the date emails’ that redirect you to www.nespresso-whatelse.com. Here you’ll find George Clooney waiting for you. He’s in front of a Nespresso shop where you will see three videos of 5 seconds.

These videos are tv ads that only contain the first 5 second of the ad, kind of annoying. But that’s where the consumer comes in! The consumer can vote for their preferred pitch and win a trip to Cannes 63^rd film festival.

Again its a stunning marketing move by Nespresso. They filled the facebook page up with luxery info on coffee and again lets the consumer drool in front of his or her screen. Hopefully the campaign gets really popular so that Nestlé will roll out yet another big idea in a few months.

Innovation, creativity and Nespresso are going hand in hand into the future.

I often start my week with some video’s from Ted. This week a friend of mine told me to watch a lecture from Rory Sutherland. He’s an ad man that brings entertainment, humor, creativity and branding to each other.

In this lecture he talks about adding value by means of perception. He makes a statement by saying that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as making a change in “real” value.

Take a look at the video and I hope you’ll get just as energetic and inspired as I did afterwards.

[ted id=658]

The web has experienced some great initiatives the last few years. Everybody loves youtube, last.fm, google maps and many more 2.0 initiatives.

The most fun I get from these initiatives is how creative people give a new meaning to stuff like google maps. There are a lot of innovative people on the web who see new opportunities in products and services.
I came across a presentation by the ‘google creative lab’. They went through a journey over the web to find some of the coolest experiments in digital creativity. I hope you can enjoy these examples and, even more important, I hope you will get a bright idea yourself. Hopefully google creative lab can add you in their next years presentation with your birlliant mash up of google maps, last.fm, twitter, facebook, spotified and the Klatergoud website…?

Henry Jenkins spread this clip, a “viral-info-snack”, a year ago. In this clip from the near future (November 2009) he sums up the basics of his opinions on convergence culture, transmedia storytelling and the Obama campaign.

After last week’s little thinking on crossmedia I thought this video could be a welkcome addition. Hope it will give you an idea about transmedia stroytelling and that you can see that it’s a vital part of crossmedia.

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia – November 2008 from niko on Vimeo.