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Svenska

Lowe Brindfors Copy the Forsman & Bodenfors SEO Mistakes

by Walter Naeslund on September 15, 2009

Last week I wrote about how Forsman & Bodenfors don’t understand how the internet works. In absolute terms, the description was fair, but in relative terms, they are not worse than most of the advertising business. Yesterday we got another painfull piece of evidence to that effect.

I’m talking about the brand new website of Lowe Brindfors. But to discuss the site we need to separate two things: Design and communications efficiency.

Design

It’s a matter of taste of course, but I think this page is very well designed from a print designers point of view. It’s excellent print design, but awful interactive design. Because it is not interactive. It’s like designing a very pretty car with only passenger seats. And just like such a beautiful but useless car, this site belongs in a museum. Which leads me into point 2:

Communications Efficiency

This thing is a very pretty printed catalogue in digital format. It’s what websites were in the late 90’s. The entire thing is a big Flash-page, with text that you cannot copy, films you cannot share, posters that you can download as PDFs (!) but not share with anyone, and invisible coworkers that you can only reach via email or telephone. No wonder they have this disclaimer on the site:

Apparently they think that the elusive internet out there is about technology and gadgets, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Because really, these new technologies are VEHICLES of ideas. Nothing else. But the ideas have to be made for a world of transparency, not to fill expensive media plans. And for you to come up with such ideas, you have to know how this transparent world functions.

Search and SEO is ONE important aspect to understand in order to get people “to spend time with the brand” (to use Lowe Brindfors’ own terminology), and this is what the brand new Lowe Brindfors site looks like to Google:

According to Google, what’s most interesting about the new Lowe Brindfors site seems to be their webmail (!), followed by pages from their old site, and a PDF press-release from August 2008.

Disclaiming your way out of obvious lack of knowledge about the psychology and behavior on the internet with something general like a “Hey, boy slow it down”-disclaimer becomes embarrassing when confronted with clients who know the internet – something that becomes more and more common every day thanks to knowledgeable rebels and speakers on the topic like Johan Ronnestam, Simon Sundén, and Björn Alberts, just to name a few. [Edit: + Jesper Åström]

Things don’t improve when I read what Peter Willebrand our Swedish ad-business press Resumé has to say about the new site:

“Resume.se thankfully notes that the trend is the same as in other digital communication: simpler, faster, and more head on”.

This statement is very general, and also wrong. The site isn’t fast. It’s a heavy Flash film with a loader from hell. The trend of the internet is not “simpler, faster, and more head on”. The trend, or rather the permanent shift, is to social participation in dynamically coordinated institution-less groups, which means that a site needs to support that behavior. You need to love people, not just say you love them. The new thing about the internet is not that people can now talk back to you, it is that everybody can talk to everybody and coordinate discussions and topics without necessarily involving you. If anything, this is more complex, not simpler. Grasping the entire strategy for this more complex system requires a more diverse skill set ranging from behavioral psychology to technology.

The bottom line is that you can have the prettiest house in the world, but to make friends, you have to meet them. Or else you’ll end up being very lonely.

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Thanks to all for your interest in yesterday’s post about Forsman & Bodenfors, Svenska Kyrkan, and Google. It led to many interesting conversations both in the comments of the post, on Twitter in my email inbox, on Facebook, and over the phone. Wasn’t quite prepared for that kind of response. So, thanks!

Today I want to talk to you about something else. I want to talk to you about clients. Because even though it is our responsibility as consultants to provide know-how and ideas, clients also need to take their share of responsibility. In short – everybody needs to do their job.

Yesterday I met a prospective client who had great knowledge and understanding of communication and the internet. He almost cried over how he had to actually teach his expensive consultants how to do their jobs. Clients such as this one are a pleasure to meet, and the projects with them always turn out great. They have passion and they understand their role in a successful project.

