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Archive for the ‘Europe’ Category

If you can’t see the above video (perhaps you’re in a feedreader, or one of my email subscribers, please access the post directly)

While in Barcelona recently, I got a chance to interview folks from the local blogging community, there were quite a few ex-pats, such as Lennert de Rijk Managing Director Spain, who focuses on Marketing in Spain. He shares his views on online marketing, how the culture and demographics are different in Spain compared to the UK, and other insights. You can find Leonard at this Spanish site called OnetoMarket, or this English version.

What you’ll learn from this video

Find out why companies fail when trying to market in Spain.

Discover which age is still considered “young” (not the same as US)

Learn how search is used differently, and how your SEM campaigns must change

Thanks for bearing with me, the lighting was a bit dark, yet the focus should be on the content.

Tristan Nitot, (his blog on open source in French) CEO of Mozilla Europe talks about how Firefox spread mainly through word of mouth and people just sharing it and advocating it to others. He suggests that the open source initiative first resonated with people, thus spurring word of mouth. They encouraged users to have the software loaded on a portable thumbnail flash drive, and install it wherever they went. Blogs were a big component of how it spread, as well as local communities that would be passionate about their region, self-supporting each other, and spreading the word.

Un traditional web strategies
As you may know, Mozilla hasn’t done a lot of traditional marketing or advertising (except for at least one full page add in NYTs with the launch of Firefox 1.0) and is really relying on social media to spread the tools. Exactly how fanatic is it’s customer base? So fanatic that some users created an actual crop circle and it’s featured all over google images searches, as well as in Google Earth! Or they’ve leaned on the community to create and submit videos (30 second commercials) with Firefoxflicks, some of which actually went on major TV networks, sans production costs.

If you’re looking for stats, you’ll find that Firefox is the second most used browser in the world, and it’s primarily spread through grass roots adoption, against a Microsoft product that comes embedded on many platforms. Users have to go out of their way to download the software, let alone spread it to others.

This is fascinating, if I substitute the word ‘Firefox’ and insert the name of ‘any religion’, it still makes sense. For many, it’s almost as if Firefox is gospel.

(Left: Clever HR ploy or relaxed place to work? Mozilla’s “Beach” must keep vacation requests to a minimum)

Update: My host, Seth has responded from his community blog.

I’ve been an observer of the browser market for some time, since I live much of my awake live within one, and have been privy to interview the IE7 team on their launch, and also have been recently got a demo from Flock’s CEO (my thoughts on the opportunities).

Seth Bindernagel, of Mozilla’s Evangelism team invited me to swing by the Mountain View headquarters, I was in luck, as there were folks from out of town like Gen Kanai (Japan) that I’ve been wanting to meet for quite some time. As soon as I walked in the door, it was apparent these was a very, very savvy web team, so I wasn’t sure how much value I could add. Seth and I discussed in advance that success would be to get the teams to talk about the globalization of the web, how different users share products, and how social media impacts product adoption. You see for Firefox, and other Mozilla products, adoption is often done by customer word of mouth and referral –and blogs empower much of this.

There were a few main topics we hit: From Technographics (how different people use technologies depending on their needs) Early adopters vs Laggerds, and how Marketing and Product teams can improve to listen and talk. For most of these topics, each of the respective teams (Executives, Marketing, User Experience, Analytics, Engineering) had a response, so they were for the most part moving forward.

Technographics
Each culture shares differently online, and when you’re applying social media products (which encourage sharing) you need to be sensitive to understand if they are: creators, joiners, critics, collectors, consumers or inactives. Will internet users that just consume the web, and just visit a few websites a week be interested in the advanced functionality of Mozilla products?

Localization
The web is a fascinating medium, many companies think that by slapping on a .cn or a .de, doing some navigation localization will be enough to get product adoption…rarely is that the case.

Early adopters to laggards
For Firefox, many of the early adopters are the ones that are ‘sneezing’ the product to others, and Mozilla has been great reaching to those folks. But what happens when the early adopter market becomes saturated with Firefox and now the focus has to shift down the adoption curve. Should Mozilla rely on ‘traditional’ marketing and advertising?

Stay tuned, I did a couple of web strategy videos talking about social media, marketing in Japanese and European perspectives, and even how to improve products with community, so stay tuned over the next few weeks for those.

Oh, and one of the employees (was it John?) made some funny remarks how Firefox was the greatest thing for IE6 innovation, do you agree or disagree?

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Lars Schwenk, General Manager of Cyworld Europe shared with me what it takes to be a community, we were at Forrester’s Consumer forum in Barcelona.

If you’re not familiar with Cyworld that have heavy penetration in South Korea, (50% of Koreans is a member — and that 95 percent of its target youth market is active -Marketwatch) where it was birthed. Find out his four components of community: Communication, Collaboration, Self-Expression and what he calls “Peeping”. Something I swear I’ve never done.

