How different is marketing in the Digital Age? Should we break away from the golden rules that once proved so successful? Or carry on as if nothing fundamental has changed?

Neither of both, says Prof. Mohan Sawhney. Electronic communication offers tremendous new opportunities for marketing interaction, sustained innovation and success - and brings along some threats. But at the same time he sees seven Timeless Marketing Principles that stay as important as ever to boost ROI.

On Friday December 5, as from 11:30, at the ICC in Ghent you will hear Prof. Sawhney explain why and how we should collaborate with customers to innovate in the networking age.

Playboy Germany opens their cover for advertisers. Tagline says: “SEAT Altea Freetrack. Access All Areas.”

Nice advertisement/viral campaign by JEEP :-)

Art2blog is going on holidays for 1 week to Bodrum. We’ll be back on October 4th. In mean time don’t stop reading our favourite colleagues. If you still have some holidays planned, check out Fasten Seatbelts where you can find the “Do’s and Don’ts” of the country you’re visiting.

We will certainly remember that:

• In Turkey, it is rude to show the sole of your shoe.
• In Turkey, the “OK” sign is very rude.
• In Turkey, in crowded busses (Dolmus), the way to pay for your ticket is to pass the money from passenger to passenger towards the bus driver.
• In various countries, you may be asked to remove your shoes before entering a home.

It doesn’t happen a lot that we post “”Not Safe For work” material, but this really is maybe best piece of URL marketing I’ve ever come accross: www.smellmeand.com. If the product is for real at least …

As Adrants points out it might be a spoof linked to Tom Ford’s new fragrance with a similar “VaginAd”.

Save phone number “070222230″ in your cell phone address book under contact name “A blind call“. That way, next time when you forget to lock your cell phone’s key board, it starts dialing this number from your trouser pocket. The number automatically terminates the call after 30 seconds and you have donated 0,75 euro to the Belgian braille association.

Much better then donating all the money of those blind calls to your mobile operator’s shareholders …

WoW! Talking about branding …

I got the following from a colleague at work. Nice example of an advertising war ;-)

1. BMW started the war

2. Audi stroke back

3. Subaru poured fuel on the flames

4. … and Bentley had the last word!

The last few days it has been quiet…well…now you know why. I moved our blog to my own hosting.http://www.art2blog.be is the place to be now…I’ll make some more changes the coming days on the design but all credits go to Design Disease which created this great 3 column wordpress theme. Furthermore you don’t have to change your rss feed address, that stayed the same (http://feeds.feedburner.com/art2blog)!

Hope you enjoy…

Sloggi takes it one step further: upload a picture of your bum in your undies, get rated top bum and win prizes! The campaign runs in several countries (hence bums of the world) and is supported by a billboard with a group of ladies in Sloggi underwear on a Vespa scooter (one of the prizes). Of course they’re counting on the 2.0 web to make this stunt a viral hit!

We’ve had smoggi alarm, the Sloggi billboard director, and the droggi girls. All very original guerrilla/viral campaigns that created the necessary buzzz, but I wonder … are they marketing on target? If their objective is branding and image building amongst the younger, (male) internet community, it’s working fine. But are they selling more undies with this? What do women think about these -fair to say- sexist campaigns? After all, I can imagine that has to be one of their bigger segments. It’s true that besides some outdoor and the prizes in this bum rating contest, it won’t cost a lot, the web 2.0 users do all te work for them, but I’m far from convinced this is getting them where they want to be in terms of brand image on target groups and sales …

Anyway, I’m a fan on their guerrilla campaigns like Smoggi Alarm and Droggi Girls, but I’m not buying Sloggi …yet ;)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FL6OnFsGm4]