I recently visited a few abandoned and historical places. I also noticed some tours all around the world in places where historical shit happened. I live in Berlin (!).

Funny enough, this "trend" of discovering destroyed and sometimes morbid places now has a relevant name! Given by the photographer Ambroise Tezenas: Dark Tourism, this is the name of his photo album.

A few examples below, all credits go to Ambroise:

Sichuan, China

Shit happened in 2008

Sri Lanka

Shit happened in 2004

Dallas, USA

Shit happened in 1963

Chernobyl, Ukrain

Shit happened in 1986

Karosta prison, Latvia

Shit apparently happened until 1991 (didn't know about that)

And these are real touristic tours. You go there, you pay a fee and you are a dark tourist.

My area is actually a great place for Dark Tourism:

-A former Stasi prison, some former Stasi officers still live precisely in the surrounding buildings. They sometimes come and take the tours, just like you. And they sometimes mess with the guide.

-Some Berlin wall leftovers.

-Some abandoned Allies facilities.

-TONS of abandoned Nazi - then Soviet - buildings. I went to a former hospital and a former military school. These tours are not really legal. They look a lot like the Chernobyl area (see above). Even thought they have been abandoned since only a couple of years.

-Some concentration camps. A bit farther.

-And lots of other stuff I don't even know about...

In the US, you could also mention the "illegally passing the Mexico-USA border trying to escape the police" tourist experience. As well as the "being surprisingly kidnapped and molested for a few days" game. But this is a bit different as th shit it's referring to is still ongoing.

However, I'm not sure if I like the fact that a name is being put on something not so official. I really prefer these soft concepts which don't carry so much importance, than these hard words: Dark Tourism.

After reading "Dark Tourism", I really feel like I should choose my side:

Either considering myself as a Dark Tourist (mentioning this on my twitter description and so on), or just not being one and actually not liking them too much, cause they're different.

Obviously, the expression "Dark tourism" fits pretty well to this floating trend, that didn't have an official name so far (unless I didn't read about this).

But I liked it better when it was just a "floating trend" with no name.

Photos via: here, there and over there.

Tip via Pierre Martin

You may browse around this blog if you like.

But there really aren't 15 other lessons.

Today, as usual (not!), you'll learn how to use cutting-edge Community Management technics for the interest of your company or client.

For you Community Manager, it is always helpful - if not absolutely necessary - to see which topics are leading conversations.

Traditional Community Managers watch their Facebook Newsfeed and their Twitter timeline. But that's usually not representative at all of which conversation is driving your target.

Some other ones follow a shortlist of blogs via Google Reader and receive Google Alerts. They also follow public trending topics on Twitter.

But YOU are not a "Traditional CM". And YOU are worth better than a "Some other CM".

YOU are a 3.0 Community Manager. Oh sweeet, other new expressions between <strong> tags! and here is your lesson #16:

1) Go to Spotify.

2) Build a mainstream playlist. Really, take the stuff in the Top lists, for a dedicated target.

3) After a few weeks, take your playlist back and filter it (Ctrl or Cmd + F) with a few words of your choice.

Here we can see that "love" is a true trending topic on my own playlist.

While other standard words such as "blue" or "plane" seem like empty buzzwords...

We would intuitively say they're popular, but they're not!

4) Okay, this is barely relevant, but you can now tell what's in your community's ears while consuming you content.

And more importantly, you can call yourself a disruptive Community Manager, "listening" to your community...

...Perhaps.

Non, je préfère pas.

Non.

Non, parce que sinon...

Un matin, c'est certain, ton image me réveillera et me brisera un peu.

J’oublierai ce que je suis. J'oublierai pourquoi je suis fort. "Pourquoi je me suis mis ça dans la tête? C'est pas vrai, je suis pas fort". "Je suis pas fort", je me dirai. Je passerai à autre chose. Et puis plus tard dans la journée je me demanderai "Pourquoi je suis triste au fait à l’instant, c’est à cause de quoi?" Je réfléchirai et je me rendrai compte que c'est toujours à cause du même petit bris de moi, depuis le matin.

A cause de toi.

Pas vraiment à cause de toi, c'est pas sympa de dire ça. Même si je le dis juste à moi-même.

Mais à cause de petites projections. A cause de moi en fait. Je me dirai que "je suis pas fort, je suis triste et c’est à cause de moi". Et ce sera dur de remonter tout ça, parce que j’aurai oublié comment on remonte. Je penserai qu’à m’accrocher à toi pour remonter, tout au long de la journée.

Tout au long de la journée.

Je me coucherai avec cette idée de m’accrocher à toi et puis je me réveillerai avec ce même sentiment d’être encore brisé.

