A blog that is as random and incoherent as writing on a bathroom wall

Saw this today and loved it

Social media creative brief

Saw this from Griffin Farley at Propogation Planning and thought it was worth sharing - it is a collaborative effort aimed at generating a creative brief for social media - we are going to start using this and see how it works and evolves over the next few months - will keep you posted.

What are the campaign goals and/or communication tasks?
This is a very clear outline of communication tasks. This could include CRM, conversions, sales goals, awareness or good will for the brand/product.

What is remarkable about the Brand, Product or Service?
This area helps us ground the propagation campaign back in the product. Think about the Johnnie Walker, the Man who Walked around the World video when answering this question.

Who is the target audience?
Is there an audience that the client needs to reach to meet their business objectives? What is the action that this audience needs to act on to reach these objectives? Think of this audience as your aspirational audience.

Is there another group of people that has more persuasion over the target audience?
This group of people might be more likely to engage with the creative assets or act on the creative to influence the real target audience. Think about Great Schlep, Coraline or Oasis campaigns when answering this. Think of this audience as your inspirational audience.

How does the creative foster a social experience?
Is the creative designed to entertain, act as a branded utility, to challenge, to spawn user generated content, etc. Think about challenges like Nike Grid, experiences like Doritos Hotel 626 or the seed paper in the Haagen-Dazs Help the Honey Bees campaigns when answering this question.

Why would someone want to pass something like this to others?
This is an area to talk about social theories (i.e. custom or personalized, gift economy, peer production, random acts of kindness, pay it forward, etc) into why this creative might be shared and passed along among friends. Think about campaigns like Elf Yourself, Radio Head, NIN or Earth Hour when answering this.

What are the existing creative assets (if any)?
List the creative assets that already exist. This gives the creative a chance to use these assets in new ways? Ask yourself if new things need to be created to help extend the narrative. Think about the True Blood campaign when the agencies created a pre-story to existing assets when answering this.

How long do we have before the paid media begins?
This is a timing question that reminds us how to use Owned, Earned and Paid media appropriately.

What are the benchmarks and metrics will we be following?
This helps the creative team know if there are platforms that the client feels are most important to measure success (Acquisitions, Facebook or Twitter followers, video views, etc.). If the client doesn’t have specific metrics list the ones that you will follow including impressions, reach, interaction and most importantly sentiment.

All change at St Pancras

There is usually no joy in travel except the anticipation of the arrival at the destination and as I was sadly not going on holiday but rather to a meeting in the North Midlands it was particularly lovely to be greeted on the return from my travels (4 trains, 2 buses and 2 taxi rides) by the sound of live music. I followed my ears and found a small stand in the middle of St Pancras station dedicated to the discovery of new music. The idea is called “The station sessions” - then site describes it as “an international platform for music discovery, a unique series of events featuring the most talented, emerging artists from across the globe, hosted by the UK’s most innovative railway station, St. Pancras International” and the idea, whilst not new,  is exactly what stations need to wile away the time, delay your rush home and, in short, relax. The band were great and in the transformed opulence of the new station with the fantastic acoustics I found it uplifting and above all it put a smile on my face !
It made me think that other souless environments need a similar treatment - maybe stand up comedy in dentists’ waiting rooms or Karaoke on tube trains or opera at airports - I know this kind of thing always gets scrutinised when budgets and ROI gets involved but I can’t think of much more that the station can do to make me enjoy the experience, tell others about it and maybe next time get there a little earlier before my train departs to take in the ambience and enjoy the moment.

Social Media stats

Nielsen recently released some stats on their blog that make for very interesting reading for brands not currently investing in this space - some top line facts are:

1) Social Media Networks and Blogs consume nearly 25% of peoples time online (one in every four and half minutes online)
2) The world spends 110 billion minutes on social media networks and blog sites
3) The number of people who are visiting social media sites has increased by 24% over the last year
4) The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than they did a year ago (6 hours in April 2010 versus 3 hours 31 minutes last year)
5) Brazil is the top nation when it comes to internet consumers with 86% visiting a social media network (74% of USA internet users visit a social media network)
6) Australian users average the most time on social networking sites a month at 7 hours and 19 minutes (USA internet users average 6 and a half hours)
7) Facebook’s reach is the widest in Italy capturing two-thirds of the active unique audience in April (Which is higher than the English speaking countries USA, Australia and the UK at 60%)
8) Japan has the lowest reach of Facebook active users at 3%
9) Ameba the microblogging platform which is the Japanese equivalent of Twitter is visited by 38% of Japanese people online
10) Facebook is the worlds most visited social media brand with 54% of the worlds internet population visiting the brand

Shilling a Scientist

“This sort of conduct strikes at the heart of that trust which is vital if this very, very useful commercial medium is to continue to operate successfully.” - was this about PepsiCo or Minibus company owner Paul Barrett ?  It was actually said by a judge in a case successfully brought by Ebay against Minibus firm owner Paul Barrett (he was fined £5k and 250 hours community service) for bidding up prices on his own products but it could just have been about PepsiCo who have had a disastrous foray into the practise of social media influencer marketing with Science Blogs network.According to Wikipedia “ScienceBlogs is an invitation-only blog network and virtual community. It was created .....to enhance the public understanding of science.(and) hosts 75 blogs dedicated to various fields of research. Each blog has its own theme, specialty, and author(s) and is not subject to editorial control. Authors include active scientists working in industry, universities and medical schools as well as college professors, physicians, professional writers, graduate students, and post-docs” According to Quantcast It has about 1.1m visits per month 65% of which come from the US and if their comments and followers sections are anyhting to go by this group is hugely interactive and very influential in the Science field.
As such it is no wonder why Pepsi decided to get involved with them to push information on its Science, nutrition and health policy - as a result they launched the Food Frontiers blog which has the byline “This blog is sponsored by PepsiCo. All editorial content is written by PepsiCo’s scientists or scientists invited by PepsiCo and/or ScienceBlogs. All posts carry a byline above the fold indicating the scientist’s affiliation and conflicts of interest” - now there are other company sponsored blogs on ScienceBlogs but the issue that greatly enraged the followers of this network is that all posts on Food Frontiers will come from PepsiCo-scientists or PepsiCo-approved bloggers - and that to them (and me) makes it blatant advertising which should be marked and indicated as such so readers go into it with their eyes wide open. To be fair the sites defence is that this sort of corporate sponsored blog keeps the blogs going commercially and as such is needed and the naysayers are cutting off their nose to spite their face.
They are however voting with their comments and mouses (is that a word?) - so far their are 240 comments to their welcome post - and incidentally no other posts - the sentiment of which is voiced perfectly by “Pratchett” If there was a single thing you could do to destroy all that the various people who write for you have spent years building up, this is it. If you must cave to corporate concerns, which this indubitably is, then at least mark it as paid advertising, and retain some veneer of legitimacy as a result”
I am sure this issue will run and run as brands increasingly try and invade territories previously sacrosanct to get their message through and however worthy the intentions may be unless it is done with subtlety, skill and judgement this type of response will grow and grow.
What next ? BP sponsoring Florida holidays or Nestle Save the Orang-utan promotions !

“Taking stock of a miserable existance”

“On their deathbed, no one ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time with my business.’.” is a quote I find myself recounting (and hearing) a lot when trying to remind myself not to get too lost in work - and that doesn’t always mean always being in the office ! The modern “always on” society means that we demand, and get, information 24/7 and find ourselves checking emails in the middle of the night, in the cab on the way home after a night out and more worrylingly according to a recent report 11% of those under 25 and 6% over 25 would check emails and social networks during sex !
The pushback against these sort of conversations tend to reach a peak when certain life events happen - probably why the book “Fat, Forty and fired” (about an ad exec who moved to Oz and lost his job and decided to take a year off rediscovering his life and family) was so popular with a whole group of friends - I think it has been passed on more than any other book I own.So when i saw that the writer of said book Nigel Marsh was talking on TED I was intrigued. The video is 10 minutes long and full of interesting and insightful observations including “all I learnt about work life balance is that it is quite easy to balance work and life when you don’t have any work!” he does however offer
4 principles that he believes we should all follow which are not necessarily new but thought provoking. They include the need to take control over the type of life you lead and not let companies do it and to be careful with timeframe on which you judge the balance (but don’t leave it too long). His assertion is that if we all do this we can change society and change the framing of how we judge success making it more about “a life well lived” than amassing yachts and houses.
If you have 10 minutes it is worth a look and a bit of introspection - my take on it was an extension of the “take control” principle and make sure that you enjoy what you do and it doesn’t overtake you so remember that that status update can wait and the email can be actioned later - or in the words of Confucius “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”

To Twog or to Blitter?

I have found myself using Twitter more and more recently to share info and comment - There are 2 reasons for this firstly speed and secondly efficiency - speed because I don’t have to consider a detailed and well constructed point of view and efficiency because the Twitter account is linked to the Gravity site and my LinkedIn account so at least I know that I am not just Twittering to my 100 or so followers. For me this provides an interesting commentary on blogging - my increase in use of Twitter directly correlates with my decrease in blogging (as you can see from the slow down in blog entries!) BUT it also means that the blogs I consider are more thought pieces and commentaries on longer term issues which not only provides an interesting differentation in usage but also encourages consideration and reflection which I think can only be a good thing in the 24/7 “always on” life.
Anyway this thought has been brought on by a fascinating review of info and stats for Twitter on www.website-monitoring.com. There are a number of key points that jump out, these include:  55% female skew and primarily 18-34 age distribution at about 45% of all tweeps! Portuguese is the 2nd most popular language for tweeting in and 41% of people haven’t tweeted since signing up and 75% of tweets come from 3rd party applications or mobiles. 10pm – 11pm is the most popular time to tweet and there are 640 tweets per second. Sadly 24% of Twitterers have no followers - All this with only 175 employees !
So now I have managed to link Twitter and Blogging - what next Facebook and LinkedIn ? Now back to some more Twittering !

“Crowdsourcing” ....The Movie

I came across this piece of online genius yesterday and thought it was worth sharing - apparently it is the largest crowdsourced film of all time. It was all dreamt up by Casey Pugh, who sliced the film Star Wars into 15-second segments and asked fans and filmmakers to reproduce the scenes in their own style. Over 472 people responded, and the film, named Star Wars Uncut, has been re-edited back into a feature-length film. Earlier this week they released the first teaser and they plan to screen the entire Star Wars Uncut: A New Hope in Copenhagen at CPH:PIX ( bit.ly/aCvyeU ) Festival April 19 and have several screenings in NYC in the plans. General consensus around the office is that it is brilliant - some clips are rather too perfect and others are just v v odd
The conversation also got onto which film would you re-make - The suggestions were an illuminating insight into people’s minds…....

The multiple applications of social media

There has been a lot of chat about Chat Roulette over the last few months ranging from “don’t believe the hype” and “flash in the pan” to “Russian teenage millionaire” and “the next Facebook”. We had discussed this a few times in the office as a Client of ours was interested in getting involved and following in the likes of brands like French Connection and Gif Gaf who have been coat tailing the concept without any real thought or cleverness. We dismissed as 9amongst other reasons)  according to Techcrunch it is used by 89% males, 50% from the USA, with the next largest country being France with 15%, and 1 in 8 spins resulted in something R-rated ‘or worse’. BUT when I saw this from Ben Folds has been doing with it in homage to Merton it not only made me smile (or as one comment said “feel warm inside”) but also made me realise how immediately adaptable social media is. As Chris Brogan blogged last week Ben Folds video in front of 2,000 in Charlotte has ressurected his interest in the singer - he even bought one of his albums ! This to me is the beauty of the digital space and demonstrates perfectly how a brand can take advantage of these sort of ideas in social media and adapt them to their own ends - be that entertainment of selling albums his take on this works so much better than the coat tailers ! Watch and be entertained and learn.

Another political Twit and a lesson in website development

The Conservatives recently developed a website designed to fire flak at Gordon Brown the purpose of which was to spread using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The site, called “Cash Gordon”, was intended to highlight the Labour party’s ties to the trade union Unite, with the slogan: “Charlie (Wheelan) gives the cash, Gordon gives the power.” But it got a bit more attention than the Tories bargained for when hackers discovered that basic security measures weren’t in place on the page.Which reportedly led to, amongst other mischief, visitors to the site being redirected to pornography, or the Labour home page.Within hours they had also discovered that lines of computer code could also be included – and used those to link to pictures (including pornographic ones), YouTube videos, malware and, finally, to redirect visitors to the Labour site. At which point the site was taken offline and visitors redirected to a page on the Conservative party site about Whelan. The site was quickly taken down, although it’s back up again now and appears to have been fixed.
This “anatomy of a hashtag by Meg Pikard demonstrates it perfectly.
It will be interesting to see what other potential banana skins the parties encounter over the coming weeks.