But sometimes… just sometimes… you bump into something dark and completely different. Let me tell you one of these stories:

On one April morning earlier this year I sat on the balcony with at cup of coffee and a copy of Dagens Nyheter in my hands. I started reading about a topic that I have a particular interest in – computers and learning. The project described in the article is called Skolwebben (The School Web) and is intended to be an information hub for teachers, students, and parents alike. A great idea to be sure! The internet could be an amazing tool to move
learning into a whole new era, but only if competence and ability is
blended into the mix. Here, this didn’t happen.

As I continued reading,  I almost choked on my coffee. This project took on enormous costs. 17 000 000 SEK was poured into the project which was to be carried out by TietoEnator. For anyone of us who has ever worked with communication systems 17 000 000 SEK is a huge sum. For that kind of money we could create amazing strategy, amazing tactics, and amazing implementation. The money would be put into streamlining efficiency for the users based on their actual behaviors, and would be built on open source technology. But this is not what TietoEnator does. Instead, the produce a buggy, complicated and expensive system, hated by teachers, students, and parents alike. From what I could tell from the article in Dagens Nyheter, the project was on it’s way to the garbage can and would then be restarted from scratch.

There is plenty to read about this project and you can find much on Google. Try for example this search. But be prepared to get upset.

"Det är flera typer av problem som påtalas", säger Anette Holm om Skolwebben.As I was sitting there on my balcony, I felt I had to do something. I picked up my computer and wrote an email to Anette Holm, the IT-director of Stockholm City, and also the person who had been commenting the story in Dagens Nyheter, explaining to her my ambition to help out. I told her that I would put mine and my agency’s resources at her disposal to figure out how to turn this catastrophe into something useful. I offered to do it for free*(see edit below).

When I received her answer I had to read it over and over five times before I could believe what it said. I could have understood if she wasn’t willing to involve a new agency into the project, but I had never expected this. It was just too much. Here is the email:


“The School Web is not primarily a matter of communication. Thanks for your offer, but I don’t see the need.” I read in the email.

Not primarily a matter of communication! What?!?! Suddenly it didn’t seem so strange anymore that projects governed by this kind of thinking would make communications projects crash, and take 17 000 000 SEK of tax money with them in the fall. How could anyone with the title of IT-director even write something like this, apparently without flinching? It’s almost Kafta-like.

I sat there looking at the email for a while, trying to figure out what to do with it. It just felt so hopeless. I printed the email and posted it on my wall for while see if I would eventually figure this out. “Not primarily a matter of communication…” echoed in my head. What is it a matter of then? If not communication?

A client like Anette Holm is one that I wouldn’t take on. Good projects can’t emerge from somebody who’s philosophical view of the internet doesn’t include the word communication. I would recommend you all not to take on such projects either. Eventually, we’ll get the clients we deserve, and our clients will get the brilliance they deserve.

Excellence is a business of ideals.

Edit:
FYI, here is a link to the email I sent.

Edit:
The offer was intended as free, though I realize now that I’m looking back at the email that it could possibly have been interpreted otherwise, as commenters “vän av ordning” and Magnus Nilsson have rightfully pointed out. The main point however, is not whether or not we actually did offer our services for free, but that Anette Holm’s thoughts on the project were that “…the school web is not primarily a matter of communication…”.

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Forsman & Bodenfors and Svenska Kyrkan Don’t Know Google

by Walter Naeslund on September 1, 2009

If they only knew what a great idea they really had! Forsman & Bodenfors just came up with a new site for Svenska Kyrkan (The Church of Sweden) where you can submit your prayer to the site. The prayer is then keyworded on the site so that you can find other prayers on the same topic.

What makes this idea so great is that it suddenly makes The Church of Sweden relevant for a vast number of current topics like swine flu or economic crisis. Just like the church is relevant across a broad spectrum of topics in real life, it becomes equally relevant online. It also produces thousands of pages with relevant cross links. Brilliant.

