Gravity Thinking

January - a month in social

2012-02-01T13:39:00.001Z

Can't believe that it is February already ! As every month seems so busy with 39 Facebook posts, 7 blog posts and 54 Tweets updating you on the World of social we thought it would be useful to do a round up of the month at Gravity Thinking in case you missed anything

TOP POSTS

Being the start of the year the main source of interest appeared to be around lists and creativity with the most popular being the 'Ways to Stay creative' - apparently stepping away from the computer and giving yourself space and time is the key.....

Others included rules of a Creators life and a fascinating video showcasing the thoughts of some of the most influential digital creatives across many different industries on the impact of new media on creativity. http://vimeo.com/34608191

As always with Social there was also a lot of fun stuff out there from the hilarious Boble Football which seemed to be the perfect solution to overcoming the increase in dangerous tackles and aggressive behaviour on the football pitch to one of the World's most innovative car companies - Mini - introducing a meme that we believe will grow and grow this year - namely taking online offline - with their 'Fan the Flames' activity. This involved a flame being produced over a rope every time someone liked them on FB - quite simply the person who burned the rope won the car - genius ! - see it here.

There was also a lot of interest in 'fails' - from McDonalds to Burger King and The Belfast Telegraph to an insightful and slightly too recognisable 'presentation fails' link.

Of course we were also informative from teaching our cousins across the pond how to understand 'English' and highlighting new campaigns from Nissan and ways to keep fans following you on FB.

On that note if you want to see these posts as they happen then like us on Facebook here http://www.facebook.com/gravitymarketing

Of course we have also been busy tweeting @gravitythinking with a huge variety of links, opinions and comments - follow us to keep up to date with what is going on in social on a minute by minute basis.

NEWS

We had a great start to the New Year with 2 announcements - March is going to be a busy month as we are dust off our Dinner suits and black dresses after being shortlisted for Best Breakthrough Agency at the 2012 MAA Awards to be announced on 1st March at The Grosevenor . To top this we will be digging our our stetsons after being selected from 100's of agencies to be part of the UKTI Digital Mission to SXSW from 9th-13th March in Austin, Texas.

BLOGS
The team have been busy blogging in January - we covered the gamut of social conversations from Brady's arguing that we are in danger of losing the art of conversation to Aimee talking about why she liked IKEA's latest social campaign, 'making sleepover dreams happen'.

We argued that QR are going to be HUGE in 2012 as brands look for ways to provide quick, easy to download URLS and proposed 5 tips for success including location, CTA, integration and impact amongst others - see if you agree here.

Finally and definitely the most challenging was Kayes' announcement that she is going to go cold turkey on Facebook and Twitter in February for only the 3rd time in her life (and the first two were forced !) so we shall have to see how she gets on with that - read the blog here and keep up with the blog to see how she is getting on http://gravitythinking.blogspot.com/

WORK
January is always a hectic month with lots of project kicking off.

We have been busy with Specialized ranging from Concept store events, bike development partnerships for the their Globe brand and planning their 2012 Facebook strategy including highlighting all the races they are attending, sharing their innovations and developing plans for London 2012 as well 2013 range launch.

We have kicked off a Social Media review and strategy development for The Medical Defence Union which will unfold over the coming months as well as ongoing work for Philips on Sonicare and E-Financial Careers.

So all in all a very busy and exciting start to the year - bring on February !

Facebook (and twitter) free for February

2012-01-27T10:15:00.004Z

By Michaela Macintyre

Delightfully, I have made it through January without making a single NY resolution. I haven’t fallen off any wagons, disappointed myself or regretted the new gym direct debit. Not once. Quite simply, I’ve been happier for it too.

When I realized that no amount of street dance classes would ever make me “pop” like Beyonce in 2008, or when I concluded that cabbage soup was literally impossible to eat for one month in 2009 I felt that I should “give up giving up”. In truth, I started resolutions that were achievable: 2010 saw me give up break dancing - yes, I avoided doing a master sausage for a whole 365 days (easier than you’d think, especially if you’ve never done any break dancing). In 2011, I gave up wearing high heels to work. My feet and posture are ever so grateful.

This year however, I have felt the need to do something a little different once again, and it’s taken a few weeks to come to a conclusion – I’m giving up facebook and twitter for the whole of February. My boss probably likes this. Or maybe he doesn’t, considering I work for a social media agency! Vodafone’s data bundle department certainly doesn’t. I predict a sharp drop in shares during February. It’s not a revolutionary idea; in fact, many did this in January over at http://facebooksabbatical.com/

Why am I doing this? I am in fact interested to discover how my life (professional, social and family) will be affected through abstinence. We encourage our clients to proactively connect with consumers in the social sphere, we absolutely believe it’s the way forward and that a sound strategic approach to social media can really benefit the brand and the consumer. But I love social media. I use it everyday. So what’s it like being a Joe Bloggs consumer when you’re not into social? I can’t remember, in truth.

