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The website Kino.de attracts more than 4.6 million visits each month and it is the leading movie and cinema related website in Germany. The company behind Kino.de, Gruner + Jahr, is publisher of leading b-to-b and b-to-c print magazines with focus on films. With Kino.de, it also takes advantage of Facebook and so far, it has attracted more than 5000 fans, which makes it the largest German language movie  fan page on Facebook.

To further grow and engage its fan base, Kino.de now partners with SnipClip. The result of this partnership is a digital collector’s album featuring the movie highlights in March:

The collection consists of eight movie recommendations made by Kino.de. Each collectible shows the trailer of a recommended movie. Users gather “movie stars”, an in-game currency that they then exchange for collectibles. The goal of the users is to complete the collection. If they do so by March 25, users have the choice to enter a sweepstakes and the chance to win a Blu-ray DVD player and free movie tickets.

In order to have more trading partners for their duplicate collectibles, users want their friends to participate the game. Jointly, they will also be able to gather more movie stars. As a result, users are highly motivated to invite their friends to the game and thus, they spread the brand across their social network.

Growing the fan base is one goal. Activating and engaging existing fans is another one. Therefore, Kino.de also publishes bonuscodes that can be redeemed for collectibles on their fan page:

The availability of codes is limited and only the fans who click the link first get a copy of a specific collectible. As shown in the picture above, fans like those activities and they also comment on them. This results in increased exposure of the posts and the Kino.de. Further, it increases the value perception of being a fan: as a fan you receive bonuscodes automatically delivered to your Facebook news feed.

This leaves us with inviting you to become a fan of Kino.de, to play the collecting game and hopefully, to win one of the valuable prizes. Good luck!

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Click on Sport and Celebrities and you find a variety of branded virtual gifts:

Do you think those branded virtual goods are attractive to the Facebook users?

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• March 25, 2008 -- “Facebook digital gifts worth around $15m/year” (0)
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Brands are increasingly the sum of their most loyal and influential fans.

Taken from:

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Christoph Janz is the (co-)founder of DealPilot.com, which he sold to Bertelsmann, and of Pageflakes, which he sold to MySpace-founder Brad Greenspan last month. His session is titled “Monetarisierung im Web 2.0″. He worked over ten years in the web industry, so I’m looking forward to learn from his insights, especially from his experiences in oversea. Btw: he is also an investor looking for the next big thing, so talk to him!

André Ballay is working at the 24 IP Law group. I don’t know André personally, yet. Robert Harrison, our patent lawyer, recommended him to us and Robert is a really smart person (I pitched him our business idea in the three minutes and he summarized it in three sentences; maybe he should do the pitching for us). André Ballay will inform us about intellectual property: copyrights, patents and brands. These are important issues, especially in the web industry, so we are happy to cover this topic as well at the Startup-Day.

I’m looking to meet you in Karlsruhe! Until then, have a good time!

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• December 12, 2008 -- Message of the Day: About Brands and Fans (0)
• October 24, 2008 -- Virtual Goods are Real Goods (0)

Trust the customer!

The problem always was: companies don’t trust the customers – however, the customers should trust the companies’ brands. In a transparent world where access to information is not limited by space and time this strategy can not work. The question is: where do customers get the information about a product and – more important – where do they criticize the product?

• On the companies’ websites (perfect, but not realistic)
• On their blogs (which is no problem, because blogs can be monitored and commented),
• In online forums (which to handle is somewhat more complicated)
• Or – at worst and what becomes more and more the case – in social networks via chat and instant messaging (which is a horror, because you can neither listen nor reply!)

Wikinomics

The only way out of this dilemma is to “wikinize” your business. Handle it like a Wiki. Don Tapscott calls this Wikinomics in his equally named book, to which I’m listen (as Audible audio book) at the present. Share your ideas with your customers, your partners and your suppliers, listen to them and they’ll provide you with new insights.

Self-experiment

We did that. We talked a lot about our ideas and concept with our friends, partners, colleagues, class mates and yes even with strangers. Everybody was so fascinated about the concept that they instantly helped us with further information, contacts, ideas and even with their spare free time.

