The award was received for the Facebook application done for Scleroseforeningen in cooperation with Kagawa/Jansson in the category of digital/social media campaign. The app – “Støt kvinderne i dit liv” (Support the women in your life) - was created to increase awareness about the fact that women’s risk of getting scleroses has doubled since the 1970’s and now twice as many women compared to men are diagnosed with the disease. The app was used to encourage people to express love and affection for the women in their lives by sending them sweet and personalized messages thereby creating awareness about the serious topic.

Claus Leinøe is an invaluable asset for our agency. We are convinced that his contribution at Konstellation will only further our positive growth and manifestation within the market. Claus’ knowledge of the industry and his experience will complement our creative and technical teams; thereby elevating our high standards. This combination will prove to be beneficial for our customers. Say ‘Hi!’ to Claus!

We have high hopes for our newest team member. Claus comes to Konstellation with extensive experience acquired from organizations such as AdPeople, Ogilvy & Mather, and, most recently, Cross Border Communications. About joining Konstellation, Claus says: “Konstellation is the first agency in Denmark to understand the need to combine creative and technical competences in digital media. Today’s customers are demanding this capability from agencies, thus creating a huge market potential. Saying ‘yes’ to joining the Konstellation team was an easy decision.”

Oh, this is gonna be good!

]]> http://www.konstellation.dk/2012/04/konstellation-hires-new-client-service-director/feed/ 0 http://www.konstellation.dk/2012/04/the-new-external-communication-task-force/ http://www.konstellation.dk/2012/04/the-new-external-communication-task-force/#comments Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:37:49 +0000 Elisabeth http://www.konstellation.dk/?p=2455 Konstellation is constantly developing as new challenges see the light of day. We work with communication for a lot of different clients and love it! But sometimes you need to take your own medicine and we have realised that if we want to be a kick ass, rock star agency we need to give something back to all the lovely people who follow us each day – and do it on a more regular basis. Therefore we decided to establish an external communication team that could help us do the job.

In mid March our two new interns Elisabeth and Nicky joined the team and together with account manager Christina they are now the new external communication task force. The team will post on our social media channels, help develop our newsletter and do tons of market research in order to have a God-like view of the market.

Christina is currently working on her Master thesis at Copenhagen Business School. Elisabeth and Nicky are the two new interns completing this three-person team, both also attend Copenhagen business school. Elisabeth is on the second semester of a Masters in Business administration and Informations Systems and Nicky is on the second semester of a Masters in Marketing Communications Management.

Get ready to hear much more from us as these three young, able-bodied people are excited and ready for the tasks that lie ahead.

Stop in the name of the Facebook Police!

Sweepstakes, competitions or contests are very popular on Facebook and most smaller companies do it. But most do it the very wrong way – against Facebook Promotion Guidelines. If you don’t know the rules, but just do as everyone else, you are most likely breaking the rules – which in turn could shut down your page!

Mikael Lemberg is a new Danish employee at Facebook and is involved with promotions especially on the Danish market. He has announced, that Facebook is starting to enforce their promotion guidelines more rigorously, and the first such signs are beginning to show on Danish pages of different sizes.

The two most important rules, that most pages fail to obey, are:

Rule #3: Facebook action(s) cannot be the sole act for entry

It is not allowed to create a competition of any form, in which some Facebook action is the only requirement for participating in the competition. Liking a page, an image or a post is not enough. Commenting or sharing something is not enough either.

To do a competition the right way, you must have your participants sign up in some third party application. The easiest way is of course to build it as a tab on your Facebook page, but it can also be completely external and you simply link to it in a post.

Rule #4: Sharing, commenting etc. cannot be a requirement for participation

Only 3 actions are allowed as requirements for participation:

• Liking a page (only the whole page, not individual post or images)
• Checking in to a place
• Connecting to an application

No other action can be a requirement for participation – includes for example liking an image or an update, sharing an image, attending an event, joining a group, commenting on an update, etc.

It does not mean, that competitions can’t entice people to do any of these other actions, but they cannot be rewarded in the competition in any way. You cannot get higher chances of winning if you share the page or similar.

Enforcement

I’ve recently learned about 3 Danish pages, that have been contacted by Facebook about their competitions violating Facebook promotion guidelines. The smallest page had 1,300 likes, so any page could be targeted – not just the big ones.

