The Marketing Store Worldwide (TMSW) is a global full service marketing communications agency behind some of the biggest and boldest campaigns in the advertising industry for brands as diverse as McDonald’s, Mars, Shell and Nestle using worldwide known licenses such as Shrek, Ice Age 3, and Kung Fu Panda.

We are extremely excited to partner with such a high-powered, creative, powerhouse in the Poken ecosystem.  To read more about this announcement, please check out our press center…

• Read More >> http://www.poken.com/pr/2010-08-30-temese

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Poken's CEO Stéphane Doutriaux receives the "CTI Certified" label

We can proudly announce that Poken S.A. has been awarded the prestigious « CTI Certified » label. This certification handed out by the Swiss Confederation’s Innovation Promotion Agency (CTI) states that the awarded companies are ‘ready for sustainable business development’. Start-ups that receive this label are regarded as the most promising, stable and sustainable businesses to have emerged out of the CTI start-up network.

To read more about this certification, please refer to our official press release. More information about CTI start-up can be found here.

Image: Bill Longshaw / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Not least of which, our Sales team is expanding!

We would like to welcome our most recent addition to the team, Vincent Dubi.   Having previously worked with some of the most renowned firms in the world, including Orange and MCI Group, he brings extensive experience in marketing, communications, and event/sponsorship management from both client and agency sides.   He tells us he got the crazy wonderful idea to join Poken because of the cool products and branding; to share his time with open-minded people from different nationalities; and, because there may even be a great success story at the end of it all – we definitely like this idea.

For now though, he’s most excited to “see how the B2B event customers will accept and promote our products and to see how far we can go with Poken among the different target groups.”  Fabulous, we’re excited about that too.  Poken is thrilled to have him as our new Head of Sales, EMEA and is looking forward to further establishing itself in the events and meetings world with his expertise.

So, say “Hello.”

Yep, this is Vincent – all serious – talking business in the Brand, Marketing, and Communications (“BMC”) Room with Steve, our VP of Product Management and Marketing.  Steve’s not in the frame, sadly – I was attempting stealth in the name of ‘candid moments’ – successfully, I might add.

And yes, Vincent does lay claim to one funky green alien spark.

There’s a fun side to us all.

We are happy to announce that Swisscom Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Swisscom AG – Switzerland’s leading telecom operator, is participating in a $1.8 million round, and will be represented on Poken’s Board of Directors by Dominique Mégret, Head of Swisscom Ventures, a seasoned executive and entrepreneur.

The Swisscom Venture investment and partnership are further validation of Poken’s fast-paced evolution as the market leader in social networking devices.  The new pokenEVENT service offering is gaining significant traction in the events and corporate networking space — helping customers such as Adobe, BMW, IBM, Microsoft and Tempo Music host powerful networking events.  In addition, event organizers such as PublicisLive — host of the World Economic Forum — have also recently used the pokenEVENT networking platform to help reduce the clutter of business cards and streamline the process for distributing digital materials at their events.

If you are interested in reading the whole press release, please visit our Press Center.

High-four!

The New Poken Cloud

There’s a big shift in the pokenverse this weekend! We are officially moving the Poken Member Hub to the cloud. Specifically, Amazon’s Cloud (EC2), the high-tech hosting platform built by the same team running the world’s largest e-commerce store.

Amazon’s EC2 hosting will bring Poken’s online capabilities to an entirely new level. The first thing you will likely notice are performance improvements. Accessing the site, viewing your contacts, editing your profile, etc, should be quite a bit snappier! Particularly for users in the USA or Asia. The list of benefits will be mostly “under the hood” as they say. Better reliability, ease of maintenance, and improved storage capabilities. The net result … we believe you will love our new home in the cloud!

There are other benefits to be realized in the future. Our engineering team can now create custom “instances” of the Poken Member Hub for development & testing, for larger events, and for VIP clients.  There are also great new tools for 3rd-party developers. The Cloud is all about scalability, and these EC2 features hold a great deal of promise. If you have some ideas, let’s talk!

The official move to Amazon’s cloud will take place this Friday, April 16th, between 5:00pm and 7:00pm CET. During this time you will not be able to log into the Poken Member Hub or access your contacts. We apologize for the inconvenience. We’ll try to make it as quick and painless as possible. The main poken.com website will be online for the duration, as well as our Support website.

