Bild’s Vado publishing eco-system and the promise of user generated advertising

Posted on Published by Antony Mayfield
Image: The Bild.de Vado from Creative
Image: The Bild.de Vado from Creative

This was an amazing week, that passed at a few hundred miles an hour, so sorry for the silence.

First thing that has grabbed me this morning as I peruse my feeds is this story from Jeff Jarvis about how the German magazine Bild, took the concept of the Flip‘s small, simple video camera, made it its own and sold 21,000 to readers in five weeks for just 69 EUROs each.

Result: thousands of “reader reporter” videos being submitted. Soon, the magazine says it will be using this growing installed based of video camera’d readers to launch a concept called “user geenrated advertising” in four weeks.

Intriguing…

Here’s Jeff talking to Kai Dieckmann, editor of Bild about the story of the Vado so far…

The magazine worked with electronics company Creative to make the camera which sells cheaper than the already reasonable Flip. Even at the poor Sterling / Euro rate we’re looking at a Flip-like camera for about £50.

The uploading of video via USB to your computer defaults to Bild’s website… which encourages people to post their videos there, naturally.

The model reminds me of iPod+iTunes, only in reverse – it’s about creating content rather than just comnsuming it. In this case it is camera+platform+media company to go and promote that platform…

Really looking forward to seeing what this highly innovative media company does with “user generated advertising”. I’ll be asking my colleagues at iCrossing Germany to keep a close eye on how this thing evolves…

In trust we trust: keeping it human…

Posted on Published by Antony Mayfield
Image: Don't feed the humans (Brighton graffitti)
Image: Don't feed the humans (Brighton graffitti)

Took some time to read some more of What Would Google Do? today and was stopped in my tracks by some of Jeff Jarvis’s thoughts on trust, a topic which has been much on my mind in recent weeks.

Trust is more of a two-way exchange than most people – especially those in power – realise. Leaders in government, news media, corporations, and universities think they and their institutions can own trust when, of course, trust is given to them. Trust is earned with difficulty and lost with ease. When those instituions treat consituents like masses of fools, children, miscreants, or prisoners – when they simply don’t listen – it’s unlikely they will engende warm feelings of mutual respect. Trust is an act of opening up; it’s a mutual relationship of transparency and sharing. The more ways you will build trust, which is your brand.

Trust makes up much of that thing we call reputation. And when hard times come, whether you’re a brand or an individual inside or outside an organisation, it is time to test your trust.

What have you earned? What have you won and stored away for when you need to make that ask, find that opportunity, seal that deal. You never really know how much you have or where it lies – it’s outside of your awareness and your control, out there in your networks, your tribe.

It also strikes me, yet again, that the rules, the emerging successful patterns of behaviour online, are very much the same for individuals as for brands.

It’s those parallels, the elevation, the restoration, of human social rules to what makes for successful politics, commerce, culture, that make me feel it’s OK to talk about “the social web” as being more than just about social computing tools.

I’m going to write about this a lot more soon, in a book. It’s not going to be going down the “personal branding” route – helpful as that is to some people. I’ll be avoiding the b-word applied to individuals, because for me brand carries too many connotations of control and design, and that’s even less helpful and appropriate for individuals that is for big corporate brands themselves.

Anyway, more later on that…