Had an interesting discussion this week at Globes event with Ahuvah, a very wise and internet-savvy friend, about foursquare. She asked me – Why? A simple question, complicated answer. Once, not so long ago, people were asking the same WH-question about Twitter, and look were we are now.
But back to me. I check-in at places of interest, usually business-oriented – meaning if I’m at a the Finance District of Tel Aviv, or the Hi-Tech district – where I’m more likely to meet people. But so far, as Ahuvah was clever to ask, those check-ins resulted in fewer random meetings than I expected. So again, Why? I guess convenience has something to do with it, meaning a proper application – Gravity. I’ve previewed Gravity before, saying it’s the main reason for my increased use of foursquare – a flick of the navbar, and I’m Here! Nevertheless, I believe foursquare is much more than just a contest for who’s got more Mayorships. It’s a valuable database of knowledge about people habitts – and knowledge is power. Much like twitter that crossed the chasm, foursquare too needs the same things: celebrity, business, media coverage.
Club Seat - 1st Israeli foursquare-based campaign
Celebrity we have (not many though), media coverage still lagging, but now we have a business. Seat become the 1st business in Israel (Hebrew) to use foursquare in a digital campaign (Hebrew, again), Club Seat, along with 3 known clubs in Tel Aviv – Gazoz, Galina, and Sublet. People are encouraged to create an account in foursqaure, download the app of their choice and visit the clubs. The campaign is three-fold:
The club that receives the most entries by August 30th (end of summer break) is crowned ‘Best Club in Town’;
Top 20 people with the highest number of check-ins at any of the 3 clubs will receive concert tickets;
The mayor of each club will receive a plane ticket (round trip I hope)
Personally I was hoping the 1st business will originate from the restaurant/cafe/bar industry, much like Starbucks is doing in the US, or FT.com’s deal to attract youngsters in London. Seat, along with Grey Interactive, have taken a leap into un-charted waters in Israeli advertising, as foursquare is still in early-early adopter stage here. Facebook has transformed the digital space in Israel – more than 3 million people connected (about 60% of internet-connected homes), #2 fastest growing country in the Middle East (7%, monthly), top 10 countries in terms of average time spent (globally!), and more. No campaign is complete here without a facebook presence. Twitter and foursquare are still considered ‘geek-only territory‘, although twitter is gaining momentum in celebrities and media.
Club Seat was only launched this week, so the stats are obviously low (Gazoz 9 check-ins, Galina 3 check-ins, and Sublet 4 check-ins), but it will be interesting to see how this pilot evolves and what impact will it have on the advertising industry. Stay tuned.
I’ll start with the bottomline of this post (aka The Title): Where can I buy Old Spice?
In a marketing space, driven by numbers, ROI and sales graphs, I imagine the Old Spice (twitter/facebook/youtube) finance people will be interested to know they’ve gained at least 1 new customer. Me. It doesn’t matter how it smells, will I like it or not, who uses it, how much it costs – really, I just want one, to be like Isaiah Mustafa (aka Old Spice guy/dude/man). So, where can I get Old Spice in Israel? Don’t know, will find out. A friend visiting Israel already said he’ll bring me his – thanks Dovid!
Plenty of words have been written about Old Spice campaign, as the 2nd phase broke previous records and defined new rules for brands’ engagement in social media (aka digital marketing). I will link to three posts by marketing professionals I trust – Lior Zoref (Digital Marketing Consultant, ex VP Marketing for Microsoft Israel; post in Hebrew), Lisa Barone (Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media), and Hillel Fuld (Tech blogger, marketer, twitterer, writer). All three, specifically Lisa and Hillel, have analyzed Old Spice campaign, and produced a must-read list for marketers.
I came across this story a while back and faved it for later, which is now. Innovation is defined as a change in the thought process for doing something or “new stuff that is made useful” (from Wikipedia). The following example focuses on the change in the thought process of a company’s CEO, and the actions he’s taking to keep his company in the lead.
Netflix Strategy - The Future
Reed Hastings, Netflix Co-founder and CEO, uploaded a presentation last month, called Netflix Business Opportunity (RSS readers click here). In the 40-slide deck, Reed quickly reviews Netflix performances to date and shifts to the future – threats and opportunities, and what his company must do in order to continue the growth and lead the market.
Netflix - The Future
In a candid inside look into his own company, Reed is saying ‘Our main revenue stream is dying, we need to find and cultivate a new one’. That’s not an easy statement to read, yet alone write, for a CEO. The DVD-by-Mail service will grow for 3 more years, but streaming will eventually replace it. If Netflix wishes to grow, it must focus on ‘a single segment of the streaming market, where we can gain and maintain leadership’.
