The conclusion: brands should form focus groups of children when testing their creative ideas :)

According to Kevin Allocca, Trends Manager at YouTube, viral effect depends on:

1. Tastemakers: Influential people who find your content interesting and then share it among their social graphs.

2. Community participation: People’s interactions with your content, their participation in the online community and what’s more their interpretations of it, help it to become a phenomena.

3. Unexpectedness of the content. 

Speaking of viral, don’t forget also to check out this post: You think you can’t go viral?

Passionate of more great content: Follow @pgeorgieva

Would love to hear your opinion about the latest video ad of The Guardian.

This week Forbes released a video talk with Walter Isaacson about Steve Jobs and his passion, intuition, creativity. In the process of writing Jobs biography, Isaacson had 40 interviews with him and in the following 3 minutes he shares his biggest impressions of Jobs.

And for me the two most powerful parts of Isaacson talk are the following fundamental sentences with which I am always going to remember Steve Jobs.

If you are going to do something, have passion about it and make the product perfect.

How do people know what they want, until we show them.

In the past few months I discovered this brilliant project that creatively compares the French and the American capitals in minimalistic visuals. The project is called Paris vs New York and it was developed from a blog to a book .

Not long ago, Jerry Silfwer and the team of WhisPR Group shared tips on what to do in New York. Quite interesting to read them even though there aren’t any chances to visit New York in the near future. Still, reading about the city reminds of experiencing it… in your thoughts :) What’s more, I really liked the way the team members were introduced in a blog post on a concrete topic, just like a blitz interview.

Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Global, also shared some New York love and released a video in which he is describing New York city with 100 words in less than 2 minutes. Very nice short movie that is bringing some inspiring insights about New York from the creative mind point of view.

Would be great and very appreciated, if you also share your favorite stuff about New York :)

Passionate for more great content? Follow @pgeorgieva.

“The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don’t really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you’re doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you’re not going to cheese out. If you don’t love something, you’re not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.”

Steve Jobs

Given my interest in graffiti works, here’s something that really impressed me.

In 2013, a new Nissan showroom will be situated in an old building just outside Brussels. TBWA\Belgium came up with an interesting decision how to catch people’s interest and communicate the news about the showroom. They decided to spread the message with a street art painting on the 400m2 wall of the building. The street artist Steve Locatelli was chosen to do the work; he used 489 spray cans in a 2-week period to complete the wall art.

The idea is:

1. Effective: It successfully communicates the forthcoming transformation of the old building into a Nissan showroom.
2. With big potential: The implementation period is enough for expanding in the time, which is good for provoking more interest and reaching more people.
3. Shareable: The creation of the wall art and the painting itself is catchy and provokes photo taking and video making for sharing online.

Below you can see the short movie that adds online buzz about the whole idea.

Passionate for more great content? Follow @pgeorgieva

Photo credits

It all started because of the heavy snowing in Serbia.

In order to clean up the snow mountains on the streets, one Serbian started initiating people on Twitter to go out on Saturday and help in the snow whipping. He used the hashtag #LopataUP, meaning shovels up, and attracted lots of people who took part in the anti-snow initiative. As a result the big group of activists who responded to #LopataUP proved what they did with  photos and videos that were shared online showing people fighting against the snow.

More photos here.

The cause was quite successful because of the immediate reaction, the good timing and the powerful messages, that were spread across Twitter users. Eventually the idea became so popular that the dialogue was carried out of the social network and reached people who are not internet users.

The lesson here: The social context both offline and online can give you ideas how to support your community, how to do something positive, even how to upgrade your business or popularize it. The trick is to listen. And to react adequately as quickly as possible. Some of the best ideas and decisions are spontaneous. In times of chaos or lack of organization, you can easily stand out with effective proposal. Just show passion and common sense.

Passionate for more great content? Follow @pgeorgieva

Hi! I want to learn more about foursquare! from foursquare on Vimeo.

Today (2nd of Jan) I finally had the opportunity to check out my Google Reader after a week of active offline life and with no proper internet connection (quite typical for the holiday season I suppose). Hence, I decided to share with you one of the most interesting posts that got my attention.  They are intriguing, some of them very important, and others – great fun. And I just think you may find them helpful as well. After all, we should start the new year in the most inspiring way. So here we go:

44 social media wishes for 2012: That’s a great post by Radian6 with new year’s wishes in typical social media style. They are fun and also highlight what’s important for the digital people and what they wish for.

Happy New Year 2012: Valeria Maltoni, the author of Conversation Agent, shared an inspiring TED talk on the things that make life worth living. Finding pleasure and satisfaction in the things you do is the key to feel happy with the life you live. That’s good to remember…

5 mobile apps to help you keep your new year’s resolutions: When I write my new year’s resolutions on a sheet of paper or in a Word file I usually loose the list or forget where I’ve hidden the file. That’s why I’ve decided to storage my list in the thing that I always carry with myself – my iPhone. So I was glad to discover that app called Resolutions 2012.

As we speak of resolutions, I found this helpful list of 11 important PR resolutions that will remind us how to be better professionals in 2012.

In January it’s trendy to speak about resolutions and… predictions as well. Here I will include a list with witty and ironic social media predictions of Jay Dolan (the author of the Anti-Social Media Blog). I agree with him about the viral videos with cats and the new social media sites a.k.a. Facebook killers that are going to be born :)

Speaking seriously about digital predictions for 2012, here are two good texts: What 2012 holds for social media and 30 social media predictions for 2012 from the pros.

If you want to refresh and update your list with bloggers, Radian 6 prepared a big list with suggestions of social media disrupters of  2011. Take your time to read all the three posts (part I, part II, part III) and to check out the suggested bloggers.

Simon on the streets: QR codes campaign: This posts should remind us that even overused tools (such as the QR codes) can be seen in different perspective and used in a new way. My tip here: always consider the social environment and demographic aspect of your audience because sometimes you may have a great campaign but  not so appropriate to the lifestyle of the people you target.

It’s interesting also to check out the web design trends for 2012 as well as these amazing photos of 2012 fireworks.

Last but not least, here’s a compact guide to creating the fitness habit to those of you who resolute to sport!

Ouch, that was quite a long first post, hope you weren’t bored :)

In the end: Wish you a great start of the new year and lots of inspiration! :)

Passionate about more great content: Follow @pgeorgieva