• B/dope Clothing with ~17,000 likes
• Cock’s & Cows with ~1,900 likes
• LACARLA with ~1,300 likes

So please, if you are unsure of whether you competition is against the rules, it probably is so don’t do it.

UPDATE 2012-03-27: LACARLA’s page has now been shut down eventhough they have obeyed the rules since the official contact from Facebook. We will monitor this issue further.

First up was a series of interviews with the client, a Japanese-American medical company based in Denver. After that we loaded the 4×4 and headed north on Interstate 70.

Part of the concept was to to simulate the style of an action movie trailer, so every shot had to be as cinematic as possible. It was a huge experience and a great privilege to see the Rocky Mountains like that.

We even almost got ourselves arrested while filming from a highway bridge. Someone in a car thought that we were carrying a sniper riffle and called the sherif. Within two minutes we were surrounded by four highway patrol cars. They could’ve easily slammed us on the hood of one their cars, but they were actually really nice as soon as they saw the camera. Guess we owe them a round of donuts :-)

Please contact us if you would like to see the videos and the campaign.

The mailbox of a ranch way up in the Rockies

Thomas filming the great divide. This is where we almost got ourselves into trouble.

Downtown Denver

What else would they write on a sign in The Rockies?

With scenery this great - it's just easy to take good photos everywhere

Our truck and Thomas Pries, Creative Director and camera guy

Don't you just wanna climb, ski, ride and walk those mountains?

Most other such projects so far have online activities that somehow affect the real world, but it is of course similarly possible (and a bit more innovative) to do it the other way around.

We have executed the latter a few times (e.g. in our Bullnology case) and we have further implementations of this brand new integration between reality and virtuality planned.

Online goes live

Converting online actions to real world effects has been done many times.

Ariel Fashion Shoot is one such example. Users stand in line on the Facebook page to control a gun with filth pointed at a lot of laundry, that thus get even more dirty. This gun and laundry is situated at Stockholms Central Railway Station, so passers-by can see this live and users online can follow it on webcam as well.

Most recently a Finnish cafe took this idea to the extreme. On the website YouDesign.fi, you can control a chair, a table or the ambient sound at the cafe while watching the results live on a webcam. However, watching people’s chairs being lowered while their coffee is being raised away from them on the table clearly shows, that this is quite ridiculous – but very funny and great proof-of-concept!

YouDesign.fi Interactive Cafe

These activities are of course the most fun for the people online and less fun for the people physically present. The reach is a lot broader, as only so many people can be physically present, but technological capabilities often limit online reach as well (e.g. limit on concurrent users watching the webcam).

And the problem for both these cases are, that only 1 person can control the physical object at a time. This can be circumvented by complicated queue systems or small time slots per person.

Real-world goes digital

Converting physical activities to online actions however is a lot more interesting as the limits are much smaller.

An example of this is training applications like Adidas miCoach, Nike Plus, Endomondo or RunKeeper, that all fight for the same turf. You install an application on your phone or connect it with your GPS-enabled watch (or even a motion-tracking dongle hidden in your shoe), and then when you run, your activities are not only recorded online, but possibly shared on Facebook as well. Some even went so far as to include the possibility for your friends to cheer you on via Facebook, which would then be broadcast directly to your earphones while running.

"Life is a sport. Make it count!"

Nike recently took this concept a bit further with Fuel Band. It tracks everything you do and converts it into an energy score (or Fuel) for the day – and allows you to compete with yourself or friends, to share it and more. It simply allows you to use the concept of movement energy as a measurable quantity to have fun with!

We have had a lot of fun ourselves with implementing digital conversion of physical activities in our Bullnology project. In this case, the people riding the mechanical bull were instantly added to our Facebook photo album the very millisecond they fell of the bull. This generated a lot of extra buzz and conversations about our party after it was over – even among people not even present.

Very soon, we’re hosting another party, where we have some new crazy digital ideas from real-world activities in the making.

The new Open Graph ideas of Facebook Timeline opens up gazillions of possibilities for this kind of digital conversion of physical activities. What if every town you visited was automatically added to your map of places? Or every meal you ate was digitized including calories consumed? Or every ride you tried at Tivoli was shared including a photo at the finish line?

There are of course some privacy concerns for some people, but for a lot of people it would be a new way to be social in everything they do.