The unstoppable force moves the immovable object

On the day that the internet turned 25 (The first ever internet address ending in .com was registered 25 years ago by a Massachusetts-based company called Symbolics) another very significant event was announced. According to Hitwise during the week of 7th -13th March Facebook overtook Google as the most visited website in the US with FB taking 7.97% of all traffic and Google 7.03%. This is the first time the monolith of Google has been knocked off the top since it overtook Yahoo in Feb 2008. Another report I was reading in a blog from from Nielsen throws even more significance on this as it shows that the average time spent on Facebook in January was 10% up at a whopping 7hrs 1 min 41 seconds compared to Google’s 2hrs 5mins and 19 secs (second place was AOL with 2hrs 14mins). Now I am sure weveryone will say - of course at this point as people use Google as a means to and end whereas FB is used as an end in itself and Google is a $130 billion public company with a super profitable business model that makes $23 billion in annual sales and FB is still a start up by comparison but it will be interesting to see what happens next - theories here include - will Google Buzz take off and start to challenge Facebook or the privacy brigade finally manage to persuade people that the ongoing changes are compromising them and we all leave FB in our droves - or indeed a competitor such as Foursquare steals a march and pulls the rug from under FB’s feet (unlikely as they seem to copy whatever anyone does) or as brands are overtaking people on FB in terms of updates and we all start using it less. Who knows all that we can predict is that the next few months cannot be predicted.

The joys of community..and running

Park run started with 13 runners in Bushy park in 2004 and with support from Nike, Lucozade Sport, London Marathon and Sweatshop it has grown to 1,833 events, 36,958 athletes, 227,270 races completed, with an ave number of 124 athletes per event and an ave 6.1 of runs per athlete 6.1 - in all over 1.1m km has been run across 32 locations in the UK - see http://parkrun.com/events.aspx for more details
I must admit I am a bit of newbie having only started running in the Bushy Park event from 2nd Jan 2010 in an effort to increase my speed for triathlons (having spent many a weekend jogging unpurposefully along the Thames.
I have been amazed at the numbers - Bushy park gets nearly 600 runners every Sat(even in deep snow attracted 300+ who all ran !) - the great feeling of community and camaraderie that exists that keeps up my faith in humankind and above all the organisation. Literally a few hours after the event I am sent an email with my time, how I compared to national average and against my age group and a link to my personal progress page detailing all runs completed.
Now I know this is nothing new but what is the most surprising is that it is all FREE - relying on sponsors, volunteers and helpers to keep every event going whatever the weather and turnout.
So what relevance does this have to this blog ? well I to me this truly defines what social media is all about - it lives on and offline - it creates a community with a shared interest and drives that interest - it creates, in the words of Paul Sinton-Hewitt ,“stories and smiles .....and more people enjoying more running, making new contacts and friends, more people entering local events and joining clubs”.
Paul recently emailed all those who have signed up announcing his intention to work for Park run full time and his conclusion struck a real chord for me:
“I wish to remind everyone that parkrun is a community-led project, that we will always be free to the runner and we will not change the model or ethos of parkrun. We have no commercial ambitions - we operate on a not-for-profit basis where any surpluses are re-invested into the expansion of parkrun and our existing events – and volunteering remains at the heart of our success, which is what makes parkrun events so special. parkrun & I are committed to delivering as many free, 5K, timed runs across the country as are wanted by local communities. Thank you to everyone. Happy running this weekend!”
So what can brands learn from this ?
That social media should not always be viewed as a commercial opportunity, that it needs to be respected, that people need to be respected and not shouted at - the brands involved in parkrun don’t shout at you they try and help runners and help make the events happen and the people involved do it mainly due to a passion for the sport.
A great number of brands can learn a great deal about social media just by following these principles.
Now how do I get my time to a sub 20mins…...maybe more Lucozade Sport or a new pair of trainers from the Sweat Shop or a top from Nike ??

Advertising has no fury as a woman scorned !

A few months ago,YaVaughnie Wilkins, the spurned mistress of one of Barack Obama’s top economic advisers,  exacted revenge by plastering details of her affair with Charles Phillips on giant billboard posters across the U.S. She is reported to have spent $150k on the stunt - hopefully she achieved her aim. However it appears that you don’t have to spend that much to get your own back
During the Superbowl this year Dodge Charger ran this ad obviously appealing directly to the millions of emasculated men watching the game. The ad was also viewed by a number of women - one of which decided not to lie down and take it but rather get her own back. Using her apartment as a set, a few friends as actors and armed with a creative script knocked up in one afternoon she produced this lovely response.
The response now has nearly 200k hits in YouTube compared to 900k for the original ad but I am guessing that the original ad cost a lot more than 4-5 times more than the viral !
It appears that you can get your own back without having spend a six figure sum.

When social media attacks ...again…..

As more and more companies embrace and use social media it is inevitable that the list of **ck ups will grow and grow but this one is a corker from Vodafone (thanks to econsultancy) - in short is appears that a rogue Twiterers in VUK posted a homophobic tweet to their (atthe time) 8,500 followers - the reaction was swift and decisive all of which is detailed in the post - what I think is most interesting is that Vodafone have replied publicly to the post (see Dan Bowsher 8th response down) where he concludes “We’re committed to Twitter as a channel for delivering customer support and are always looking for ways in which to enhance our online support services. We’ll take onboard the experience of last week and we will absolutely use it to fine tune our approach moving forward”
Whilst I applaud Vodafone for embracing social media and indeed using Twitter as an effective customer service tool it appears that they have fogotten the point of the service - obviously everyone understands that these things happen but if they had come out with complete transparency indicating what had actually happened, apologised in a unreserved but human manner they could have easily moved on and killed the story ....instead it rolls on - it will be interesting to see what happens next - maybe they should ask Vernon Kaye to host the service for the day !

Social goes offlne

Last week Man City played Man Utd in the Quarter finals of the Carling Cup - the game was shown live on BBC1. The game featured digital advertising hoardings around the pitch which (amongst other) featured Umbro the Man City kit manufacturers - nothing new there - except the ad featured a call to action ‘Follow us at twitter.com/umbro’. We reviewed this as part of a project we are running for a large lager brand as it showed a good example of integration of social media with traditional offline media which there is no doubt is going to become a mainstream phenonmenon over the coming months. What was interesting was not the fact that it happened - after all Umbro are an active brand in social media - or that they neglected to include a call to action - “Follow us on twitter.com/umbro for free shirts / tickets / boots etc.- but rather how ineffective the activity appears to have been. From our analysis the activity added no more than 200 extra Followers from the period starting at the beginning of the match and ending 4 days later (to allow for those who saw it and thought they would follow soon after). Now of course there could be a number of reasons for this - the lack of incentive, maybe people were watching in the pub or maybe they are simply not “Twitterers” but what it does show (for now) is that the jury is still out on whether social media can integrate itself effectively in offline media ?

Another resolution emerges on Twitter - 9 to go !

“Location, location, location” was the 7th entry in our recent bog of “Social Media Resolutions for 2010” and yesterday (Jan 26th) Twitter announced the addition of “Local Trends” - this will (in their words) “allow you to learn more about the nuances in our world and discover even more relevant topics that might matter to you. We’ll be improving this feature over time to provide more locations, languages, and data through our API”. - so in essence know what people are talking about in your city rather than the World generally.
I had a look at the function and although it currently only displays 15 major cities (mostly US with London being the only UK city) it promises that they are working on more. It was interesting to see the difference today between Worldwide and London trending topics with only Apple’s new tablet and #nowthatsghetto being the only consistent topic.
Suddenly everything feels more local and everyone has more of a chance to create a trending topic that would have no chance Globally but could take on in London - Nandos featured for a period of time today !
We will certainly we playing with this over the next week or so to see what effect we can create - right now I can’t wait to see if Davina enters the Celebrity Big Brother House tonight (not!)

One prediction already seems to be happening !

It appears that only 19 days into 2010 and one of the resolutions cited in the 2010 resolutions report is already set to happen ! - according to technology researcher Gartner revenue from app downloads will reach £3.7bn by the end of 2010 and rise to more than £17.6bn by 2013 with the number of applications downloads to grow to approx 21.6 billion in 2013 (currently 2.5 billion). This may not seem like new news but if the kind of applications that have been developed recently by Nike are anything to go by then I am convinved that the figure will be higher than that.

Nike launched the True City iPhone app yesterday claiming to “Make the hidden visible.” The app provides hyper-local, real-time information for 6 European cities by combining expert curation of news and events info, crowdsourced information discovery, push notifications, QR codes printed and posted around the city and apparently a little Augmented Reality. If the reviews are anything to go by with words sch as “slick”, “cool”  then I suggest that anyone wih an iPhone checks this out

11 Social Media Resolutions for 2010

The advent of 2010 seems to have brought with it more “top ten 2010 predictions” than I care to count so we thought we would focus on what this means for brands for 2010 including some strategies for how to take advantage of the opportunities and counter the “watch outs” - please feel free to plus or challenge

1) LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN: The scholar William Arthur Ward once wrote “before you speak listen, before you write, think..” and never has this been more relevant than this year. With the plethora of open source tools available from blog search tools to buzz tracking and message board and Twitter search tools to social bookmarking, feed aggregators and search data there is no excuse for brand managers and their agencies not to have even a rooftop view of how their brand or service is viewed online. This, coupled with the developments in social search that Google and Microsoft are planning meaning that the results can often be viewed in real time (and most especially using Twitter) and the increasingly sophisticated and informative means of understanding a landscape for your brand or service means if there is one resolution that you make this year make this the one. Incidentally we have now completed 9 “Social Media Landscape Reports” for different Clients who have been so engaged by the results that we are now working with them to develop strategies based on these learnings. I think Brian Solis sums it up “Everything starts with listening and observing in order to maintain relevance to the very conversation we wish to reach, learn from and inspire”

2) THE YEAR OF MOBILE: After a number of false starts this year really will present a threefold perfect storm for Mobile: a) Handsets: the relentless rise of the smartphone pioneered by Blackberry and driven by iPhone coupled with the rise in use of netbooks and more recently the recent launch of Nexus One 3 billion downloads from the iPhone App store and it is predicted that there will be over 300k iPhone apps available by the end of 2011. The applications give the phones a whole new World outside of calling, texting and surfing making them used in everyday life - this makes them a prime opportunity for brand and services to get in front of people in a useful and engaging manner. Some brands are already all over this – just look at Stella Artois’s use of Augmented Reality and mobile in Le Bar Guide . So if mobile doesn’t feature in your 2010 brand plans then I suggest that you add it in quick.

3) SOCIAL MEDIA PERVASIVENESS: My 2 last blog posts of 2009 “When social media attacks” referred to how companies like Eurostar, media tycoons like Simon Cowell and celebrities like Tiger Woods can be bitten by social media - this concluded “..no brand can afford to ignore the power of social media, and that goes through the entire organisation not just the marketing department..”. This will become increasingly the case as joined up thinking and authenticity become necessary when all the marketing in the World can be undermined by simple HR, customer service or just bad luck. In 2010 all companies need a long hard look at themselves to honestly check if there are any grounds for complaint or potential issues and develop a crisis plan for the elements that they can’t control or foresee. Conversely think about all the touchpoints that you have with your consumer and how these can be used to make yourself more accessible and use social media to not only start but continue the conversation.

4) CONTENT IS KING: As the “Attention Economy” tightens its grip brands will increasingly have to become useful, interesting, entertaining or just simple in their communications and interactions with people (see the Stella example in the Mobile point above). Social Media provides the perfect opportunity to address this as it becomes the place where most people are spending an increasing amount of time - according to Imedia “Facebook is the fourth largest website in the world in terms of unique monthly visitors. However, it blows all the others out of the water when it comes to time spent on the website - apparently an average of 5 hours and 12 mins per month. Users on second place Yahoo averaged three hours and 23 minutes”. HOWEVER brands beware - simply adding a Facebook fan page or Twitter account is not enough - the presence has be considered and planned - we use the Forrester POST principle to ensure the solution is not coat tailing these social spaces but instead uses them with consideration of the need of the user and the brand.

