Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Local branding: Berlin experiences

You have one city - Berlin - , with a strong and long history, a powerful brand, a top destination for the worldwide tourists. And a couple of icons, as the Reichstag, Museums, the Checkpoint Charlie, Spree and Kreuzberg to randomly mention just a couple of them - and not all, of course. But, at the grassroots level some new and old trends are more and more obvious: the power of the local branding within a local, powerful brand part of an international strong brand - Germany. During the summer, all across Berlin, in Spandau or Neukolln, just to stop to the two I already attended, local festivals - for a day, a week-end or a whole week took place: open-air concerts, and discos, exhibitions, wine and food tasting. A good occasion to increase local investment - because you need to bring the small companies, to make the concept and print the presentation materials, to invite the artists etc. But, in the same time, a valuable opportunity for the local community to better know each other, to get involved in organising their local small events. As for the tourists, if they are having the chance to be around, they could discover another kind of town, not yet too much introduced in the usual touristic guides.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Update your Status

How much does your status tell about you? And why should it be important to have any status details?
Started to ask myself recently, after observing that even yahoo messenger - in my opinion, one of the most conservative communication platform - introduced the "status" opportunity.
Finding the right and creative recommendations about yourself it is not easy. Some of us simply are unable to write fluently or to have new and astonishing ideas at every moment. Some of us don't travel, don't go to movies or theater and don't fall in love each day. Others simply don't find a reason to share their daily schedule step-by-step with the others. So, for them, the status update issue - obsessively present in Facebook under the question :"What's in your mind?" - for me, at last once, the temptation was to simply answer this, considering it is not the smarties suggestion to improve your personal creativity; maybe, for example, my mind is blank, but still alive etc. - is non-sense.
For commercial purposes, the advantages are quite interesting, because you could keep away a broad area of consumers - real or potential - with news, updates about new ideas and permanent repositioning under various angles. At least in one point, a lesson to be learned for the personal communications: branding yourself is just putting into light what do you consider are the strong point and what is defining you better. Should we all became experts in personal branding? Not automatically, but the mechanism according to which we are organizing our communications are most likely to have more to do with this. Or, at least, to offer as broader opportunities to better know ourselves. And, of course, to better make choices in terms of friends or people part of our direct community. For better sharing common thoughts, concerns and joys. In fact, these new communication tools are not so neutral, depersonalizing as we thought first.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

School Communications

A very good example from a normal German school.
The parents are part of a network where they are able to exchange e-mails and ask questions to the principal and other teachers regarding the content and the program of the school. Monthly, you receive newsletter with the main activities taking place in the near future, or those already organised, as well as the main changes regarding the teachers and the program.
Periodically, you have the usual parent's meeting, but as well other socializing events purposed to offer to the parents better ways to know each other and, eventually, to identify their common problems.

Question

If 24 months ago, including in a PR and communications plans, the social networking platform was a futuristic and innovative way to see things, nowadays, the presense of those tools is normal. What it is normal too, and always was, is to offer a valuable and creative content to those networking solutions. Here I see the main challenge because, even many of us, we are using several time the day almost all those tools, we still not have (the almost) full management. Because, we need to adapt our thoughts and ways of thinking to an environment always on the move. How to do it faster and better?

Twitting for the Filipinos

another use of social networks.