Parce qu'il faudra remonter tout ça et que je serai pas fort, je devrai m'accrocher. A toi, à quelqu'un d'autre.

De préférence à toi.

Et puis après pas mal de journées de merde comme ça, à me réveiller en petits morceaux. Mater le sol pendant 25 minutes. Me dire que je vais mettre des fringues sales "de toutes façons tout le monde s'en fout". Après pas mal de jours à faire la personne souffrante, qu'on prenne un peu soin de moi. Après pas mal de temps, je vais me faire des images avec quelqu'un d'autre. M'accrocher à quelqu'un d'autre.

Mais, je pourrai pas m'empêcher de penser au matin où finalement je me réveillerai cassé, plus de repère, plus de toi, plus de projets, plus de lien. Je penserai aux matins où je me réveillerai brisé. Et aux soirs où je voudrai m'accrocher.

Alors, non, toi, ça va pas commencer. Je suis pas disposé à te mettre dans ma tête.

Non, je ne voudrais pas par hasard sortir un soir, même pas juste pour prendre l'air.

Photo: Dan Mountford

Short notice about a tiny little trick I've done to try to find a job.

"Trick" is my shorten for "Campaign".

"Notice" is my shorten for "Post".

Objective (Why?):

- Finding a job within the Digital Communication field. Giving value to some Brand Image.

- Having fun, meanwhile.

Target (How?):

- People who have good friends in Ad Agencies, Gaming Companies, Innovative Startups, ... => Berlin's new economy landscape.

- These influencers do have smartphones.

- They like playing around, exploring what this device has to offer.

Dispositive (What?):

- My company was holding its annual Summer Party.

So I thought about handing over my CV during the party.

But in a confortable and still-elegant way. The Flashcode was the key.

Booooring...

We want pictures to look at!

So, of course, I carried it on myself. (Violet is my Company's color.)

I obviously look like a corporate asshole.

But this was meant to drive a bit more attention. And was fun. 

"Flashcode me" and you're lead to this page, where you can recommend me to your good friends.

In addition, I put a few papers all around the club, saying "This guy is looking for a job in Digital Communication. Here is his CV http://tiny.cc/hereismycv/ (with a flashcode instead of this link)"

Result:

- Have been f****coded a few times.

- Still had fun during the party. As a piece of evidence, I can't remember how many times I've been f****coded.

- Got 24 "Recommend" so far on my online application: http://tiny.cc/myapplication/ Hope they'll be valuable!

- Can do a blogpost about it, wuhu!

This is a bit of a bitchy show-off. And if I wanted it to be fully efficient, I perhaps would do it with other people than my current coworkers. But it was most of all for fun.

Coolway, a spanish cool clothes brand, is opening a store in Berlin, a german cool capital city.

Pretty cool, but their communication plan on that opening wasn't as kick-ass as expected...

Last week, a lot of pieces of cardboard were spotted in the center of Berlin. Alter-hipster area: organic lunchplaces, bike shops, IT offices. Cool targeting.

This included flash codes, was it some kind of city quest? Or just redirecting to the Coolway homepage? Any mini-advergame mechanic? No idea.

Seeing that, every alter-hipster was having the disruptive idea to impress his alter-hipster mates: taking these light pieces of art and putting them on their shared-flat's walls.

These tiny ropes made the job very quick and easy, even if alter-hipsters don't always carry a knife with them (while the rage-chavs or the trek-hikers do).

I would say the buzz is limited to alter-hipsters and their flat mates. (I mean who else than me is doing a blog post about that?)

And the flash code implementation was probably not worth it.

In addition to the locking mistake, there was also a planning mistake: the following video was posted on the facebook page 24 hours after the "street event". As pretty much all the pieces of cardboards were gone. Pretty not-cool.

Pretty not-cool either: the website isn't showing their list of stores until the user has chosen a Spanish region. No other choice than Spanish regions. Even in the English version.

Bad timing again.

This plan wouldn't had been that bad for an arty-sthetic stuff. But for a commercial purpose, that just doesn't work.

Or more exactly, hiring people whom job is to communicate would have made the campaign way more efficient. Both in terms of traffic and image.

I also advise them using language targeting for their facebook community management.

But - HEY! - what's up with other cool brands in Berlin's streets?!

Nike has done some nice rough posters. For some reason, we notice them from far far far away.

Its main communication competitor at the moment - Adidas - has endorsed the Urban Artist Series.

Here is how the vernissage at the West Berlin Gallery looked like on Friday. The exhibition will remain in there until the 23th of July.

Previous update on the same topic (french):

Sur le même sujet: Berlin: Histoire, Culture & Marketing