Fascinating pictures

You already may have seen these pictures but they still be amazing and thrilling:

- Nissan has announced plans to cut its Sunderland workforce by 1,200. Thousands of unsold cars are stored around the factory's test track:- Imported cars stored at Sheerness open storage area awaiting delivery to dealers:- The build-up of imported cars at the port of Newark, New Jersey:

Slovakia produces most cars per capita in the world. VW, Kia, Peugeot are produced here which makes automotive industry the biggest by contributing with 30+% into country´s GDP. With that we are strongly affected by the current economic situation. The situation is the same here at local car dealerships. Parking lots and also the grass lawn around are usually full of cars.

So what to do?
The local government decided to support new cars sales by financial contribution if someone decide to scrap his 10+ years old car. I don´t want to be too protectionist but this helped mostly to foreing producers as approx only 5% of all production ends on local market. Thanks God that "scrap funding" is introduced in more than 15 EU countries.

Microsoft influencing presidential elections!

As Slovak presidential elections are in Slovakia in less than 5 weeks we wanted to use this opportunity for something extraordinary. We had a brainstorming and which resulted into joint online project with with largest printed media publishing house Ringier (best selling tabloid). We agreed to build an online entry page for all, who want to be informed about everything about presidential candidates in a modern way. After this I think better headline would be "Microsoft contributing to better information about presidential candidates" :)

Result?

Starting this week Slovak internet users have the chance to visit new internet site with presidential candidates – http://www.prezident2009.sk/. Ringier provides all important information to Slovakian voters such as:

• actual preferences today and how they evolved,
• hot news,
• comparison of opinions on 6 selected topics,
• Facebook fan site plus multimedia content like video, pictures,
• and all necessary infos about candidates like CVs, up-to-date career, etc.

So where is the difference?

The most important thing from my company is that the whole site is build on Silverlight 2.0 technology and candidates photogallery in DeepZoom. These technologies allows to visitor out of the box work with content showed on website, for instance continuous fluent zooming of pictures or dynamic work with charts and much more.

Since Ringier is very popular on Slovak market we believe that this cooperation will help us with Silverlight (plugin) penetration among internet users and change perception of Microsoft as provider of innovative though easy to use technologies. On the other side Ringier is connected works with state-of-the art technology which offers them advantage compared with competitors.

Check out the site at http://www.prezident2009.sk/

No baby nursing pics on Facebook?

There was an issue with nursing pictures published at Facebook recently. This portal censored all pictures with this theme. For thinkers within PR agency a good opportunity to promote a product.

A Slovak website dedicated to children care http://www.baby-web.sk/ used this as good starting point for self promo. They hired a well known Slovak photographer and did a photo session with nursing mothers. 30 of them came and created a nice picture, see below.

This Slovak response has been taken over into almost all relevant newspapers what created huge media coverage.

Why this was a good idea?

• this message of censorship has shocked almost all mothers, therefore created large awareness and interest (mothers wanted to discuss their feelings and shock),
• the Slovak response was nice (lovely picture of renowned photographer) taken over by all relevant media (printed, electronic),
• it was published at the particular website and furthermore supported by statement, that all mother they want to express their support with this can send their pictures to the gallery at the website (from awareness to engagement).
  

Article originaly published on my Word-of-mouth marketing blog.

Not that usual photos

You were astonished by CNN´s report about Obama´s inauguration made of all those sent in pictures?

Do you wanna promote your real estate development project or current offer in your car dealership in another way?

Let´s try then new technology which is easy to use but free and available to you today.
Check out http://www.photosynth.net/ , register and you can do similar 3D pictures at your home desk.

Links about product:
Photosynth on CSI
Photosynth architect on the product
TED presentation on Photosynth

Does viral appeal to companies?

Most advertising companies do believe in viral.

So do lot of their clients.

Until it comes to the budget.

After presenting the idea and needed investment, there are usualy three ways of answers comming from clients:
A - So expensive? Let´s leave it out...
B - Too expensive! We would go into it but with much lower budget.
C - Good idea. Let´s lower the budget by 10% and go for it.

Of course, the best answer for the ad company is C, however the question is: how to deal with the situation if the answer are only A or B?

If it is a major client worth to risk for, an ad agency might cover (some part) the production cost. Crazy? No, some virals shown on the link below wouldn´t have been executed without this approach.

As already Onassis used to say: if you believe in yourself and aim to get a dream job dare to work for free at the beginning. If you are really good, they will hire you.

List of successful Slovak and Czech viral campaigns.

Rule of success

Friends, colleagues often come to me to tell me about great new business idea they have.

I do believe, that great idea is only 33.3% of success. There are a lot of interesting new business suggestions in business magazines or internet, but is it enough?

I also do believe, that successful implementation is another 33.3% of success. Without having the right team, enough quality funding bringing idea into reality is difficult. But this is still not enough.

And finally I do believe, that endurance to survive the growth or initial troubles in first 1 or 2 years is the last 33.3% of success. Stats are clear 60-70% of businesses fail in first 2 years.

33.3% - 33.3% - 33.3% is success. Idea itself is not enough.