Nuit gravement à la santé

Q without A

for two weeks now i´m intensively thinking about my master thesis. i realized that if i want to finish my thesis before a possible exchange term, i should start in february with it. therefore i really should start to get a topic...
but hmmm... what should i write about? what could be interesting? is there a blockbuster topic out there? is there an interesting topic which i could write about in a cooperation with a company? who´s a good prof.? sofar there are only questions here. i´m browsing institute website, websites of other universities, company websites, websites with topics of already written diploma thesis in order to find some answers, to have an input to think about, to get a solution in the end.
maybe i get THE idea tomorrow while taking a shower, maybe in a week at do-it after not sleeping enough? perhaps santa claus tells me a solution or maybe i´ll find it under a christmas tree somewhere?
anyways, it might take some time to come up with a topic and i´ll take my time to choose it. the first step in the right direction i made already: i have now at least 5% more brain capacity to use, because i cut my hair ;-)

Advertising space

While I was surfing around to get ideas for a topic for my master thesis something on a blog catched my attention. well some stuff might be a bit politically incorrect, but still funny...

Situation 1: You´re a divorce laywer and want to attract as many potential customers as possible. How to do? Maybe like this...


Situation 2: How to make sustainable advertisment? Like that...?


Situation 3: The war of the car industry in a little bit different way...


Situation 4: Ever looked at the "wash" etiquette of your clothes? If you do maybe you find this...

even november can be beautiful

earlier this week in front of my window...

University marketing & journalism - or what students really think

First it begins like one of those very emotional car ads, then it has a very short sequence of a very low-budget scary movie and then it switches to the real message in this movie - the attempt to market the marketing. The movie is done by the Institute of Marketing at the University of Berne - where I studied before my bachelor. Therefore I have some insights and the strange part about this youtube sequence for me is the following:

1. first student statement - first part: I decided to study in Berne because of the good reputation
Ok, for me the reputation (related to business studies!) of my former university is neither good nor bad. It´s average. If you ask students from other universities in Switzerland they even might say that there´s a reputation of acquiring a degree with not so much effort.

2. first student statement - second part: It´s a good feeling to know that I study in the capital of Switzerland
How is the education itself and the quality related to the simple fact that the university is in the capital of a country?

3. Why does Prof. Harley Krohmer have to mention that the lecture is based on "this book" and he´s not showing it fully? Well if he doesn´t say which book it is, there´s no value in this sentence. If he mentions the title, everyone realizes that it´s self-marketing because he wrote it on his own. Well he´s not unique in selling his book as an obligatory reading for his own lecture. Many other Profs do this as well...

4. It´s strange that the 2 students talking on camera happen to be working for the institute (or were former employees). The credibility even gets higher when one of them says that Prof. Krohmer and his assitants have a good "access" to the students. What´s the keyword - aaah yeah, self-praise...

5. They put this video on youtube. They wanna do some marketing. The university wants to attract students from abroad as well. So, why do they let the people speak in swiss german?


So far so good. That was the first part. Now something else, I happen to know. There was an "article" on a news show in swiss television (10vor10) about the high salary of top managers. In the second part, they do an interview at University of St. Gallen (where I study now). Sometimes after around 5.30" they say that still it is important for students, that they earn a lot after studying. They ask this lady why she´s studying in St. Gallen. She says because I like it and of course because of the future salary.
So, question: Are statements really what students think? Well in her case I don´t know if it was the truth, but I know the following fact: Reporters from the tv station were wandering around and asking girls, if they were willing to say "I´m studying here because I want to earn much/more afterwards". Well, is this the journalism I´d like to get if I watch news shows? Is it reflecting the truth? For me - No...

Broadcast yourself

Today I had a lecture about “economics and human behaviour”. It was about blogs, communities (like brand communities or hate communities), broadcast yourself like youtube and opinion leaders and their importance for marketing. As I´m interested in this I decided to write some things here...

Some facts provided today in my lecture about decreasing importance mass media (only us market):

- CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox had a historical low audience rate in July 06

- Sales of music albums (incl. digital downloads) were on a 10-year-low in July 06

- Audience rate for radio decreased for antoher 8.5% this year

- Newspaper consumption decreased 2.6% this year

Compared to this consumer generated content is highly increasing. Some facts as well provided in todays lecture:

- 100 Mio. videos are watched on youtube - daily. Growth of 297% (!) in the first half of 2006

- Each day 1.6 Mio. postings in blogs per day = 18.6 postings per sec.

- The social network Myspace has 15 Mio. logins per day and has a growth of 240´000 users per day.

Why am I blogging about this? First of all because I think there´s a huge shift towards an e-life. People are not only using the net-technology to send emails and disconnect afterwards. They´re using it to gather information, to entertain themselves. Instead of meeting face-to-face or calling people, they spend evenings on msn chatting with friends while playing online games, watching movies or surfing on the internet. They spend hours each day in front of their computer and connect to the web. And with online communities, “broadcast yourself” sites and blogs they´re not only consuming, they´re producing content...

Secondly I´m blogging about this, because I´m studying marketing. I think that we have important changes in society here. Those changes affect consumption behaviour, they affect the way of gathering information about products and services and thus they have an influence on what we buy and how we decide what to buy. We might not want to buy an ipod anymore because we visited http://www.smashmyipod.com? Maybe we suddendly dislike Starbucks coffee because we visited http://www.ihatestarbucks.com? Online communities and blogs can have a huge impact on the opinion of each of us. As a future marketer, I´ll be probably dealing with stuff like that.

And thirdly there´s a post about this because I have just an intrinsic, personal interest in this. It will probably affect my future in my field of work, then I´m a member of this new, 2.0 web society and I´m interested in information- and communication-technology which is closely linked to this topic. And maybe I´ll write a thesis about a specific topic in this field. Who knows?

Simus music charts

The following albums I like to hear at the moment:

1. Fort Minor - The rising tied
2. Muse - Black holes & revelations
3. My chemical romance - The black parade

These are the singles I like most currently:

1. Fort Minor - Where´d you go
2. Snow Patrol - Chasing cars
3. Breaking Benjamin - The diary of Jane

The next 3 songs I like to play on guitar:

1. Metallica - Nothing else matters
2. Green Day - Wake me up when september ends
3. Eric Clapton - Tears in heaven

And when a song of those 3 artist is played, I rather switch off radio:

1. Crazy Frog
2. Tokio Hotel
3. Plüsch

From the following collaboration I´d like to hear more: