In Alexandra Township, the work of media trainees is valuable, but not bankable.

As part of the Ideas Will Travel project, I was allowed to spend some days with Siyakhona Africa in Alexandra, Johannesburg. Siyakhona is a joint CSR project by FIFA, Sony, and streetfootballworld to create communal education and providing media training to young South Africans from poor neighborhoods.

The Worldcup provided a perfect kickoff opportunity for the project. It offered the double support of equipment and funding from the sponsors, as well as four weeks of global interest in all things South African. When FIFA and streetfootballworld started their parallel grassroots soccer tournament in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra, Read more »

A New Take on Costa Rican Cuisine adds Socialweb Presence for La Cusinga.

La Cusinga’s Chef David has returned from a trip to Panama, and that means that dinner at La Cusinga has become even more delicious.

But that’s not the reason why David Mahler will feature more prominently on Ideas will travel next week. The true reason is that he is an important part of the lodges web presence. In his blog “Chef of the Jungle” he writes about his general philosophy of cooking, and also shares the ups and downs of a gringo’s life in Costa Rica.

Maybe less literary, but more frequent are his activities on Facebook, where he posts this evening’s dish and a photo of the sunset taken from La Cusinga. In case you want to take a look at his Facebook page: there is more than one David Mahler, but only one lists La Cusinga as an employer.

Sharing pictures of food is always a nice idea, and just to make everyone just a little bit jealous, here is a picture of Thursday’s dinner. It’s roasted yellowfin tuna with pineapple salsa puree of camote (local white yam) and (if I remember correctly what he said) chayote or perulero squash. Read more »

Drogba! Cannavaro! Rooney! Ribery! Ronaldo! Ronaldinho!

These are – in order of appearance – the superstars of this year’s Nike world cup commercial. And those 3 minutes are the only place in the space time continuum they will rule this year. As of this Sunday, they are all out of the tournament! And we’re not even talking semifinals.

Not only did those players not write history…  they actually left their pens at home. Some of them did not show up, some were invisible, and some were embarassing.

I am actually wondering if those guys started believing they’re as shiny-good as their TV-ad doppelgangers. From time to time, you could see a frustrated Ronaldo doing triple scissors in the middle of the pitch for no apparent reason whatsoever. Or attempting a freekick goal from 40 meters out.

“The time has come for players to carve their name in history. One touch, tackle or free kick could crush a nation’s hopes or cause them to build a statue in your honor.” NIKE

Am I really blaming the ad? I know, less than four weeks ago, I said this commercial was beautiful and full of truth. But maybe, there’s too much truth. Maybe Nike’s commercial has increased the pressure on the players beyond breaking point. Trying to achieve immortality is a very tough job. It’s probably easier to achieve if you don’t have to watch a better clone of yourself doing it on TV.

Either way, the new ad does mark the end of a long stretch of ads that weren’t  focused on individual superhuman-succes. Starting with the famous 1998 worldcup commercial, Nike instead celebrated the playfulness of the beautiful game: in an airport, in a locker room, in team buses, or even directly in the belly of the stadium, minutes before the game. In hindsight, that now looks like a more flexible strategy.

But there’s still good news for Nike: They also made an ad with Robinho. But even that’s might turn out to be a difficult sell. If any one in the Brazilian team is writing history, it’s Dunga – and his defensive henchmen Lucio & Joan. They have turned Brazil’s penalty area into a no go zone for their opponents. But by far the most impactful force on the Brazilian team has been Kaka’s elbow. Time for a commercial?

Here comes is the second offering of the Twitter ad era: Disney’s launched the new “Promoted Trend” to kickstart the launch of its summer movie Toy Story 3. What’s the difference to their first offering, the “Promoted Tweets”? To come across a Promoted Tweet, you actually had to perform a search. The Promoted Trend is basically a preset search/trend showing up on your twitter page.

And just so you’re not shocked, that trend/search will have a promoted tweet on top, too. For example, this one:
“You’ve waited 11 years to see Woody and Buzz again. Toy Story 3 – Share the experience with friends! www.disneyticketstogeter.com”
After coping with being slightly underwhelmed, here is what we can learn from this:

1. A Promoted Trend/Tweet isn’t quite the regular tweet that Biz Stone talked about.

Contrary to Biz Stone’s initial insistence, that their advertising offers would amplify valuable content Read more »

The Guardian has given us a beautful visualization-animation of the Twitter hum during the world cup games: Twitter Replay.

While quite charming to watch, it also shows that live coverage might be a field of communication where Twitter gives us very little additional value: It’s basically the referees’s game report, pretyped by the multitude. No new insights seem to be trending here. Read more »

In the dark ages before facebook, “Social Advertising” meant ads for good causes. The new FIFA campaign “Football for Hope”, that is flickering on stadium advertising screens during the world cup games in South Africa, is social in this old school sense. If the world hadn’t been vuvuzelaed into catatonic stupor, some among the tv-audience might even have googled it.

What they would have found is a FIFA supported effort to establish a combination of football and education facilities in communities that are usually too poor to afford either. Read more »