5) COMMUNITY MATTERS: Back in June 2008 we blogged (Enjoy Salsa? Live in Brighton? Check out Anderstand) about the weird and wonderful variety of social networks and since then the increase has continued - Wikipedia features a list of over 150 of the major active social networking site, Ning now have 1.9 million Ning Networks and over 40 million registered users and LinkediN has over 55m users - it seems communities are now here to stay. This of course offers a perfect opportunity for brands to infiltrate and use the relevant communities to reach their consumers but as Seth Godin says “What I don’t like online is the superficial networking. It doesn’t count for anything”. Remember it is a marathon not a sprint and YOU WILL BE FOUND OUT if you try and short cut this. 2010 is the year when brands should be pinpointing the relevant communities and forums for their brands and developing a strategy for how they can get involved, add value and ultimately become a valued and respected member. From there huge opportunities exist for reaching out to these valuable consumers to interact, engage and learn…and vicariously sell to them!

6) PRIVACY: When Eric Schmidt infamously said “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” he managed to not only irk whole swathes of the online community with responses in blogs, sites and forums but also entirely miss the point about people’s concerns about privacy. This has not been helped by Facebook’s announcement late last year re: privacy the sentiment of which was “We want to earn your trust by being transparent about how Facebook works” but the reality was far more divisive to many resulting in posts such as this . The fact is people want all the benefits that social media brings in terms of sharing and discovering but none of the downsides in terms of disclosure and this needs to be considered by every brand entering this space. So it is essential to ensure that every company has a defined and transparent privacy policy in place.

7) LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION: The beauty of social networking has been based on the ability of creating a virtual connection between people with similar beliefs, hobbies, backgrounds etc. in the words of but as says Techcrunch says “location has the power to bridge the gap between social networking and actual social interaction….and services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, and Google Latitude are leading the way”. With Twitter about to launch a new feature that makes it location aware and other services not far behind there is huge opportunity for brands to focus their messages to those they really want to reach be that by country, city or even street!

8) INFORMATION OVERLOAD: I tweeted this week about theWeb 2.0 suicide machine - which apparently has since been blocked by Facebook – the sentiment of which was that the benefit of disconnecting from “so many people you don’t really care about” and “Unplugging from your social life online will leave you more time for your real life, which you’ve probably been neglecting”. Obviously this was a bit of fun but it does underline a bigger more sinister point – people are being overloaded and 2010 will only see this increase to the point where there will be a backlash.  Linking to the other points about privacy and community brands need to carefully consider if they are part of the problem or part of the solution. This means thinking holistically about all communications ensuring there is a consistency (see point below on “making it personal”) and you are no bombarding your consumers with messaging.

9) MAKE IT PERSONAL: From Google announcing its developments in personalized search to the BBC
letting users personalise their experience across the entire site 2009 and Forrester predicting that “The future of The Social Web” will be portable identities that will transform “marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising” personalisation will be a hot topic in 2010. Brands should be looking to consolidate their data and investigate taking advantage of the increasingly sophisticated software systems that exist to really understand their consumers and deliver personalised solutions across all their communications and activities.

10) SOCIAL GAMING: Farmville, the popular casual game on Facebook boasts a current 69 million monthly active players, making it the largest Facebook application by a factor of more than two to one over the next highest competitor. Their daily active players count is now up to 26.5 million, which apparently is bigger than Twitter is big business with people happy to pay up to $100 of cold hard cash for virtual currency – indeed Playfish, the London startup behind Word Challenge and other online games that EA have just bought for $300m, generates more than $75 million a year in revenues, mainly on virtual goods. This demonstrates how popular social gaming has become and the inexorable rise in popularity of social gaming is something that brands should consider in development of their social media activities in 2010.

11) MEASUREMENT MYOPIA: The last point is perhaps the most important – that is ensure that everything you do is not only measured but monitored throughout the campaign not just once it is all over. There have been huge debates this year about whether social media is measurable with factors such as return on invested time, return on objective, return on participation, share of voice and so on all being touted and the debate will continue through 2010 and beyond. I would recommend that brands ignore the majority of these debates and approach investment in social media as they would any other marketing or indeed business activity. As detailed above the Forrester POST acronym is a good starting point – namely understand the People you are hoping to reach, set an Objective, plan and develop a Strategy and choose the relevant Technology(ies) – I would add Measurement and Evolve to this – ensure with any social media activity that you undertake this year that KPI’s are set at the start and that the principle of evolution is applied as opposed to always worrying about ROI. After all the beauty of social media is that you can change it as you go along indeed you have to!

So there they are - “light the touch paper and retire” as they say – there is no doubt 2010 is going to be a very exciting year in the World of social media best summed up by Charlene Li of Altimeter “Social media in 2010 will cease being the shiny new object and instead become part of the everyday lexicon of business”. We strongly advise you to select at least 5 of the points above, consider them carefully and develop a plan, (and if you need any help I am sure we can help) if you don’t just remember the quote from Cluetrain Manifesto   attributed to a “Veteran of a firm now freefalling out of the Fortune 500” who famously said “The clue train stopped there four times a day for ten years and they never took delivery.”

When social media attacks - an update

Following yesterday’s blog post it was interesting to see this post from Endaf Kerfoot in LinkediN’s Intelligent Social Media Group comments which berates Eurostar for sending this email after all the porblems they have had recently - in his words “The question is - does ANYONE in their marketing team have a brain to be sending marketing emails out at the current time (without so much as a reference to how they have royally screwed up these past few days)? Or, to turn this into a discussion, how should brands respond in the digital sphere when faced with PR catastrophe? Would YOU send out marketing messaging as if it’s “business as usual” in a time of unprecedented stress for your customers?
It will be very interesting to see the story unfold online over the next week or so and see what they ave in their plans to address this in the New Year.

When Social Media Attacks

This week has seen a “perfect storm” in the World of social media - With Rage against the Machine pipping X Factor’s “antichrist weaned on the wolverine teats of the tabloids” (as one of my friend’s described it) all the news has been buzzing about people power, or rather the power of social media with nearly 1m FB friends proving their point. From my point of view it was great to see the power of social media finally reaching the mainstream (hopefully with lots of Marketing Directors watching)  but perhaps more interesting has been the recent troubles of Tiger Woods and Eurostar. Tiger has become a brand in his own right over the past decade which has made him a billionaire and ambassador for brands such as Nike, Gatorade and Gillette he has also used social media to great effect with a personal webpage (which includes a blog) a Twitter account (albeit with 3 entries directing people to his webpage (but with over 16k followers) and a flourishing FB group of 1.4m fans who receive plenty of updates and news about Tiger where in their words they “encourage you to leave comments and links here. However, we will remove any comments or other content that is inappropriate or offensive or otherwise violates the TigerWoods.com Facebook Page”. This is all well and good however since the recent events he has effectively turned his back on his fans - there have been no posts and comment on any of these sties (other than a crafted press release) and the FB page has been blocked - not very friendly !. Eurostar have also been a proponent of social media with their recent “little break big difference”  campaign/ which included a Flickr account, a FB group plus discussion wordcloud however their recent own “imperfect storm” with 5 trains trapped in a tunnel and 3 days of no service they have been roundly criticised by the very media they have used for their lack of meaningful dialogue in social media prompting a “non mea culpa” from their social media agency ” “We Are Social.. They have since implemented a crisis plan and are ploughing their way through the multitude of questions, comments and libelous accusations.
I guess the adage about dancing with the devil could be levelled but here’s the rub, nowadays no brand can afford to ignore the power of social media, and that goes through the entire organisation not just the marketing department, and if you are in the game then at least (like Eurostar) you have a platform for response and an understanding of how social media can be used to combat the negative and turn it into a positive.
Are you listening British Airways?

And finally a brand that really does get it !

There is a lot of chat about Clients (and agencies) jumping on the Social media bandwagon - in our experience this usually results in a brief involving “Do facebook” or “Tell me what I can do with Twitter?” now there is nothing wrong with this as long as they are willing to back track and clearly explain the rationale - that way we can ensure that the outcome matches the objective or intention - we find the POST approach as outlined by Forrester works best ie People / Objective / Strategy and Technology (in that order). So it was good to see a campaign that IKEA ran recently to promote new store opening in Malmo. In short using nothing but Facebook’s built-in and readily available tagging features, IKEA was able to gain hundreds of new ‘friends’ and fans, and virally spread the IKEA catalog offerings to thousands of Facebook profiles. They did this by creating a Facebook profile for store manager Gordon Gustavsson. Over the next 2 weeks, 12 pictures of IKEA showrooms were uploaded to his profile. Facebook friends of Gustavsson could ‘tag’ the items in the photos with their name and literally win the product. the activity became highly viral and as word spread through profiles, newsfeeds and Gustavsson’s page, mor ad more people became friends with him.

Although this did not achieve huge number of views and he did not gain vast numbers of friends plus apparently according to http://www.contently-managed.com/blog/2009/11/26/why-ikeas-social-media-stunt-wasnt-a-huge-success/ it did not acheive a positive ROI but it did follow the rules - it took into account the fact that people were on FB, it enegaged and interacted with them and it used the right technology.
Just looking forward to the opening in Putney now !

Check out Social Media Sharing Trends 2009

I recently looked at Social Media Sharing Trends 2009 the conclusions were rather interesting:

- The top channels of sharing include, email, instant messenger, social networking sites
- Email and IM continue to be the most popular mediums of sharing
- Facebook rules the sharing in the social networking channel
- Twitter is growing in popularity but is still just 5% among social networks.
- Only 2% of shares happen over Bookmarking sites.
- In the Email channel, Yahoo Mail is the most preferred, followed by MSN.
- Google’s services like Google Bookmarking, Google Talk, and Gmail, are lagging in their respective channels when it comes to shared content
- LinkedIn, as a networking site, ranks the lowest when it comes to social media

A brand that really doesn’t get it

I went to watch England take on Argentina in the rugby this weekend with a bunch of mates at Twickenham and experienced a new low for English rugby - I am not referring to the standard of play - it was pretty dreadful but I have seen worse - but rather to the woeful attempt to “launch” the comeback of the English purple shirts.
When we sat down there was a card left on every seat which announced the return of the shirts worn by the famous amateur teams of the 70’s and 80’s and asked everyone to hold up the card after the National Anthems to spell out “wear it proud” - everyone duly obeyed and to all we could see was the Nike “swoosh” at the South and North stand. The response from the crowd around me was one of immediate disdain resulting in ripped up card or cards being thrown in the pitch.
I was told after that the stand I was in did spell out “wear it proud” but by then the damage was done - in the days of transparency and respect for the consumer this sort of stunt really shouldn’t happen and has resulted in far more negative publicity than could ever have been achieved by the exercise.
Brands really should consider very carefully how they approach this sort of activity and Nike really should know better!

Speaking “geek” to the masses

I have read a lot about the forthcoming launch of Google Wave and although not fortunate enough to be sent an invite I have read a number of independent blogs (unsurprisingly Google overloads their first 4-5 pages with Google referenced material!). The blog opinions seem to vary - from “it is like a new mobile phone with no one to call or text” to the fact that poeple believe it will become a “conference staple” and replace Twitter - the main conclusion seems to be in the words of web worker daily “It still has way too much geek cred to dismiss outright.” I looked on the site and found a confusing and long intro video so it was hugely refreshing to see that they have also produced a very entertaining video on You Tube to explain it better. It uses the famous scene from Pulp Fiction where Samuel L Jackson uses, in the words of wikipedia , ” a baleful “biblical” pronouncement”.
It is not only entertaning and memorable but also works well to explain something that is complicated and detailed. Watch it here and see what you think.

Finally a brand that (nearly) gets it!

I don’t currently bank with First Direct but have been alerted to their superior service by a number of friends and colleagues so I thought I would check out the site. They claim that “we don’t shy away from feedback so we would love to know what you are thinking” and they do seem to live this principle - I expected to see mostly positive comments but there were also some negatives - mainly around interest rates and some customer service issues.
The site is really interesting and addresses most of the cynicism I had about their being just another bank - I really like the “live feelings” which shows floating “+” and “-” with the claim that 72.9% of responses are positive, 7.71% are neutral and 15% are negative and the ability to expand and play and group these symbols BUT no ability to click through and read the comments - maybe they were worried about people naturally always looking for negatives?
Similarly the “live feeds” section allows you to “expand and play” and you can see the words that people are using BUT again you can’t click through to see the posts and that brings the credibility into question.

