Google paranoia

I am amused by the amount of google conspiracy theory videos :-)
Here are only two (thanks Ben)

Free or paid?

I found a bunch of threads on twitter among Romanian entrepreneurs who discuss the potential impossibility to make money out of services like twitter or youtube. This made me think of this cool video showcasing Chris Anderson's upcoming book. It discusses the way we should and can deal with situations in which something we produce becomes so easy to disseminate that it's value literally drops to zero...

watch it here

IMTO conference in Iasi

I will be there in two weeks or so.

Conference on the Myths of technology and the legendary ways in which people use it ... :-). I'm also thiking of doing something like a 'communicators coffee evening' [hard to believe that if I call it planner's coffee a lot of people will show up]. So come see the conference because it will be smashing, look at the line up, and also drop by for the coffee thingie. Details soon.

Twitt review

I have previously said some things about myspace and facebook [the myspace review was probably on my deleted blog]. It's time for some thoughts on twitter.
Content
I have been using it for a while now but only got into it in the past couple of weeks with my post volume soaring to approx 400. Initially, I found it an easy way to release frustration about daily events and also jot down some ideas I might use for the blog later on. Soon, I realized that my follower list was growing and also that they posted replies to my twitts. Currently my daily usage of twitter includes all of the above - frustration outlet, blog notes - but also a lot of what seems to be indirect ym-ing with people I barely know, all of which happens in face of all those following us.
Followers
I find it amusing also to review who is following me because it makes me think the blogosphere is truly a small place in Romania. There are 3 categories: tech people, bloggers and communication people, all Romanian, plus the random American [I have five by now] probably stumbled on my profile by accident or attracted by the pic [no explanation, truly, for one resident of Miami, spending most of his time tanning and making gourmet foods for his friends who also seems to follow only girls with really teenage looking profile pics :-]
Turn-offs
It seems to be addictive - the more followers you get the more you feel like you need to update more [similar to blog]. It gives a sense of voyeurism paralleled only by checking out people's photos on facebook.
What it does
If you want to get into more conversations than you have at work, with your peers, online on your blog, on ym, twitter is a great idea. I assume that you can make actual use of it, if you restrict your followed profiles to only those people whose twitts can add information and you never check the Replies section. You will also get great fun from twitter if you like to argue, flirt, annoy, smack and bitch, all of the above in the very public face of your followers.

Twitter is for addicts of the information super fast highway or for shameless mental streakers.

Limerick to blogger - making a point

I rant without meaning, rss, link, misspell
Am a self centered asshole, put facts in a nutshell
I twitt, and pownce and facebook a bit
Bite back to comments and use the word shit
But love me forever: I'M A BLOGGER, WHAT THE HELL?!

check my twitter to understand why... :-)

Storytelling

I am a humanities graduate and one thing we like is reading and listening to stories. Sometimes it's very much about how to tell it and less about what you tell with us and that is why when I read about this thingie here, a club called The Moth in NY where people tell stories, I though "yes!".

I think that a lot of what we are missing in Bucharest right now is a place where people take pleasure in telling stories in a nice way as opposed to telling facts in a short and concise way. We spend a lot of time searching for brevity when in fact nuance and the real quality stuff comes from when you take the time to describe and really include people in your world. So yes, this would be the anti-twitter meeting, a meeting of people who like from time to time to write wonderful posts with lots of details that make for a pleasant reading. A meeting of the storytellers as opposed to the factmongers.

I think Dragos Roua is a great example of this kind of rhetoric, so is Serban Alexandrescu and so is Catalin Stefanescu. Know someone else? Wouldn't this be nice? :)

Conspirators at the Czech Center

Design trends

as spotted by Design Conspirators Ben and Kingsley
1. Web 2.0 [okay, this is not a real one but it's done in 2.0 style]













2. Decorative













3. The new ugly [ugly nouveau ??]


















4. Charts

Doing new business

I have recently become more involved in doing new business because, well, I have to and it seems to me that the entire comms industry in Romania is based on a network of acquaintances. The normal way to get new business is to know someone who knows someone who needs something. Then the person you know says to the other person "hey, I know someone who can do this"...you go, do a credentials presentation and you're in.
The good thing about this is that for new businesses it's an easy way in into an industry where there's a lot of money being kicked back for account securization (you pay people money to give you the account and keep it with you despite you doing lousy work).
The bad thing about this is mismatching: often the wrong agency gets matched with the wrong account because someone knew someone.
Not a lot of people talk about pre-pitch screening and very few appoint agencies directly based on a competency and portfolio review. All of these should be the job of brand managers and they would also act as incentives for agencies to develop a coherent track record of performance.
Until then, do you know someone who knows someone?

