Giulia Eremita

nowiamawake:

‘so how did you decide? this is why we have seen the rise in the esoteric black art of branding in the last two decades. branding gets the product ahead. branding is a creative process – it is holistic, irrational and emotional and completely out of the comfort zones of most logical, rational, linear businesses.’

thirsty-fish-marketing:

by Ron Huxley, LMFT

“What do we do with chaos? Creativity has an answer. We are told by those who have studied the processes of nature that creativity happens at the border between chaos and order. Chaos is a prelude to creativity. We need to learn, as every artist needs to learn, to live with…

poetrybomb:

Abrams Books and Tumblr are celebrating National Poetry Month with a month-long Poetry Bomb! Join us by reading, reblogging, submitting your own poetry, or meeting us IRL on April 30th at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe.

Poetry, the beauty of words, the expression of our emotions… or, maybe, the way round (?)

dvdp:

130406

reason for the raised post-frequency: It seems like that after 10 years of independence I’ll  work as an employee in the near future. So I’m enjoying last long sleepless nights with creation for my own fun. 

150252*thank_you_for_following!

My journey in Turkey last Christmas time. This is a short edit of long shots taken basically in the amazing natural and cultural spots at Pamukkale (“castle of cotton”) and Efeso (“the ancient city”), in Sulcek. You also will see some shots taken at Kusadasi (Isle of birds) and Sirince, pittoresque village next to Sulcek, also famous for its delicious wine.

I wanted to highlight the contrast between the modern and the tradition. Beside excellent roads and pavements, modern building, interior design, new buildings and urban decor in a perfect shape, you also find tractors, kids playing in the streets, women cultivating fields back from the hard work with the sunset on karts, dogs and cats who live a perfect life in temples and theaters. Ruins well preserved.

In this globalized world nowadays these are very extraordinary daily life scenes. Something all of us in western countries miss. Something we will never have back again…

EMPTY AMERICA - NYC

Here’s the latest installment of Ross Ching’s “Empty America” project, which features time-lapse videos of major cities in the United States with all the people magically removed. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve visited the beautiful cities of San Francisco and Seattle; this week, the destination is New York City. - via humanscalecities

Interesting findings by Istat which confirm what we also see in our figures. Italy as travel destination is not perceived abroad as a seaside spot, despite its 7,800 Km of Coast, 70% of which bathing Cost.

Foreigners prefer to visit Italian art towns (37.9%) than seaside resorts (26.3%) . Even Mountains and Lakeside (26,7%) are more popular than Beaches.

An unexplored potential, a lack of branding investments or simply Italy is too expensive in the summer because bended by the domestic demand?

All Italians go on holiday at the same time between the end of July and the first 3 weeks of August since the tourism industry started at the beginning of the XX Century and especially in the 60ies.

Sure, it’s also the hottest period of the year, 90% of the companies force their employees to go on holiday in that period by closing their activity. But, in the other hand , the Italian domestic demand  is effecting the foreign summer demand. Italy perceived as a cultural destination, to be visited once in the life - maybe twice, maybe in an advanced age -  and not as a seaside spot to come to visit every summer where to relax and have fun, as it should be.

If I had some dozens million of € to invest in advertising abroad, I would bet in the beaches cities as next move, to reverse Italy main perception from a sophisticated cultural destination - and also a bit boring -  to a dynamic and funny Mediterranean half-year summer spot.

This is Italy as the whole world knows it.

This is Italy as we want them to know.

It’s not easy to reverse this “post card” because it was built up in 2 centuries, but it must be possible nowadays with the strongest media that we all are living with, the internet. I really would like to see a move in this direction. Time to reposition the brand Italy and make it almost palpable with sun and sand.

Cala Luna, Sardinia, Italy

(I also find quite significant that such great beach doesn’t have any official source of information in English, but I have to link a third website - telegraph - how can that be?? )

Life is too short. Make it count.  Casey Neistat, a youtube influencer with more than 70000 followers and a reach of 27 million of viewers, was offer by Nike to make a world round trip with a certain budget “as far as he could”. Leit motiv of this challenge was the running and of course Nike’s shoes.

I found this video during a meditative weekend, while watching best travel video collection. After the epic video “where the hell is Matt” in 2006 and the Longest way to China  in 2008 I didn’t find anything else so inspiring, so I was wondering who else got the same spirit.

I must admit that Casey didn’t thrill me as much as the others did, but it really make me think at the regular travel planning process of an average man.

First, the need of a long distance travel, some piece of world in mind which generated some emotions, then the rationality prevails above all: working days vs days off still left; friends, parents and relatives most important moments which requires your presence (Damn!); your travel/soul mate, how flexible is she/he?

