Octavian Mihai

INTRO Until a couple months ago we (Rock&Social) run a very complex operation into the local small business sector. Our intention was to sign social media accounts for most local business in historically high traffic streets in a city (Montreal). We have set up a simple client acquisition program; build and tested a production process with all [...]

Bringing Smart and Sexy Back: Pay-Per-Success Model in Social Media Advertising View more presentations from Octavian Mihai

This is a small series I prepared for our clients at Rock&Social. It is not necessarily news but it might help you get some insights. WE WANT LOCAL Everybody and their brother wants to go local. Small local businesses are under extreme pressures from various marketing and software companies. WHO IS CALLING YOU? So, you have [...]

Our bullshit detector gets better and better. Transparency slowly but surely takes more and more space in our communications, politics, business and pretty much in any other social endeavors. However gimmicks still work. The tail is very long… with believers in magic and empty promises. There was a time when advertising was based on strong [...]

Seven years ago, I was managing the interactive communication of Leonard Doroftei who was fighting for the Montrealer club Interbox. In may 2003 I was in Pittsburgh for the WBA/IBF lightweight title unification bout, a match transmitted live on HBO. As usual, I was sitting next to the ring taking random photos for the website. [...]

CORPORATIONS VS CONSUMERS Corporations are built around consumers. And naturally, consumers expect brands to revolve around them. However, many brands have consistently avoided, or fought hard to minimize, any contact with consumers. Consumer communications channels have always been limited. The few ways consumers could communicate with a brand were at the point-of-sale or though dedicated [...]

YOUR CHOICE You shouldn’t allow anyone to choose in your place. Ever. Everything you ever did can be traced back to some decision. Got late for a meeting, you decided to sleep longer. Failed an exam, you decided to enter a too difficult program or not to study enough. Got stuck in a boring and [...]

Here is another secret. Adults are a bunch of scared puppies. They might talk louder, but their back hurts. They have trouble sleeping. Stomach pain. Their neck is always tensed. They are always stressing out about stuff. They find in money the only way out. Every adult has a boss. Especially those who say they [...]

Here is a secret. There is no way out.  And that is so relieving. Your options are limited. Your mission is simple. Keep on living. Don’t be boring. Walk tall. Don’t live in fear. Get real. Choose. Cattle or cowboy. Smile. Stay a kid. Adults are boring imbeciles. Protect the weak. Support the good. Call bullshit. Don’t [...]

    If the nature of your business is changing, your business must change. As I’ve mentioned in Social Media and the Age of Agile Business Modeling, Social media is one of the forces pressuring the classical business concepts. Moreover, these days the nature of the corporation is in question. An agile business model is incomprehensible in [...]

You might think we live in accelerated times. BUSINESS SILOS Traditionally businesses have been organized in silos. Innately there is nothing wrong with the division of labor. Some common issues arising from working in silos are difficult communication between silos power struggles slow decision making even slower execution (when this implies silo-collaboration) Usually, work within [...]

    Your Twitter photo screams that you are the most important person in your life and you want everybody to acknowledge your emotionally stable, yet creative, exciting and important existence while life is passing by and you are still smiling for others, a smile that you hope will cover your backache when everybody you know pulls [...]

A NEW VENTURE Starting a new venture it’s always exciting. This time around, I have decided to invest in social media. Although, I am still passionate about strategy, advertising and business management (and Jaime Candy still provides these services), I became convinced that social media will give birth to the marketing agency of the future. [...]

[this is a cross-post from the Rock&Social blog] There has been some confusion lately regarding Rock&Social’s services. This post is meant to clarify some of the misunderstandings. We are not a marketing company. We completely understand all forms of marketing since in past lives we worked in traditional and digital agencies. However, Rock & Social [...]

The first step towards implementing a social media presence for your business is defining a comprehensive social media policy. Here are a couple obvious points to keep in mind when preparing a social media policy: 1. ENSURE IT REPRESENTS YOUR COMPANY VALUES AND BRAND PROMISE If your brand is about openness and blue sky then [...]

A MISSING LINK & A COMMON MISTAKE We all are part of several communities: family, friends, interest groups, work. All these communities have written and unwritten rules. A very simple unwritten rule is to be respectful and loyal towards your community. Otherwise you’ll very often be excluded from it. The concept of group loyalty is [...]

Clearly social media practices will invariably produce a change of business model in most industries. And still, it is not the time to call for a lexical change. One has to understand that unlike us, those who lived and died by the web for the past 15 years, most businesses are still having trouble grasping all the [...]

We have been talking about Social Media for the past decade and finally the market is ripe enough to bring real value to most players.  This post is intended mainly for those businesses who are considering entering the social media realm. Social Media is an umbrella term that represents the use of web-based technologies in [...]

The entrepreneurial spirit has two important dimensions: (1) to change and improve one’s personal situation and (2) to change and improve something about the world.  I’m currently advising a couple of start-ups, here is a list of points that don’t always get across. 0. One distinction: Freelancers are not entrepreneurs. A freelancer will always work less than an employee and an [...]

SELF-ACTUALIZATION VS STAYING RELEVANT Self-actualization (Know Thyself …) is a transformation that someone goes though in order to realign with his changing values, competencies and interests. On the other hand, staying relevant is a series of steps we undertake in order to keep aligned with the changing reality of the world. While self-actualization is about realigning [...]