Wanna play?

The Voice-Over is in Danish.

Upon further examination however, you might discover som new small features that has become possible due to the new technology.

First, the transition from regular map to Street View can be done much nicer – the camera actually zooms in and tilts in the direction of the street image, placing the images in their proper context:

Google Maps has known about all buildings in Copenhagen (and their 3D structure) for a while. With WebGL, this has opened the opportunity for an even more fancy detail. All the buildings are rendered in perspective now (before they were just static images) and this can be seen when panning around the map – the facade angles slightly turn to match the pan.

The 3D building information has also been combined with the local time of day and knowledge of the suns movement resulting in shadows on the ground, that updates in real time! Below are two screenshots of the same view taken at 11 AM and 11:15 AM on the same day. Notice how the shadows from our office towers have moved slightly – and it is almost perfectly in sync with the view from our windows.

Google MapsGL shows shadows from buildings - and they move with the sun!

Other details have been added, that makes the entire user experience just a tad more smooth and perfect – have you found any?

Vores bidrag har været at lave en Facebook-konkurrence, hvor man skal vælge Biva møbler for 25.000 kr. og herefter udfordre en af sine venner til at gætte, hvilke møbler man synes bedst om.

På den måde har vi sat fokus på produkterne og oplyst brugerne om, hvad det er Biva kan præstere i dag. Konkurrencen løber indtil slutningen af uge 38 2011.

Ideen er som sådan simpel nok, at når nu nogle folk alligevel skriver offentligt, så burde det da være muligt at få ind i mit feed, så jeg ikke skal ind på profilen for at se hvad der står. Men en af bagtankerne med det er at eliminere personlige sider til fordel for personprofiler med offentligt indhold.

En af Facebooks helt store planer er, at alt indhold på nettet skal ind i én stor graf, hvor der er forbindelser mellem alting så indholdet kan søges på struktureret vis. I den tankegang er det lidt noget rod, at de ikke har deres egen data i en meningsfyldt graf. For eksempel er det jo lidt mærkeligt, at der både findes en side for Lasse Rimmer – og en personprofil. Men Lasse er jo nødt til at gøre begge dele for at nå en masse mennesker med sine one-liners. Han kan max have 5.000 venner på sin personprofil og hvis han bruger sin personprofils venner som generelt publikum kan han ikke samtidig bruge Facebook som en privatperson (uden at hele hans publikum kan følge med i hans privatliv). Men nu har han jo to forskellige sider, så han skal sørge for at opdatere den rigtige af dem, når han skriver. Og hvad skal han skrive hvor?

Facebook’s nye abonnements-feature er tiltænkt at løse lige netop dette problem. Personer såsom Lasse Rimmer, der skriver en massse som mange gerne vil høre, kan nu istedet gøre dette ved at lade folk abonnere på hans offentlige nyhedsfeed og helt droppe siden.

Jeg tror endda at det kan gøres automatisk – at konvertere like’s på en personside til abonnementer på samme persons profil for derefter at nedlægge siden. Dette er nemlig sket for Robert Scoble, som jo er VIP-test-bruger #1 overalt på nettet. Han forklarer, at nogen fra Facebook har gjort dette for ham i kraft af hans VIP-status.

Dette er selvfølgelig ikke relevant for “personsider” som fx. Helle Thorning-Schmidts, som jo ikke opdateres af Helle personligt men af hendes støtter. Samtidig vil Helle muligvis også gerne holde folk så langt væk fra hendes (potentielle) private profil, hvis hun overhovedet har en sådan.

Disse abonnementer læner sig meget op af, hvordan Google+ er struktureret og er klart inspireret af konkurrentens initiativer. Alt i alt er det med til at vi får bedre og bedre sociale netværk, hvilket vi jo alle sammen kan nyde godt af.

Flere spår, at dette sammen med Google+’s innovationer er dødsstødet for Twitter, men det må tiden vise.

Vi på Konstellation er super glade for den udfordring og glæder os meget til at vise resultaterne på en række forskellige devices.

The winner of the 2009/2010 contest was the well-known case about how an inverse speed camera, that rewards obeying the speed limit more that punishing disobeying it, can solve speed problems remarkably:

But the most interesting about this competition is not the big well-known cases developed by professional agencies, that gets tons of attention from the web. The really exciting part is, that anyone can come up with new funny, alternative solutions to all kinds of problems via this website.

