Merry Christmas & Happy New Year. See you 2010.

A trusted friend who attended at the Nobel peace party in Norway. I asked him if Will Smith will be the actor playing Barack
Obama in a movie about him, since I think he looks like Obama. He responded that they did talk about that when they met. Actually Smith joked with Obama about having himself to play Obama in a movie. Smith told this to his wife – she responded with happiness but also replayed with the line that he will need bigger ears to look more like Obama. Rumor or not, I really like to see Smith as the actor portraying this historic person.

Does Smith looks like Obama?

Since its start in 1901, the Nobel Prize has had a lot of time to build a strong brand. Today it’s one of the most well known brands in the world. But not until 2008 did they actively work on building their brand. Last year their website, Nobelprize.org, had 38 million visitors. By spreading information about the Nobel Prizes on social media, Nobelprize.org’s visitors are increasing rapidly around the world.
With this in mind, I met their first ever Marketing and Communications Manager, Merci Olsson at Nobelprize.org. Merci and her colleagues are starting to use social media to make the Nobel Prize history accessible and to let people connect with wealth of information on the vast website Nobelprize.org.
We met on October 20th at the Nobel Museum in Old Town, Stockholm. The same day, Nobelprize.org had the world première for the project, “Ask a Nobel Laureate”, where visitors had the chance to pose questions directly to a Nobel Prize Laureate, Dr. John Mather from NASA, via the Nobel Prize YouTube channel. This event was a success and a good example of how the combination of online and offline worlds can work together to increase traffic on their sites. During the Nobel Prize announcements and press conferences, the Nobel Prize YouTube channel was the first from Europe to live-stream these events to a worldwide audience.
When I asked which social media channels they are using, Merci’s response was, “We are the channel”. She explains that it doesn’t matter which type of platform one uses: the platform itself is only a tool to reach different people. “If it is online or on a bus or event at a museum, it is still about getting people involved in our brand. Involvement means creating an interest and nurturing it. We have a responsibility to spread information about the Nobel Prizes and to inspire the next generation of Nobel Laureates.”
One of the goals Nobelprize.org has is to create direct relationships with universities and schools around the world to offer educational resources about the Nobel Prizes and the awarded achievements.
When it comes to social media, Nobelprize.org is active on important platforms such as Facebook. On Twitter they have many followers.  Because they don’t try to control discussions, they take part in a dialogue that goes on 24/7 and their followers answer each other. In October, the website visitors increased by 100 to 200 per cent. Every time they make an announcement, the traffic increases, leading to the expansion of their ‘fan tribe’. Merci calculates that they have a fan tribe of 20,000 dedicated people who have an interest in the Nobel Prize. She makes an excellent point out about how social media has developed for them: “It’s becoming a self driving car.”
Many brands, companies and agencies would like to get into that car.

Since GM didn’t manage to sell SAAB, they announced that they will shut down the legendary SAAB brand last Friday:

G.M. would still be willing to consider selling Saab if a new buyer were to emerge. If that does not occur, the process of winding down Saab will begin in January… “I can’t rule it out, but the clock starts now.” John F. Smith, a General Motors executive vice president
Nytimes.com

In other words SAAB is now on the death-row. GM is not an charity organization. Until now buyers have only offered them words, here is my idea for how to get potential 10 billion Euros. In other words,   numbers so good that it would be criminal to say no.

SAAB has the most dedicated automobile consumers in the world. Still GM only manage to sell 93,000 SAAB cars last year. Too few brands have something unique left. Users of SAAB understand this better than GM management.
Here is my solution: start selling one of the SAAB cars customized into a special edition. Sell it for a higher price, lets say 50.000 Euros. Give buyers half of the money back after 2 years if they in that time have managed to sell 10 cars to others.
By buying one of the unique SAAB cars the buyer automatically becomes an owner of SAAB. Each bought car makes the buyer a part-owner of the car, that will make fans go from being ambassadors to Kings and Queens (everyone will recognize this special edition of SAAB and see what they stand for – a hero and owner of the SAAB brand). Include a free tripe to the SAAB fabric in Trollhättan for every partner that owns a SAAB car. Give each car a unique number, so more fans can expand the fantribe by using social media (connect every car with an user story, ore an Twitter account on wheels). Let these part-owners become future salespeople of SAAB cars. Connect the cars with Google Maps and GPS, give the owners better commissions on the sales if they park and drive them in popular places. Give every employee and suppliers the same deal (at least 10.000 people are directly or indirectly involved in the making of SAAB cars today).
Numbers: Sell 200.000 cars before they are made to consumers, employes etc. 200.000 x  50.000 Euros =  10 Billion Euros. 10 billion Euros will make a difference.