I asked my Twitter network (over 1700 of them) what questions to ask Lars, and David Berkowitz wanted to know what we could learn from Asia’s deployment of Cyworld and what it means to the United States. If you’re interested in social networks in Asia, I was recently in Singapore and asked their top bloggers (video), two months ago I was in HK and talked to many of the web leaders, check out this four part series.

Cyworld launched in North America yet adoption has been very low, I learned from my travels that social technographics vary by culture, so to simply re skin a website for regions doesn’t work. Web Strategists must understand the people who they want to serve first, one size does not fit all!

Jay Stevens, an executive for MySpace EMEA, was one of the keynotes at Forrester’s recent Consumer Forum conference. He shared with me the value of community, his definition of community (find out what “peeping” is all about) and the opportunities afforded to marketers who use social networks to connect with customers. He gives a few kick steps to get started, a must-know for anyone getting ready, what’s the recommendation? Get a strategy.

I also was live blogging his presentation Marketing in a Networked Culture if you want to get more in depth information, thanks Jay for your time.

Photoblog: Glimpses of Bareclona by Night

Categories: Europe, TravelPosted on November 18th, 2007

Having just returned from the airport a few hours ago (I was on 6 flights in 10 days) it’s good to be back. It’s rare I post a personal post, but I had such an amazing time in Barcelona, I feel compelled to share.

I was busy working most of the day at the conference, so I only had time to go out at night. Fortunately, Barcelona’s culture is designed for night life, after work, I have drinks and tapas, take a nap, get cleaned up, then headed out (such as the Barcelona Blogger Dinner). Coincidently, on my second night out we ended up at the same restaurant we were at the night before, although we sat outside.

The last time I visited Barcelona was on my honeymoon, so it was really great to be back, it’s always great to explore the old gothic old town, see the cathedrals and Gaudi architecture.

I’m often teased for the amount of pictures I take, as I recently broke the 20,000 mark in Flickr, I use images and video to record where I’ve been, and sharing with others brings us closer. Often, when I go to events, people will tel me “I saw your photos at X” and we’re instantly able to strike up a conversation as they share their own experience at the same place.

If I could go anywhere in the world next, I’d go to Dubai to visit my new friend Ahmed, that’s an amazing city, I could spend a month wandering around taking photos.

If you’ve been to Barcelona, leave a comment, or share a link to your photos or posts, I’d love to hear. Also, if you know of any ‘authentic’ Tapas places in the SF Bay area, I wanna know. There’s Iberia restaurant in Menlo Park, pretty good, although it’s on the expensive side.

Video: How to pour beer –German style

Although I’ve poured many a beers in my life, Axel my German friend, teaches me how to pour a beer the German way:

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I’m sitting at the front row of the Forrester Consumer Forum in Barcelona, this post will be cross published on the Marketing blog.

I’ve had a few minutes to visit with Jay before his presentation, he’s Vice President of Operations for MySpace Europe. He’s a long background in the internet industry, and shared with me his background in communications and the web.

Key nuggets from his presentation:

History of MySpace: Launched in Jan 2004, by Tom Anderson and Chris de Wolfe. Grown from roughly 1MM uniques throughout Europe to more than 24MM today. There are currently 175 employees in 10 European territories.

What’s a social network? Individual profiles, semi persistent public commentary on the profile, a traversable public articulated social network displayed in correlate to the profile. -From Dana Boyd


[Jay Stevens: "User told us that 'I don't want brands to advertise to me, I want them to be my friend"]

Why do people flock to social networks? A User’s profile may be seen as a metaphor to their room or apartment. The profile has become a user’s online persona. This “Digital Native” have grown up online, with cell phones, and tv. MySpace is their space. Globally, there are about 400 million social network users worldwide. 86% of UK 15-34 year olds are now on social networking sites. 4.3 Billions monthly UK page views on MySpace.

So how do you take advantage of these social networks? Build a network within a network. Create icons (content, images, logos) that will be dressing up users profiles. A few don’t matter as much, until thousands and then millions do this. An English tea brand called has 9500 friends in MySpace, they encouraged users to change their profile pictures to become a cute monkey icon.


[Why join a network rather than create your own? Leverage the power of an existing network, the larger the network the larger the power]

Why would anyone create a social network? There’s a momentum effect that transcribes to ‘never ending friending’

What about Facebook? There’s huge amount of cross over. MySpace is over 2X the size, and are still growing. The media gloms onto the ‘next big thing’.

What about Open Social? The promise for opening up certain elements of MySpace profiles makes sense. Widget’s can’t interfere with user experience, but there’s concerns about user data, and we have to be careful. (learn more about Open Social) Google has advertising on MySpace, and discusses hyper targeted, to learn more about Hyper Targeting, please read this primer.