I think this is where they are missing a trick - to be truly transparent you need to follow through the promise. Recently we ran a forum for one of our Clients Imedeen where we received more credit from the community for overtly showing negative posts than for the positive posts - I guess people want to challenge brands in social media and found glitches in their supposed transparency.
So in the round First Direct do “get it” - this is even backed up with their £100 if you like us and £200 if you don’t with seemingly no strings - and are miles ahead of other banks and indeed other so called socially media literate companies but I would really like to have seen them being upfront about the negatives and then posting a response outlining how they are going to address the negatives.

The Saviour of magazines is….video?

Can you remember the last time you bought a magazine from a newstand or shop? nor can I (excepting the one I get delivered monthly for a fraction of the cover price) after all why buy when you can get more interesting, accurate and varied information online? - I guess this points towards the the reason for the huge decline in magazine readership - and the much discussed death of the print medium so when I saw an article in the WSJ (online edition) I was unsure whether this was a last gasp effort at “advertainment”, an attempt to create Word of Mouth or just a gimmick to try and woo back cynical advertisers (or all three!)

The story was about CBS’s recent attempt to achieve standout in Entertainment Weekly using what they term VIP or rather “video in print” which involves embedding a video player in a print ad that works like one of those audio greeting cards - opening the page activates a quarter-inch–thick screen player which is a viewable through a cutaway between two pages - you can see how this looks on you tube here. The ad, which will only be seen by subscribers in the New York and LA markets, plays about 40 minutes of video.

According to various reviews it “plays full-motion video at a crisp resolution” and despite what appears to be good audio quality there are no volume controls so watch out on the train. Apparently this comes at no small cost - the ballpark dollar cost for one of these video units is in the “low teens,”
This is not the first foray into challenging magazines to enter (or rather challenge) the World of web 2.0 - a year or so ago Esquire magazine tried it with The E-Ink display which drew a muted response - from disdain to the slightly more positive with most writing it off as a publicity stunt.

On the face of it this appears to be a genuine effort to provide more interesting and valuable content for the reader and a great opportunity for advertisers to reach out to consumers in a more interesting and rich way - on a wider scale the technology provides for interesting application both within the print medium but also on a wider level - from cereal boxes to in-store media.

However unless the costs come down significantly I cannot see how this will take off other than a gimmick - unless of course the porn industry gets hold of it!

Burn after Tweeting

There was a lot of furore this weekend when in a moment of doubt and introspection Stephen Fry self proclaimed “British Actor, Writer, Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blogger” threatened to walk away from Twitter because of “aggression and unkindness”. this was followed by Katie Price who broke down in no-more-than-140-character sections, telling her “haters” to just attack her and get it off their chest (her words).
It seems that now that Twitter has reached the mainstream it is the must use method of communication for a “celebrity” to stay in the public eye but they are all unprepared to deal with the backlash which Mr Fry’s 938k followers exacted on him.

The same principle is true for brands - few have found a useful way to use Twitter a good example being Habitat’s fateful foray and some have made a huge success of it such as Zappos with their 1.5m followers they have successfully used social networks such as Twitter to build a very successful business.

We have recently completed a project for one of our Clients that involved an analysis of a number of Twitter based campaigns including T Mobile, Walkers, Dell and Skittles and the overriding conclusion was that people are pretty fickle - the most successful way to build followers was a prize draw or competition - indeed Moonfruit came top where by simply giving away 10 laptops and asking people to mention #moonfruit they generated 55k Tweets and a buzz of up 15k mentions per day, it also accounted for a significant sales boost.

I guess the challenge for brands is how they can grab hold of the zeitgeist and integrate themselves in a productive and intrusive way into the conversation - right now the biggest topic is unseen prequels where “People are tweeting made-up titles for nonexistent prequels to different movies” - there are approx 1,000 tweets per minute right now ranging from “Batman and Robin The Curious Years” to “The Devil Wears Primark” - I wonder how a brand like can integrate itself itself into this - prize for the most innovative / make the actual movie ?

“I sell products not advertising”

Dave Trott’s blogs on Brand Republic are always interesting and today’s was no exception - in it he recounted how a tube driver’s amusing announcements cheered up his day and outshone the majority of D&AD ad entries that he reviewed that day - in his words “What he did started my day off really nicely. There was no reason to do it. He wouldn’t get paid anymore for it. None of us would buy more tube tickets because of it. There was no financial benefit. No material incentive. So, in advertising terms, why do it? It couldn’t be justified. And we don’t do anything that can’t be justified, ultimately, in financial terms” His point was that maybe is not always about selling but rather that “word-of-mouth is the best media you can get”.

Shock horror .....an advertising God acknowledges that there are often stronger routes than advertising.- albeit unknowingly. It reminded me of a quote from another Ad God -Don Draper in Mad Men - ““I sell products not advertising” - back in those days there were only a small number of channels to reach an audience and advertising was about shouting at people to buy a product - whilst this has changed beyond all recognition the objective is still the same ultimately we do always sell it is just about considering the channel for delivering the message. This is precisely why it is not always about shouting at people but rather a considered and consultative approach relying on the understanding and subtley of the messenger. Call me a cynic ..who knows? maybe the tube driver was told to cheer people up to deliver better customer service and extol the virtues of the much derided tube or maybe he had a postive feeling about TfL because of better HR - the point is now we need to consider every touchpoint to ensure that the consumer has no reason for negativity and that includes every level of the chain - after all the new World of Marketing means there are now so many places to talk positively or negatively about a brand maybe even the great Don would be presenting a WOM campaign !

Social media killed the website (star)

Do you think your time online has increased over the last few years? I am sure that the answer will be a resounding “OF COURSE!” and I am sure that when asked what you were doing I am sure the answer will be “Durr social media stupid” (or similar) BUT have you ever stopped to consider the effect on your online behaviour elsewhere?

I always assumed that the rise in time spent online had a knock on effect to other sites from news to information based to educative or fun but apparently this is not the case.

A recent post on Supercollider that was highlighted on http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/ talked about “the end of the destination web and how the times are fading for websites and microsites are dead” In the post there are some great Google trends graphs that show that some of the best known brands in the World are losing visitors at a rate of knots - see here the example for Disney.

Digitalbuzzblog have cited 2 reasons why they believe that website traffic is declining, firstly that social networks (obviously) are growing and most people prefer to hang out there instead of searching the big brands websites for content to interact with and secondly that off-site content distribution is rapidly growing so naturally this removes unique visitors from their main sites. I would add that the main reason is that brands have not fundamentally grasped the reason why people use the web - for entertainment, information, conversation and participation - 90% of sites out there don’t deliver on this - they are simply brochurewear, a brand information depository that adds no value to the user and hence provides no reason to visit in the first place or come back.
Some brands are, of course, acknowledging this - we always use Nike as the best way of creating social utility with sites such as Nikeplus and the Ballers network - both great examples of a fantastic insight flawlessly delivered.
The sooner that brands understand and embrace this the sooner they will start becoming relevant to their bread and butter consumer.

What is the fastest growing company in the World?

Starbucks? Tata? “Some Chinese or Indian tech company” - these were the results of the straw poll I conducted in the office this morning,

According to Fortune BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) is the World's fastest-growing company, apparently the Canadian firm recorded average yearly revenue growth of 74% over the last three years,and average profit growth of 84% over the same period. Since 2006, RIM has provided an average 45% return on its backers' investment.

This growth is directly driven by the huge rise in demand for smartphones in the last three years.- it now has 74% of the business smartphone market and recent reports indicate that the BlackBerry now outsells the iPhone in the US. Interestingly Apple also features at 39 which belies their sucess recently due to the huge base it is growing from.

With smartphone sales representing the fastest-growing segment of the mobile devices market surpassing 40 million units,- a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year they have recently become the “phone of choice” for everyone from high powered International businessmen to sutudents which have apparently adopted them in droves - mainly down to unlimied access to personal email, free contracts and according to some even to cheat in exams! it will be interesting to see if this growth is sustainable but with the exponential rise in social networking through phones, applications and announcements such as Nokia recently announcing a partneship with Microsoft and Apple relaxing its association with specific carriers such as O2 in the Uk it looks set to continue

Music for nothing and your TV for free…

Over the last few years Social media has grown at an exponential rate. The founders of Facebook, Myspace, Youtube and twitter could not have foreseen the uptake, or the impact that they have on popular culture. With elections being contested, news of earthquakes alerting the emergency services and fan bases emerging from the broad to the niche, social media is a new defining force in our everyday lives.

This has meant that some things which in the past we have become accustomed to purchase, have been forced to go free - nowhere is this more visible than in sites such as Spotify, Zattoo and lastFM, plus of course file sharing sites like BitTorrent,, Graboid and Napster.

Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail” recently penned a soon to be best seller, “Free” (which incidentally if you visit his site http://www.thelongtail.com// , you can download for free) in which he argues the free model has a basic premise - offer content for free, then up-sell to your consumer the benefits of purchasing whatever it is they have taken.

The free model in music was taken to a whole new level in 2007 when Radiohead released “IN RAINBOWS”, the first totally free album, downloadable from their web site - it was a worldwide success, but fans didn’t just want a digital copy, instead 100,000 people pre-ordered the album and original EP’s at full cost and the physical CD still sold 1.75 million copies worldwide, which puts them alongside Lil’ Wayne in proving that making music free digitally doesn’t necessarily impede sales. Interestingly despite the album being available to download for free on Radiohead’s website, 30,000 Americans paid full price to get “In Rainbows” from iTunes in its first week of release (go figure!) - it was Radiohead’s second largest selling album in over fifteen years.

Each of these free sites subscribe to Anderson’s model - Spotify do offer free music they do offer a three tier model - free music, with an audio advert every five songs; pay £0.99 advert free for a day, or £9.99 advert free for a month. The site has over 30 million users, 1 million from the UK alone.

Zattoo is free TV over the net. No more paying your TV license, and with more channels subscribing every month, it’s soon to be a force to be reckoned with – at present digital MPU’s are the only distraction however I am sure that there is an income generation model coming soon.

File sharing remains extremely popular. It was estimated that over 2 million files are shared every day. TV programs, music, Films and so on. A legality question ensues, and sites are being taken to court every year and being forced to close down, but you have to ask, are you, the user just as responsible as the administrator sharing those files?

What remains is this. The net will continue to grow, and whilst technology will develop and allow us to continue benefiting from free forms of entertainment and purchases at faster and less intrusive ways, the models need to adapt just as well. The free model can’t continue to be sustainable forever. Independent sites will need finance and advertising to keep going, which could be to the detriment of your viewing/audio pleasure; big retailers can only give so much away for free, you will eventually have to purchase items and services, to keep them in business.

But what makes this truly different is the landscape. Businesses now have a choice. Attract new customers by giving them what they want for free, gain loyalty and then start to sell. As for the consumer, if they truly want something, they too have a choice.

As Chris Anderson says, “you can listen to music for free, but going to a concert has never been more expensive”

Don’t hate the player, hate the game

I have waited for months now to write a post with that title and when I saw a campaign that Nissan ran recently I found the perfect excuse. In short to promote their new car, the Cube in their words “they avoided the usual mainstream quadrangle of TV, radio, print and billboard to trumpet their car launch” and instead used a social media led campaign targeting the creative classes to spread the word according to Jeff Parent, Nissan Canada’s vice-president of sales and marketing “The creative class is what’s motivating everything these days they are the ones that other people coalesce around. Creative people make their art to infect others. For us, it was a natural fit.”

In short five hundred finalists were assigned a blank webpage on Nissan’s hypercube.ca website and invited to creatively “audition” for their chance to win a free vehicle - one of the winners award winning Canadian artist Greg Sczebel ended up generating more than 4,000 votes and 21,000 profile views.
So what is the point in the title? - well the point here is not the campaign - it is not particularly innovative or different - but rather that a huge company chose the launch a new car in this manner and spent (according to them) a third of the amount they would normally would for a car launch of this type as PHD’s Rob Young says “The thinking here is that you could spend $5 to reach 1,000 people in a TV commercial at a relatively low level of involvement, or spend $5 reaching 10 people at a high level of involvement. The high level of involvement – if you get the right consumers – is a better payback.” My issue is that that this is not a UK based campaign (it is from Canada) and it is by no means normal and the reason is not because of agencies not presenting these ideas (I am convinced that any agency worth its fee will be pushing social media activation wherever relevant) but rather that Clients at best do not understand the opportunties afforded by this approach or at worst are not willing to embrace the myriad of opportunties that are available in the new media landscape and “think outside the cube”

So the conclusion has to be fairly aimed at Clients to raise their game - and that although the risks are high, so are the rewards, as Ice T says in the aforementioned song “If you out for mega cheddar, you got to go high risk” but I am sure the rewards will be worthwhile.