Cool things

I like The Onion [a political and not only satire newspaper in the US] mostly because of its personals space. And I like the personals space for three reasons:
1. I like the quirky and individualistic profile pages
2. I discover new interesting books among what the profilees read
3. I think it's a neat business model
[okay, fine, I also like to check out the men but hey, I am only human]
Theirs is really a smart way to capitalize on brand equity without doing irrelevant things online like so --> you expect your readers to be of a certain kind. you expect they also are aware they are of a special kind and would be interested in meeting people like themselves. so you let them, by setting up a personals space. BUT to preserve exclusivity you raise barriers: a demanding profile page [if you're smart enough to read The Onion you'll be able to handle the page] and a credit-based contact method - you can only contact the person you like if you have credits which you buy with real money...
Naturally no one minds this because they know that they will meet someone with the same likings, a similar mindframe and a sense of humor. I think at least a couple of sites in Romania might benefit from a similar approach :-)

follow-up on telecom insights

Local telecom Cosmote (challenger, price wars, 3rd place) has just announced unique 10 cents/min pricing in all mobile networks available to prepaid users. Details here in Ro.
The catch is that you have to have one extra-option activated which means that the money they lose from interconnection they will make up from the extra options. I think it's a fair deal especially since what it does it it virtually eliminates secondary or tertiary SIMs and makes Cosmote the sole carrier for young adults (the regular users of prepaid)
I wonder how the big two [Vodafone and Orange] are going to respond to this?

How to make something interesting

We get asked to do virals a lot. And we seldom deliver because usually we get asked to be "on brand" and place a logo at the end and do just ONE thing. Truth of the mater is that, today, virals are like games that you engage the consumer in, so sometimes you need to build more than one thing.
The funnest 'game' I got involved in recently is this post by a careless Romanian blogger. As Romania is hosting a NATO summit and tension is high [as is security level] he made a joke about renting space for snipers on his balcony. The fun stuff is that all the people who joined the prank played along and if you click on the names of those who replied you will be taken to a fake CIA page (real one is cia.gov BTW), a fake AlQaeda page and even an AlQaeda manual :-)

Everyone played along and this made it interesting...because virals need to be engaging and interesting :-)

Olimpiadele comunicarii

I thought that this post might have been a great moment to inaugurate my new half English half Romanian blog [yeah, I'm thinking about it] but truth is I think people who cannot read Romanian should hear about this event too.

For the second year in a row I will have the privilege to be a jury member for the Communication Olympics, an event which faces off communication aspirings with the advertising community.
I find it amazing how much energy the people participating in the event bring to the table every time they present and last year I was also delighted to see some honest sparks of strategic thinking in some presentations.
I think there is an interesting tension at play in the recent events, with the jury including more and more strategy people as opposed to exclusively creative as in the past. Leveraging creative and strategy is a hard balance to strike for any newcomer to the industry especially since they get tutored by creatives and strategists in different seminars. So, some basic advice for those entering:
- establish a clear strategy with clear objectives [brand + sales]
- decide on your target as it will influence your TOV
- outline a clear message to achieve that strategy
- deliver creative that will result in your message being understood by your target and internalized

Naturally the above are all hygiene factors so going beyond the basics would imply:
- understanding that communication is now part of culture so whatever you make needs to perform as content
- understanding that people internalize messages and then use them to compose a brand universe - an integrated campaign is important but it does not mean you deliver the message in the exact same form every time
- tailoring media to your target - just because it is cool you don't need to do guerilla or virals for every project

I am really looking forward to this....

Got stuck on this one

Damn! can't stop listening to this track and it's not doing anything good to my Tuesday

SouthPark web 2.0

Wohoooo, new Southpark website with full episode streaming is online here
Cooooooool! Craciun, hope you're watching :-)
OMG! and there is a tiny Cartman where the URL is ....hihihihih [giggling like a little girl]

Clutter

Okay, so we must be getting cluttered out if this is a valid media for advertising. This can system allows you to place an ad [not TV :P] in the opening of the can before you drink. It's the equivalent of placing a link on certain words in an online text I would say...
geeesh...

