Bence Husi's blog

This is the blog of Bence Husi a marketing & creative executive. In my blog you can read about my passions: design, marketing and leadership. You're expected to receive the latest trends and unique tricks and solutions in these topics. Read more about me...

[peterdiamandis]

Millennials are those born between 1980-2000, today between the ages of 15-35.

This blog is about millennials – why they are changing the game, how to hire them, and how to keep them motivated.

The data presented below comes from Mary Meeker’s “Internet Trends Report” – one of the reports I...

[bencehusi]

Our digital world is flooded by insta selfies

#1: change to Flickr API (or stg. else)

#2: leverage on this given fact

Of course #1 is too simple so I went for #2. To be honest I really hate selfies - maybe that is why my Insta feed is so empty - but since it is so significant in this community, cannot be ignored. And sometimes you’ll get really fun results.

So the communication was built on these two basic messages:

You are not alone with your mood

See how the world handles the same feelings

Actually I leveraged on a very simple insight: common feelings - of course this time I neglect the validation and research (ex.: feelings might or might not work since they are too personal). See how it looks alive: http://bencehusi.info/moodify And the about page: http://bencehusi.info/moodify/about Don’t forget to share this article and get a picture to your mood :)

[sequoiacapital]

WhatsApp Co-Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton

Earlier today, Facebook announced its acquisition of WhatsApp for $16 billion. It’s a spectacular milestone for the company’s co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and their remarkable team.

From the moment they opened the doors of WhatsApp,...

[icanread]

[bencehusi]

View this post on Instagram

Haapy New Year! :)

[bencehusi]

Why do we think different for B2B customers?

The problem is whenever corporate websites of B2B companies come toward me, I find only facts. No context, no story and everything is written in neutral tone. Everyone is afraid of giving a little spirit or personal aspect because they think they might be untrustworthy and not professional. This is a typical top-down thinking and totally wrong. Best example for top-down thinking are QR code campaigns - my favourite nightmare :) There isn’t any behaviour in real life for scanning dummy symbols from billboards along the motorway and so on… This behaviour exist only in marketing department brainstorming sessions (of course QR marketing can be done smartly as well). When your context (where, how, what you communicate) meets customers’ expectations and mood, we are talking about insights. Thus, any others are only findings or thoughts. I’d prevent everyone from holding brainstorming sessions about: "what our customers might want?". Ok, but how to get to know what customers want? Well...

ask

listen

This is not brain science, huh? :) I will leave for later how to ask and what to listen, now let’s focus on the simple fact that will change your thinking about B2B customers. I mentioned insights previously. We, marketers are always looking for insights in order to connect people to our product, service or brand. It should be the way in B2B as well. With a loads of interviews, data analysis and thinking we are able to discover deeper and deeper insights. But even the best is worth nothing when you are not able to tell a story. And yes, this is where B2B communication fails. Your customer is theoretically a company - which we know from ivory tower economy is a rational decision maker. A rational decision maker is interested only in facts. Thats true. But top-down thinking again. Look behind the walls of that company a little bit and what you’ll find: people.

And we know, people are not rational but emotional creatures and nothing can overwrite it, even not corporate processes or regulations and decision making schemes. So next time when you write something or you talk to a customer, follow this simple rule: communicate as face-to-face with anyone. You will not loose credibility, you will not seem unprofessional but trust and engagement - and the likelihood of conversion - will increase. (Moreover bullshit will disapeear :) )

And the "one thing" I promised. A two numbers that show who is worth to communicate with. Only the very tiny proportion of people are your customers, but 100% of your customers are people :)

B2B, please learn to communicate as people!

[bencehusi]

Who are the New creatives?