How much do your friends mean to you….and to anyone else?

The latest edition of Business Week carries a fascintating article about the value of friendships not only to us but also to companies how by analysing the closeness of friendships and associated behaviour a great deal of useful information can be gleaned about that person and the opportunty they represent.

One part that particularly struck a chord was from a study that is being carried out by Cameron A. Marlow, a research scientist at Facebook, who has studied social media communications including wall posts, shared photos, pokes, and friend requests among 200 million people to determine how close we are to our friends online. According to the article “They looked at how often people clicked on their friends’ news or photos, how often they communicated, and if the communications travelled in both directions. Studying this data, they determined that an average Facebook user with 500 friends actively follows the news on only 40 of them, communicates with 20, and keeps in close touch with about 10. Those with smaller networks follow even fewer”

The conclusion to this is obviosuly that in order to make sense of the opportunity to drive WOM then the focus should be on the closest friends ignoring the wider group - as they say “By focusing campaigns on people who interact with each other, they’ll likely get better results”.

I think the opportunity does differ by product as I know I have a small group of close friends with which I will discuss certain brands and products in detail I also have a slightly larger group of friends who are experts in certain areas - wines, holiday destinations, bikes, technology etc. BUT I also have a much wider group of acquaintances with whom I will discuss either very specific issues with eg a new laptop or music system (as they are perceived to be experts in these areas) and this is is where it becomes an awful lot more complicated.

I guess as a brand or company trying to tap into this the key is coming back to the traditional method of understanding your consumer and their decision making journey and where and what degree of influence the friendship group carries on this journey.

Do you Wordle?

Writing a good presentation is always a challenge that takes time, skill, and great content but the biggest challenge of all is making it interesting and there are fantastic resources out there that help not only hold the attention of the audience, but also interest them and make them want more - http://www.wordle.net/ provides a perfect resource to create and interesting first page. Have a play with it - I have directed it to look at this blog and it developed the word cloud displayed here - I guess we talk about social media a lot then!

How dirty is your mind?

Apparently according to Irish bank RaboDirect” Life is more interesting when you tell the truth” and they have launched a viral to support a website that does just that - a place “where you can confess your truths read confessions or get things off your chest. Up to you.There are 5 categories - Money, Relationships, Personal, Professional and the obligatory ‘Other’ for the stranger ones among you.” I had a look through the “confessions” and most are pretty tame and a little boring even - the Sarah Beeney one was funny. Overall I like the approach- it works well with their “straight talking” proposition and the involvement of their staff work well at adding a human face to the brand plus they seem to be getting some traction judging by the forums and the increase in chat online BUT the videos are boring (they could have had a lot more fun with these) and it feels like they could have gone one step further and linked the viral more directly to their brand and product offering or related their offering to the areas eg insurance or cover for accidents that people confess to or some of competition for most juicy/honest confession with a financial prize eg. money in a bank account to escape the consequences or pay for the damage etc. That way they also have some sort of follow up.
Interesting (and probably inevitable) that the top 5 are all about sex!

Everything you need to know about Social Media-in one place

Last month I was invited by UTalkmarketing to attend a round table discussion on social media with (their words) “some of the UK’s biggest agencies, brands and experts in the world of social media.” the full article is included in “an unmissable ezine” which you can download here - as they say “It gives you everything you need to know about social media - all in one place!”

My take out from the discussions was encouragingly everyone involved agreed that social media was not just another channel but rather a whole new opportunity for brands to get involved in in a huge number of ways - from listening to learning, embracing to engaging and talking to energizing - the reality check was that there was a general lack of knowledge about the opportunties and concern about the potential fall out.

Personally I think this can be overcome by not creating such a halo of complexity and black magic around the area but rather talking about how easily social media integrates and enhances more traditional marketing - that way it is not seen as a step into the unknown but instead a hugely interesting and exciting opportunity.

Have a read and let me know what you think.

Ning, Facebook, Twitter all showing growth as social media marches on

Nielsen recently published its regular review of what is going on in Social Media land the highlights of which were the 2,500% rise in Twitter and the fact that FB has now overtaken MySpace as the most visited Social Network (69m montly visitors for FB v 56m for MS). There was also one other very interesting fact - Ning, which according to Mashable recently announced that more than one million social networks including Twitter Moms group with upwards of 13,000 members, the This is 50 fully branded social hub for 50 Cent's 400,000 adoring fans, and Ning's MuggleSpace, where 15,000 plus Harry Potter fans gather together - is now the 2nd fastest growing social networking site with traffic up 283 percent YOY.

It’s not all about digital and social media!

In these challenging times “getting the attention of the consumer” has become the most consistent and clearest part of most of the briefs that we receive and all channels are trying to achieve this. As a result social media has become the buzzword of the moment in many Clients’ HQs and agency office with varying degrees of desire, aptitude and ability to deliver on this still nascent medium and it was with this challenge in mind that I was invited to attend a round table discussion on social media by Utalkmarketing an online community for the marketing industry (more about that soon). Anyway, after the session, with the lively debate still bouncing around in my head I walked up Tottenham Court Road to a new business meet (about social media) and came across 2 great examples that restore my faith that it is not all about digital. The first was very simple but very attention grabbing - a six sheet poster (picture top right) for “The Boat that Rocked” that incorporated a loudspeaker playing the voiceover trailer for the film including parts of the soundtrack and a sampling van for Vitamin Water that featured a spin and win device based on moods and a free sample for everyone - this was so popular there was a queue of consistently 40+ people for the 30 mins or so I observed the activity for. I know it is not scientific or new news but still encouraging to see not everything happens online!

We’ve found Wally and he’s just around the corner!

Google officially launched Streetview last week to much controversy and general public indignation about privacy with numerous stories from reports of images showing a man being arrested in North London, another going into a Soho sex shop and one throwing up on the pavement in Shoreditch and that the UK Google Chief’s house has been deliberately not included. On the flip side this has been regaled as a revolutionary development with what it offers in real World mapping - after all when was the last time you were lost and the map made no sense and you wished for a proper look at where you were? The stories and conspiracy theories will continue BUT the most important development for us was that Richard in the office found Wally just down the road on Putney High Street - some things never change!

Are you a NOOB or a GURU?

I read an article yesterday that really struck a chord talking about web 2.0 / social media and different people’s levels of knowledge and how they view others from this perspective. The essence of the article was, in the words of Joel Postman “Some social media “experts” and veterans look down on social media “noobs,” aka newbies, or newcomers. (The word “noob” comes from l33tspeak, an early hacker “language” now popular among some social networkers.)”

This is something that everyone who knows a little about social media has (I am sure) been guilty of but is absolutely against the principles of social media - after all the clue is in the name “social” - namely that no one knows everything about everything and the point of web 2.0 is about sharing, passing on and commenting on information.

I found this particularly pertinent on a personal level when I recently undertook a search for information on new Asics Kayano trainers and wanted to know if I should get the 14s or 15s and all the info online proved very useful (the 14’s are best btw) and I am currently looking at multi room wireless audio system that is less than 4 figures and social media is proving a hugely valuable resource- on a professional level we recently won a pitch for Racing UK and getting under the skin of the racegoer/ watcher was key to success - social media was invaluable in gaining this understanding (indeed part of the challenge is now setting up their own social community) and for another pitch for a large financial services firm where the challenge was to present how social media could be used to help sell their product in to a new target group understanding the social media profile of these targets was key to the response.
So I guess the point is that we are all gurus in some areas and Noobs in others and the web is there for us to learn from others and social media means there are plenty of teachers out there!

How to buy a blogger

I wrote a while ago about Alltop - a virtual magazine rack - and how Guy Kawasaki was doing some great things so it was with much disappointment when I saw Guy’s latest blog entry in his blog entitled “How to change the World” all about an Audi R8 and how he had been loaned the car for a week and in return ...well apparently nothing….but in reality some great coverage on his blog, lots of pictures and a discussion about what car he would get next….A Q7 it seems from the blog. Whilst I think the R8 is a great car and would love to own one it seems that the strategy of influencing influential bloggers has led to the point where any blogger however well respected and followed (like Guy) can be bought. Maybe.
I am being too much of a purist but surely the point of a blog (especially one called “How to change the World”) is to share your thoughts with your readers and the blogosphere generally and not to be influenced by outsiders in return for a cheap thrill - but then again maybe this is a sign that blogs really are becoming the newspapers of old where a few well placed complimentary favours are rewarded with complementary copy!

Challenger Agency Tactics

Came across an great article on Ad Age by Milan Martin of Gyro International in New York entitled “A Few Steps to Help Your Challenger Agency Thrive” which made some very interesting points - read the article in full to get the whole story but the main points were:

Be better suited to create big ideas
1) Be better suited to create big ideas
2) Don’t hide your creative people
3) Offer skin in the game
4) Share the hatred

He concludes “All in all, it’s business as usual for us challenger agencies. These are the things we do in good times, as well as bad, to show our clients that there is a better way. As we would tell our clients, from crisis comes innovation and change.”
We couldn’t agree more with all the points and would add - the ability to be agile, keep your finger on the pulse of what is going on and consistently deliver great Client service - I am constantly amazed how the bigger boys just don’t do this for example how many big agencies practice what they try and preach about the importance of new media by writing blogs and setting up their social media profiles???

The time seems right for poacher to become gamekeeper.

Ever wondered how often you “get busy” with someone….. or yourself!

I blogged in the past about weird social networks but then I saw this site and things really can’t get any weirder!

As Springwise describes it “Bedpost is an entirely personal application, password-protected from the prying eyes of others, and stresses that it offers absolutely no social networking features. Rather, it is a way for consumers to keep track of the sexual encounters they’ve had by logging in and entering some key details after each one. Users begin by creating a profile for the partner involved in their most recent encounter and then clicking on the calendar to indicate when the encounter happened. Then, they enter not just the time it happened, but also how long the encounter lasted, some descriptive tags and a star-based rating of the experience. The site then records all that information and presents it in a map of activity for the month on the user’s dashboard. For a historical view, Bedpost tracks summary statistics including frequency, average rating, and totals for the month and year so far.

Hilariously “Solo sex” tracking is also available! Sensibly (and I guess pretty integral) they have been very specific about privacy and data and instead of hiding the privacy policy in a link at the bottom of the page they have made it very clear on the home page. There is a point that all the data is kept by third party companies so they cannot absolutely guarantee that your closest darkest secrets don’t end up in a skip or worst still in the inbox of your closest friends!

Advertising can work!

Every now and then the role for good old fashioned advertising is reaffirmed - either by inspirational creative (Honda’s impossible dream or Cadbury’s Gorilla) tapping into a zeitgeist (see the new Virgin Atlantic ads) or fantastic media placement to which I think this ad placed in the Sydney Herald this week is a fantastic example…Nuff said !

And your chosen subject is….. “The Bleeding Obvious”

In Fawlty Towers Basil Fawlty famously told his wife Sybil “Stating The Bleeding Obvious” would be her specialist subject on Mastermind and this sprang to mind when I read ft.com's recently published an article entitled “Social networks threaten advertising growth” following the The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, “Social Media Futures” report warning that advertising agencies face growth of just 1.2 per cent a year by 2016 if the industry fails to tackle the changes to the media created by sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Much of this is not new news…certainly amongst people who work in the industry who can see the increasing divide between agencies who do and don’t understand and embrace the new media landscape.

What was interesting was that Moray MacLennan, IPA president and chief executive of M&C Saatchi Worldwide cites in the report that “The current downturn will accelerate these trends in agencies as everyone is looking to innovate and stand out from the crowd” - showing that one of Peter Kim’s predictions of 2009 (as per the Gravitythinking blogspot entry on 23rd December 2008 is already coming true!

Of course the bigger point is that all agencies that claim to provide marketing services to Clients should be considering social media as a matter of course and not just as a media, as this report suggests, but rather as a method of communicating with their target audience and that can only be done effectively by (paraphrasing Kevin Roberts in Lovemarks ) - telling a great story - and in turn contradicting him - that does not always have to be via a “Great 30 second commercial”

We look forward to the months ahead!