Telecom communication

I am constantly surprised by the lack of insight telecom advertising displays in Romania. The comms we see always seem to assume that people want to talk more and they need more minutes. Nothing new or relevant is ever tried to answer some of the following:
- I want free minutes in all networks
- I want free minutes which I can use when I want not when the network does
- I want free stuff when I pay more for the services I use
- I want to recharge my mobile from my mobile
- I don't want to listen to a gazzilion of ads before I can talk to a client service person
- I do not want to sign a contract for a lifetime in order to get benefits
- I want cool phones with the lifetime contract you make me sign - i don't want to sign up for a two dime handset

I put it all down to laziness or greed.

Sony madness

You thought the bouncing balls were crazy? the paints? the bunnies?
This is what Sony Bravia is doing for its new commercial



It is/will be called Foam City and is made by Fallon. Look fwd to seeing the final product
More here

How to advertise in cinemas?

Cinema houses are a preferred place for advertisers because it is believed the degree of attention is higher and targeting easier too.

If you are at a loss for ideas check out this new gimmick called Audience Games
A demo here


and the company doing it here
Neat, no? via

Do you spam?

Via zoso I found this google engineers' description of spam

"When trying to decide if a page is Spam, it is helpful to ask yourself this question: if I remove the scraped (copied) content, the ads, and the links to other pages, is there anything of value left? if the answer is no, the page is probably Spam"

Please apply this to what you read online to identify how much content we really produce :-)

Vodpod update

Check my updated Vodpod [right bar] for some electronica goodies :-)

MTV made in Romania

MediaPro has bought the local MTV franchise from some people who were running it down with bad programming and silly DJs. The result? Even sillier DJs and the home shopping channel has been transplanted onto MTV.


This was on Sunday morning at 10:30...
I am questioning the idea of franchise more and more. Maybe careful screening should be done of those who want to buy franchises (in Romania at least the following were almost destroyed by local investors with no nose for brand value: Mango, Sephora, Esprit, Burger King)

Facebook review

I used to do these reviews of new stuff online and naturally Facebook is not new but after spending 1h (oneeeeee hour!!!!!) ignoring or blocking applications I feel I need to include a rantview (this will definitely not be a review) about what is going on in there.

1. Anything will do
The apps that Facebook enables must be paying to be allowed in because they range from the insane to the silly to the downright stupid: you can be bitten by zombies, vampires, slayers, can kiss, have a crush on, pick, poke, play with, preetify, please someone, you can see who likes you, who pays for you, who wants to date you, who wants to have sex with you, who thinks the world of you, who think you're crap, you can choose what Greek god, cartoon character, cookie, celeb, city, region, world, bird, animal, color, car you would be if you were any of those.Most of these are mindless one-second interaction widgets.
2. Opt-out minimal, opt-in is mandatory
All "send all" options are pre-clicked for you so that you do little thinking and your friends bear the burden of you being a blind-okay clicker (you click okay without looking at what that means); the options for you to prevent the flood of apps from your silly computer illiterate friends are written in 0.6 font and almost invisible. there is no ignore all button.
3. Interface is complicated and tortuous
The links between pages are never obvious from all windows; you need to be on a particular page to go to one that you are looking for. Invitations are visible only from one page, the Wall is visible only on a different one. Basically it forces you to "grope" your way from one page to the next. Personal pages are hard to customize and definitely less personal than in, say, MySpace [which i bashed a while back but now am slowing starting to see the value of]

I am growing out of this so fast it's not even funny for a believer in InternetPower

Sounds

Music/sound is the most important in advertising. Connex and then Orange in Romania have taught us how music/sound can make an ad.

listen to this one



and now watch this one [can't find an embeddable version]
which one makes your hairs stand up?
[right answer, no. 2 :)]
by psyop

New media

This is what we can expect next in our already overcrowded advertising universe
[sad]

Wrong vs right in branded utility

A while back I was telling you about this campaign by Charmin to outfit Times Square with clean and comfy toilets. Today I came across the competitor Cottonelle, doing it's own brand of "branded utility".








Meet the Comfort Bus - looks like the Cottonelle puppy and it's traveling across the country to allow people to test the toilet paper INSIDE!!!! and talk to specialists if they have a hard time... well, pooping. [see the indoors and commercial here]
Can you spot the difference between the stupid idea and the good one? I can.

Misspelling progress

Sometimes I wonder at how people misunderstand what happens around them. I have on several occasions talked to people who dismiss the iPhone as a relevant device [much like Ballmer dissing the MacAir at mixx08]. I think that one thing is clear about what the iPhone does [very much like the iPod set a new standard for enjoying music on the go] - it sets a new standard for mobile browsing. Once you have seen how it's done on an iPhone you can never go back to a different interface.
What is the natural/smart thing to do? Mimic the iPhone interface on other devices
What is the stupid thing to do/say? The iPhone does not have market share so it does not matter.