But what are the features of these new creatives? 1. Skills There are creatives with really different background doing the same thing. Someone who were a photographer is now a creative director an illustrator is a web designer, a marketer is a creative associate. I met with really interesting guys during the last 1-2 years and I also consider myself somewhere close to this segment. But there’s something always in common: we are using creative tools as an integrated system, like a plugin of the brain. The focus is on the final appearance of what we do and not how to achieve it, even it is on web or screen or paper or web. 2. Way of thinking I think the most important is that new creatives discovered how easy is to adapt the knowledge and best practices in an unknown or not really known area. If someone is using Photoshop can use Illustrator, and it is only couple of steps ahead to set up a workflow with After Effects to create more complex animations. The tools (layers, blending modes, masking, etc...) are pretty similar and the way of thinking that can help to understand the new context we are using them on different platforms. 3. Code rulez! As Shane Snow published on LinkedIn blog coding is indispensable today. My opinion is the same. Having the ability to code means not only you are geek but you see the things differently. Coding helps you to understand the world better. And seriously, I can’t imagine anyone doing marketing or any creative role without at least knowing HTML and CSS. Today you can be app builder if you know HTML5 CSS3 and JS.  4. Generation issues The older generation has only met with the very first digital tools around their teenager years, Adobe Photoshop 1.0 was released in 1990. I was born in 1988 (gen Y) so while I grew up the meaning of  “photoshopping” became obvious. My personality was ripened by the web during teenager years and I found myself as an adult in the middle of the digital age. And the generation Z, who are called the "digital aboriginals” will more likely to verify this "new creative trend". For them it is obvious that things are touchable, slidable, interactive and so on. So being a new creative doesn’t mean we are an imdoingeverything.uwant nerd. New creatives are only the product of the rapidly changing and digital world. I appreciate every effort on recognising our work.

[bencehusi]

Which line to pick at hypermarkets?

I don’t know if there are people who were ever thinking of which line to choose:

the shorter one with people who bought a lots of stuffs (so physically it is not shorter)

or the longer one but people with tiny carts

Avg time needed for a checkout at a supermarket cashier:

In addition there are always annoying variables in the system like coupon users, items without barcode etc. so with more customers these fuck-ups has more probability. This time I try to prove my previous decisions with the science of operations management. So let’s see a very basic example.  In case1, we have a pay desk where average 2 customers arrive per minute and the cashier can serve 3 person per minute. So we can say, these are the tiny cart guys. In case2, - because people see the lots of items - average 1 customer arrives per minute and since there are many stuffs the cashier can serve average 2 person per minute (it is 30% less, as I mentioned before). So my calculation looks something like this:

Inputs

case 1

case 2

Time unit

minutes

minutes

Arrival rate (λ)

2,000

1,000

Service rate (μ)

3,000

2,000

Calculations

Average time between arrivals

0,500

1,000

Average service time

0,333

0,5

Performance

Resource utilization

67%

50%

P0

0,333

0,5

Average customer in the system

2,000

1,000

Average waiting line

1,333

0,5

Average time in the system

1,000

1,000

Average time in line

0,667

0,500

  Bumm…. I was right :)

It means that you can save an average 25% of waiting in line if you go for the line with more items but less customers.

But I don’t stop… I’ll make empirical analysis of this case :)

[bencehusi]

Mark Zuckerberg's new business - that internet.org

Business models: introduce business models that give people more ways to go online. The most important part. It is the bottleneck of the big dream. Go back to the fish quote, this is about to teach people fishing. Teach people how to reach and use internet. At this point there are similarities with the Grameen project which purpose is to teach the poors how to make money (be an entrepreneur). I followed the project for a while, I don't know what milestones could they pass and how they are performing with the purpose currently. One yield I can mention is that because of the project Bangladesh has one of the best mobile internet coverage. So, from my side applause, sounds great! Let's just do it! :)  But looking from the dark side we've to consider the threats. Internet has some written-unwritten rules and requires a special behaviour from the users side. For those who lived in poverty it can mean a source of troll fun which we are already through. Think about spam… I see some point that we have to take care about and don't let the newly coming societies to commit that tons of mistakes we did. It is again all about how we educate the two third of the world (4,5 billion people!). To sum up internet.org this is a very intelligent and sustainable way of thinking. I share same values and looking forward to put my volunteer efforts for the project. And some troll: I use purple in many of my design works. It's a great colour… but isn't it too much? :)

[bencehusi]

Top 5 trends on web you should consider when briefing an agency

The way we use the web has totally changed in the past some years. Here is a short, snackable handout about the main trends you need to consider when designing a new (or redesign) website.

