Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Ballsy Protest: Art as Communication?

Or is it guerrilla marketing? You decide. Gaetano Cecchini was at it again this past week in Rome. No, it's not a Sony Bravia commercial, it was Mr Cecchini's protest -- an artistic gesture to demonstrate the problems in Italy. "To do so, I used art," he said, "Both the Left and the Right are telling us so many lies and I and the Italians have had enough. They have broken our balls and hence this live art display." Many of the people who were there collected the balls as souvenirs. You can see some in the video below. If... Read more →

Forget Influentials: in Viral Marketing, Context Matters

That's right, reaching influentials is not the way to reach the many. Duncan Watts says the emergence of a trend does not depend on influentials. Instead, it depends on the susceptibility of the public to the "virus." Social-network effects are so complex, that trends are basically random. Has The Tipping Point peaked? Clive Thompson says so in the February issue of Fast Company magazine. I participated in Duncan Watts Small World Columbia research project, and although I'm sure he and I have six degrees of separation, we have not met in person. Yet, I have definitely an affinity with his... Read more →

Conversational Index is Reputation-Driven

I Like the iPhone, therefore I like Apple, therefore I am less likely to think AT&T sucks. That is my more or less conscious thought process on the whole likeability concept. If your company has built a good reputation, that has transfered onto your brand and your customers will be more accommodating with you -- they will cut you some slack. So much work has been done to humanize brands, we should not be surprised at all if a well liked brand also has a stronger conversational index with customers. We've observed this with social media at the time that... Read more →

Advertising Not Wanted Here

To make extra cash, I distributed advertising fliers when I was in school. It was not as lucrative as doing the paper route here, believe me. Pennies to a flier and I had to put it in the mail boxes. In Italy they are locked inside condominiums and apartment buildings. On my bike, sometimes in the cold rain, I would carry pounds of paper from block to block. Then I would need to park and lock the bike, ring a bell to ask someone to open the door to the building and then go in and insert in each mail... Read more →

VW's Tiguan Ad Campaign Misses Social

It's not so counter intuitive to advertise for a car at a train station. Especially knowing that some trains may be delayed, although the delays are not as bad as they used to be. I was recently at the Bologna train station and saw this ad right by the cafe' where I stopped for my morning espresso before catching the connecting train. You can see to the left there the coffee shop, where the retro panel ads are. It made me stop and look -- from the corner of my eye it looked like the pavement was broken. There's construction... Read more →

The Marketing Conversation

Companies are not afraid of conversation, some people are, not all of them -- the rest run out of time. We should never talk about organizations as entities, it leads to all sorts of false assumptions, the most glaring of which is that an entity has a mind, it does not. Conversation is not new, it's not different, it's not even original -- we were built to have conversations. A marketing conversation is also a story -- and we've been telling stories even before we could talk. It seems alright to keep pointing the mouse to businesses and ask them... Read more →

New Media Influences Journalists

A recent survey of journalists in North America conducted by Brodeaur, a unit of Omnicom Group, in conjunction with Marketwire, finds that "blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news, but also influence the tone and editorial direction of reporting." I met Jerry Johnson of Brodeaur last year in the comments section of John Moore's blog Brand Autopsy. We struck a great conversation by email and I learned more about his work and agency life as I was in the process of updating my resume. When I saw the results of this survey I... Read more →

Of Portals, VideoBlogs, MoBlogs and Other Time Hogs?

It's Friday and we're letting our hair down. Today we're going to have some fun talking about how blogging is changing and what are the five things you should at least try in 2008. I should, too. I limited my advice at The Blog Herald to things that are either emerging or have been sort of forgotten in the excitement of the new tool that was blogging even one year ago. Now it's time to take another look at them. For example newsletters, digital photography sections on a site, even a new content area on a sub-domain are ways of... Read more →

An Unlikely Blend -- Part II

Almost one year ago, I posted my response to the question: why aren't there any Starbucks in Italy? Today at Fast Company Expert blogs I talk about learning from Starbucks -- Was it Too Much of a Good Thing? I thought it a good idea to take another look at the reasons I gave for the absence of the coffee chain in the beautiful country I come from (waxing poetic now): My two cents on Italian coffee and why Starbucks is an unlikely blend in Italy (I've been proven wrong before): True espresso coffee is an experience hardly any Italian... Read more →

Not New, Not Even Improved

Why are we doing this release? Is probably the first indication that something is not right. There should always be a good reason to get the word out on a company, a product or a service -- something that is newsworthy. Yet often, internally, there is this misconception that many things that are in fact not new, not even improved, require the obligatory press release. That is the everyone-is-a-PR-expert approach, one I don't quite buy. I propose that there is another way of getting the word out. One that would, interestingly, enhance the company's reputation and get information that is... Read more →