LATER EDIT: also because users give this type of reviews of the iPhone

The truth about Focus Groups

I have written on several occasions about the marketing manager's propensity to ask the customers everything he does not have the balls to decide on. In a great article from Landor about how not to do naming (here via Stefan) I found this gem:

"6. Have a focus group to pick the winner
As a rule, it's smart to entrust strategic business decisions to someone who trades an hour of their time for $25 and a few handfuls of M&Ms. Research proves that a focus group is the best way to pick the winning name. The dynamics of a focus group, in which participants naturally compete for World's Biggest Brain and Most Piercing Wit, ensure that only the fittest names survive. Be sure to ask which name they like most and which will be most successful, because customers know a winner when they see it — oh yes they do."
[sarcasm implied]

Question of the day

What brands would want to associate with figure skating?

Alternative philosophy

:-)

Equity or buzz

Is the question behind the strategy of these three ads for DEL dairy. Since it is a launch I am assuming buzz is the right answer and I think it's probably very smart and very daring to do something like this. [clue for those non-Ro: the main character in here is the owner and main anchor of a tabloid TV station, with huge ratings but absolutely no advertising due to the quality of its programming and its renown; and it is him, for real!]

Practical questions arise: where are they going to air them? Won't people assume that if they are on O they are pretty low quality? What's the target? Are these virals? Will there be an alternative TV campaign for quality TV?

Other than that, Raluca, you are truly wonderfully insane :-) credits



More here

BIG IDEA

Two things I have been thinking about lately:
- I have seen no less than 5 briefs asking for a BIG IDEA that the advertiser could buy and use for the coming 3-5 years (implemented by their own agency or by a regional consortium) and I wonder if we are seeing a crisis of marketing or of big corporate advertising
- maybe writing some of the blog posts in Ro and some in English is a solution to my conundrum, that sometimes I write stuff in En and can only link them to Romanian texts. hmmm

Planners meeting

John Griffiths is in town and, as we had promised, we are putting something together for a meet with him. Join us for a revival of the planner meeting tomorrow at 20:00 (hey, same hour :-P) at Cafepedia Universitate.

lovely pic via (thank you...)

Stats help

Can someone point me to a reliable resource for social networking statistics?
More specifically I need to evaluate Romanian presence on main SNs.

Internet debacle

I was wondering how long it was going to take for the Internet community in Romania to smell the cash and start jumping at each other's throats. It actually took longer than I had expected before the scab was pulled away and the puss started bubbling to the surface, about a year before someone said the magic word - millions - and everyone realized it was time to get a piece of the action. Before, it was all nice friends and good will and bolgfests and loads of enthusiastic people getting together to enjoy being part of something special. Now it's pretty much all about cartels, who controls traffic monitoring, who has hired their wife or made them an agency, who is organizing what event to promote his/her blog/site, who is getting paid to write crap or spin about who or who is trying to rig who's traffic ranking.

Internet was free a year ago, now it's a cash cow. And, as a cow it creates a lot of methane which is hard to breathe.

Telecoms in Romania

when they celebrate millions of users

Orange
[this was broadcast in Romania with a different copy referring to the 10 million users they have acquired; please recognize the decency of the marcoms dept who did not ask that the earth be covered in orange even though it may have ruined the idea :)]


Cosmote - 3 mil



Cosmote - 1 mil



Vodafone

Advertising innovations

Insights about product innovation need to confirm not contradict some form of existing knowledge. This may stem from the fact that existing knowledge is essentially the source of the innovation.
There are certain categories in communications that require constant innovation, not in point of creative strategies but rather of "product improvement" - low involvement, FMCG, hygiene. I cannot bet my job that these exist, but we have enzyme Q10, proteins, Bifidus Essensis, oxygen, fruit extracts, bark extracts, cream in soap etc etc all of which are, allegedly, included in the original recipes of our yogurts, soaps, creams, shampoos etc to give an extra and differentiating RTB. These so-called innovations, however, only make their mark when they hit on some sort of pre-existing knowledge.
e.g.
Garnier has been pushing their fruit enhanced creams for a while now but only the one with extract of Canadian maple hit the right spot - my assumption is that making a cream for extra dry hands with something that comes from a place we assume is cold and dry all the time made sense.
CIF has just introduced it's spray-cleaner with fizzy action - it also made more sense to everyone, than cleaners with citrus and all that, because we do seem to remember that things that dissolve go "fizzzzz" - incidentally it does go fizz but does not clean at all.
Window makers sell windows with several "chambers" stating they insulate better - we buy it because we assume more chambers equals more air and air is insulating. truth is one chamber is as good as 6, what insulates is how well the joinery is attached to the glass and the glass itself.

