Political engagement

This blog is not about politic affairs, but with the world tuning into the American presidential election, I can’t help but follow the progress. After the not-so subtle jibe from Paris Hilton’s video, the latest development of the campaign turned to the announcement of the candidates’ VP nomination. What is so interesting? Well, instead of doing it in the conventional way, Mr. Barack Obama decided to inform his supporters via email and SMS. Ahead from the journalists and from the man himself!Barack Obama is no stranger when it comes to utilising the power of web 2.0. He managed to outdo Hillary Clinton’s gargantuan money machine by employing grass-root strategy through social network sites like Facebook. But this takes the political marketing strategy to a new level. Why? Two words: engagement and personalisation. Won’t you be awed to receive SMS/email from your presidential candidate? It will also definitely differentiate him from other candidate and just imagine the buzz surrounding this move. In addition to that, now he has a good database of his supporters that he can easily use to activate them. Is this manoeuvre going to be the new benchmark in political engagement? Lets wait and see.

Geschmackslabor

Hey Folks, I am back and kicking once again after such a long hiatus. After a couple months of tight workloads, today surprisingly I am in the downtime. I should really savour the time and use it for loads of other commitments that I have been postponing. First are this precious blog and then my self-enrichment film editing workshop. On the latter one, hopefully I can at least master the basic skills and use it soon ;-)
Anyway, I just want to share a good example of trysumer and customisation business combo. Geschmackslabor, Flavour Lab in German, is a new restaurant in Bremerhaven that offers a new experience for the diners by allowing them customise and experiment with their food. Dishes are served ready-to-eat, but guests can then add different seasonings to their orders with the available 20 different flavours infused olive oil (ranging from pepper, pineapple, Arabica coffee, to bergamot).

Fresh breads are also offered abundantly so guests can test the olive oil before making the final decision. The menu in Geschmackslabor offers suggestions for the seasoning combination, but in the end the guests are encouraged to mix and play so they can find their very own perfect combination. I don’t know about the yumminess rating itself but this innovative approach hits the bull’s eye when it comes to catering the modern customers’ constant craving of personalisation. And it looks fun!

Having fun while being green

With climate change in the fore mind, there have been many new ventures sprouting to help turning all aspects of our life greener. Ranging from eco-friendly products to guilt free holiday, companies are ready to go further than ever to prove their green creds and we as customers can definitely benefit from it. One of the latest offering that I love is the wind-powered mobile phone charger in Glastonbury Festival courtesy to Orange.

First of its kind, the recharge pod is a self-sufficient unit that taps into a wind generator and solar panels to charge as many as 100 mobile phones per hour. Developed by the renewable energy specialists Gotwind, the recharge pod will serve as a trial for using renewable energy sources on a larger scale at future festivals. The recharge pod will be stationed within the Pennard Hill camping grounds at Glastonbury throughout the weekend of June 27–29, when the event takes place. What is better than a green Free Love?My second green love is the latest eco-nightclub in London. Following the green footsteps of San Fransisco's Temple Nightclub and Rotterdam's Watt, Club4Climate in Bar Surya is even installed with a piezoelectric dance floor that will generate electricity for the building! Organised by Club4Climate, the club also provides organic drinks and if you can prove you walked, biked or took public transportation to the club, you can get in for free :-)

Green is the new black

Responding towards customer's rising consciousness of being environmentally friendly, more and more companies are changing their ways to be greener. For example today, Sainsbury announced that they are changing their milk packaging from the un-green plastic bottles to a recyclable plastic pouch. If the customers are willing to change to the new packaging in waste reducing effort then what next? How about the carbon footsteps? Which is better? Weekly shopping with car or daily shopping on foot? Personally I can't be bother to do all of the difficult calculations (FYI: I recycle, use green energy, and travel with public transportation so don't stone me), therefore whenever I spotted any great green business ideas, I will definitely share! This is one good example: Bikecaffe (UK) and Ole Skram (Denmark) are offering you fresh coffee with zero guilty conscience. First of all, they are using fair trade coffee and they are selling their trades on tricycle which means lesser carbon emission. Is this emerging trend will someday change our coffee drinking habit? I am not sure that we are ready to move from our Starbucks coffee culture yet, but who knows.

Twittering about

This morning, Mr. P, my boss came up with questions about Twitter. It baffles him how it can be so popular, and even more confusing is why somebody wants to know what he is doing 24/7. In the end, we decided that I am going to prepare Twitter 101 for him so here is some info from Twitter FAQ:
What is it?
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool.
How do I use it?
Tell us what you’re doing in 140 characters or less! Send your thoughts, observations, and goings-on in your day. Whether you’re “eating an apple” or “looking foward to the weekend” or “Heading out of town” it’s twitter-worthy. Join us here. All of your personal information including your phone number is, of course, confidential.
But… what is the point?
As it turns out, your best friend is probably interested in knowing if you’re “loving the new Radiohead album.” And yes, your Mom may want to know if you’re “skipping breakfast in favor of a latte.” You might want to know if your significant other “feels like taking a roadtrip.” Find out what your friends are doing; keep each other abreast of your quotidian rituals.
To me personally, Twitter is more like a social-networking + micro-blogging service. I find quite convenient too because users can send tweets to the Twitter website, text message (SMS), instant messaging, or external application like Twitterrific or Facebook. But what is so great about Twitter? Well, some people post a really mundane things like "I have just eaten apple", but we can also use Twitter in a bigger scope. Let say it is like a simple group-SMS service, so instead of emailing or posting a blog, I can simply tweet a new cool link that I have just found and my friends (or followers) would be immediately updated.

On the business side, if you have built a Twitter credential, just like the way of bloggers, you will have a very good tool to advertise and reach your followers. For example you have just written an article, then you tweet the link and inadvertently helps to increase the traffic to your article. You can subtly endorse certain brand without doing the personal mouth-to-mouth tradition. Free online advertising and brand channeling comes in 1 easy form. Many companies started to make use Twitter to reach their audience: the American presidential candidates use it for publicity, CNN is beginning to break news with Twitter, Tennis Channel is hyping French Open with Twitter, and so forth. So what can I say? Twitter is going to open a new way of marketing.

Extinction timeline

Let see what the futurist trend watcher has to say about the general progress of our civilisation...