Unfortunately this is also where the brilliance ends and it becomes apparent that Forsman & Bodenfors haven’t understood what a great idea they really had. Why is that? Well – much of the power of this idea, say a potential 20-50% of visits to the site, comes from the fact that the church becomes a relevant hit on Google for so many different topics. Or would have become just that, if they would have been at all visible to Google. And they aren’t, simply because F&B don’t know Google. Forsman & Bodenfors have chosen Flash as their technology for this campaign, which in it’s standard form isn’t indexable by Google. And they haven’t done any of the standard workarounds to make it so. To Google, this looks like thousands of identical and uninteresting pages with different names. Google looks at it, scratches it’s head, and throws all of them in the garbage without indexing anything. Let alone indexing on a wide variety of topics.

Svenska Kyrkan 1

You can see above what the site looks like. You can see the selected prayer in the middle with keywords in different colors and the share buttons. Pretty, but utterly useless from a Google perspective. Because if you take a look at how Google sees http://svenskakyrkan.se/be, this is what Google sees:

Svenska Kyrkan be på Google

Google sees three pages instead of the potential thousands. One containing the main page containing the Flash file, the Flash file itself described with this beautiful text: txt Header instructions txt1 txt2 txt3 txt4 Header instructions txt Header instructions txt txt Lorem ipsum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, …”, and the fail page “the prayer doesn’t exist”.

In plain English this is a complete failure, and an awesome display of the problem most agencies are facing – they are smart, but they live in the past.

Besides the Google perspective, there is also the perspective of user behavior. Users want intuitive interaction. It is not intuitive to use an embed-code to embed text. For video, there is a purpose for the embed code, but for text? No. People naturally want to be able to copy and paste the text directly, preferably with links and colors and everything. That way we also get relevant links all over the web linking back to the Church of Sweden site on relevant topics. THAT would have been brilliant.

Conclusion – This is really an excellent idea, but the excellence is there by mistake, and is not taken advantage of at all simply because of lacking knowledge of basic SEO. It’s really sad. Especially since it would have been so easy to solve by using DHTML or even underlying indexable content.

One thing puzzled me though. How could something like this receive thousands of entries? Truly a mystery. At least until I switched on the television in my hotel room and saw television commercials for the internet campaign! Advertising for… advertising! What on earth?! To get traffic to the site you try to buy this traffic with television dollars?! A site like this one should get at least 20-50% of its traffic via search, which would have been free, self regenerating, and incredibly easy to achieve.

Suggestion – (Hi friends at F&B, I know you’re reading this and you know I love you, but I HAD to write this, since it’s such a great example to learn from. Please accept my free advice here as a return favor).

What if you would have used existing and established services such as Facebook status updates and Twitter posts (#whatever) to complement your web interface as a way to input prayers?  And an email adress (spam filtered of course) and an SMS-service (free of course)[edit: they have SMS-input]? What if your output of the prayers would have been much more flexible, mashable, widgetized and projected at the churches of Stockholm? Or whatever. Make it bigger. Give it presence.

But more than anything – learn SEO. Optimize that thing! Optimize it! Because really, what you came up with, apparently without realizing it, was a really good idea! You have great brains! But by implementing it the way you did, you created a bomb without a fuse.

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For some reason, this image comes to mind. ;-)

SocialMediaCool

Yeah, we're down with social media.


[Edit: Article about the site in Swedish: ]

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Sweden’s Most Swedish Job Completed

by Walter Naeslund on August 6, 2009

Today the “Sweden’s most swedish job”-campaign that I was involved in with Syrup Sthlm and Bizkit earlier this year came to an end. Calle Engström, who has been traveling around Sweden blogging, filming and tweeting about his experience, arrived to Stockholm and the STF hostel Af Chapman after posting 82 YouTube-films, 371 blog posts and 762 tweets.

In the early stages we received a lot of comments, both positive and critical, about the project. Most comments have been about the “plagiarizing” of Cumming Nitro’s “Best Job in The World”-campaign. And like I’ve said earlier, you can all start by removing the quotes around “plagiarizing”. Because even though the campaign in itself is perhaps not so similar, honestly tagging on to the very successful “BJITW”-campaign has been crucial in powering the campaign. We actually needed to make it sound more similar than it actually was. And we did. Those of you who have seen my lectures on social media strategy has heard me talking about 7 different techniques, of which one is referred to by me as “Sailing”. And well – this is exactly what sailing is about. Find a good gust of wind and tag along with it.