“The purpose of publishing this concept video is first and foremost to spark a discussion around the digital reading experience in general, and digital reading platforms in particular.” Bonnier.com (more information and contact information).
Personally I think history is overrated, innovation should be free from history (but then it would be harder to sell it in present times). Showing your innovation steps as Bonnier does speed up evolution.

There is an bird that spend 90% of their life flying in the air. It’s called Common Swift. It is made for flying and often they are flying 24/7 for months. I find nature amazing in developing solutions by adapting to its needs. It would be interesting to see top management performing 90% of their time on earth.

When you are in love, your blind. iPhone users are both blind and deaf. Personally my love for Apple is more of the old kind. The kind when you see and hear if its a good ore bad deal to buy an Apple product. In the computer field is the evolution mowing slowly. But when they introduced the iPhone iPredicted that they will swim in shark water (having a product that are bleeding/performing bad are only attracting more sharks). Some of my friends are hard core Apple fans they don’t understand why I not are using iPhone. It is simply because iPhone is not deliver what I demand from an mobile. Some users don’t use their iPhone as an mobile they only use it as an iPod. Why? Love is blind and deaf. Take a look on this warm welcome of criticism:

iPhone users are suffering from delusion akin to Stockholm Syndrome, says Strand Consulting in a weird little slice of research released this morning by this particular team of generally anti-iPhone analysts.
9to5mac.com

When we examine the iPhone users’ arguments defending the iPhone, it reminds us of the famous Stockholm Syndrome – a term that was invented by psychologists after a hostage drama in Stockholm. Here hostages reacted to the psychological pressure they were experiencing, by defending the people that had held them hostage for 6 days.
Strand Consulting

A point that they totally are missing is what I did find in my research for over 10 years: If a company have bad quality products (read iPhone) but over time improving it to good quality – they will have an stronger relation to their consumers than if it was perfect from start. Why? Some will say that perfect is boring. That may be an point but I will say that brands are like friends, real friends you can disagree with but still be friends it is an sort of relation insurance. This kind of friendship is what IKEA did offer us – from bad quality to legendary world domination by improving quality. If Apple should do the same they need to update their strategy.

So when will I by an iPhone? Never if it is not deliver my basic need as an mobile user.

For not so long ago, it was cool to wear Levis jeans. Today it´s not. But the fact remains, jeans is a statement of the person wearing them – it is a walking opinion.
Recently a couple of young Swedish entrepreneurs started to import North Korea-made designer jeans called Noko Jeans. Shops did like the jeans but not the political statement they where dressed in. So they decided to get rid of all Noko Jeans in the swedish store PUB (see photo). The act of removing the jeans and making them unavailable will make the brand even more interesting for trend searching consumers. Brands that are hard to find automatically gets interesting. But for political jeans the statement can become dangerous, for example to wear Levis in Irak will not make you popular. But to wear political jeans at the right please can change perception of what is right and wrong.
Back in the eighties I called Greenpeace and suggested that they should start producing products to manifest their brand. At that time they where not interested, but today I think they would listen to the concept. If they would produce “Greenpeace Jeans” their believers would buy them for their values. It would make Greenpeace´s invisible grassroots visible and that could make a difference at the “hopenhagen” meeting. If their jeans where in a green color they could easily turn the hole city of Copenhagen a green movement.

Got this from my girlfriend. It is really nice.

Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot. Who calls you back when you hang up on him. Who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep. Wait for the boy who pursues you. Who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you’re in his sweats. Who holds your hand in front of his friends. Who thinks you’re the prettiest when you have no makeup on and insist on holding you around your waist. The one who turns to his friends and says “THAT’S HER!”
Unknown wisdom

I think brands should have the same behavior as the boyfriend in this quote. Then they would deserve love, without paying for attention. Thanks to my girlfriend, I will use this wisdom as my personal brand book.