Special K campaign

In the last few weeks, one ad campaign especially got my attention: Kellogg's Special K. Special K's are presented as healthy but delicious and varied products. There are 5 different breakfast cereals and 5 different healthy snacks. The commercials on television informs potential customers about the Special K products and the personalized health plan Kellogg's designed. They ask for the customer to look on the website.

I was triggered by this commercial (so they did a good job ;)) and looked on the website.

This is the start page:
As you can see, the whole campaign is build on the idea of personalization. "We are all different" "Design your personal plan for FREE". Also more relevant information, like the prices people can win, calculating your BMI are added on the homepage. I think this is a very good campaign. People always like interactivity, to design something personal for free, which they can benefit from.

So i tried to make a plan for myself. You have to answer a few questions and a plan is designed personalized to your answers. I don't think I will follow the plan but their tips were helpful, and at least now I know the different products of Special K and I would like to try some of them!

Euler Hermes' Intranet

My last blog was very skeptical about the use of Twitter in organizations. Last week I spend searching for information, so that maybe i could change my opinion. And... it worked!

This blog will be about the media and ict use in the company Euler Hermes. Euler Hermes is a credit insurance company with global offices all over the world. Right now they are working on a reorganization of the company.

Reorganizations are often paired with a lot of problems, miscommunications, questions and further on. To avoid this, Euler Hermes designed an intranet for their employees.

This is a personalized page for every employee. In the picture above you can see the intranet page of my father. On this page you can easily access news updates from different categories. You can see a calendar, the stock prices of the company, personal reminders and a phonebook. Furthermore, other options are integrated like a search engine (Google) and a translation mechanism. I think this is a very good example of how an appropriate intranet page should look like!

Back to the reorganization.. to avoid all the problems they placed a option to do a video chat with the CEO on the intranet. Here you can ask him questions directly and talk with him about your impressions of the reorganization. I think this is a very good idea, but it is not very accessible. If I was an employee at Euler Hermes, I think that I would be a bit scared to start a video conversation with the CEO. Therefore, I think their other option, use of Twitter, is very appropriate and accessible for this function. Unlike e-mail, Twitter is open for everyone and every employee can see what was written before. Twitter is a very good program to ask questions about the reorganization. The CEO can answer them. Because of the 140 letters limit, the answers and questions should be short and to the point!

So now I found at least one good example of Twitter-use by a company...

Twittermania?!

Me writing this blog, me using twitter: I all blame it on the course Media use in organizations that I am following this semester. Last years I watched the hype around everyone writing blogs and twittering about every little thing they experienced. I consider myself as a modern girl, who can handle technology and is pretty good in working with computers but blogging and twittering was never my cup of tea. So, now i am forced. Well not really, but i really want to pass this course.

I have to admit, now I am a bit settled and i understand the basic principles of blogger.com and Twitter I kind of like it. Still, I am surprised with this Twittermania, as I call it. There are thousands of people who are twittering about the most silly things, like doing groceries, going to sleep, having a drink. Why? Why do people want the world to know everything and, more importantly, why do they think there are people interested in this? It could be my insecurity but I don't feel that people, even my friends, would really want to know when I am going to the toilet or when I am having breakfast. It just not seems interesting.

Nowadays, Twitter is not only used by people in their private lives, even companies are using it. I investigated some background information and googled a bit and found out that companies are using Twitter for a large number of different purposes. Update customers about company deals, offer customer support, to post company news and further on. Of course, I see that it could be useful, but isn't every option already available on the company website? Why use Twitter? When I want to know something about a product, or get help, I first go to the website to find information. I would certainly not search on Twitter for the account of the company. In my opinion, using Twitter for this purposes is useless. For me it has a negative influence on the image of a company. It makes the image look cheap and the companies are really trying to be trendy. Why? What is wrong with just a website? Why following this hype?

But that is just my opinion ;)