Would I buy a cream that is enhanced with tar extracts?

Thought of the evening

By Bradut Florescu, during an APG seminar: "Planners are the only people still working in advertising. Creatives are in Cannes, CS are in Cannes too".

"Inspiring the creatives is the planner's new mantra but creatives are like communists, they need to make a revolution every time."
[with speaker's permission :-)]

Saturday evening

Music Club was all booked up so ended up with this

roblogfest

The event tonight was pretty decent, with long lines at the entrance as if it was for some VIP's select appearance. It's also nice to see how every year there are more and more people attending but at the same time to see that blogging is a long lasting love as the faces you saw the first time you were there keep coming back. Fabrica as always is a blast and I think all the brands who supported this event should be given a thumbs up so I will name them: Adobe, Dacia, Pepsi, Lipton, Academia Catavencu and its media group mates.
I thought it was great that Dragos won, and also found an old acquaintance among the winners, Gabi, old colleague from Headvertising days. I also managed to catch a word with Calin Fusu who told me about his new blog and about the thrills and sores of having one of the most successful online projects ever. We also tossed around a brand idea [yeah, I feel special and important right now]
I think the full list of winners will be posted soon on the event blog. I am proud to be part of the roblogsphere [maybe I should start writing this damned thing in Romanian :)]

LATER EDIT: list here

Setting measurable targets

I hate the mass-market objective as it is understood by your regular marketing manager nowadays. Mass market means selling anything to anyone irrespective of the context, of whether that person is open or not to the need for the product or if there is a premise of sale in the life of that target.
I understand and accept the need to create desire for a product where there is none (so we do advertising, so we have no real ethics) but I fail to understand lack of market data when doing it. Too often we have been asked to sell to 18-88, urban rural and elsewhere, all incomes, all social grades "because we need to go mass market with it". And do it all with a TVC.
What follows is a scramble for the universal truth that will convince my grandma and my kid, thousands of pre-launch meetings where everyone has an opinion because, right?, the product is for everyone so everyone SHOULD be asked, production within days because getting everyone's approval is hard, the scramble for crisis management when results are not to par with expectations, firing the agency and moving to the next suckers who cannot say NO.
NO, give me market data and objectives set according to that, before you try to make me sell ice to polar bears.

Will online video replace TV?

If you ask most of my friends, they will say yes. I also went without TV for about 6 months and then I succumbed and got reconnected. Somehow the general buzz of the TV world was missing. This article also seems to think that online will only act as an appendix rather than a replacement (true it only speaks about US market)

Some updates

• John Griffiths is coming to Romania soon so there is a planner meeting in the making. Keep you posted on that.
• The APG seminars are still going on but because there has been a wide request for another session we would like to maybe redo them (if anyone is interested please e-mail or comment)
• In order to make them better, we also really need feedback from the seminars so anyone willing to share also e-mail or comment
• APG membership is still available and open and you get discounts and preferential entry at APG events. Join here
• In case you never visit the site, here are some cool videos some even cooler planners did for the newest APG chapter :-)

Citizen marketing

I love it because it will make me redundant. Today, I found that there are people who effectively think that you should ask the customer what your positioning should be. Go world, we're all commmunicators now!

Efficiency at any price

I have never heard this said in advertising, I mean, "we need to have an efficient campaign at any cost and in doing that we shall not think for a second of how we do what we do".
This is probably going to be my only polemical post of the blog EVER but I cannot help it especially since I seem to have angered a dear friend and being the person I am...I want to anger him completely.

This is the poster produced for the school of creatives part of the Art Director's Club. It features in a well recognizable "manele" concert [low class oriental type of music much berated by mainstream and elite] poster layout, the country's top 12 creative directors.
One of them, annoyed by comments of the kind I am about to make, has placed an explanation of the thinking behind this here and, as always he makes sense because, true, VIP endorsements sells and telling people that they will get to hang out with the coolest of the advertising world probably works double.

I only wonder if recruiting those that come to school to hang out with the cool ones is what they should have been aiming for. If it was volume they were going for, they surely got it with this. If it was buzz, yeah, it did that too because people went "har har, these crazy creatives...". I think, however, that when you are trying to teach people to become creatives who will want to go beyond the easy, face value, Romanian slice of life humor and develop a market of truly valuable designwork and copywork, we should raise the bar in recruitment as well. This is supposed to be the Art Director's Club - if only for that, a more rewarding execution would have been in order. This layout also bears the question what kind of place is the ADC going to be?