We look forward to welcoming you this weekend on our new cloud!

Stephane and Dome at ADMS

About two weeks ago, Poken’s CEO Stephane and myself, from the Marketing Team, flew to the United Arab Emirates to support the distribution of pokens at the prestigious Abu Dhabi Media Summit (ADMS). The exclusive 3-day summit was an invitation-only event and welcomed about 400 chairs, CEOs and major business unit heads from the world’s top-tier media players as well as their new-market counterparts. The event organizer publicisLIVE had chosen Poken as their networking partner and provided all participants with an ADMS customized poken on their badge.

Besides the incredibly exotic venue at the Yas Hotel, Stephane and I were excited about the incredible line-up of speakers at the event: Eric Schmidt of Google, Rupert Murdoch of the News Corporation, Maurice Lévy of the Publicis Group and Josh Silverman of Skype, just to name very few.  The focus of the event was the challenges and opportunities rising from an increasingly globalized media landscape as well as the advent of new technologies and their effect on traditional media.

The Summit coincided with the official launch of Poken’s new product offer, pokenEVENT, a great showcase for Poken’s latest developments. Conference participants in Abu Dhabi enthusiastically used pokens during their breaks and evening networking.  The Poken booth was constantly busy with people updating their pre-registered accounts and peppering these two Pokenauts with questions regarding our exciting networking device.

Enough said. We’ll let the pictures tell the rest. Enjoy!

The Perfect Poken Accessory

For those of you just visiting or slightly out of the loop, we’ve been running a Poken Fashionista contest through our Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account. While our fan based turned out to be bit shy, a few brave souls took a shot at coordinateing stellar outfits with their favorite poken.

We’ll be sending the winners (below) their choice of any one of our limited edition pokenSPARKs in the East London Collection and a choice of any one of the limited edition pokenPULSEs in the UrbanPop by GabyGaby Collection.

So give it up to Warren Corpus and his amazingly cool Warren G get-up. He and his Lil’ G poken are ‘da hip duo’!!! Shelly A. Good-Cook – looking absolutely fab and gorgeous in her black & white outfit, topped with the ultimate fox poken accessory. And last, but certainly not least, the stunning Vanessa Dodd Swanepoel sports her ELC poken, Miki, with extra cool finesse – love it.

Thanks to all who participated ! Warren, Shelly, and Vanessa, please send your address and your pulse and spark preference to info@poken.com.

Have a great weekend everyone !

Ciao,

The Pokenaut Lovers of Style

Lift Social Business Card

Big news folks! Today we are introducing our first service offering, called pokenEVENT!

A pokenEVENT is a customizable event package that includes a mix of physical devices (pokens), a branded social business card, a branded networking platform (the Poken Member Hub), full post-event analytics, and more.

We built pokenEVENT specifically for event organizers, and the equation is simple: Poken improves networking at the events and helps them stand out in a crowded event space. Improved networking = greater customer satisfaction. The result: Increased repeat attendance, stronger word of mouth, and an additional compelling sponsorship opportunity!

Custom BMW Poken

The concept isn’t entirely new, Poken has been helping customers from around the world host powerful networking events. Companies such as BMW, IBM, Samsung and Tempo Music; as well as conference organizers like the Omniture Summit, Lift Conference, and Swiss ICT Awards. Each of these customers has managed to bring something unique to their events by incorporating pokens, and pokenEVENT, into their offering.

In addition to the pokenEVENT launch, we have also introduced a new Solutions section on our website.  Here you can find more info on pokenEVENT, customers, data sheets, and much more.

Check out poken.com/solutions for details.

If you would like to “pokenize” your next event, you can contact us directly through our Events team at events@poken.com.  We can also refer you to one of our resellers in your country who are equipped to provide you with direct hands-on support.  We are already running pokenEVENTs in the USA, Germany, Japan, Holland, South Africa and other points around the globe.

More information on pokenEVENT to follow.  Check out the website and please send us feedback!

Thanks again to all of our resellers, and customers who have helped develop this great new service.  We could not have done it without you!

Customized Member Hub - Lift Conf

Watch the full video below: