This weekend Berlin will finally see some big festival inside the city. It has, in my opinion, a killer line-up, and takes place at one of Berlin’s most historically charged places: Tempelhof airport It was built by the Nazis, hosts one of the world’s biggest buildings, was used by the US army to fly goods in while West-Berlin city was blocked by the soviets, it’s a vast place with lots of space and now home of the Bread & Butter. And the Berlin festival. (If the site is offline, try the Google cache version)
Friday and saturday there will be shows by Deichkind, Peter Doherty, Jarvis Cocker, Dendemann, The Rifles, Moderat, Saint Etienne, Zoot Woman, Digitalism (DJ Set), Peaches (DJ Set), The Thermals, Junior Boys, Florence and the Machine, WhoMadeWho, Bodi Bill, Bonaparte, Berlin Battery and many more.
It’s the second release on NIG (Nights in Gale) records and I love the record because it’s so diverse: there is a massive techno tune, some very dissected minmal soundscape techhouse thing by Tom Dicicco and a deep dubsteppy remix by David Harrow.
Now, it has gotten some very mentionable mentions from Japan and Italy, good feedback from Timo Maas and Laurent Garnier and, amongst others, charted by Ryan Elliot.
As a company, freelancer or whatever economic subject, here is some great strategy tool that helps you categorize and put a structure in what you want to do, what you are good at and what you get paid for. And how all of these areas work together.
Ein schönes Videoduell von politik.de zwischen Franziska Drohsel (Juso-Vorsitzende) und Johannes Vogel (Juli-Vorsitzender). Beide wirken durchaus sympathisch, inhaltlich gibt es einige Unterschiede und die vorhandenen Gemeinsamkeiten überraschen.
HE MAN TRUST ON POWER DUST at KIM, Brunnenstr. 10, 22:30h
“.. emerges with an exciting ass-shaking performance,
combining excellent music and ground-shaking visualz produced by He Man Trust On Power Dust.” Continue reading →
I am getting myself together to recover from Melt and collect some thoughts about that amazing festival again, in the meantime, here are two nice hiphop widgets: Unionstreet and Asher Roth.
(I work for P3000 and helped to build Union Street, we also did the Asher Roth widget). Unionstreet is a news platform with lots of community features about urban music and lifestyle, with hardworking editors and daily news about the big bling and the little bang. Asher Roth sounds like a mix of Eminem and Money Mark, easy, funny, funky, singalong music. Continue reading →
In may, I played at the Webinale party and was quite excited because it took place at Week End club on top of Berlin with a brilliant soundsystem and DJ booth. The party was great and everybody danced plus I was lucky to have the mix recorded so here I can present two 30 minutes mixes, one opening house mix and one which is more dubsteppy and in the end loaded with hiphop classics. Enjoy!
“Ein Jahr nach dem Bürgerentscheid „Spreeufer für alle“ wollen wir dagegen demonstrieren, dass vieles was Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain lebenswert und besonders macht, verdrängt wird. Wir werden nicht zulassen, dass die (sub-)kulturelle und soziale Infrastruktur und unsere urbanexperimentelle Underground- Kiez- und Clubkultur durch einen musikalischen und kulturellen Mainstream ersetzt wird, den wir auch noch mit steigenden Mieten bezahlen müssen. Wir wollen gemeinsam entscheiden, was in und mit unserer Stadt geschieht. Komm zur Demo-Parade am 11. Juli. Wir werden laut sein, wir werden viele sein. Wir sind die Kinder Berlins.”
Nobody really likes their telco provider. Everybody can tell a story of a contract which could not be cancelled, about intransparent tariffs, crazy roaming prices (send one mail, pay 5 EUR) and unsatisfying service hotlines. So telecommunication is not a sexy product and what is the telco’s approach to that problem? Change their products? No, it’s massive investment in marketing. Which is why e.g. Peter tells us why telcos are doomed.
Now, Vodafone Germany puts 200 mio. 50-90 mio (!) EUR in a big marketing campaign. And makes it even worse by especially targetting a group of people who feel the need to be online a lot, call them “generation upload” and starting all sorts of social media channels (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and so on). While the term itself might be questionable, the targetting itself is quite smart in my opinion: it is an interesting, important and targettable group. What is missing here in the branding strategy is the consumer insight!
These people who use telecommunication more than others know exactly about the lack of good contracts, good service and fair treatment by their telco provider. They are the ones who are able to tell all the stories I started this blogpost with. Targetting them with advertising without changing the behaviour is exactly the way of one-way marketing and placebo dialogue that should be over since the days of the Cluetrain manifesto.
Vodafone picked the advertising company Scholz & Friends especially for their ideas on social media. But Scholz is an advertising company. They are not business consultants. And social media won’t change that. They talk to marketing directors about ads, not about products. They might talk about products over coffee, but they will never change a company’s behaviour. Claiming to do so, claiming to listen, claiming to put the customer first and then not living up to the expectations is worse than not even rise all sorts of expectations at all.
Of course this is not my sole opinion. The German blogosphere is filled with harsh, taunting, zynical and serious critique. No one of the targeted “generation upload” is impressed by the campaign which was presented this week in a press conference streamed live to the web. Johannes writes in a very short and precise post how a real change could have looked like.
Unlike many commenters I am not talking about sell-out of the blogosphere because some bloggers and prominent twitter users are testimonials of the campaign. That’s not the core of the problem. On the contrary: I hope, they get paid a LOT for being in that campaign. Sascha Lobo, one of the main faces should receive around 100K EUR in my estimation, everything less would be dissapointing.
Moreover, the clip itself is crap! It’s an ad which we have seen in around 100 variations for 100 products in the last 20 years: young, happy, enganged, curious, active people doing young, engaged, active stuff. Wohoo! And the David Bowie interpretation is hideous and hurts! Just to remind you that Vodafone can do better, here is the “Bohemian like you” spot again.
Update:Nevertheless, it’s a very visible campaign and all the buzz that has been created is obviously free brand space. Plus: If you work in internet marketing and like to create social media tools for companies yourself, this is a brilliant example to point to. May it be for the use of social media channels in general or the overall message I hope I made clear in this post: Social media can be about listening and in the end changing behaviour. I am curious how this works out for Vodafone.
This weekend Berlin will finally see some big festival inside the city. It has, in my opinion, a killer line-up, and takes place at one of Berlin’s most historically charged places: Tempelhof airport It was built by the Nazis, hosts one of the world’s biggest buildings, was used by the US army to fly goods in while West-Berlin city was blocked by the soviets, it’s a vast place with lots of space and now home of the Bread & Butter. And the Berlin festival. (If the site is offline, try the Google cache version)