Anyway – today we can evaluate and look at the sheer numbers. First off we’ve had major media coverage in basically all media of significance in Sweden. From the big ones to the local press. But more interestingly the traffic to the STF website has increased by 70%. And for a client where the website is so absolutely crucial, this is not bad.

Check out Calle in the clip below or on his STF-site.

Read the full article →

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Spotify Goes Mobile and Offline!

by Walter Naeslund on May 28, 2009

When I lectured at Stockholm School of Economics about the future of music and video I remember receiving a few critical questions about mobility: “What about when you’re mobile?”, “What about when you’re on a plane?”, “What about when you don’t have an internet connection?”. Ladies and gentlemen, here is your answer:

And by the way, here’s a little hint to Antipiratbyrån, Ifpi, Sami – Svenska Artisters och Musikers intresseorganisation,SOM (Svenska Oberoende Musikproducenter), Stim, Sveriges Författarförbund, Svenska Förläggareföreningens, Sveriges Filmproducenter och Film i Väst, Svenska Filminstitutet, Dotshop.se, and all you others who think that IPRED is a good idea: INNOVATE don’t LEGISLATE! Without filesharing there would be no such thing as Spotify. Trust me.

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Cut, Copy, Steal. But never lie.

by Walter Naeslund on May 19, 2009

Recently I was involved in a campaign that we blatantly stole from another very successful campaign. At least that is what some people say. Me, I would call it a remix. We mashed up a very successful idea with a different set of ingredients, contexts and spices and relaunched it with very open references to the original, and the campaign took off like mad crazy! Every major newspaper and most minor ones covered the story. The amount of exposure was just phenomenal, with little to no advertising budget. Here are just some examples:

http://www.vagabond.se/Redaktionellt/Nyheter/Sveriges-svenskaste-jobb/
http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/sveriges-svenskaste-jobb-1.866962
http://webbsverige.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/sveriges-svenskaste-jobb/
http://www.expressen.se/resor/1.1570203/sveriges-svenskaste-jobb
http://norran.se/nyheter/norrochvasterbotten/article289523.ece
http://stockholm.city.se/nyheter/16746/sok_sveriges_roligaste_sommarjobb
http://xing.blogg.se/2009/may/sveriges-svenskaste-jobb-utlyst.html
http://www.ot.fi/story.aspx?storyID=41431
http://www.utsidan.se/cldoc/15168.htm
http://www.gp.se/gp/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=913&a=495339
http://blogg.travelstart.se/2009/05/sveriges-svenskaste-jobb-.html
http://ltz.se/nyheter/inrikes/1.1045355
http://business.bulletin.se/news/more.aspx?ItemID=7162
http://www.nt.se/nyheter/artikel.aspx?articleid=5225329
http://www.expressen.se/resor/1.1570203/sveriges-svenskaste-jobb?standAlone=true&viewstyle=print
http://www.metro.se/2009/05/15/79953/ar-det-har-sveriges-basta-sommarjobb/index.xml
http://www.travelnews.se/Ovrigt/Vem-far-Sveriges-basta-jobb/
http://blogg.svd.se/resebloggen?id=13665

And here comes the interesting part – If this had been an original idea (assuming the existence of such a thing) it wouldn’t have come close to the exposure we now received.

There is a lesson here: By being honest and open we both benefited. We got massive exposure for our client because of all the references to the original campaign, and the original campaign looks even more remarkable when more people copy it. It becomes a classic.

This is the ReTweet of advertising. A mash up. A remix. Call it what you want. It worked. Beyond all expectations.

If we hadn’t been open about it on the other hand, it wouldn’t have been cool. It would have been a carbon copy without the reference, and this is actually exactly what is happening in a lot of trad-ads. Cut, copy, steal, but never lie.