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Implications for Brands and Advertising

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A visual representation of a network


Tags FCFEMEA07

It’s obvious form the culture in Barcelona that it’s a community of sharing. I realized this as we passed plates and plates of tapas within a crowded restaurant to each over beers and passing ideas. It wasn’t just about the amazing tapas, but ideas, relationships, URLs and business cards were being shared about.

Last night, the Barcelona blogging community culminated at the Buda Bar, a very upscale lounge suggested by Maria Sipka and Daniella (both of Linqia), our gracious community hostesses. About 30 individuals came out in this open city, and I learned that many were web entrepreneurs from other countries around the world. I’ve kicked off these bloggers dinners at various cities that I visit, and it’s really for the community, and the chance to meet those that I often interact with online, where the focus is on community, not any individual.

I think I could really get used to the Barcelona lifestyle. After work, I enjoyed drinks with colleagues and tapas, I returned to my room, took a nap, got cleaned up, and headed out to more socializing on the town, followed by supper at 10, if not later. My doctor tells me that many small meals is better than the large mega meals that we have in America twice or three times a day.

One notable conversation started with the open source movement, and we quickly started to note that many of these software movements lack solid marketing strategy to mainstream consumers. We started to talk about what could fix this issue and the concept of ‘open source marketing’ or ‘open marketing’ could deliver this. What would this look like? A combination of evangelism from established marketers doing pro bono work, and the collaboration from global marketers to help with the variety of skills that many developers do not have.

In my hand, I have business cards froms companies such as ecaptia, migoa, rollingtalks, ITnet, neurona, onetomarket, and emascaro. While this is not the first time this group has met (some knew each other from previous events) it’s always intersting to witness people introducing themselves for the first time, and realizing they have an online relationship via blogs, and other social tools. Face to face is often a relationship sealer for many online relationships.

I took a few pictures below (please help tag with names, and I’ll correct titles) and recorded a few videos that I’ll publish in the coming weeks.

Thank you Barcelona bloggers, it was great meeting you all.

Tags: for this event are BarcelonabloggerNov07 (or just link to this Technorati page)

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I’m going to use this post to point to anyone that’s blogging or tweeting at the well attended Forrester Consumer Forum in Barcelona, where I’m here as an employee. I’m currently sitting in the front row and will be taking a few pictures. Later, I’ll head into some of the sessions and capture knowledge from the social media tracks.

If you want to get real time updates of juicy nuggets of knowledge, go to the Forrester Twitter account being managed by Tracy and Peter both of Forrester.

Let’s use the tag FCFEMEA07 (Forrester Consumer Forum, EMEA, 2007) for this events tag.

Come back to this post, and I’ll update this post:

  • Forrester Marketing Blog will have Q&A and session captures
  • Wunderman Defines The Age of Influence Marketing
  • Jaap Favier to Brands: Don’t Walk Alone
  • Forrester Twitter Account
  • Rolling talks is excited to be here
  • Vue Royale and part 2
  • Peter Kim
  • Sandrine Plasseraud (Renault)
  • Facebook event page
  • Demystify and Democratize have some sound bites
  • James McQuivey enjoyed the conference and the trip to Spain
  • you!
  • I’m going to try to get some quick video interviews with the CEO of Twitter, the managing director of Cyworld, and an executive from MySpace, wish me luck!

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    See you at the Barcelona Blogger Dinner

    Categories: Europe, EventsPosted on November 14th, 2007

    See you at the Barcelona Blogger Dinner tonight, details on the wiki. For me this event is starting late, but hey, we’re in Barcelona and night life gets started later. Who’s going to be at the dinner?

  • Maria Spika
  • Jeremiah Owyang
  • Carlos Blanco
  • Marc Canter – spiratulally, virtually and socially (just not physically) In an OpenSocial kind of way.
  • Peter Kim
  • Elfried Klarenbeek
  • Bart Termorshuizen
  • Gary Stewart
  • Henri Varlet
  • Lennert de Rijk
  • Toni Mascaró
  • Jan-Willem van Beek
  • Bas van Bokhorst
  • Evert Jan Koning
  • Alberto Domínguez
  • BJ Fogg (Stanford University)
  • Jesus Monleon
  • Tomy Pelluz
  • Haripako aka Francisco Vargas
  • Christian Van Der Henst S.
  • Francesc Pla (RailsLab)
  • JC Duarte; Charminguy.com & Strategy in a Day
  • Victor Aloi
  • Caroline Maerten(RollingTalks)
  • Simon McDermott (Attentio)
  • Sergio Gago
  • Daniela Arens
  • Alex Maneu
  • Gregor Gimmy
  • Update: Interestingly, according to Google Analytics the second most visiting country to my blog is Spain, over the last 30 days. It probably has nothing to do with me visiting, so I really look forward to meeting everyone.

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