communication – Fennyblack

How to support local business: choose to buy local | After Covid tips

Fiori del tempo Artigianato Firenze

Think local.

It’s the first useful thing you can do in a critical situation as the current one.

Shops have been closed for a while, now they are re-opening little by little, hence it’s on us to help them.

Let’s think about the local shops instead of the giants or luxury brands that could survive also without the ‘general’ benefits. Local artists who show their handcraft, people who have worked for a whole life because of passion and roots, people who dedicate time to truly shape their objects, fabrics, clothes and so on. Choose to buy local.

Here you are an example of what I’m personally doing: trying to support local Florentine small business, as in the picture above with a wonderful handmade ring made with chalcedony, a variety of quartz.

Fiori del tempo, Firenze – Have a look at Instagram

You can have a lots of ideas about bijoux, nice jewelry, handmade jewels created in a small lab in the streets of Florence.

2. Estetica La montagnola – Have a look

Just for fun and help for this local small beauty center and nice cosmetologists, why don’t support them instead of those giant chains?

3. Local pizzeria and great artist too – Have a look to those pics by Miralou

Support local business – by Miralou

4. Choose to buy local. It works also for your favourite flower shop and that wonderful florist that always gives you more than flowers: stories, local tips, smiles and happy thoughts.

This is what generally happens when you try to connect with your neighbourhood and you get on well with the local people and their stories that make you feel part of the same story.

Then, if you’re sporty enough, choose to buy your accessories in the local shops. For example, for runners who wants to run also in the rainy days, I can suggest to buy specific running shoes, that may look like other sneakers, but they contain specialized technology to help you run.

5. My tip: Neverland Firenze – Running, trekking, Ski, streewear – Have a look!

Hoka – Neverland Firenze_ SHOP

Those are the proof of specific accessories bought in a local shop.

In addition, talking about food and upcoming Christmas, you will surely buy enough traditional cakes or pie, Italian panettone or something similar. Well, also in this case, you can choose to help foundations as for example:

6. File foundation that through The Party Society – a charity organization – helps to fundraise for several initiatives in favour of associations protecting women, children, victims of domestic violence, illnesses and so on.

This is the tasty panettone for this year:

You only need to think local.

#SupportSmallBusiness #thinkLocal

#NoteOfTheDay: Pure Love, Dolores O’Riordan ft. Zucchero

Wattpad – new #storytelling on the move

What’s Wattpad? Try to ask it to the new generations and teenagers and you will have all the details you need. It’s about the communication that is changing its way to provide stories to the world. It’s the new social network for the people who love to tell stories and use their mobile to do it. And share them, through the biggest community of readers in the world. Storytelling.

Wattpad - the social network for writers — Wattpad – the social network for writers

Through Wattpad people can write, share stories and interact with them. It’s a sort of blogging activity but you’re free to start your unlimited stream of consciousness – as only Virginia Woolf would start…

Stream of consciousness in a sketch :) — Stream of consciousness in a sketch 🙂

Its aim? To give users the chance to spread their stories in the world and become an official author or writer, even if not respecting the ordinary rules – as for example to write at least an amount of million’s crap or publish at least 10 novels and so on..

Wattpad - social network for authors — Wattpad – social network for authors

By the way, now there’s a new way to let your story be popular and meet millions of readers who can directly comment and share opinions with you. Just to give an example, Anna Todd has literally became one of the most popular author of the last years:

FROM WATTPAD SENSATION TO BEST-SELLING BOOK SERIES is written at the beginning of her website: she has been able to find the community she wanted, ‘a home really, with these people who were writing in the hours off of work, school, parenting, life, and I loved every second of it’ she wrote. And now she has hundreds of millions of reads!

The community of Wattpad has spread faster than you can imagine thanks to a new feature that wouldn’t be underestimated: the mobility. People can write while they’re on the bus, in the gym, on the sofa or while falling asleep: you can take your story with you everywhere and add pieces to a story little by little.

#NoteOFTheDay by Usman Riaz at TEDXBeaconStreet ‘Music & storytelling‘

Interactive Storytelling – Popular Apps to understand how it works

It’s a new trend that is spreading in the marketing and communication worlds. Storytelling or tell the stories is what commercials and newspapers do everyday, but now they’re doing it in a new different way. Interactive, because obviously you have to play with a story, live it and have an active role. Transmedia is the new word that we can add to the previous ones, and it’s worth to say that they go on very well: transmedia interactive storytelling, tell a story through images, pictures, videos, maps, people that you can experience and share.