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Walter Naeslund – Åter på svenska!

by Walter Naeslund on October 2, 2007

The English version of The Walter Naeslund Blog now has it’s own URL: http://walteronadvertising.blogspot.com .

Den här bloggen kommer fortsätta på svenska. Det är roligt att skriva på svenska också, så det fick helt enkelt bli två bloggar. Jag kommer täcka ungefär samma saker, så du som kan svenska kan oftast nöja dig med att läsa den här skulle jag tro.


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Kung Konrad

by Walter Naeslund on August 22, 2007

Det finns virtuoser inom alla konstarter. Presshantering är inget undantag. Alla pratar om att “walk the talk” och “live the brand”, men det är inte ofta man hör någonting annat än inrepeterade mediatränade automatsvar. Men ibland så träder en virtuos upp på scenen.

Jag slår upp SvD på webben och läser om F&B’s nya koncept för Volvo. VI, som det heter, skakade tydligen runt lite i varumärkessverige eftersom det är på kollisionskurs med andra registrerade “Vi” som driver tidning respektive säljer mat. På de engelskspråkiga marknaderna kallas konceptet för We. Journalisten listar snabbt ut att det krockar med svenska klädmärket WeSC och ringer marknadschefen Konrad Bergström för en kommentar:

Konrad:
– Jag kände inte till detta, men det är ett roligt sammanträffande för vi hade planerat en klädlinje med säkra och tråkiga kläder som skulle heta just Volvo.

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God middag från Skärgården. För er nytillkomna (en ansenlig mängd senaste dagarna. Är ni tillbaka från semestrarna kanske?) får jag väl börja med att berätta att byrån nu är installerad på Omega 42:an Aniara, och håller till i Stockholms Skärgård.

Och idag skall vi idka lite svängningsdämpning. Vad är nu detta? Jo, i vår värld är det lätt att ge sig hän åt allehanda trender och tendenser. Med hull och hår. Speciellt om man är liten och det är lätt att byta riktning. Men är det alltid bra? Mja… Jag tror att det är väldigt bra att vara snabb på bollen. Att vara trea på bollen (typ MQ just nu i kölvattnet av till exempel WeSC och JC) är ju inte bra för PR-effekt till exempel. Dessutom framstår man inte som cutting edge direkt, om man nu vill det. Men det är inte bra att bara glömma det gamla. Att glömma hur man gör en sån där klassisk print som suger till i magen.

Den stora rörelsen i reklam är mot att allt skall integreras och gärna ha en egen nytta. Zeus Jones är ett intressant exempel på en byrå som jag inspireras av. Jag tror att rörelsen är helt rätt, men jag tror också att man skall vårda det klassiska hantverket. Det är det som är kryddorna till den integrerade viltgrytan. Zeus Jones motpol är väl i det avseendet svenska F&B.

Jag ser tendenser ibland att man “plannar” sönder en del kampanjer. Med det menar jag att man har en så helgjuten strategi och integrerad idé att man nästan inte anser sig BEHÖVA göra reklam längre. Det manifesteras i annonser där man renodlat för mycket. Man visar FÖR enkel reklam som i princip bara beskriver produkten, och där man tar för givet att kunden redan känner varumärkets personlighet. För det gör ju arbetsgruppen. Men som kund vill man se glöd och passion, sorg och glädje. Man vill se personlighet.

Den gamla CD-gurun Tony Cox har sagt att “Inside every fat ad there’s a thinner and better one trying to get out”. Det tycker jag stämmer intuitivt. Det stämmer också filosofiskt/vetenskapligt med Gödels teorem som säger att man aldrig kan veta att man hittat det kortaste sättet att beskriva någonting. MEN – det finns en annan klok gubbe som sagt någonting ännu klokare. Och det är Einstein. Han har sagt någonting som borde stå på en mässingsskylt på varje reklambyrås vägg: “Gör allting så enkelt som möjligt, men inte enklare”.