At this point you may have found already 100 obstacles to your long distance journey. Assuming that you have found a resolution to this, you still need to look at logistic and finance: how much money you would spend for this trip, how easy is to get there.

It may takes already a couple of months. The need is still there, but you will find some good sop to place it and to stop you from doing your long distance travel. Statistics say that for a long distance average booking window is 170 days! That means that it may takes almost 1 year between you have first in mind your long-distance journey till you actually do it. An eternity.

Next time we all should get just the necessary in our backpack and take a ride with Casey and go as far as we can, to satisfy our licit need for a while.

The less a product is known, the stronger it’ll be its own awareness as effect of bad publicity and bad reviews. A recent research led by professor Alan T. Sorensen and Scott J. Rasmussen for Harvard Business Review (March 2012) demonstrates that a bad reputation can increase notoriety and even drive sales!

They looked at sales curve for those books reviewed by New York Times, the most authoritative source on book reviews in Usa, during 2001-2003. They divided those books written by well known writers and those written by unknown writers: good  reviews helped to boost sales up to 52% for both types of writers and those well known  writers who got bad reviews made weight losses of 15%. The ones less known or totally unknowns got instead positive advantages out of bad reviews with a 45% average increase in sales. 

How could that be possible then?

The memory of the product is stronger than the memory of the bad judgement in itself. This hypotesis gets even more true when the product is peculiar . Throught a bad review readers had the chance to get to know new authors and new books which they otherwise wouldn’t be able to identify. More awareness of something unknown has brought to best sales performance over the time.

Very seldom small entities make fun of their bad reputation using it as main topic for their advertising to make people aware of them.

One of the most brilliant cases in the Hotellerie is the Hans Brinker Hostel in Amsterdam which turned its bad reputations in its own strength and made its brand so well known. It’s one of my favourite example ever: they put themselves in a safe position  proudly telling the entire world their hotel “sucks” and they cannot do anything about it. The worst can happen to them is a lack of fantasy, what else?

Sometimes also big companies look on purpose for bad reputation as “calculated risk” to maximize visibility of their brand or concept.  That’s the case of Benetton and its creative director Oliviero Toscani, master of controversial adv.   Most of their campains generate polemics and criticisms, provoking a general shock.  

(… well, I must say that just few big firms as Benetton can enjoy the luxury to plan bad publicity to maximise visibility)

I came upon this “trailer” while I was looking for new inspiring video about online Hotel Reputation and some smart way to manage it. Going in to deep it doesn’t look any better, it seems that you can “accelerate” your good reputation in less than 90 days, cleaning any track of your bad one, or any bad review, simply buying this service and boost your business as well. Reviews seem to be generated by real customers by pushing them in sharing their experience, giving as assumption the fact that they will be anyhow very happy of their stay… But com’on ! As traveler, potential client, marketer and also hotelier, I would feel totally taken the piss out of!

Words such as “improuve your service, invest in quality, invest in the guest experience and develop your customer satisfaction” are totally missing. It’s clear that this is an other tempt to sell reputation whereas there is a lack of service. Instead of facing the problem of a bad reputation, the solution is to delay a resolution, cheating people. Well, of course this may not be cheating, it can just be “put in to light” good feedbacks and suffocate  the bad ones with content overloading: but, are we really sure that we are not generating so big expectations to people which may turn soon to negative comments? Are we really sure to have enought advocates ready to testify a possible excellence? Is our service really so outstanding and infallible?  Are we really certain to offer something which people would be willing to share their comment online for? 

As a reader and potential customer I would feel totally mad if I would discover every tempt of manipulation and this would generate the opposite effect: I would discurage others from staying at this Hotel. I would be more and more careful in looking for authentic traveller content and I will follow just the most reliable source of information.

Just some days ago I got to know that in Italy there is a small company selling guest supplies which is offering as a bonus for a certain buying order a service for creating fake accounts and fake reviews in all languages. It seems that it’s necessary to order just a box of slippers to get 2 five stars reviews. More slippers, more reviews and better reputation and ranking.  Incredible story? Check it out!

Reviews management and online reputation is creating new opportunity of business, but also it’s becoming a space for braggarts. Achtung: Manage very carefully your reputation and avoid every tempt of manipulation, this is not a game.

Wow.. I started this 2012 with the best intentions and I am still pursuiving them in my calendar crossing a day with the following symbols: R, B, D, T which are, in the order, Run, Book, Deutsch and Travel. As every year, I want to run, travel, read enought and finally speak - even while dreaming at night - in German :p-, as I wish. But then last weekend a well known impulse came back from the land of living: writing. Since then I cannot do anything else anymore in the evening. I’m totally absorbed by this.