I joined facebook & twitter in early 2007, and since then I have experienced only 2 instances where I went for longer than 24hrs without signing in – one was when I was in hospital after a major operation and the other was on holiday in a remote location of Africa with no internet or 3G. In both of these instances, I was outside of my normal routine, so neither really impacted my social or working life.

And sure, not everyone uses twitter and facebook as much as I do. Working for a social agency, it’s in my and my clients’ interests to be immersed. But the real reasons that I am so personally wed to my daily updates from facebook and twitter are in fact not just to keep connected to friends & family anymore, instead, I log-in everyday because I like:

Getting real time updates about travel (how many times have you turned to twitter to find out what’s really going on at Surbiton with the “technical fault"
Hearing about new music/ concert ticket sales first (no website or magazine is ever updated as quickly as the artist who updates their page themselves – priceless);
Notifications of sales/ offers/ discounts from brands I love (If that All Saints dress goes on sale & sells out while on my facebook free February I am simply going to die);
Hearing breaking news first and reading ‘from the horses mouth’ accounts before the BBC does (twitter is so brilliant for this);
Crowd sourcing vital advice and tips from experts (God Bless you twitter for explanations on everything from changing washers and bleeding radiators to how to do my make-up like Jessica Rabbit for a party);
Reading and connecting with industry peers (from other agencies to personalities in marketing across the- world – never has it been easier to find a silent mentor).

Additionally, when was the last time someone actually texted and invited me to a night out? When did anyone email me and ask if I was free on Saturday for a gallery visit? When last did someone email some photos of their new baby? 2006, that’s when. What will I do on my commute – die of boredom? What if I miss the invite to the best party of 2012?

On the plus side – I won’t have to read about Little Jonnie’s potty training progression or get into an argument with someone I’ve never met about whether it is OK to be sad about Amy Winehouse passing when there was also a gunman on the loose in Norway. Maybe I’ll talk to people more – in real life! Maybe I’ll read more.

So I am absolutely terrified about this little facefast (all of a sudden, cabbage soup for 30 days seems a much more achievable task), but I’m going to do it. Michael Erard wrote a wonderful piece on what he experienced when he gave up facebook – it is all of my fears collected.

So here goes, a deep dive into the abyss of modern life without social media. If you find yourself next to a blonde on Platform 6 waiting for a delayed train muttering “I’m still waiting for the 18.25, hash swtrains you suck asterisk grumpy face asterisk ” – give us a little word of encouragement, won’t you?

IKEA – making “sleepover” dreams happen

2012-01-23T17:40:00.005Z

By Aimee Smith

What with it being the New Year and all that jazz, I have found myself trying to snap up a bargain or two in the January sales. Having recently moved house, I decided that this year I would focus my attention (and cash that I don’t really have) on furnishings I don’t need, but desperately want. And where did I turn I hear you cry...none other than everyone's favorite Swedish superstore IKEA. Having purchased and assembled my new (reduced) bed early this week, I got thinking it is not only flat packed furniture that IKEA excel in.... they also excel in smart thinking combined with the drive to make it happen.

IKEA recently carried out a fantastic pr stunt, the Facebook Fan Sleepover. Having found the Facebook group “I wanna have a sleepover in IKEA” with over 100,000 fans , IKEA created a competition on their own Facebook page offering users the chance to be part of a sleepover in their Essex store. Have a look at the video here

I think this stunt demonstrates smart thinking because it turns fans into advocates by combining a traditional pr stunt with positive brand experiences - allowing consumers to test products first hand (a sleep expert was even on hand for advice). This simple yet effective stunt creates engagement and conversation through WOM across all channels of the marketing mix.

With a strict pj only dress code and an over 25 age restriction, each participant was given a goody bag (containing eye masks, slippers, a towel and a snack) and was treated to manicures and massages, hot chocolate, a midnight film and a bedtime story read by Sam Faiers (think TOWIE). This sleep over sounds like the type of sleep over fun I can but dream of...but I am of to my new flat pack IKEA bed to try all the same.

Conversations

2012-01-18T22:35:00.002Z

By Brady Polkinghorne

In my personal opinion, much like everything in this universe, there’s nothing quite like the real thing. Grass, seawater, stars, emotions and at the risk of sounding crass, even breasts. So is the case with conversations.

Over time conversations and communications have evolved to reflect a need, a necessity for evolution and furthering our race. To start with humans began to evolve more complex social groups only by developing their language. Another example demonstrated the printing press becoming vital during the renaissance as it allowed scholars and the like to share their thoughts. Now, we’re seeing collaboration tools enabled by the web that are hastening this communication process. This is where my interest lies in the matter because due to these tools constantly making conversations easier – never in history has it been so easy for an idea to spread!! But with this in mind, how does a virtual conversation differ, or ultimately compare to the real thing?