Social Media predictions 2009

As a regular reader of Peter Kim’s blog “being Peter Kim” I came across his paper entitled SOCIAL MEDIA PREDICTIONS 2009 which is a collaborative selection of various points of view on the industry and its potential for 2009. For me 4 immediately stand out namely:

- Recession will mean the huge potential to achieve a lot with dwindling budgets will mean that social media will be expedited - as per the entry by Ann Handley ” - or rather as she puts it “low cost social media (will) look like the pretty girl at the ball”
- Metrics are to become essential to prove the affect and stave off the critics as per article by Joseph Jaffe “We’re going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate ‘commitment’.”
- Leadership - as Rohit Bhargava says “you may not always start the year as a leader, but you can certainly finish it that way” so we are all now pioneers and adventurers !
- Finally I also found Todd Defren’s article to be interesting - as he points out “the tipping point has not only been reached but could still tilt away from social media” - this is an area that we strongly believe in - namely that social media needs to be integrated into all the campaigns that we conceptualise and create if it is to be accepted and taken as seriously as it should be - after all if we really just trust each other as this chart from Forrester shows then the future surely has to be (as Josh Bernoff touched on) to focus on energizing using word of mouth and supporting customers to help each other –rather than what most brands do - namely just talking and telling consumers!”

I have been Satan, Beelzebub and once I was Asmodeus

I am of course referring to the 7 deadly sins of social media article published by James Clark co-founder of Room 214 and featured on their website called capture the conversation

It is worth a read and I am sure that very few involved in the area of social media can read it without a shiver of recognition and regret and a “note to self” to ensure that they reform before the note (or post) comes from someone else!

It would have been good to see a few moore examples of where companies or individuals have strayed, in order to make the sins come alive, but maybe he does not want to incur the wrath of those people or show his own greed .
Have a read and decide if you are “Saint or Sinner”.

Who would you slydial?

I was recently introduced to a new service that initially I found fascintating but on reflection (and at the risk of sounding like Jeremy Clarkson) it makes me despair for humanity.

The service is called Slydial, a new technology that allows you to leave voicemail messages for people without them knowing that you’ve called. On the site they give a few different situations where they thought that the service would be useful including the practical “When you are short of time”, the spineless “when you want to avoid an awkward conversation” and the crafty “when you want to avoid someone” - they also proffer some scenarios such as when you want to play the field more effectively and leave all your conquests a VM rather than an impersonal text message!

Slydial looks like a great new technology that is mostly designed to bring out your inner coward and take over another sacred part of your space - so I am sure it is only a matter of time before we start getting messages from brands on our voicemails - maybe Nike asking me how my last run went or Innocent reminding me to stock up next time I am at the supermarket.
Anyone have any ideas how brands could use this to their (and their consumer’s) benefit?

The POMBOMB - good or bad viral?

I was intrigued when sent a link to this site where i was introduced to the latest high tech “iPhone killer” - named the Pomegranate (Blackberry?) Phone - the clever and slick animations are fantastic - the phone claims to shave your legs, brew coffee, project video in full HD, translate and even turn into a harmonica - the interesting reaction I had was that whilst I knew it was a fake viral I wanted to see more about what the phone did and have a guess as to what the pay off for the “the ultimate all in one device” - we even had a vote in the office - was it a soft drink? a business service? a website? a new “Rampant Rabbit”?

It turns out it is a site to market the wonders of Nova Scotia featuring video vignettes telling stories about residents and why it is a great place to live / visit etc. Apparently this cost the Canadian tax payer over $300k and there is lots of debate and costernation from Canada’s bloggers about whether this will pay back - although judging by the number of people talking on Twitter and Alexa shows the site to be growing in visits daily (it is currently ranked 68,000th from 290,000th) so in my book this is $300k well spent and a creative way of getting interest and attention to something that I would otherwise ignore - especially as visits are coming from countries as far afield as Germany, Italy and India plus the US and we all know they don’t travel anywhere let alone Canada!
Have a look and let me know what you think

Never ending friending with John McCain and Stephen Fry

I have recently made friends with John McCain, Sarah Palin and Stephen Fry - none of this reflects my political persuasion or sexual orientation but rather shows how pervasive, democratic (‘scuse the pun) and voyeuristic social networking has made society - it is fascinating seeing that 30 people have recommended John and only 1 (that is one)- who incidentally is John McCain, has recommended the lipstick’d pitbull AND I know that Stephen (first name terms now we are “friends”) is currently filming in Africa and loves F1 and Lewis Hamilton (via Twitter). This anecdotally backed up some research I read last week from TNS, TRU & Marketing Evolution called “Never ending friending” which shows how social networking has caused a quantum change in how we interact – with each other, with bands and brands, and with the entire media landscape. Perhaps most importantly it also details a
set of best practices that will govern behaviour in this new world - this should help me understand how I interact with my new found friends - I am just waiting for Obama, Hilary and the original “6 degrees guy” Kevin Bacon to accept my “friendship”

At last!.... A great viral

Generally virals have become a bit old hat and have largely been overtaken by more techincally complex and interesting solutions but every now and then you come across one that works brilliantly to not only engage the viewer and hold their attention throughout but also to get the point, send it on to everyone they know would love it too and be intrgued as to why it was done and who did it - and this did all those things for me - I LMAO (especially at the Barbie part and the credits “all of the toys featured in this film were played with” ) and sent to all my other thirty something friends and colleagues and I am hugely intrgued as to who did it, why it was done, when the follow up might be?

Consumers with attitude (CWA)

I was researching for a presentation when I came across this great video by Neistat Brothers about Apple’s dirty little secret - great video and pefect soundtrack in NWA’s Express Yourself (ahhh…. the memories of hot sweaty clubs back in late 80’s) and it reminded me of the Vince Ferrari’s AOL story and Jonah Peretti trying to get Nike to put the word Sweat Shop on custom made trainers and their subsequent refusal back in 2001.

Brands are now making every effort to use the social media space from corporate blogs to use of Twitter and Flickr fourms to forums and Facebook Groups but they still get caught out - there is an excellent list on Jeremiah Owyang’s A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media

Does anyone have an example of where a brand has dealt with this sort of thing in a positive way ?

...and the Olympic Gold for the social media goes to…

Apparently the 12 global sponsors of the Olympics have spent over $6 billion for ads targeted at the Chinese market alone but according to the Wall Street Journal it is the brands using ingenious social network based activity that are showing some real results.
Guerilla activity from companies such as Volkswagen with “Honk for China”, and Pepsi with “Everyone can be on the can for China” shows tha social media is fast becoming the experiential marketing of the Athens Games.

Of course the Global sponsors are hitting back with Coca Cola’s Design the World a Coke, McDonald’s Lost Ring activity and Lenovo’s Olympic competitors blogging platform as well as Samsung and Panasonic with photo and video uploads but according to Paul French, founder of Access Asia, a market research firm based in Shanghat, writing in the LA Times “Everyone thinks everyone is an Olympic sponsor,”

This dilution and clutter have left some analysts wondering whether Olympic sponsorship—or even advertising at all during the Games—was worth the hefty fees. Eastman Kodak Co., an Olympic regular for decades, said this would be its last Games sponsorship. Computer maker Lenovo Group also is dropping its global partnership after Beijing.
It will be very interesting to see what London 2012 brings!

Brilliant simplicity

This year there was another large increase in entrants to the Cannes Lions and the Promo Lions category in particular was up 40% to over 1,100 entrants so I was particularly interested in what made the grade. One entry in particular caught my eye (can’t think why!) which made Bronze was from DDB in Auckland for Durex Performa.

According to their objective “Durex Performa condoms are designed to help men last longer in bed. Each condom contains benzocaine, a mild anaesthetic, allowing blokes the peace of mind that when they go to bed with a woman, they’ll last the distance. Durex wanted young New Zealand men to know about the launch of this amazing new product.”

Their solution showed brilliant simplicity - they created ‘Last Longer’ pillowcases, emblazoned with the bare head and shoulders of a uniquely ugly woman striking a seductive pose and instructed guys to place the pillowcase over a pillow and lay it at the head of their bed prior to sex.

Giving a good presentation

According to the winner of last year’s “World’s best presentation contest ” on Slideshare “25% of Chinese population with highest IQ’s is greater than population of North America” and “China will soon become the number 1 English speaking country in the World” which means that “shift happens” (that was SHIFT). There are plenty of other intersting facts manipulated from different ways of looking at figures and lots of fans (635k plus views and over 60k downloads) and cynics commenting on their take on the presentation but I think what makes the contest and the past winners and current entries more interesting is to observe what make a great presentation.

Agencies often moan about having to send over presentations or talking them through over the phone and this is often completely legitimate as they want the chance to say their piece and passionately sell their work, but it is a great discipline to get into when you must make the presentation sell itself using words, pictures and designs and a lot of these presentations do it fantastically (see meet Henry)
I think far too many agencies have great intentions when it comes to planning big presentations or pitches and fall back on lame Powerpoint (see Death by Powerpoint ) and this contest proves that a lot can be communicated with “a good story well told”.

Although when it comes on to the actual presentation we must always remember the rest of Mark Twain’s quote “....that is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself”

How can agencies be better at social media?

The Wah Report by Jared Roy is always an intersting read and I was particularly interested in an article publshed recently titled Social media demands a reinvented agency the premise of which was that agencies are simply not set up to deliver effective social media campaigns becuase they think and act in campaigns rather than a longer term committment and also in straightforward creative rather than iterative creative development.
He concludes: “An agency’s new role in social media will be to maintain a brand’s presence and extract various benefits that a brand should receive from making a social media commitment. To do this will require redefining the media agency’s role. It will be far more consultative. It will interface with more facets of a client’s organization. Tapping into all the ways an effective social media agency can deliver value to marketers, will set apart this new breed of agency. The skills required to coordinate effective social media management will command the margins required to support Madison Avenue.I see some shops moving in this direction. Do you? Who is the closest? If you are an agency or a brand that feels you are moving towards this type of relationship, tell us!”

A lot of what he says makes sense but I think he lets the Clients off the hook - yes agencies are set up to deliver campaigns and creativity usually on an ad hoc basis because they have to make money to pay the executives salaries and keep the network behemoth happy BUT that is also the way Clients want to work with most agencies and social media seems to be a barrier they cannot overcome and therfore dismiss out of hand withour proper consideration.

In my experience it is best approached as being integrated as part of another campaign, properly tracked and assessed and then based on success it can be viewed seperately in future activity to both be part of an run alongside all future campaigns.
However maybe the main barrier is that agencies are not prepared to rock the boat ....or do not know how to!

Social Media in Plain English

I found this interesting film the other day which simply and clearly outlines “Social media in plain English” - it is well put together. My only cynical thought at the end was what he did not show was how Big Ice Cream Co got their act together and bought Jarrett’s ice cream shop and reduced their prices to the point where the local residents could not make it profitably and then sue everyone who tries to make their own new flavours that are too close to their flavours!

Seriously though the more worrying point is that the Big Ice Cream company’s of this world do not always get involved in social media at all and I think this is due in large part to their agencies who are not willing to get involved because they have developed an organisation that does not support the proper activation of social media for brands.

An agency’s new role in social media will be to maintain a brand’s presence online and extract various benefits that a brand should receive from making a social media commitment. To do this will require redefining the agency’s role into a far more consultative process interfacing with more parts of a client’s organization over a longer period of time. Tapping into all the ways an effective social media agency can deliver value to marketers will set apart this new breed of agency.

The question is, can the current agencies adapt or will the new breed of agencies currently working effectively in this area take over the vacuum of effective social media campaigns? Evolution or revolution?

Teenagers have sex shock!

There is (sorry was) a viral ad on YouTube purportedly produced for JC Penney (a US dept store) by their agency Saatchis, showing 2 teenagers practising quick undressing and dressing in their respective bedrooms apparently in preparation to “watch TV in the basement” while the girls mother is upstairs - see article - that has caused uproar in the US as it apparently condones teenagers having sex. Last week the viral won a bronze at Cannes and JC Penney have absolutely denied any involvement in the ad and have pulled it from You Tube and ambitiously are trying to pull it from “the web”. This follows a spate of similarly supposed “no Client involvement” virals including the VW suicide bomber viral and “sneaky” virals such as Gatorade and BMW’s mockumentary as well as some great ideas such as Draft FCB’s for Sporting Portugal.