Writing was my only desire some years ago and my job as well. But that time I was a kind of introverted as well. Writing was a way out from the reality in which I couldn’t express my self so well. The approach is now totally different, I am speaking out so much every day, I don’t need to keep things so long and type them in words. But I have to admitt that writing may create a certain dependence. I will try to frugally handle this impulse… Let’s see for how long..

Pittulongu Beach - Olbia, Sardinia (Italy) this pic is taken by my sister Silvia

Temperatures are crazy this period: Dusseldorf is -8, Hambourg - 14 and Rome is - as well under snow and ice which is pretty unusual: schools and government offices are closed, the City is paralyzed and silent for the first time. Last time there was so much snow in Rome was in 1986, 25 years ago which was the first time I saw the snow in Sardinia as well. 

Very longtime ago, Silvia my sister was just 1 year and I was 4.  Can’t forget the sensation to jump outside in the white grass field of my garden which was like a soft duvet and do not feel any weight, around my house the countryside was suddendy sprinkled of a kind of icing sugar, sheeps’ bells were ringing as usual in the next field but you couldn’t perceive them so much anymore.

It was a Sunday and we were going to have lunch at my grandparents place in the town and i wanted to bring to my grandma a snowball as souvenir. Once arrived at her place I treasured it in a glass and stored in one of the cupboards of the living room, the one used just for the biggest family events (with all porcelaines and crystal glasses) . How disappointing was then to find after lunch just a glass of water! And my grandpa started to explained to me the principle of the water iced which melts after a certain temperature. While he was explaining it to me, I started crying. I soon realized the snow outside was gone, “would I never see this again in my life?”, I maybe thought. My mother promised me we would have bought a new snowball in the supermarket the day after, but it obvioulsy didn’t happen :)

I had to wait to see the snow again more than 15 years. It was in my University time in Perugia, it was amazing. Suddendly you wake up and a great silence answers you, you look at the total white around and you feel happy without any particular reason and you start to shout to make you feel alive. It was so exceptional that moment I had to dedicate 2 lines about it before going to sleep. Just came to my mind tonight.

Why did I put a picture of the beach next to my home in Sardinia if I am then speaking about snow?? Maybe it’s just home sickness which is coming these cold days.. or maybe I’ve just learned that now the sea, this sea, which was in front of my eyes every day for decades, has became as much exceptional as the snow I first saw that morning in 1986.

I recently came across a discussion in twitter   in one of the few #traveltuesday I occasionally take part in and the question was if the travel and the travelling can be considered a luxury or an exigence . I naturally answered that the travel is a need, not less important than visiting a museum, experience an art exhibition, go to the cinema, go for shopping, etc…  and I was instantly argued by someone that it wasn’t correct: “travelling is not a need!”.

Well… I don’t think there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer to that question, but few considerations must be expressed.

If I would ask my parents or my granparents they would answer me exactly the same, that travelling is a luxury for few. Everytime I was telling them that a friend or a friend of a friend was travelling across India, Australia, Asia… in the most remote places of the world, the answer was more or less the same: either they have so much money to be wasted on this.. this “travelling”, or that they didn’t sacrifice themselves enought for family, work, duties… duties…

This set of mind reppresents the whole previous generations of people grow up with other rythme, but not necessarily values: being educated costed money and sacrifice, going somewhere was a lifetime memory, working far from home was “wrong”, getting in touch with people required strong motivations and feelings, mobility wasn’t simply and kind of umcomfortable. That’s why travelling was unecessary, more than unaffordable for many. Travelling was an unknown experience, out of the ordinary, and as every new experience, it had a substantial percentage of risk of failure (getting lost without any communication device, choosed the wrong hotel, spent too much, robberies..). 

And here we go to my “generation”, we experienced the irreversible change and I’m so glad to have been a witness of my times. First the mobile which made possible to be in touch wherever and whenever, then the net which made accessible to every one all possible information. Informations on places to see, how to get there, where to sleep cheap, what to avoid, etc..wasn’t anymore accessible just to people “they could” afford a travel agency, but to everyone, from every social status. In the last decade our knwodledge and perception of the world around got empowered.

Cut-price airplane deals have been a key factor to encourage mobility. Look at low cost company as Ryanair (which is detestable for many reasons), but they intercepted this growing need of mobility turning it into a genial business model which was able to put global flight airlines over the edge. Not only that, but the whole Tourism industry had to revise their price list. Travelling wasn’t anymore a luxury for few, but a need for many! Whoever didn’t adapt its business to this ephocal change (still in progress right now) fast enought, got cut off.

