by Walter Naeslund on September 29, 2009
The way I see it, public speaking is not about conveying information – books and Google do that much better than I ever can. Instead, I set out to inspire. If I can, on a good day, inspire you out there to take even one action in a powerful direction, things can start to snowball in amazing ways. That’s what inspires me, and that’s the common theme for all my talks – to get you to take action.
I give talks in Sweden and abroad on the topics of digital communications strategy, branding, internet trends, and social media. I also do talks on how building business through communication is just like attracting the opposite sex (or the same sex for that matter, depending on your preference), but that’s a whole other story that I’ll tell you more about when we meet.
Some of the talks have been at schools, companies, and organizations of different sizes, including Stockholm School of Economics, SAS, Berghs School of Communication, Hyper Island, and others; while bigger conferences have included Esomar WM3, Bring Dialogue Conference, and SEMPL in Slovenia.
Contact me for bookings and enquiries, or give me a call at +46-708-560 365.
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by Walter Naeslund on March 20, 2009
In this morning’s newspaper (DN) I read an editorial by Hanne Kjöller about government communications. What has upset Hanne is the fact that the government office Stockholm’s Stad have developed rules for how to talk to the press, and distributed small reminder cards to remind of these rules. Granted, this could have been a problem if the rules where intended to cloak government affairs, but really Hanne, I think you’re overreacting. Here are the rules:
NEVER
* Lie, guess, or communicate your own theories.
* Get upset or angry.
* Let the situation or the reporter put you under stress.
* Discuss classified information.
* Use the expression “no comment”.
ALWAYS
* Take your time.
* Think before answering.
* Stay within your area of responsibility.
* Say if you don’t know, are able to, or allowed to answer the question.
* Stay to the facts.
* Assume that all conversations are interviews.
* Be decisive, fair and honest.
To me, these seem to be rules intended to improve communications with the public, not censor it. See – clarity of message communicates far more information, while confusion and opinions communicates less (unless you’re interested in private opinions, but these rules are about the communication of Stockholms Stad).
Hanne’s recommendation to Stockholms Stad is instead “…to withdraw their plastic card and instead encourage their staff to contact journalists whenever they think they have something to tell”. Wow. As a communications consultant I would strongly advice against that if you would like to create anything but confusion.
So Hanne, I think you got this all backwards. These rules may make your life as a reporter at work less fun, but if we’re talking about creating effective communications between Stockholms Stad and the people, they’re probably quite good for everybody.
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by Walter Naeslund on February 16, 2009
I haven’t written much here for a while because I’ve been busy commenting this post, which has become like a little blog in its own right. Check in there for what I think is a pretty interesting discussion.
Ciao!
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by Walter Naeslund on January 23, 2009
I think it’s interesting to see how the Insider’s Journal-blog of Björn Borg is posting pictures from their work on the SS10 collection. I think this is the way to do a blog. Very open, very involving, taking your customers with you on the journey. Screw secrecy, and tease the nextopia nerve by being smart, not by being closed.
God job.
(And it felt good saying something positive about BB after bashing their Gay-marriage film).
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by Walter Naeslund on November 12, 2008
In the last post I asked the question whether the death of privacy will improve the quality of behavior in our society. I guess this is a bit controversial. But you can see the exact same thing for brands. And here is not very controversial at all.
The privacy of brands is under heavy fire when blogs, reviews, and comments expose bad quality or behavior almost instantly. Will this improve these qualities? You betcha. Otherwise the brand just wont survive in the long term.
And still, despite this, you sometimes here comments about brands “not wanting to be part of social media because they loose control of the message”.
People will talk anyway. Will you join in?
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by Walter Naeslund on November 5, 2008
In an effort to keep this blog non-political (oh well, at least a little bit of effort), we’ll not talk too much here about the political effects that this historic event will have on America and on the world (Yeahj! Go Obama cries Walter from his desk a little too loudly!). Instead, we’ll talk about the effects it will have on our business.
Because not only did the people of America put in the White House a black guy called Barrack Hussein Obama as the successor of George W. Bush (only in America), they also gave the world, our collegues, our investors, our critics and our clients the biggest and finest case we could ever wish for to prove us right about a communications model built on social media.
My guess is that this will be widely popularized in our country by the upcoming Swedish elections. Parties will have studied Obama and they will be eager to replicate what he did. They will demand that their respective agencies possess this knowledge and work by these strategies.
So thank you America for rewarding a new way of thinking about communication. Thank you for being so eager to change. Thank you for making my job explaining social media so much easier.
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by Walter Naeslund on November 4, 2008
Media independence is a very worn term in marketing. It’s been hyped to the skies by agencies and advertising tutors all over the world, and considered the holy grail by many.
They’re all wrong.
Back in the day when media was equal to mass media and television networks could have 40% rating shares, talking about media independence made sense. Today, the cannels are many, specialized and narrow. Talking about media independence in this new world is like using the same language regardless of country or culture.
The media channels are many and diverse, and they have different audiences. Many times the channels are not the channels at all – the content is. And you are still talking about media independence?
I would rather talk about channel orchestration, distributed marketing, and media dependence. The same product can very well be marketed in different ways to different audiences. It should be. When in Rome…
Our agency is highly media dependent. And channel orchestration is a key part of our strategic toolbox. Integrated marketing is not the holy grail, distributed niche marketing is.
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by Walter Naeslund on November 3, 2008
The Swedish advertising award Guldägget just announced new digital categories. The categories are:
1. Interactive Category A:
Sites
Includes campaign sites and corporate sites.
2. Interactive Category B:
Advertising
Includes banners, mobile marketing and SEO.
3. Interactive Category C:
Other digital media
Includes widgets, applications, digital events, interactive tools and social media.
This segmentation into technologies could have been a good idea for production companies, but for communications agencies? I don’t know.
In a media landscape where the consumer chooses it’s channels and switches between them seamlessly and very quickly, any communications strategy residing in ONE channel is questionable. And thus, deviding up awards in this way is too. Any communications strategy that does not take into account channel orchestration is simply incomplete.
I would love to see the awards segmentation matrix turned 90 degrees. Channel orchestration and choice needs to be present for any strategy to be considered complete, and segmentation could instead be by business type or target audience for example.
Then perhaps there could be another awards show for production companies and their technical achievements, just like Roy is for film production companies.
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by Walter Naeslund on October 30, 2008
What if the institution “advertising agency” has had it’s day already? What if “proudly found elsewhere” is the new agency mantra. What if the new key competence for the whatever we would call this new kind of agency is the ability to find awesome things and marry them to brands in different strategic ways? And also contribute to put out awesome things that somebody else can pick up and pair with some other endevour?
“Yeah, but big companies would never dare let go of control” could have been a good argument here, but the thing is that I didn’t invent “proudly found elsewhere” – Procter & Gamble did. A.G.Lafley at P&G, to be precise, in regards to P&G’s innovation policy.
Ponder on that for a moment.
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