All it took for some campaigns to go wildly viral was great content that has been passed around beacuse it was funny, clever or sarcastic and the most successful are often risky (see JC Penney!). But being truly interesting requires risks and in order to reamin true to the channel Clients needs to take risks to achieve true virality.

Enjoy Salsa? Live in Brighton? Check out Anderstand

Apparently no matter how weird, worthy, dull or deranged you are, there’s a social network for you and the Crave part of the Cnet website have been good enough to pull togeter the 50 most bizarre social networks.

It makes fascinating reading what people get up to from the understandable but oddly named Sermo where over 65,000 doctors share their knowledge from the frontline of medicine, to the supportive divorce 360 for people contemplating, going through or recovering from divorce to the stalkers dream of Loopt - a friend-locator site that uses GPS to turn your mobile into a homing beacon or the dark (self explanatory) Goth passions. I personally found the my free implants the most extraordinary.

Social networking is booming with emarketer.com predicting Worldwide advertising spend on social networks forecast to reach £2bn by 2011 with roughly 11 million UK Internet users visting online social network sites regularly in 2007. And the market is booming—60% of respondents to an early-2008 survey said they had created a social network profile, up from 27% in 2007.
So if you have a brand that is interested in where they can reach recovering alcoholics (sobercircle if you are interested) or Hamster lovers (yes seriously - complete with a paw pointer - see hamsterster.com) then here is your answer!

Social Media meets customer service

After a nightmare I have had recently trying to sort out some issues with my TV, phone and broadband provider (guess who?!) I was intrgued by a piece I read in the Times Money section a few weeks ago about a site called Pebble - which was summed up as “the site will force companies into improving service by making customers’ experiences visible to everyone.” - it was music to my ears.
Pebble was set up with one main purpose in mind - to improve the level of service and value for money provided by every business and other organisation in the UK. It does this by giving consumers a voice on customer service issues and by using the power of the internet to join together consumer voices in a powerful, easy to use and easy-to-understand format for other consumers and businesses themselves to use.
It’s about sharing information simply and quickly - but highly effectively. It’s about empowering you, giving you choice and enabling you to make the right decisions about which businesses to use. And, in the end, it’s about making businesses more aware of and accountable for levels of service.

I had a look this morning and interestingly (although maybe not surprisingly) the worst performers were well known companies such as Foxtons, the Labour Party and British Gas whilst out of the top ten only 2 were mainstream companies (Waitrose and Ocado at 8th and 10th respectively). It will be fascinating to watch this site develop and hugely amusing the read the comments which for Foxton’s the choice 2 were
“Arrogant. Appalling hair cuts. Ridiculous sense of unfounded importance. Funniest thing was seeing a Foxtons mini being clamped and towed away. I cried with happiness…” and the simple “prats in minis” - Virgin Media watch out !

Web 2.0 truths

Hugh Macleod of gapingvoid fame has just published his “10 things I hate about web 2.0” which (despite the americanisms) made me smile a lot especially number 6 (below) after a recent conference experience (more on that in a day or 2):

6. People at conference panels, pretending that the only reason they’re attending is to offer valuable insight to their fellow man, as opposed to just pimping their wares and/or scouting for consulting gigs.

Definitely worth a read, particularly the comments posted in response.

Balloon race 2.0

I remember more years ago than I am willing to disclose, I was running a campaign for the launch of a new Fiat in association with The Children’s Society where we “sold” balloons for a donation to the charity and the chance to win one of the new cars. One the launch day itself we released over 1m balloons from Fiat dealerships all over the country and I recall the nightmare of speaking to the Civil Aviation Authority about when and where exactly this could happen ...so I was intrigued by the new Orange activity to launch the animal themed contracts for PAYG customers billed as the “World’s first internet balloon race” and it looks great - you can choose a balloon, call it what you want and add a tag, all the balloons are launched on a specific date and you have to control them as they cross the internet collecting internet miles along the way for daily, overall and bonus prizes. The site is simple, easy to navigate and upload and I am looking forward to having a go in a couple of weeks - I do however think they have missed one integral trick in that if this is really balloon race 2.0 where is the web 2.0 functionality ? - I tried to enter the Gravity site as a site for the race but it kept logging me out and there is no feedback form or even blog / forum to feedback on this glitches AND most importantly it would be great to know how many others have entered (maybe a clock counter) and the chance to read what other particpants think about the idea PLUS why can’t I play this my mobile…................?

“When Good Social Marketing Goes Bad”

As we all know Social media has become an essential element of a marketers armoury - it not only offers a fascinating insight into your customers point of view on your brand / sector, but also provides a perfect opportunity to get involved and start talking to them and providing them with what they want. So it was good to learn that, according to a new report from Jupiter Research, titled “When Good Social Marketing Goes Bad,” marketers are using consumer-generated media in their marketing plans, but are failing to do the leg work on the back end to keep things going. According to the research, 35% of marketers have CGM on their on sites and 21% have an online social networking profile. However, only 29% of marketers who use social media tactics follow through and monitor online discussions on an ongoing basis—and a whopping 17% of marketers who use social marketing tactics don’t monitor online discussions at all.

This does not surprise me at all - in fact I would have thought that the figure would be far higher - too many brands think that by setting up a Facebook account and adding an ecrm stream to their site that is social media job done when anyone who is even vaguely involved in this new media opportunity knows this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. It seems we all have a long way to go to change this perception but it is a fight worth fighting with huge rewards to those who persevere - let’s get going!

Web users are ruthless!

I came across this excellent article on the BBC website at the weekend on the annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen which is a huge wake up call for those designers and Clients who get carried away when designing a site and developing its architecture. Interestingly most of it is not news - just something I think some people (and I count myself in that) forget along the way.
Apparently “Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave. Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.”

They conclude that “People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience,” he said. “I do not think sites appreciate that yet,” he added. “They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them.”
Just keep that in mind next time everyone is throwing in widgets, video, forums and discussions boards that unless it is absolutely relevant to the needs of the visitors it will achieve the opposite the effect!

Creative User generate content

I remember at school there was a popular game that involved drawing a part of a human body on a folded piece of paper and passing it on for someone else to do the same with a connected part then revealing the hilarious outcome - the same was done with words to make up fascinating stories. This idea for Sony uses the 21st century version of the idea and is a great example of how far UGC can go to create engaging, interesting and usable content. The project started with a scene from John Malkovich, he invited visitors to continue the story and chose three winning entries. As the site says “then working with an animator you can see how the script lives on in his dramatic creation. Watch as, with a few bold strokes, the characters come to life. And see how the story unfolds… We hope you enjoy the show.”
Overall it is very engaging but it makes me wonder why they could not have involved more people and / or done a variety of different versions to see how different a story can be - anyway have a look it is fun to watch.

Trends in Digital Advertising for 2008

Came across this the other day and although it was written back in Sept 2007 and we all know how quickly things become outdated a lot of it was pretty spot on - the overall sentiment that digital will continue to be absorbed into an agency’s DNA is becoming increasingly apparent as the lines are blurred. I think 2 of the most interesting points were the shift from creating TV ads to creating experiences and also the rise in the importance of social media. We all know that big ad agencies are running scared of moving away from the set play TV ads as they know that you can reach millions of consumers via a quick, engaging viral BUT they can’t bill the huge production budgets and see their ad in the Corry break. Also re: social media we have defintiely seen more briefs go that way and whilst I think social media is very important to consider for future briefs it has to be incorporated into the general thinking and planning as opposed to a being a strategy by itself.
As we say these really are the most exciting of times in the communications industry and the agencies that are running scared are the ones that really should be!

Social networking use set to triple in four years

This article in Brand Republic caught my eye this morning. It basically says that a survey by Datamonitor The UK has the highest social networking membership in Europe and it is forecast to almost triple by 2012 to 27m members, according to a report by independent market analyst Datamonitor. It was even more interesting when coupled with the finsdings from this article from Ad Age that details nine profiles of who your targets are and where they might be online.

Innocent are all a twitter

It has become a rolling joke at Gravity that when you ask an interviewee what brands they like / admire etc. that they all say Innocent so I was interested to see that Innocent used Twitter the other day to report on their AGM - just another headline grabbing initiative I thought - but I was wrong - the script is really interesting and gives a great insight into the company. They also posted the pictures on Flickr and Q&A’s on You Tube and offered the annual report for download on their blog (which by the way is one of the best company blogs I have read and offers a fascinating insight into the company). I can see more and more companies embracing this sort of reporting as complete transparency is demanded not only by shareholders but also interested consumers who apparently have been asking Innocent to produce Innocent lollies, pies, sorbets and ice creams - sounds delicious!

The Beautiful Game

Football is a hugely discussed subject online - I recently saw a post regarding the shortlist for the Football Fanzine Awards for the best blog - the entries included:Aston Villa AVFC Blog Celtic Celtic Quick news Fulham Craven Cottage Newsround General The 100 Football Grounds Club Liverpool Kop Blog QPR QPR Report Rangers Fat Eck Sunderland Sobs on Soccer Watford BHaPPY Fanzine Awards

I was also amazed at the success of http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/ where they now have 35k owners who have paid £35 for their stake in the club and they get to have a say in everything from kit suppliers to the team selection - they have got to the final of the FA Trophy on 10th May.

When you have a look at these sites there is hugely engaging, interesting and amusing content so it even more interesting that a football network site http://www.oleole.com/ is coming out of beta and launching in early May - the aim is to create a Global Football Community allowing fans to communicate with other like-minded fans. It allows you to create your own custom profile, join or create a fan group, discuss all the latest news and gossip, blog about everything from controversial calls to players to favorite stadiums and more, or manage your own football team with their unique European Super League fantasy football game!

As a social network I guess they rely on getting people to the site as well as ongoing interaction but judging by the content and the passion displayed by those already using it I think it will only be a matter of time before they place themselves well and truly at the centre of all things football.

Social media aggregator

I came across this great site from Guy Kawasaki http://alltop.com/ which helps you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. These collections are aggregated into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports and politics which are updated every 10 minutes. At each Alltop site they display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — they call this “single-page aggregation.”
They claim to have created the “digital magazine rack” of the Internet where they create starting points not destinations to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed.

They have a goal of the “cessation of Internet stagnation” which seems like a lofty intent but I think it works very well and goes a long way to start helping people through the quagmire of subject related sites on the net - this is especially relevant if, like me, you do not focus only on the feeds you have in your reader, but if you want to read something different it is perfect.

Avatar me up!

People have talked about avatars for a while now but have never seen a simple and fun way to create your own until I came across voki which allows you to not only pick from a number of templates but also full customise every aspect of the image from facial hair to background to accompanying “bling” and you can even add a voice / song audio - you can then post the results of your efforts to any blog or a number of social networks. If you look at their blog people have created avators for a variety of people from Barrack Obama to Alicia Keys and there are multiple other applications.

The site is hugely popular and has been nominated for the South by Southwest Web Awards - have a play with it - I did - the results are featured to the right of this post - I just wonder if the Second Life effect applies here ie I read that although 70 odd % of users are men 70 odd % of avatars are female - go figure as they says in the US!

When User Generated Content Attacks

Lots of time has passed since the last post but I guess as things get busy prioritisations have to be made and the Blog suffers - this should not be the case - anyway - I was prompted to get writing again by this article - When User Generated Content Attacks! which I found incredibly entertaining. Now many of these stories have been recounted before but when it all sits together it is clear that many companies embark on UGC activity without any real thought as to the consequences and the fact that by definition it does leave a brand open to abuse. The story I like especially is Nike’s bespoke trainer campaign - I cannot believe that a behemoth such as Nike don’t think that this sort of dialogue will not be shared with with the blogosphere and as result do more harm than good!

Now social networks really are going to change the world

As we are doing a lot more work in the area of social media at the moment I always try to keep up with all the new developments in this fast moving area so I was interested in a new social network called edenbee http://www.edenbee.com/ that has finally launched.

They claim their intention is to create a vibrant community, working to tackle climate change by measuring your carbon footprint, suggesting ways to reduce it and showing the difference you make.

The site includes a “hive of hot ideas to keep our planet a cool place to live” such as turn off your oven 5 mins early, take a stand against direct mail and take a holiday near home - it then aggregates all users tonnes of Co2 used each month in a graphical format.

Although still in Beeta (with a few hundred members) I think it is a good site - well laid out and interesting with a mixture of discussion board subjects and blog content and I really like the localised element of the groups eg there is a largish (compartively) Brighton Group and the mummies and dads group is inspired.