Netflix segment - to lead and maintain leadership
How Netflix intends to gain and maintain leadership? By Democratizing Innovation, meaning leveraging the company’s assets – its customers and employees. Reed explains the threats to the company’s new strategy (Pay-Per-View, Piracy, Cable/Sat/DVRs, Direct/Online/Free, etc), but also how to compete with them – providing superior customer service, improving subscribers’ satisfaction, creating amazing user experience, and keeping subscribers raving about Netflix (among others).
Democratizing Innovation
The complete deck is embedded here, definitely worth the reading time. I know that once Netflix launch in Israel (expanding international begins 2010) – they have my vote, and subscription.
I saw this infographic at Konigi blog, definitely worth the re-post: it describes the major features enabled by HTML5 that we need to be aware of – Canvas (1), video elements (2), geolocation (3), and offline storage (4). The graph also shows current and future support in web browsers: Chrome 5.0 is best (86%), followed by Safari 4.0 (79%) and Firefox 3.6 (77%). Those out there still using Microsoft’s browser, IE 8.0 is only at 26%. Click the image for full size (1200 x 1312).
I remember reading a tweet the other day, which I actually agree with (can’t remember the author though), saying ’social services like facebook, twitter, myspace, come and go. Flickr has been here since 2004 (!), and is here to stay’. The same goes, in my opinion, to blogs. Other sharing services will come and go, but the web-log, is here to stay.
It’s been 3 weeks since I started working at Inkod-Hypera, and almost 2 weeks since my last post. True, there’s facebook, and twitter, and LinkedIn, and other social services that I update on a daily basis, but those micro-updates cannot be compared to a blog post. Same audience perhaps, different format. And no limit on words!!
Ilan (creative director) and Assaf (VP products) are testing the new helicopter model
Being recognized for your work is always a good thing, and makes one feel good about the things one does. In the 3 weeks I’m here we’ve received dozens of ‘thank you’ emails from customers, the best incentive for any employee. One of our customers, Sparkeo, is a winner at mini Seedcamp Tel Aviv [English post], and are waiting for the Seedcamp results. We’ve been published [Hebrew] in a local news website, and are gaining momentum in the social scene (you’re welcome to joinus).
I laughed through most of this 4 min clip, as comedian Louis Szekely (Louis C.K) is telling Conan O’brien how ungrateful people are to technology. The monologue (although he’s a guest, but Conan acting smart and letting him speak) is hilarious, and Louis goes over some of the major technological breakthroughs we experienced in the past 50 years. Enjoy!
We knew some of the new features back in April, but still, iPhone 4 (aka HD) is a big step forward. And also, another proof that Jobs is a genius in marketing and setting consumer trends. Video calls have been around for couple of years, but FaceTime makes you wanna STOP making regular calls and do only video.
During the past 10 years in IT my roles were predominantly in the end-user position – either selling or marketing of a product or a service. I was familiar with the process, just not part of it. Well, this has changed, as of June 1st.
As the Marketing Manager I handle strategy, lead generation, brand management and positioning, sponsorship and events, PR, BR (bloggers relations), community and social, marcom, online/offline, and other stuff as well. Here’s a profile slide that you can download/share around. For business opportunities (or just social), feel free to contact me at dvir at inkod-hypera dot com. Samples of our work – after the embedded slideshare presentation and online. Enjoy!
Soluto’s PC Genome is a knowledgebase of PC frustration data built automatically through the usage of Soluto software. Its objective and statistical information, gathered and analyzed by Soluto, is also editable by the community.
Location based services (LBS) are a hot topic now, owing the success to the built-in GPS chips available in every mobile smartphone sold today. In Israel, every cellular provider (4) has its own GPS application, which costs extra $$ monthly to use, and users, like myself, decided to look for alternatives [HE review].
2 years ago I came across Waze, a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on the live conditions of the road. The idea is simple – waze provides the software, but the users are the driving force behind it: the more you drive, the better it gets. Each driver shares his location and road conditions with fellow ‘wazers’, alerting them of traffic jams, police, and accidents. Twitter and Foursquare integration are also available.
Waze is available for iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry (Beta). Simply point your phone’s browser to m.waze.com or follow the instructions here. The symbian version (officially) works with Nokia E66/71/72/75 and N82/85/95/95 8GB/96/97. Personally, I know it’s been used with Nokia 5800, N86, and E52.
Waze are doing an excellent work online with their community, sporting a company blog, users-blog, forums, wiki, hall of fame users (each report is worth points), recent map updates (by location), twitter (global and Israel) and much more.