I know we are looking for efficiency, but not at the expense of the brand. Even as far as efficiency goes, I still think it's so much easier to pick the pearls from a bucket of pebbles than from a wagon of mud :)

Overheard in a marketing meeting

"Sure the battle is in retail right now but our research of other markets shows that this will die down in about five years so our focus is not on that"
... speaking of looooooong term projections :-)

People just looooove macs

Just watched Kawasaki and Ballmer talk about Vista and stuff at Mix08 and I just love how much Guy obviously likes his Mac and how much Ballmer is obviously pissed off at it... :-)
MacLOVE is all around
Also, how lame is it that if you want to watch the keynotes on the conference website you HAVE to install Microsoft Silverlight :P - okay, it is a Microsoft conference but do they have to shove products down our throats constantly?

Vacation highlights

Had a great time in my couple of days off. Pics of the lovely places we saw here and also one uncanny image: smack in the middle of a field with hardly a tree around )Let alone houses or people) my mac registered this "would you like to connect to wireless network GH8"... Internet is all around us, wohoooo

Dacia does the right thing

This is a post about reconsidering.
To start off, I have always disliked Dacia (the car for Romanians :-). I thought it was a badly named, badly made, badly promoted product bought only for the wrong reasons namely for price, low price.
Today I was invited to an event which continues in the series that Dacia has been implementing to promote its new take on the brand and I went. The event gathered a bunch of bloggers, some identity and comms people and some journalists. It was meant to be a 2.0 reveal of the new Dacia logo, identity and also of the strategy for the years to come.
The new logo
It has been widely mocked for resembling a bottle opener, although on the spur of the moment I must admit it reminds me of a much advertised Durex vibrating ring. BUT, that is not the point. Shapes are always reminiscent of other shapes because, unlike words, they are taken in holistically (that is why we recognize the H without a leg instantly in the well known test). So, the argument that it resembles random shapes is immaterial to me. What matters is that I find the logo speaks to some of the innate Dacia values (very much unlike the new identity statement as we shall later see) of sturdiness, bulky reliability and rough simplicity. Dacia is not a sophisticated car not should it claim to be one. According to what the company reps said the car is still bought because of its low low price for quality ratio, therefore the logo serves to reinforce some basic features which justify the "frugal" pricing :-)
The brand identity
As stated in this doc (ro only sorry people and so are most of the links) the new brand is generous and ingenious. Generous - through its interior and ingenious through great price4 quality solutions. The company rep also mentioned some other reasons for this positioning which, to tell you the truth, seemed tacked on and made no sense in the context. As I said before, I find the logo a true incarnation of what the product and the brand is. The talk behind it seems, for the generous part, a bit too inspirational and for the ingenious part a bit overpromising. I think that a dose of sincerity may have served the brand platform better. The good thing is that no one will ever hear the platform and if the agency working Dacia knows how to avoid BS talk this may even work.
The product
I am not the right one to talk about this although if it is as large as I expect it, it is sturdy enough to make a point to the brand and, hopefully, it will not come with too many a sophisticated add ons. This should not be a fancy car.
The initiative
Finally, I feel I need to underline how much I appreciate the chances Dacia is taking with its comms. After the much discussed Kiss Dacia blog campaign, this 2.0 manner of opening up to a community of opinion leaders, which is less acknowledged than it should, signals one truly amazing thing: that someone in that company has an open mind. I find this noteworthy especially coming from a formerly communist and monopolistic brand whose appetite for change was slim in the years following the revolution.

So, weirdly enough, this is a post about a decent job Dacia is doing, maybe not with the product yet and not with the talk behind the new logo either, but at least with the approach to comms and the design of its frontpiece :-)
read some more about the same from other fellow bloggers attending here and here
Pics courtesy of zoso

LATER EDIT: just read some more about the company's idea behind the logo. It seems it is meant to make the brand more attractive to women and young people. Interestingly enough this fits little with the look of the logo which is, true, more rounded, but at the same time too sturdy to work for a woman. As to the younger generation, I am assuming that the 'ingenious' brand attribute, meaning price for quality ratio, will be the clencher. Somehow things are not really tying in together.

Off for a week

Strangely rough beginning of the year so I am taking a week off to "swim" around and explore.
Back next week