It remains to be seen how this will take off but it seems to me to be the best starting point for changing perceptions and saving the planet is to start by making a difference on a local/personal scale.

Facebook backlash continues

I saw this very funny clever viral today and it ressurected an interesting debate we have had in the office recently - that Facebook is the the sexy, visible tip of a very large social media iceberg and whilst interesting and involving, it does not really represent a real opportunity for brand involvement.

This seems to be proven by that fact that altough Facebook is the UK’s most popular social networking site it suffered a decline in unique users in the UK for the first time since July 2006, falling 5% to 8.5m users, according to Nielsen Online. Interestingly MySpace and Bebo also experienced a decline in user numbers last month, down by 5% and 2% respectively, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

There is however a huge amount of far more interesting, involving and hugely rewarding opportunities that exist in blogs, discussion board, forums etc etc. and by adopting a very simple 5 step approach we have developed we are starting to get a lot more success in these areas for a number of our Clients than we ever did out of FB apps!

So although I don’t think it is the death knell for Facebook it certainly highlights that there are plenty of other viable and rewarding opportunities to use social media to understand what poeple really think about your brand or get your brand discussed or simply to counter negative comments.
Ayway…..I must go and update my status…..

Has the art of Customer Service deserted us?

I bought a new suit from a well known US designer earlier this year on a trip to New Year and the other day I was searching for something in my pockets and found this small piece of paper (picture) which not only made me smile but also restored my faith in the principle of customer service.

This faith has been severely tested in the past 3 days where I have experienced 2 examples of really lousy customer service from 2 companies that I previously admired - namely Orange and Sky. I spent 30 mins speaking to a very enthusiastic operator at Sky assembling a bespoke package to replace the Virgin Media service that I really cannot abide any more (charging 50p a minute for any help on Broadband was the final straw) to be told that unless I bought there and then I would have to call back even though he could not help me with a new BT connection needed to run Sky+....!! I then tried to get someone at Orange to help me with a fault on my SPV Orange phone to be told that I would have to take out Orange insurance at £6 per month even though we have a business account and spend a fortune each month.

Surely in the new age of the empowered consumer or “prosumer” as they (we) have become known that this sort of treatment should be avoided by companies at all costs - or should it? I think there seems to be a divide between companies who nurture consumers and treat them with respect and companies that still view us as cannon fodder. Sky is a great case in point in they spend millions of pounds each year to convert people to their service and then when they do gt a “bite” they are happy to let it go which to me is ludicrous - just think what they could achieve if they spent as much on trying to retain an interested consumer as they do on trying to get them to pick up the phone!

It’s good to talk

I always remember the BT ads from the ‘80’s with Bob Hoskins (see link above) for 2 reasons - I couldn’t believe that one of Britain’s best and most respected actors could sell out like that (although I suppose it is a step up from Jessica Rabbit) but mainly because of how phenomenally successful they were - I read that they paid back t0 1:6 ROI and Hoskins’ parlance made its way quickly into every conversation.

How things have changed and the adage “It’s good to talk” now means via IM, text, email and social networks - we no longer actually speak to each other but ironically we actually communicate more. The rise of social media has driven this more recently with the likes of http://www.facebook.com/ facilitating millions of ongoing chats and the ability to voyeuristically read posts and blogs about every subject you can imagine (and some you can’t) as well as viewing and discussing strangers opinions about anything from holidays http://www.tripadvisor.com/ to training for a triathlon http://www.tritalk.co.uk/ - this is now a mainstream communication channel.

Recently however, I have noticed more and more an analagous situation arising in business where more and more people want to meet and chat face to face and how sucessful this interaction can be for “doing business”. Since setting up Gravity I have made a concered effort to get back in touch with old colleagues / suppliers / Clients and partners and have also talked passionately about my business with anyone who will listen (including a guy on plane who is now one of our partners companies) and this has reaped great rewards in referrals and new business.

So I guess the message is that it is still “good to talk” just make sure that some of these conversations remain face to face!

You couldn’t make this up…well someone has!

I read this article with interest this morning as it not only affected 2 friends of mine but also myself…...apparently they are both v. v. faithful (being female designers) and I am more likely to stray (being a business owning late 30 something).

Now I understand that press releases like this are written every day by PR account managers desperate to get some free column inches for their cash strapped Clients but doesn’t this sort of misinformation go a step too far? My point is that there has obviousy been a fair amount of work gone into this approach and what kind of reaction do they think this is going to achieve? Do they think I (as a business owning 38 year old) will read this and think “Oh I must have an affair / illicit encounter” I wonder where one starts ....oh look http://www.illicitencounters.com/ - lets log on and see! There are far more effective and subtle ways of reaching their (notice the “their” Mrs Roberts) audience most especially for example via the multitude of social media opportunities that exist that are v cost effective (often free) which although often uncontrollable they do offer targeted and accountable communication routes that surely work harder than this lazy marketing.

By the way I did log on in the interest of research and found one part of the site hilarious:
WARNING: NOT EVERYONE IS SUITED TO HAVING AN AFFAIR. THEY ARE NOT AN ALTERNATIVE TO WORKING ON OR ENDING A MARRIAGE. NOT ALL AFFAIRS HAVE A POSITIVE EFFECT ON A MARRIAGE, SOME CAN BE VERY DAMAGING. ALWAYS CONSIDER OTHER PEOPLE AND IF YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE AN AFFAIR, PLEASE SELECT YOUR PARTNER WISELY.

Transparency

I have recently organised, booked and travelled on a golf trip to Marbella - nothing different there (this is the 6th year of the trip) only this time it was different.
In the past we have just used a company to organise everything- the flights, hotel, courses, transfers , car hire etc. - this year for the first time I did it in pieces - I booked the flights using air miles with BA http://www.ba.com/ , used a golf company to recommend and book courses http://www.golfbreaks.com/, hired the car through a company recommended by a friend http://www.nizacars.com/and found a hotel on Trip Advisor http://www.tripadvisor.com/ that received the best reviews and then booked via Alpha Rooms http://www.alpharooms.com/ which I found on Google.

I know this seems like an awful lot of hassle but it only took 2 hours one evening BUT not only did it save about £500 in all on the trip it also ensured that it was the best trip we have ever done and I felt completely in control.

The biggest point of all however is that it just shows how thing have changed and it got me thinking about the same analogy for Gravity http://www.gravitythinking.com/ - people (Clients) just don’t want off the shelf (expensive) solutions anymore from companies that insist on doing everything - they are prepared to put up with a little bit of time and hassle to ensure that they get the right solution that they know will be the most effective - and often it can actually be more enjoyable to piece together the individual parts (or agencies / suppliers / partners) to create a bigger whole.

I have already nominated myself to orgaise next year and I am actually relishing the task to make it even better than this year !

Mid life crisis

I recently took up triathlons - not sure why, I think it was a drunken bet and maybe the Nike “man Boobs” ad (posted alongside this, but anyway they have got me now - I am addicted to it, from the “sprint” distance (400m swim / 20k bike & 5k run) one I did with a number of colleagues back in May to the hugely challenging and peversely enjoyable Olympic distance race (1m swim, 40k bike and 10k run) - I am even training through the winter by cycling to work (12 miles) and running home from Wimbledon to Teddington (11k) and starting to plan next year and talking wistfully about going away to do the Barcelona triathlon at some point in the future and I have even joined a number of tri talk forums and groups online!

I am not alone it seems - Triathlon is the fastest growing sport in the UK with over 500 events planned next year and in a time when we are being told that half the country will be obese by 2010 this is all good news but the most interesting element of this to me is that being part of the groups has meant that I am now conversing with people from all over the World about training, diet and kit - people that I will never meet but I find I have loads in common with and to me this is the interesting part - I have more interactions with these people than I do most of my friends and neighbours which as I read it makes me sound v sad but in fact I guarantee you that this is the case for lots of other people - think about it in this busy life your down times are spent online not on the phone and emails and texts have replaced a beer down the pub or over a meal. In turn the brands that are facilitating and being involved in this social interaction are the ones that recognise this phenomenon and non traditional method of communication.

Information is not knowledge…..

This week I downloaded Radiohead’s new album via the site http://www.inrainbows.com/ as it has been widely publicised you can pay what you want, but whether you paid £0.00 (Creep) or the average CD price of £8.92 they certainly got as much if not more than you did out of the deal. Research has showed that email addresses are worth £5 at least and if you add phone numbers, addresses etc. then the amount defintiely increases. The possibilities are endless for this data - not just for 2 way comms via phone, home and email but also in profiling the buyers via postcode and starting to gain a real understanding of who your audience are.

In an industry that is struggling due to illegal downloads and decreasing sales this is inspired and shows a very interesting way forward that is not only being followed by Radiohead but it is rumoured that the Charlatans are about to follow suit and with Prince and Ray Davies releasing new albums via the Mail on Sunday and Live Nation’s new association with Madonna it is fascinating to see where the industry will go next. This also shows an interesting example for many other industries with multiple outputs and the desire to reach an ever more elusive consumer. Lets wait and see how they follow this and who else gets on the bandwagon. Einstein once said “Information is not knowledge” and far be it from me to disagree but in this case think just having the the information is a great starting point…......

Dove Evolution Parody

his a parody of the Dove Evolution ad- it just shows where here is creativity there is always someone more creative!

Man Boobs Nike Advert

The reason why I guess I do Triathalons!

Sesame Streets

This is hilarious!

Brand Experience Week

I have been commuting through Waterloo for 7-8 weeks now and for some reason everything changed this week - I am being targeted!!! Not by homeless people, Big Issue salespeople or terrorists but by agencies and in turn brands.

In 3 days I have been offered 5 leaflets, a badge, a pot of yoghurt, a mid morning snack, a ride to work, even an apple and today there was a guy drawing on the floor of the station for Sky HD.

Now obviously Brand Experience is not going to go away, indeed it has become the mainstay of many brands plans but I am still amazed how a great strategic idea and creative approach can be completely ruined in execution. One case in point - Nurofen - are pushing their Nurofen Express - I assume a quicker way of getting rid of a hangover or various other aches and pains - and as such offered commuters a free ride to work in a cycle rickshaw, ie an “Express” way of getting to work (I assume) but they placed these all in a row (about 7-8 of them) on the Strand away from Charing Cross and on a tourists route - as a result all I saw were Japanese tourists delighting in a free trip around London and lots of commuters either ignoring or missing it altogether! Then today I was given an apple by “Little Red Riding Hood” or rather a lady in a red coat with a straw basket which upon inspection had a sticker on it detailing Stansted - New York American Airlines - then it dawned on me….The Big Apple (geddit) - the apple was tiny and was covered in bruises…...does this reflect how I will feel when I get there?

I can’t wait to see what next week brings….

The defintion of irony where there is an incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result and this is the case here - if Brand Managers, Marketing Directors and Chiefs Executives could see the actual effect on their brand they would turn their back on this medium forever.

Irony is also usually associated with humour and tragedy and here’s the rub .....it is in the delivery that this activity is letting down the brand - now I can’t say whether this is due to inexperienced agencies being used or worse agencies that claim they can do this but just subcontract to make a few quid or Clients trying to do this themselves but it does demonstrate exactly why we at Gravity (http://www.gravitythinking.com/) have adopted the approach we do ie coordinated capabilities tm - that is we stick to the strategy and creative development and we then work with partners to deliver perfect execution or in other words perfect placement of the rickshaws and proper juicy “Big Apples”.

New World Order

Well this is the first blog on the new site so always the most difficult.

The purpose of this blog is to look at different takes on old (sometimes), established (always), antiquated (occassionally), and old school (definitely) ways of doing things.

The world has changed forever, nothing is the same, everything is different now, everything is accountable and the speed of change is immense. I will attempt to add my take on these developments that reflect the New World Order that has driven our desire to set up a new agency that does things differently.

We’ve created a new type of agency delivering quicker, smarter, leaner solutions for our clients.

The principles behind our approach are quite simple - we call it Coordinated Capabilitiestm. In a nut shell we have a core team who know you, your brand and consumer inside and out. They are responsible for coordinating our network of partners – companies, teams and individuals – to deliver the very best work. In essence a hand picked team tailored to the needs and requirements of you and your specific brief.

The cost effective bit comes from the fact that we’re not carrying a huge overhead like most agencies – less people, less down time, less desks, less expensive London office space to pay for – a lean mean marketing machine !

See for yourself at http://www.gravitythinking.com/