Today we can turn the famous quote of Humphrey Bogart in to “That’s Ryanair baby! And there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing!”

Oh yes! Would Ryanair never be so successful if it would have created an other comfortable flight company tailored for the haves??

Now, everything said so far can become very serious once we think as travel marketer. If we still want to consider the travel and the travelling as a luxury because we want to feel this own right exclusive or because we have other priorities in life and a need is a vital one, that’s fine and not arguable: but if we keep on mirroring this thinking to our customers nowadays and try “to suck” as much possible from a single person and its bank account on holiday, we will face just  disillusionements. Read (coming soon): The dream customer has passed away (long time ago).

Few days ago I asked again this question to my team and the answer was that the travel is a need. I will ask again this question to my mum, my best friends, to the baker and I am sure I will hear different point of vues, mostly linked to generational differences and experiences.

The value of your fanbase depends on how much you truly care about your customers.

Didn’t want to write now, but time is getting slower than ever. I have a bit of cold and cannot sleep at all. Throat is burning while I’m lying down in bed. I had a cup of hot ginger and an aspirin or something smililar. I hid the desktop clock because I don’t want to know what time is: I hate time passing. Tomorrow or today or whatever I’ll decide if is the case to get up from bed for work.

Finally starting “my German” these days: what a shame, I’ve never wanted to do so for any specific reason. Just I didn’t find it so necessary, never thought I could have lived here already for so longtime. I’ve a good feeling now for this language. By the time I’ve started listening songs and become more curious about. There’s always a starting point in learning stuff, I guess, even if you don’t have any motivation. The environmental conditions after a while bring you naturally towards something.

Saw the first Italian worldcup match, didn’t like it at all. But, I guess I don’t understand so much because everybody said it was a fair enough performance in the press… don’t see so many chances . Hope to be wrong. By the way, I never enjoyed worldcup as much as this time. I really like to look at the game.

Now I’m totally captured by this amazing song by Bruce Springsteen “I’m on fire” just listened at the radio. Maybe I like it because the fever is coming.. but the song is about an other type of “fire”.

Enjoy it!

Folkwang Museum in Essen

Just discovered Black and Gold by Sam Sparrow. As always happens, if I like a song, I’m able to listen it for so many times I get an hangover and at the end I hate it.

    i looked up into the grey sky
    and see a thousand eyes staring back
    and all around these golden beacons
    i see nothing but black

    i feel a way of something beyond them
    i don’t see what i can feel
    if vision is the only validation
    then most of my life isn’t real

Hi!

My last post was long time ago. I didn’t respect the concept of Tumblr so far, reposting stuff, I’m still using facebook, and I also don’t why, but I like using it more privately. I miss a private space in my Social Networks and here I find it more private, maybe… but also true that I am already to much in to this emotional whirl of sharing, sharing… otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.

Back to Dusseldorf this week, after a crazy month of public events, private sadnesses, social smiles, every kind of mixed feelings I was waiting to run off soon from. When my private time is missing for so longtime I start to become nervous. My private time is actually more private than my private, which is basically be on my own. My mother often said “your concept of freedom is so huge that totally sweeps others away”.

By the time I’m here sitting this post, a ray of a shy sunlight filters the clouds, already bursted: for a couple of hours it was raining and I didn’t feel guilty to have spent my whole day at home. I didn’t answer at the phone, I didn’t answer to an “hi” into the station from a guy I randomly met several times in Dusseldorfer’s pubs. I wanted really to be alone . Just for today. I prepared my cup of tea after longtime. My flatemate left to India for a pre engagment ritual, at home sink is broken I cannot use washmachine and washing my last 4 weeks luggages dirty clothes, a shocking electricity bill received last week have to be clarified tomorrow in the Stadtwerke. It was an hard winter, but 1.760 € as extra bill (to the ones already paid in 10 months) is totally crazy.

Bsides the ordinary, things go well. I canceled every travel programs for this year: I’ve so many extras trips every month coming without looking for them due to an unexpected sickness which effect a member of my family, I cannot plan anything this year in advance. We live week by week, waiting for good news. Tough weeks are coming. It was too easy these last years. Sometime when things go smoothly I have to think about the worst to resize life.

Just discovered Black and Gold by Sam Sparrow. As always happens, if I like a song, I’m able to listen it for so many times I get an hangover and at the end I hate it.

i looked up into the grey sky
and see a thousand eyes staring back
and all around these golden beacons
i see nothing but black

i feel a way of something beyond them
i don’t see what i can feel
if vision is the only validation
then most of my life isn’t real