Entries from April 2009
What to do with your gmail/facebook when you die?
Imagine in 70 years time, gmail & facebook will probably still exist, but not you and me.
So everyday there’ll have tons of gmail & facebook account being ‘physically’ dead.
How sad.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.
Well, some smart ones take a further step and make it into a business
I should do it earlier, next time before I die.
http://springwise.com/weekly/2009-04-15.htm#stickiestory
https://www.legacylocker.com/
“Ever since the internet became an integral part of daily life, we’ve become accustomed to securing a wide range of online identities with usernames and passwords. But what happens when someone passes away, leaving their family and business associates unable to access their email, online photos, financial accounts and other online assets? It’s a problem that San Francisco-based startup Legacy Locker aims to solve.”
But as a business, I doubt that who will use the legacy locker right now, people like me who normally will not think I’m going to die tomorrow, or if I do I will have a place write down all my wish/pw etc. So I guess this might not be the ultimate business model right now, but there’s room to think about it.
Categories: digital
Information Architects Japan has a new post on the user interface of new Firefox 3.2. Their big idea is “turn the browser into a media system organizer more than a media display application”, what a fancy term.
Please go ahead to read their rationale behind, personally I’m not a fan of it, I can’t see any brilliant idea behind. I agree that “Today, twenty+ parallel sessions is quite common”, but those twenty+parallel sessions are random/ocassional sessions when you search something on wikipedia. We don’t really need to keep all of them systematically in a library, they quote iTunes as an example that people don’t need a second to find a songamong 10,000 songs, that’s true but not applicable to a browser, coz people usually just keep 10 favourite websites on hand. (based on my guestimation only). And what else? I can’t see any difference.
http://informationarchitects.jp/designing-firefox-32/
Categories: digital
Tagged: firefox, information architects
It’s like the fall of Troy, once the largest office of the world’s largest advertising agency network is now done! 118 years of history, this is incredible. The fall of Enfatico is like a trivia.
“By December, the agency — which once employed 800 people — was down to 50 employees and four accounts, prompting management to initiate serious discussions about shuttering the office” http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=135781
Writing on his blog, Idiot Flags, independent marketing consultant Stephen Ban comments on the closing of JWT’s Chicago office and the general demise of ad agencies in general. Some of them are inspiring:
“Hiring smart people who could help the client’s business: The upshot of the price war was an end to the ability to attract or retain smart people. The agencies of today have a group of retreads at the top and a group of bouncy 25 year-olds who “like to work with people” working for them. The era of David Ogilvy’s “gentlemen with brains” is long past.
Have a look at Ogilvy & Mather, in our opinion the best of the old line agencies (full disclosure: we worked there for seven years) and what it stood for and examine where they are today. Had they stuck to “We sell. Or else.” as a real philosophy, they’d be the biggest, most successful, and most relevant agency in the world right now. They’d have evolved into a powerhouse of sales generation, measurement and accountability — which is precisely what Chief Marketing Officers require of their partners.
Ogilvy’s website has no traces of the old line Ogilvy beyond their trademark red. No cash register. No commitment to sales. In fact, theirWhat We Do section notes “We work not for ourselves, not for the company, not even for the client. We work for Brands.”
Agencies work for clients who need profitable sales to survive. Strong brands are necessary but not sufficient. Ogilvy used to stand formaking the cash register ring. Their mandate should be building brands and SELLING PRODUCT. Someone forgot about that part.
The self-indulgent “creative” shitheads at the top have forgotten that advertising is about commerce, not art, and have rendered most of the old line agencies, once giants, shadows of themselves, and likely on the same path as JWT Chicago.
Mismanaged businesses and industries don’t deserve to survive. No tears should be shed for stupidity, intellectual sloppiness, and the fallout thereof.
“We sell. Or else.” was a brilliant reminder of what agencies should stand for. We see now what “Or else.” really means.”
http://idiotflags.blogspot.com/2009/04/we-sell-or-else-and-jwt-learns-hard-way.html
We sell. Or else. That’s so true…..
Categories: digital
Finally, Enfatico is over!
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Only 16 months after it set out to build a 1,000-person marketing agency to serve Dell’s needs, London-based holding company WPP has folded the start-up into its Y&R Brands division.
…Some observers attributed Enfatico’s woes to WPP building the wrong type of agency for the project, and that Mr. Boone — brought onboard from Digitas several months into the project — wasn’t involved from the get-go.
“Torrence [Boone] didn’t have enough time. Had he been the guy at the beginning, it may have worked,” said one top executive. “I just don’t think they had the talent that really understood the high velocity of the transactional nature of the Dell business. They thought it was a big global branding assignment, but brand is part of that, and you have to drive the transactional part. It’s a tough piece of business, and what’s tough about it is to really understand is how do you drive the business and drive the brand at the same time. I think they struggled with that.”
This is expected, I was in Bates 141 HK a year ago, and Enfatico (just a Dell team) sit next to me, they’re like a team of routine machine to handle 10 millions of tactical campaign. WPP consolidates all the promotion/tactical campaign into Enfatico, who else would like to work on a single account like that. Branding assignment? Maybe, but not at the economic hard times I guess.
George Orwell must be one of the person feel most excited about this news. “The agency of the future is now the past” very well written!
read more at Adage:
http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=135910
Categories: digital
Tagged: Enfatico
David Armano joins together with Peter Kim and Jeffrey Dachis on a startup firm “Dachis Corportaion” focusing on social business design
“Dachis Corporation was established to create a company delivering social technology platforms and professional service programs with the stated goal of helping companies become “Social Enterprises”.
This involves both deploying technology to connect people and provide them with tools to enable specific business intent, and professional services to help transform the way business processes work and the way people communicate.”
The 3 of them are really like Messi, Henry and Eto in digital advertising
and I believe the Dachis corp. will be as strong as Barcelona
I really look forward to what their business model will be, and how the industry react to them, it’s really interesting!
for more information:
http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2009/04/and-now-for-something-completely-different.html
http://www.dachiscorporation.com/
Categories: digital
Tagged: dachis, david armano, peter kim
