I like the plan to use the well known mascot as a facebook-character, let it make friends and let it speak or twitter about important topics – from financial advisory to financial crisis -, and to use it as multiplier of the company’s releases and publications.

I think it’s also a good idea to handle multilingual issues with a relaxed laissez faire approach: International users (from the company’s press and communication departments) should post their contents in their language to shared digg- and delicious-accounts and feed them to the mascot’s status updates in facebook. That does not harm users with to much spam, but it closely relates the business content with the entertainment content and it even makes it look cooler.

Have a look; maybe there’s something to reuse.

But what really horrifies me, is the reason why Ioan’s boss (is that really a communications guy?) cancelled that idea:

…the division manager (communication) does not believe in the power of social media. In the contrary: he does not want to get involved here, he’s afraid using communities like facebook might even have negative impact on the company. “

Jive’s CEO Dave Hersh promised he would get a tattoo if the company reaches a quarterly result of  $ 8 M for Q 4 2008. They did and he kept his promise – that’s a true itch for business.
So even if your business is not fckd – sometimes you are…
You can see the picture here.

Marketing Executives are pissed – no more Web 2.0

There are not many who have a clue – but there is a lot of the talking. Anderson Analytics published a research that lists the reduction of social media activities as marketing top trend # 4 in 2009.
Actually – I think tis is a good direction. Marketing and campaigning spam is social media is boring; social media are way more than just anothe channel for boring campaigns.
That leaves space to develop some real social media strategies, some strategies that deeply incorporate the new media environments and not only use them for short term selling.
This will also open new perspectives in the ongoing ROI discussions  and shift the focus from marketing to public relations; one day, it will be selfevident that social media have to be used.

Kids on the Net – The biggest threats are other kids

The Internet Safety Task Force  of Harvard University found out, that child molesters, sexual harrassers or terrorists are not a big threat for children on the internet.
That does not mean that communities are a cosy environment either: bullying, ganging up and insults by other kids are the most common unpleasant experiences that are reported from social media.
So they are really close to real life…

Deloitte published a report that says media companies are extremely poorly managed. Companies know that they have to change, but they just don’t do it or they don’t know how. More flexibility and transparency are required, and also new business models – especially the administrative processes have to be adapted to the new business.
Here is a german blogger covering the report and here is another post on lacking management and planning skills in media companies.

Year of Creativity and Innovation

2009 is the year of creativity and innovation  in Europe. The officials say:

“The European Year was started against the backdrop of the current economic crisis and many speakers underlined that boosting creativity and innovation is part of the solution. “We do not know how long this crisis will last and how deep it will become. But when it is over, those who will have invested in creativity and innovation will find themselves well ahead of the pack”, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture and Youth Jan Figel’ said in his address.”

The year was started with a round table discussion of ambassadros, their conclusions can be downloaded here
We’ll be curious – hopefully there are some media innovation projects, too.

Top ten new media blogs

Well, the criteria and the choice are maybe special, but it’s always worth a look to check such fervent recommendations. Read this; recommendations by a guy called Chris Snider.

The board members gave their views on financial crisis and financial business in the next months, and they had to very impressive graphs:

#1: the company has to cut 130 m euros expenses, that’s around 8 percent of the total budgeted costs

#2: the cfo presented a chart about annual stock price developments in the past 180 years. In the majority, stockprices won between 0 and 10 percent. There were five years, were stocks performed better then 40 percent, and another 5 years, were they performed better then 50 percent. And there were only two in 180 years, were stockprices performed worse then minus 50 percent. That were 1931 and 2008.

Related articles by Zemanta

• More Tips for Surviving the Downturn
• No Worries?
• This is Not Financial Meltdown
• Recession 2.0: Living Within Means

 liked it, and it was especially amazing how little understanding even lower management has for online business
even more amazing: how many people still want to talk about online media – but frankly admit that they don’t have a clue!
guys! you don’t have to be a techie, but then leave the people alone; let them do their work
it’s NOT ok to keep saying “I don’t get that tech stuff but…” – if you don’t get it – learn it or leave it
handling online media is a cultural technique like reading and writing – you don’t look very smart if you don’t get it…

go and find out more…

Welcome to fckdproject.com, even if you’re not working in the financial services industry…

domain fckdproject.com is bought

hopefully at least this one can be launched soon…