New Year

Well, as you all may have noticed, I haven't updated this blog very often lately. I feel a bit sad about not having the time to do it, due to my daytime work, and also due to my weekly commuting between Stockholm and Göteborg.

I will not make any new year's resolutions about posting more often though. LoveEvent will live on, but more quietly and not so actively, waiting for better times. Times more suitable for me to pick this up again...

I'd like to end this year by writing a short post about two companies who I have written a lot about this past year: ICA and A Non Smoking Generation, who now have a campaign together.

Read more on A Non Smoking Generation's blog, or at ICA's facebook page.

(My older posts about A Non Smoking Generation and ICA.)

Until next time; Happy New Year and I wish you alla 2011 full of energy and new opportunities!

F**king brilliant commercial

Yeah, well, I'm sorry for swearing, but this is the best commercial I've seen in a loooong time! A friend of mine shared it on FB today, but the video has been uploaded on YouTube since the end of August. My only regret is that I haven't seen it until now.

I'm not going to spoil it for you, so just enjoy! :)

The power of social media

Sunday evening, one of Sweden's more "non-politically correct" political parties, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, were voted into the Swedish parliament. This rose a lot of protests, and just a few hours after the results were official, several Facebook groups were created, encouraging people to demonstrate on Monday evening.

In Sweden's three largest cities; Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö, around 10 000, 5 000 and 2 000 people gathered in the town centres, protesting. And this was less than 24 hours after the results! The power of social media!

(English article here.)

Wedding at IKEA?

IKEA is running a campaign right now, where you connect to their campaign site through your Facebook account, propose to the love of your life, and the funniest/best proposal wins the couple a 50 guest reception, complete with food, decorations, flowers and everything.

I think it's a fun idea, so if you're about to propose; check out their site! :)

Picture from IKEA's campaign site.

Pilates, anyone?

The other day, when I was driving up Odengatan in Stockholm, I spotted some green balloons on lamp posts along the street. I had to stop and see what they were.

They were a guerrilla marketing campaign for Stockholm Pilates Center, who will host an open house event this Friday, to celebrate that they moved to new and bigger premises. The folder attached to the balloons said something like: "Help us puncture the myth. More than just balls, individual training for the whole body." I must say I thought the slogan was quite catchy, and today when passing by again, many of the ballons were actually punctured...

Catchy and eye-catching. And probably not too expensive. That's my kind of guerrilla campaign! :) Well done, Stockholm Pilates Center!

Make sure to also check out Stockholm Pilates Center's Facebook page!

(And if you look closely in the second picture, you can see my Glacéau Vitaminwater car in the background. Yep, that's the car I'm driving around in Stockholm all day long... :)

Lindex goes SM?

Lindex is one of the biggest fashion retailers in Sweden. They recently announced that they will be selling some of their clothes on Tradera (Swedish eBay). The winner of the auction will get a code that they will use in Lindex' web shop to purchase the clothing item. A good idea to drive more traffic to their site perhaps? Way to go Lindex! Check out the Lindex Tradera store to see what items are up for grabs.

Lindex have quite recently started exploring social media. On May 4th they started a Twitter account, with news from their stores and from their web shop, but, they only have 359 followers! Even I have more followers than that, and I wonder why? But maybe it's just the fact that Twitter hasn't had quite the impact in Sweden as it has had internationally yet...

Lindex are also present on YouTube (20 followers) and on Facebook, (4360 fans) and you can easily follow from Lindex' web site.

Cute dresses are always appreciated, and Lindex did recently come out with a very nice collection of party outfits. What is not equally appreciated is that the dresses can only be bought up to Swedish size 42. Not nice, Lindex! Why not make the dresses up to size 44, or even size 46?!?

Kreafon on Twitter

So, it turns out it really does take up a lot of your time trying to keep up to date with everything that happens on the internet and in all social networks and blogs...

Only a mere five days after my blog post about communication agency Kreafon, where I kind of dissed them for being, according to themselves, "in the front" when it comes to social media, though they did not even have presence neither on Facebook nor on twitter, they actually started a twitter account and are now official twitters! Well done, Kreafon! :) Follow them on twitter here, I know I will.

Kreafon

A few days ago, when browsing the internet, I came across a nice blog. The blog is hosted by Swedish PR and communication agency Kreafon. I checked out their website and found it very interesting. They claim to be a full service agency, but I feel some things are missing. And by some things, I mean events. Events are a great way to enhance brand experiences, and combined with traditional marketing, a strong graphical profile and social media, a brand can gain great success with the target group consumers. So I think I will send them an email, offering my services! :)

So, this morning I did a normal Google search (normal for me anyway). I entered the words "advertising pr marketing" (but in Swedish; "reklam pr marknadsföring"). And I was a bit impressed to see that Kreafon, this relatively small agency (with only three full time employees) came up as the number one hit (after the sponsored hits)! It must be a sign! ;)

Though, I can't stop wondering why an agency who claims that they are good with social media and can help their customers build a stronger (online) profile, doesn't seem to have neither a Facebook Group nor a twitter account?!?