Why we are launching HIRONDO, the global expert network for marketing (and more)

About 20 months ago, I started freelancing as a fractional and part-time CMO, marketing director, marketer… whatever you call it. My first gig at Optee was full-time and lasted 6 months, the next year I worked in 2 companies part-time, IMPACT+ for 6 months and Driveco for 10 months, and today I work at The Keepers, part-time.

In all those cases, my clients had big goals, limited manpower, little marketing expertise, no one to lead marketing strategically internally, and -as always- lots of lots needs. This is where I came in.

Since I cannot deliver on 100% of marketing myself, I have surrounded myself with trusted experts in CRM, RevOps, design, brand, content, events… with whom I was able to help my clients get where they needed to be. This is how Hirondo, your company’s most reliable marketing partner, started.

Continue reading →

In July: Sponsoring the Lakers, watching #TDF2018 while working & vaporware horseshit

Zoox Bloomberg Businessweek PrintIn July, we became FIFA World Champions and the Tour de France has provided us with 3 great, entertaining weeks of racing. In this post I share my 5 favorites articles of the month: why Wish sponsors the LA Lakers, how Dribble’s product team works, where Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku comes from, when Airbnb adopted storyboards and what “vaporware horseshit” product Zoox’s team is working on. Continue reading →

In December: @Mr_Turley about Formula 1, @ItsMattWard about Uber & @DorieClark’s Book

F1-logo-mock-up-2017

Image via CreativeReview.co.uk

There have been more than 30 monthly digest posts now. A small milestone that I’m quite proud of, as it takes discipline to write up a blog post every month. But it’s a good way to give all the things we see & read every day a second thought. Sitting down and synthesizing thought-provoking content in a series of paragraphs allows me to improve my writing & communication skills. And to build a community!

Continue reading →

This Guy Travelled Around The World To Meet Creative Community Members

Image via vimeo.com

Meet Matias Planas, a graphic designer and photographer from Argentina who also happens to be a member of the jovoto crowdsourcing platform. He just came back from a round-the-world trip where he met a lot of other creatives from the same community (I think this is awesome!). As Matias basically did in real life what I a have been doing for years for my PhD – which is to find out why creatives from across the world participate in crowdsourcing projects – I got in touch and asked him a couple of questions. Continue reading →

Recruiting Individuals to a Crowdsourcing Community: Findings From an Ad Copy Test

Video Contest Website Landing PagesRecently, a counterpart contacted me to get some insights about how to attract and activate “solvers” on a platform. That person had validated a business need to create a crowdsourcing platform, but was now looking to assemble the community to respond to the challenges he would launch on its platform. How do you assemble a community? Some tips are already available in this book, but it’s a bit dated. Here are some findings from a project that we just published as a book chapter, along with Daren Brabham and Jean-François Lemoine. Continue reading →

How Doritos Is Using Its New Community For Marketing #CSreport2015

Image via Linkedin.com (click to access article)

Image via Linkedin.com (click to access article)

After writing quite a bit about Doritos’ crowdsourcing activity of the last decade, which all started with the famous “Crash The Super Bowl” video contest, let’s have a look at the “next step” that PepsiCo’s brand seems to take. The company has indeed started a platform called Doritos Legion Of The Bold, which is  based on Flockstar, a crowdsourcing technology operated by Texas-based agency The Marketing Arm. Blogger Dan Lamoureux said about it: “It sounds like [Doritos] is so crazy for crowdsourced content that they’re going to start running lots of smaller contests all year long.  That’s an interesting bit of news in and of itself.

And indeed they are because, as I write this, Doritos has launched a dozen of marketing competitions already on this platform. It is mainly about marketing activation and consumer engagement, but tomorrow they might start running HQ-video projects or innovation contests. So, will they kill “Crash The Super Bowl” eventually? Is this a logical next step for the brand to drive consumer engagement? Here is what Doritos has used this platform for, and some thoughts about where this might lead to in the future. Long story short: I think it’s a very smart move, let’s see where it’s heading.

Continue reading →

My Favorties Of December: Countries As Brands, Sorbonne From The Inside & Choices Across Cultures

Image via @HistoricalPics (click to see tweet)To wrap up 2014 nicely, here is a selection of links (articles, reports, interviews, photos…) that I liked and tweeted in December. Articles about crowdsourcing, content marketing, entrepreneurship and open creativity populate this wrap-up, I hope you will like them.

For me, 2015 will mark a pivot year as I will start as a full-time Marketing Manager at eYeka, shifting the focus away from research and towards driving business results for the world’s leading creative crowdsourcing platform. I just found this part of my job to keep me going more than only doing teaching and research (note that I will finish my thesis, continue working on currently ongoing research projects and start teaching marketing at ESSCA Business School, so I’m not totally changing focus).

Happy 2015 to you all! Continue reading →