We attended the digital marketing conference Gulltaggen, in Oslo and it would be an understatement to say it was a blast. It was the blast of blasts! We spent two entire days, listening to marvellous people talking about what we love more than anything: innovative communication. They talked about the change in the consumer awareness, towards a new engagement for the brands. Or as I wrote in my final exam at Westerdals: “Your communication should be a gift to your audience”.

Jacob Lachman

The first day at Taggen, as the natives call it, started with bad coffee, some fruit and a workshop by Jacob Lachman from Go Viral. The start was a little bit boring because we already had plenty of knowledge of the content he was telling us about. But after a while he really delivered. He gave us four generic steps for making a good viral, and it was a quite useful list and can be very handy if your client asks you to make a Viral.

1. Create an outstanding story
People still loves a good story. Here are some main subjects to build your work upon.

• Brand humor
• Amazing stories
• Cool demos
• Twist/Joke
• Social truths

2. Leverage pop-culture

• Celebrities
• Hook ( ex. Dynamite Surfing )
• Pop-culture references ( ex. Will it Blend)

3. Social Value

4. Building an ongoing narrative

Bastholm

After the workshop, we listened to Mr. Bastholm talking about the Social Storytelling.

As we didn’t get the whole speech, we only got to write down one page with notes. This is the list of four ways to make social storytelling.

1. Hijacked Story

• fan fiction
• (ex. @don_draper, we are Sterling Cooper)

2. Responsive Story

• Respond to your audience
• (ex. EA sport, Tiger Woods walking on water, response to a glitch in the game.)

3. Travelling Story

• Nike Photo ID (viral shoes)

4. Interactive Story

• (ex. The Lost Ring (ARG) by McDonalds.)

Yoni Kish

One of the best presentations was delivered by Yoni Kish from McCann Digital in Israel. He had some nice slides, with big texts in Helvetica, only a couple words on each slide.

He also was a good speaker, talking about the importance of delivering value to the receivers.

These are the seven (nine? WTF) Ps

1. Price

2. Product Innovation

3. Practical

• Time saving
• Energy saving
• Drop dead simple

4. Popular

• Personalization Interaction
• Personalized product

5. Pleasure

• To use
• To view
• In conversation

6. Play

7. Participation

• Win-win
• Crowd filtering
• Collective intelligence

8. Purpose

• Larger meaning
• Define an agenda
• ex. Jedi

9. Platform

• Building an ecosystem
• ex. Nike +, Fiat eco drive

Modern advertising = ADDING VALUE

• Add value at every state of the advertising.

Then there was Microsoft, and we considered that to be a bit boring and soulless. No notes were taken during this presentation. Graphics, numbers…Microsoft this, and Microsoft that.

Gerry McGovern

And then Gerry McGovern came a long with his funny tie and enthusiasm talking about “The Long Neck”. It was a thrilling talk about removing pages from websites, instead of adding new ones. “Every time you add something, you add complexity.” This sentence kind of sum up his presentation, but I sure was a good one.

Day two

After a restless night, because an overloaded brain, we were ready for the second day at the conference. Johannes and Martin jumped on a bus, ready to get more knowledge. This day started with better coffee and great conversations with other listeners. First to go was Chris Anderson, from Wired Magazine. He was talking about “giving things away for free”. And we couldn’t agree more.

Here are some of our notes:

Youtube is wasting videos, in search of better videos.

21st century Bits Economy

Free :

1. A Marketing Trick

(ex. Gillette, Cellphones)

2. Ad supported

• ex. Radio, tv etc
• eventually you pay for the lunch ( the products that is marketed on TV gets more expensive.

3. Freemium

• Time limited
• Ex. Flickr premium, ning

4. Gift Economy

• ex. Wikipedia

If something is almost free, give it away for free and sell something else.

Five free lessons from games:

People will pay for:

• Saving time
• Lower risk
• Things they love
• Status
• Make them (Once they are hooked)

The hard way (Free) – The easy way (Pay for it)

There is absolute nothing wrong with music, there is something wrong in selling plastic discs.

Jack Myers

Next to speak was Jack Myers. He gave us emerging principles of advertising.

1. Establish relevance
2. Define differentiation
3. Conform to patterns and ritals
4. Establish and maintain trust
5. Engender passion

Follow the content, not technology!

Now we were warmed up, and ready for a break. NRK P2 wanted to do a interview with a couple of students on the situation in Norway, and why the digital marketing is so much better in Sweden. We talked to the guy from P2 and headed back to our seats, for more wisdom and a peek into the future.

Mike Walsh

8 ideas for tomorrow:

1. Naturals

• People born after 1994 are not aware of a world without Internet. Talking to them in old media terms are no use.
• Post 80s generation of China do not watch television.

2. Mobile

• Anywhere, anytime, anything
• In Korea everybody use mobile televisions
• Dennis Mendiolas Chikka ( sms twitter for celebrities)
• Mobagetown mobile ( cola co-promotion)
• Memorial QR codes: Youtuve video of the dead persons life.

3. Discovery

• We will watch what other people tell us to watch.
• Crow sourced advertising Sam Flemming, CIC media.
• Brand recommendations, will come from people in your network.

4. Crowd

• Tuango: groups in Japan demanding a discount.
• Sharon Stones comment on Tibet.

5. Where

Where is the new when?

• placeengine.com: Wifi location tagging. Isolates the days that are special based on your movement and create albums.
• Sekar Camera by Takahito Iguchi: Tag the real world with iPhone. ( Ex. Go to a restaurant, and use your iPhone on a meal and watch comments on it.)

• Yoku Paike citizan video

Location awareness will be the core of social media.

6. Play

• Virtual currency

• Net addiction

7. Overlay

• Wearable pc prototypes. Rekimoto labs.
• babak

The world will be the new net.

8. Mediajack

• You can not stop music.
• China: Red Cliff online distribution.

The only way to win the game, is to change it.

Kjell A. Nordströms

Then a funky professor entered the stage. He was a stand up comedian with a message. The twitter messages onscreen on Kjell A. Nordströms performance, all said the same thing: They loved the professor.

The talk was mainly about how to survive the new age that is coming.

• Capitalism don’t have a problem, General Motors does.
• Karaoke capitalism: The media landscape is a karaoke machine. You sing along, sing along and sing along.
• Go for the temporary monopoly. (ex. Ikea, iPhone)
• Forget about technology. (Necessary, but not sufficient.)
• Only ability to change is rewarded in nature. (Survival of the fittest)
• Survival of the sexiest; either sexy nor fit.

Please enjoy capitalism. It really seems to work.

Seth Godin

Then Seth Godin talked to us, live from New York.

• He told us that Internet was a radio for ideas.
• How to spread your idea? Give it away for free.
• Why do you want to post good stuff on Twitter? You have to earn permission.
• How to market a product people want to talk about?
• We don’t buy the product, but style, how we feel and story.
• If you want people to talk about something, you better give them something to talk about.

Is that all you are going to do during a revolution? Make some pop-up banners?

• Everyone is a restaurant critic
• You need to multiply sites so that people can find you
• Reach the right people
• Story makes it easy to spread your word.

If I go on twitter, I wouldn’t do anything else. I would sit there like a monkey.

• There are no boring products. All products make cool stuff.
• Every medium was designed for advertising (Tv, Newspapers)
• Internet doesn’t care. It doesn’t need advertising.
• If it doesn’t spread, you need a new idea.
• The movie becomes the marketing. ( The movie is free, selling souvenirs and other stuff)
• Marketing is about leadership. Leading tribes.

Is it worth doing? If its worth it: Do it.

Lead us. We will follow you.