medium.rare

Unfollow. Why following each other won’t get us nowhere new

Posted by Maximilian in Communication, Innovation, Strategy

Over the past weeks I tried to get back a bit more into my old “reading interesting stuff the industry is talking about” routine. Staying up to date on strategy, planning challenges, the industry and their thought leaders is, after all, part of what enables a strategist do to their job. Or at least that’s what I thought. What a mistake. Too much of the same? After clicking a couple of links on Twitter that all led me to the same WARC articles and after skimming through a bunch of newsletters…read more

Nov.30

The Sciamachy between Big Data And Big Ideas

Posted by Maximilian in Advertising, Brand Experience, Communication, Strategy

Much to my surprise, the last couple of weeks saw an increase in conversations I had about a topic that apparently does neither get old nor boring. It’s been around for a while but still creates a natural tension – which is, in a way, exciting for strategists: the sciamachy between the Big Idea and Big Data. It is a debate about good versus evil, the pure versus the inauthentic, the real versus the fake. It is one versus the other, an either-or-argument. A debate where non of the contestants seem to be able to see…read more

Feb.21

What Advertising Can Learn From BuzzFeed

Posted by Maximilian in Advertising, Communication, Consumer, Strategy

A few days ago I attended a panel discussion/interview with Juliane Leopold, founding editor of BuzzFeed Germany, at betahaus Hamburg. She talked about how everything started, how she set up the team, how BuzzFeed wants to be political and opinionated, etc. All of this wasn’t really surprising until the moment when she opened the site on her computer and referred to one of the post as „identity post“. An identity post is content that aims to appeal to a user’s identity rather than his hunger for news. It’s related to his…read more

Dez.04

3 Reasons to Favor Direct Over Indirect

Posted by Maximilian in Communication

Last night there was a party in one of the apartments facing my backyard. The music was playing annoyingly loudly – or so I thought. Suddenly another neighbor started to play his electronic guitar at an even higher volume. His plan was to get the other party’s guests to stop the noise. The lesson here? My loud was not their loud was not his loud. Yesterday, one of my planning colleagues made himself a cup of tea and offered to bring one to another colleague. When he returned five minutes later, he…read more

Nov.27

Rotting teeth and immediate communication

Posted by Maximilian in Communication, Consumer, Technology

I stumbled upon an interesting fact in this Youtube video by Erik Qualman: It seems that more people own a mobile device than a toothbrush. Despite the fact that there’s not a source for this fact, I don’t have a problem believing it. It just proves what all of us somehow knew already: people are more concerned with their virtual illusion of an appearance than with their actual appearance. It seems as if we look after our Social Media profiles more carefully than after our actual selves. It could also be another…read more

„Find out what the real problem is, understand why that’s the real problem“

Rob Campbell

Nov.25

Nov.24

The Misguidedly Targeted Flyer

Posted by Maximilian in Advertising, Brand Experience, Communication

Every now and then a little piece of direct marketing gets lost in my mailbox. This particular time it was a flyer from an online retailer where I had bought some technical accessory for a washing machine a while ago. They offered me a 10 EUR discount code for my next purchase. On the front page of the flyer: a blonde woman in a winter coat. The guys in the marketing department there know my name (a common first name for a male in Germany) and they have my one dimensional purchase…read more

„We have to become more obsessed by the outcome we create rather than the output we make.“

Nov.18

Sep.16

What A Priest Told Me About Lovemarks

Posted by Maximilian in Advertising, Communication, Consumer

Two weeks ago I attended the wedding of my cousin. I expected to hear a lot about love and faith and relationships. What I didn’t expect was hearing about brands. Most of you have probably heard of the lovemarks concept, introduced by Kevin Roberts some 12 years ago. That book made me think about the power of brands and ultimately got me into advertising. Over the years I somewhat dreaded how everyone got obsessed with their brand having to become a lovemark – a brand people were loyal to beyond…read more