We’re already in a cross-communication stage, because now the need is to reach people through several channels and make them feel into a total experience.

What I want to say is that it’s nothing so complex, you just need your story, your mobile – iPhone, iPad or whatever – and try to use the apps I’m going to list right now. That’s it!

Here you are some examples of what Interactive Storytelling is:

See New York Times – journalistic storytelling

A story about passwords in everyday life

We can’t see him but we can listen to his story through his voice, watch a series of pictures appearing into his image and showing us his story: we can feel his lost numbers story about the 700 people he lost in his company on September 11th. Just try to imagine…

Eleanor, who found a special protection in his husband shield number when he used to work in a police dept.

Her password is like a new story in her life, with her children, after her mother’s death: passwords, secrets, tears you can hear while she speaks.

Here you are some tips and apps you can explore that can help you to tell your stories: Medium, Adobe Slate, Pixotale for visual storytelling. Storehouse and Steller for basic tools to storytell.

New storytelling is the way we can interact with our readers, find your own way. Everybody has a story to tell, just choose to do it with all you can use: videos, pictures, labels, screenshots, signals, movies, cuts, interviews, songs, sounds, voices.

Fendi QuTweets for Christmas 2014, nice marketing operation

Here you are what happened. I’m gonna tell you about a cross-media experience I’ve just had while exploring Fendi world.

I decided to spend some days in Rome, it was too long I didn’t see the magic city, and even more time I didn’t have a walk in the city centre, near Via del Tritone, Via del Corso, too much time I didn’t get nervous by walking into the crowd of Rome.

Well, I was there for the perfect day, not only sunny, but also in one of the last weekend before Christmas, when all the people start to buy Xmas gifts. Well.

While I was walking, I got to Fendi and stopped in front of the most lively decoration I’ve seen in these days. I’ve always loved its way to communicate because generally its not to standard, and thinking that a luxury brand likes to enjoy the colors – as I’m going to show right now. Let’s discover little by little Fendi decorations for Christmas 2014:

They’re not penguins 🙂 but just little colorful birds that look like very social and happy.

And here you are one more picture:

Yes, there are a lot of birds all around a giant Xmas tree, Fendi Xmas tree.

And here you are another view of Fendi building (and store):

Firstly, I thought about this weird decoration, by thinking ‘How much social is it?!’..I was looking at all these little tweety birds among the bright bags which decorated the main wall of the building. Too weird, but happy and colorful, contrary to the rest of the conventional bright Xmas lights.

Once I was back home, I wanna look at Fendi website, let’s see the actual bags I’ve seen hunging on the building…let’s see this new collection and what it’s about.

And here you are what I read: ‘Fendi QuTweets’. I found again those Fendi-style birds, and also a nice video showing them flying all around the new bags, eating accessories and jewels.. nice Xmas operation: from the streets to the web. Maybe now it’s time to go the shop, isn’t it 😀 ?

Look at Fendi QuTweets video here.

Video about an Italian Radio: Radio Kiss Kiss

Just some words about this post: in the video, they talk about this new phenomenon of Cloud.
Actually it’s one of the most important Italian radio, Radio Kiss Kiss, based in South of Italy, Naples.
Actually, also the more ‘traditional’ channel of communication (that is not traditional anymore), has to compare with the new kind of infrastructure, the Cloud. In fact, radio speakers and managers talk about this moment of transition: how the radio is evolving and decides to base its business on cloud.

The language of the video is Italian, enjoy the video!

Crossmedia – Stories in between: narratives and medium @ play

Does anybody know about crossmedia?

A word that started to be popular some years ago.
A word that is a mix of CROSS and MEDIA, between media, among media, from a media to another. A word you can directly link to Henry Jenkins

Here you are a little world about this word, discover it if you fancy to know more.

It’s time to mention ‘Stories in between: narratives and mediums @play‘ – a unique text exploring the interplay between stories and media. The discussion focuses around the Myst narrative as it moves across media from games to books to comics to games. Along the way, the text also discusses the Sandman comics, and the hypermedia of Ultima Online and MitterNachtSpiel.

A text that has been created hypertextually to exist online as a website with an inter-related book. A text about story-telling and video-games. A text written by Drew Davidson, the person who gave me the chance to enter this world that now is a trend.

Enjoy it!