Take for example the chewing gum sculpture as a means to reduce gum thrown on the ground. Or talking trash bins, to easier find the right bin to sort you trash into – just say what it is you’re holding. Or how about getting kids to remember to wash their hands after visiting the toilet via an animal sound quiz. And finally, playing Connect Four with beer caps integrated in the side of the beer crate – that is simply brilliant!

With over 700 suggestions, of which most are made by amateurs, it is a goldmine of ideas to solve all kinds of problems in society in new and interesting ways.

Et godt eksempel af Metawatch – et armbåndsur, som i virkeligheden blot er et lille iPod-agtigt display monteret på en rem krydret med bluetooth-teknologi, accelerometer og en programmérbar grænseflade:

Den koster $199 USD og er netop kommet på gaden. Det er bestemt ikke billigt og teknologien er bestemt ikke fintunet nok endnu til, at det kan bruges af hvem som helst, men gadget-freaks vil sikkert flokkes om den allerede nu.

En anden teknologi, der har været noget tid undervejs, har eksisteret i store dyre versioner indtil nu, men som efterhånden er anvendelig i mange sammenhænge også til forbrugerpriser, er 3D-printere. De har længe været brugt af store virksomheder og institutioner til at printe plastik-dimser efter 3D-modeller, men det har sædvanligvist været meget dyre modeller, som er både sløve og besværlige at bruge.

I dag kan man bygge sin egen 3D-printer derhjemme for under 2000 kr, man kan printe chokolade, så kagen bliver helt perfekt og snart håber man på at kunne printe organer:

En anden stor trend inden for gadgets det sidste års tid er fjernstyrede flyvende objekter, som bliver stadig mere præcise, nemmere at styre og billigere at få adgang til. ARDrone’n er nok den mest kendte, som er en lille 4-propellers helikopter, der kan styres via en iPhone.

Men andre sjove flyvende objekter er også kommet ud – som for eksempel den her:

Derudover er teknologier såsom bøjelige skærme også noget, der virkelig kan rykke markedet, når det først kan produceres billigt og pålideligt.

Kom gerne med dine bud på teknologier, der kan skabe helt nye typer forbruger-gadgets inden for en ikke alt for fjern fremtid.

Velkommen på holdet!

Casual gaming (altså små hygge-spil á la Angry Birds) kan lære meget af konsolspil på den front. GTA IV har umiddelbart de fleste ligegyldige statistikker, som ikke desto mindre tilføjer mest mulig værdi og sjov til universet. Man kan i statistikkerne bl.a. se, hvor mange strikes, man har lavet i bowling, hvor mange minutter, man har været jagtet af politiet, hvor mange penge man har brugt på prostituerede og alt mulig andet fjolleri. Det kan og vil skabe et forum, hvor brugerne netop konkurrerer i alle de her ekstra metrikker.

Forestil dig at Angry Birds-spillet opsummerer, hvor mange røde fugle, du har skudt i alt, hvor mange grise du har dræbt ved at få dem til at falde ned på hovedet eller hvor mange grise du maksimalt har dræbt i et enkelt skud. Man kan lynhurtigt lave 50 fjollede metrikker og hurtigt lave en skærm, hvor man kan se disse. Og de er relativt trivielle at registrere – bare man har tænkt dem ind på forhånd. Det vildeste er faktisk, at Angry Birds allerede registrerer en masse af det her, blandt andet hvor mange grise du har skudt (nemlig over 3 billioner grise i alt). Så er det da synd, at de ikke siger det højt, så du kan slås med dig selv og mod dine venner på disse spil uden om spillet.

Den eneste grund til at holde lidt igen, er at nogle spil, ligesom kasinoer, ikke er interesserede i at informere brugeren om, hvor meget tid han har “spildt” på deres underholdning. Hvis Angry Birds fortalte dig, at du har spillet det i 10 timer denne uge, så begynder du måske at genoverveje dine prioriteter her i livet. Det er dog en statistik, som du kan være helt sikker på at spillet allerede registrerer – men næppe ønsker at informere dig om. Jeg synes dog personligt at spillet bør være 100% åbent også om den slags. Det andet er lidt fordækt.

Så her mit ønske til danske casual gaming-udviklere: Giv os en masse fræk statistik!