Top 5 trends on web you should consider when briefing an agency from Husi Bence

[bencehusi]

Facebook hashtags

space, -, and other special characters will break the hashtag. So if you write #do-it-yourself than only #do will become hashtag. You should write #doityourself instead.

as I saw fb doesn't make difference between lower or upper case letters but you might use lower case

There are also ethical, non-written regulations which you might consider:

don't create waste! Using 20 hashtag in a post will make your fans or friends go crazy

5-6 are pretty enough

use relevant hashtags

How can you leverage on it? Simple. From one side it will let Facebook's search engine find relevant content easier. From other side your post will be shown among topics in hashtag searches. What you have to do is using trending tags and relevant content, so visitors can see or interact with your stuff and you'll get more likes, visitors, shares, followers etc. For marketers: how to make hashtag campaigns We've seen on instagram when companies made has tag campaigns. Users had to upload photos with a special and unique hashtag for a prize or some reward or just for fun. So that hashtag become popular. See examples on postano's blog Try to find out something unique for your product or service and create a hashtag campaign. For example: if you run a gym you might ask your fans to upload photos about their results with #ilovemybody hashtag. It not just creates engagement among your fans but can deliver bigger audience. So what campaign will you start?

[bencehusi]

Getting started with a personal blog

"A personal blog delivers your values and passion that inspires others for action or to change."

First thing when you start blogging about something is to put the computer away and go for a walk. Let's call it a "why walk". Why walk because you have to think about why you want to blog? Of course you want to blog because of visibility, thats right, but it is not the why, it is just the result. The result of blogging is you are visible. But your why shouldn't be! A blog - if it is a personal one - starts with you! It delivers your values and your passion that inspires others for action or to change. Let me explain what does it mean: for example a developer guy's message can be e.g.: "open source rocks!" and he might offer own open source projects to make an impact on developer society. Now let's see step by step: Step 1 - Know your values: Sum those factors that are affecting your behavior and the way you evaluate external circumstances. Like a compass values show the direction and influence your decisions. So if loyalty is considered as your value than it is likely you make different decisions from a person who's rather individualist. Make a list about the first 5 of your values. Put them on a paper and look at it for a while, reorganize  if needed, then ask your friends to validate them. Just to provide a guideline what are values, here is my big five: #1 Impact #2 Passion #3 Change #4 Excellence #5 Courage Even if I don't want, my life is determined by these factors. This is unconscious but of course you can influence them. Just change your thoughts to change yourself. It requires a little struggle - I know. But find a calm place and leave 3-4 hors for yourself to evaluate your life. It's gonna be worth I promise! Step 2 - What are you passionate about? If you don't feel passion, others won't follow you and won't change. If you want to make impact you have to be remarkable, otherwise no one will listen to your words. Those people are remarkable who are passionate. It is simple. If you want to blog about banking just because your major was finance at the university and you just want to gain something plus at a job interview than close this site and forget about blogging. Seriously, prevent the web - and us - from boring content! But if you feel you can add value - at least your passion - to society than go to next step. So list those activities that make you feel valuable, happy, enthusiastic etc... Step 3 - What are you going to write about? The critical factor is content. You will definitely need a content strategy. Don't panic, a sentence starting with 'I will write about…' is enough. But avoid listing more than 3 things you will write about. So in my blog 'I will write about little tricks - mostly in marketing - that inspire change'. My topics will be about: #1 marketing #2 design #3 leadership Step 4 - How will you connect the first three steps? This is where the magic happens. Your success will depend on whether you are able to link your values, passion and integrate them into valuable content. Step 5 - Follow what you decided Be careful! Unstoppable temptation can occur to share your experience and photos about a trip to Spain. Don't do that! The web is a strange rascal and doesn't care about you. If you can't align your travel experiences with the other 4 steps - so it doesn't add value - than post your photos to Facebook instead. Now download the Personal blog quick start guide, fill it and pin it to your wall! From now this is your fingerprint.