#ThinkIaB – Interesting digital scoops

Brussels, 26th of May

I attended IaB Think Digital at “The Egg” in Brussels. 8 speakers on the digital topic. Since this was an Interactive Marketing Event, the scope was always selling the product (=goal of marketing) but I got some good insights on the digital space (and how companies are branding through the digital environment.)

Mother‘s Alex West (@alexdwest) kicked off with the holy trinity of the Mother Agency.
I was less interested by the holy trinity, but he got my attention with some cool examples on how they created an emotional engagement. Most of the campaigns ran through classical channels, but got additional digital content. Mother rather sees digital as part of instead of a goal. A nice example of  this emotional engagement was the 574clips.Com campaign from New Balance.  With this campaign 574 unique pair of shoes were manufactured, and added with some unique filmed and photographed content.  Each customer buying one of those 574 pair could claim and own his unique clip through the website 574clips.com. 
Things get “phygital” when the online world is taken a physical form in the real world! – I couldn’t agree more, when digital has to be real and physical aspect, otherwise emotional engagement is difficult.

Ogilvy‘s Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava)  was next with the future of brand evangelism.
With is soon to be released book “Likeonomics” he brought an interesting story on how everything is “share-able” nowadays. In this “share-able” society the accidental spokesman plays an important role, while marketeers don’t like it to be ‘accidental’.  This is way the digital (r)evolution isn’t a marketing (r)evolution…it’s a fundamental shift in corporate strategy (shamelessly claimed by marketeers….wrong!)
He presented a great case of Heineken (where 2 advertising students from Germany) invented Heineken Invite.

The relationship with others (Phygital - you know) plays a central role in how we communicate nowadays.  Social media play an important role in this….when you create great content, social media will set it free. To prove his case, he showed the following Coke campaign (Coke Friendship Machine).

Twussel – a twitter trip through Brussel (Belgium Capital)

A couple of days ago this article caught my attention.

Twitter through Brussels Trip
Posted on October 26, 2010 (De Standaard)

“On wednesday october 27, 2010Saskia Videler brings a visit to Brussels. Nothing special really, were it not guided by Videler tips they get from users of the social networking site Twitter.
Videler will visit the city on Wednesday only visiting sites recommended by its users from Twitter. [...]

Throughout the day Videler will tweet about her location and the things she visits. Twitter users can send her some extra tips about restaurants, museums and shops in the area.

Who wants to follow the adventures of Videler, can visit the Twitter account of Saskia Videler. Who wants to send in tips, the # hashtag twussel use.”

Today (November 6, 2010) the Twussel of Brussels was published in De Standaard. Interesting to read how she got a realy personel visit of Brussels, visited sites new to her (and me), found athenticity, … and figured out that the Brussels is a realy warm Twitter community.

It’s a different way of traveling or visiting a place, city or country! A beautiful way on how the network and social media society (web 2.0 – web 3.0) are forming a world 2.0 – 3.0.  I believe this is an example on how the new social interaction takes place in the new 2.0 era.  Although we don’t know each other, we interconnect with one another through different social media.

If you are a ducth native speaker you can read the blog of Sakia at http://www.saskiablogt.be/ and discover the Twussel visit.

Let this story inspire you to also take on a twitter visit to a place, city or county you want to visit. You can share your experiences through the comment section of this post! Good Luck!