Good day everyone, I am back with an update of my blog about creativity – innovation – trends. Today I am going to tell you about something “out of the box”. Literally and figuratively.  Have you guys also noticed some billboards that are rather unusual? Well, I surely do and that is the subject that I am going to talk about today; “unusual billboards”.


More and more companies are using these kind of billboards to get the attention of people and this really works. When I am driving with my car and I see this kind of billboard, it really draws my attention. I have to be careful that I don’t accidentally cause any problems on the road because I can’t stop looking at it. ;-)

When the billboards are creative and people are talking about it, you create a sort of buzz marketing for your company. The best way to create awareness is to use mouth-to-mouth advertising and by using a spectacular billboard, you will definitely have a positive mouth-to-mouth advertising. However, this is rather difficult… if your billboard isn’t that creative and people don’t like it, it will work against you. You will get negative reactions so these unusual billboards are a bit tricky to use. I have put a couple of pictures in this blog so that you can see what creative billboards are.

I am a huge fan of this kind of advertising because it is totally different than the basic advertising. Marketers won’t stop looking for new kinds of advertising and I am really excited to see what advertising will be in the next 10 or 15 years.

Well, thank you for reading my blog. Feel free to comment and let me know if you are also a fan of creative advertising!

- Niels

Hello everyone, this week I have found an interesting marketing trend. A trend that will break through in the market of marketing in 2013 or I hope it will. The new trend is called “Hyper-local commerce”.

It describes the new services and technology that make it easier for anyone who wants to invest in local businesses and buy from local merchants. Everyone who owns a smartphone (the majority has already one, except for me but that will change hopefully ;-)) and have the desire to shop local will have plenty of help the coming year. There will be online tools, innovations and comparative technology that helps anyone in any location around the world to identify local shops for products that you are looking for.

This is really something interesting because, for example, when you’re on holiday to Germany and all of a sudden you have a great desire for some Lays chips, you just use your smartphone and you know the nearest shop where they sell those chips.

There already exist a couple of applications for smartphones based on the trend “hyper-local commerce” such as GoPayment, Square, MobilePay, etc. With one of those applications, you use a small device that you can attach to your smartphone and it reads your credit card. This means that you can pay everywhere around the world with your smartphone if you want to buy something on the Internet or just want to use online banking. There is only one condition; you need a wireless connection of course.

I have found the description of this trend and the examples on the following website: http://www.slideshare.net/rohitbhargava/15-marketing-trends-in-2013-and-how-your-business-can-use-them. Definitely visit this website if you want to see more upcoming trends for 2013.

Feel free to comment and I will see you next week for another blog about Creativity – Innovation – Trends.

- Niels