Apropos: Thanks a lot, dear friends!

Blogversation

This blog is another instrument for us to talk to people. Blogs are conversational tools and our aim is it to establish a “blogversation”, a conversation via blog, with interested people all over the world. We already have a plenty of readers, but only a few commentators, yet. We hope to change that in the future. If you have any suggestion how to transform our blog from an informational tool into a conversational tool, let us know! We really appreciate that!

And have a good time!

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• December 12, 2008 -- Message of the Day: About Brands and Fans (0)
• May 2, 2008 -- “A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media” (0)
• May 2, 2008 -- Emancipation instead of refusal (0)
• June 1, 2010 -- Cash = Community * Context * Content * Currency (0)
• March 15, 2010 -- Kino.de Uses SnipClip to Engage its Fanbase and Broaden its Reach On Facebook (32)

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• March 15, 2010 -- Kino.de Uses SnipClip to Engage its Fanbase and Broaden its Reach On Facebook (32)
• February 13, 2010 -- Facebook Promotes Branded Virtual Goods. What You Think? (1)
• December 12, 2008 -- Message of the Day: About Brands and Fans (0)
• May 9, 2008 -- Update: Startup-Day sessions (0)

Companies that were blind-sided by the internet, they didn’t understand the impacts of the power shift to the participants, or how fast information would spread, or were just plain ignorant. This doesn’t include the list of fake blogs, that’s on a different list.

See the list at: A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media

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• May 8, 2008 -- Social marketing strategy (0)
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• June 1, 2010 -- Cash = Community * Context * Content * Currency (0)
• March 15, 2010 -- Kino.de Uses SnipClip to Engage its Fanbase and Broaden its Reach On Facebook (32)

Emancipation and Enlightenment

If you don’t agree with something, you have three choices:

1. to subordinate
2. to refuse
3. to emancipate

Emancipation means taking control over what you don’t like and changing it. On a political level: you do not like the current political system? You may advocate anarchy – that’s total refusal. As history showed, anarchy is contradictory to the human nature (need for safety) and does not get a broad acceptance. What in most cases happened: people took self-control over the political system. Here is my favourite quote (by Immanuel Kant):

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from self imposed immaturity for which he himself was responsible. Immaturity and dependence are the inability to use one’s own intellect without the direction of another. One is responsible for this immaturity and dependence, if its cause is not a lack of intelligence, but a lack of determination and courage to think without the direction of another. Sapere aude! Dare to know! is therefore the slogan of the Enlightenment.

Media Emancipation

Similar mechanisms can be observed in case of the female emancipation or media emancipation. Women reacted on two kinds to the repression: they denied everything feminine or they claimed for a self-determined life. The latter strategy succeeded. Same is true for media: some people refuse TV, Internet etc. But in this way they never learn to handle the media in an appropriate manner – they do not gain media skills. People who grow up with TV, Internet & Co. have much more self-confident way to handle the media. They understand how the media works, how to use it for their goals and when to trust it.

Brand Hijacking

Back to my initial story: most subcultures refuse every brand, because it is mainstream. However, in doing so, they create new brands. So they don’t succeed with their strategy. The majority of young people is much smarter. They are emancipated. They do not only mix brands and styles (building fashion, video or music mash-ups), they create brands on their own (user-created brands) and also redefine existing brands (Red Bull is an example for this phenomenon) – this is called brand hijacking.

User-created Brands

So the next emancipation will be brand emancipation: people take control over brands. As a company leader don’t be afraid of this. It is a chance to build strong and influential brands. Let your customers decide what the image of your product is. Take the chance and have a good time!

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• May 2, 2008 -- “A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media” (0)
• June 1, 2010 -- Cash = Community * Context * Content * Currency (0)
• March 15, 2010 -- Kino.de Uses SnipClip to Engage its Fanbase and Broaden its Reach On Facebook (32)
• February 13, 2010 -- Facebook Promotes Branded Virtual Goods. What You Think? (1)