Tänk om Einstien hade varit planner.

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När jag var Civilingenjörsstudent för 8 år sen eller vad det nu var hade jag ett nästan barnsligt intresse för typografi vid sidan av skolan. Jag vet att det låter lite konstigt. Men redan då var jag sjukt intresserad av grafisk form och startade bland annat en tidning tillsammans med Natalia Kazmierska, där jag gjorde ursprungsformen och AD:ade i 5 nummer. Än idag tycker jag mycket om dess grafiska uttryck. Och hur vi alltid lekte. I identiteten låg att ständigt byta identitet. Vi bytte papper, typsnitt, vände och vred på idéer och färger. Jag stod till och med på tryckeriet tillsammans med tryckerichefen och blandade färg för hand i burkar som vi sedan hällde direkt i tryckpressara för att få rätt ton på en tonplatta (rosa, täckande vitt och silver). Det hade blivit lika bra ändå inser jag nu, men det var roligt, och han lärde mig sjukt mycket.

Så var det på den tiden, och jag plöjde typografiböcker som dagstidningar. Förutom Elements of Typographic Style, som jag för övrigt fortfarande älskar, minns jag Christer Hellmarks böcker speciellt. Och då särskilt en sak: “innan man bryter mot reglerna bör man kunna dem riktigt väl”. Jag är inte säker på att jag håller med om att det är ett måste, men jag gillar att göra så själv. Och det är för att jag inte vill stå utan svar. Och om jag gör det så vill jag veta varför jag inte har ett svar. Jag är en stor anhängare av intuition, och den fungerar bättre när man har mycket kunskap att hämta från.

Hur som helst så tar jag upp det här nu av en anledning. Nu har jag hört det från flera byråer. Svenska byråer. Byråer som anses vara bland de bästa i landet. Och såhär säger de: “Har han inte gjort någon vanlig reklam”? Ungefär som det vore någonting att sträva efter. Vad är vanlig reklam? Menar de inte “har han inte gjort någon reklam som någon annan typ redan gjort”? Mitt svar blir väl då såhär: Precis som med typografi tycker jag att det är bra att kunna grunderna innan man bryter mot dem. Jag har gjort en massa vanlig reklam. En hel del som är helt okej. Jag har gjort över 500 broschyrer för olika teveprogram från att de varit Word-dokument till att de blivit tryckta, bland dem program som Hombres och Lasermannen. Så jag kan hantverket också. Väldigt bra. Det jag gjorde första veckorna på Berghs var mycket vanlig reklam. En del av det jag gjort senare har också varit vanlig reklam. Printar, manus, banners. Och jag har ingenting emot dem. Så länge som det finns en story bakom. Det handlar inte om att använda alternativa media. Det är inte det jag pratar om. Det handlar om att kommunicera med reklamtrötta människor. Människor som är trötta på tråkreklam, fyndig copy, klatchig ironisk tevehumor. De är inte trötta på sådant som bär en mening, ett innehåll, en story, en frågeställning, en identitet. Och det är den reklamen jag vill göra.

När jag åker runt och pratar om min sätt att se på saken har jag aldrig med mig någon mapp. Jag berättar om min syn, de saker jag gjort och visar exempel. Ibland i en skolåda, ibland i ett bubbelkuvert, men aldrig med en mapp. För att jag tycker att det är tråkigt och asocialt. Men nu har jag bestämt mig för att sätta ihop en vanlig mapp med vanlig reklam i också. Inte för att jag är särkilt sugen på att visa den, men för att kunna maila den till dem som envisas med att säga att jag försöker förnya för att jag inte kan det gamla. Det är precis som med typografin – det lönar sig att kunna de gamla reglerna innan man bryter mot dem.

Och en sak till: Den som gör det som ingen annan gör är den som står ut ur mängden. Och då pratar jag inte om mig själv – jag pratar om mina kunder.

Nu lovar jag att inte skriva om mig själv på ett tag.

Kram till er alla!

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