An interesting albeit slightly long-winded take on this topic can be seen here: Networked Society: "On the Brink" There are some fascinating thoughts and predictions from market leaders who have ‘made’ it’ in this online realm by enabling various forms of conversations themselves. Case in point would be Eric Wahlforss, co-founder of Soundcloud which enables sound to be hosted in a visual manner which then encourages conversations within the track itself.

Social media, online forums and a plethora of other platforms in which we now communicate are all great due to the speed, convenience and reach factors, essentially a modern marvel in their own right. But despite the technological advances, it’s still slightly stilted. There’s a certain fluidity that comes with a real conversation that just can’t be beaten. Even with the likes of Skype, the Heytell social walkie-talkie app and Facetime, it still seems very hard to recreate the real thing. Things are missing that make conversations so significant such as interpreting full body language, physical interaction and something as simple as looking the person in the eyes. It seems like we will have to treasure the real interactions as they happen with our online conversations becoming the important day-to-day form of communication. For the moment, they are still impersonal and thanks to hiding behind 1’s and 0’s, people are often more brazen and honest than they might be in ‘real-life’. So with constant development ushering our real world online, what weight does this hold for us personally, but more importantly for those in the industry, where does this place our audience and how do we effectively become a part of these conversations that will soon be in the clouds?

Discussions and conversations have become the power behind a brand’s digital presence, shown in the huge growth in review sites (e.g.TripAdvisor) and brands now using Twitter as a glorified Customer Service solution. Conversations will need to be adapted accordingly to ensure the most powerful tool in advertising or marketing stays fresh and front of mind within the industry – the tool being storytelling.. Now the burning question is; how can the master mechanic that has worked across all advertising mediums live within this space? Tune in for the next edition as we look at how storytelling becomes all more important within online conversations with examples of the good, the bad and the promising.

To QR or not to QR - is that a question?

2012-01-10T19:34:00.003Z

The title obviously gives away the subject but I wonder if you would have guessed it from the facts above? when I tested this on the team in recent meeting no one got it - and why would they ? after all QR codes are dull and boring right? WRONG! (IMHO) and here's why......
QR codes are well and truly here to stay - they are cropping up everywhere from gravestones to bus timetables and you can even get a tattoo with a QR code - but that doesn't mean that they are being used correctly and to their best effect - after all not everyone can be as creative and bold as ebay were recently bringing its ‘buy-it-now’ shopping experience in the form of a pop up shop to London for Christmas. to inspire your Christmas shopping by allowing people to scan a code with the eBay app on your smartphone and buy it for home delivery right there and then- they even had HTC phones on hand for the smartphone-less.
So here are Gravity thinking's top 5 tips for how to make QR codes work for you:
- LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION: Tesco in South Korea (called Tesco Homeplus) wanted to expand their market share - the problem was that shopping was seen as a "dreadful task" especially given the crowded nature of the country - they came up with an ingenius solution - take the store to the people by developing a virtual store in a subway where people could order using .....you've guessed it QR codes....and have shopping delivered direct to their home. So an innovative solution to a difficult challenge - one point of warning - remember where the audience is located - in South Korea they have mobile phone access on subways - Red Bull forgot this in the US and ran a QR code campaign in subways and Continental committed a similar gaffe on a plane.
- CTA - As the use of QR codes spreads it is inevitable that people will become immune to them and the challenge is then to drive scans in the first place - The August/September 2011 issue of VIBE Magazine introduces the first ever interactactive trend issue of VIBE. The 5 page spread features 7 QR codes and exclusive mobile landing pages connecting readers to valuable trend information and trusted e-tailors to buy.
- CONTENT IS KING: As with all social and digital work if you have done the hard work of getting someone to act then please please please ensure that the place they end up is relevant and engaging and above all mobile compatible don't just send them t your PC compatible website ! The recent CNN Republican Presidential Debate was a great example - they delivered QR codes throughout the programme that unlocked exclusive mobile content and even linked to Twitter...which brings us onto number 4....
- INTEGRATE - the aforementioned debate featured a dedicated Twitter feed #cnndebate which encouraged people to be part of the conversation - they used the content to enhance the programming. Diesel recently did this to great effect when they encouraged people to share their favourite denim from their stores using QR codes at retail fixtures.
- IMPACT - As with all campaigns understanding the effect is essential to learn and develop - include elements such as scan rate, time spent, location, numbers etc. but also elements such as shares and referrals. There are some great bespoke tracking services out there such as Tappinn
Although these may seem obvious many brands are ignoring some real basics and whether the future is all about QR codes or the new alternatives such as digital watermarks as trialled by House Beautiful this month the same principles apply - just make sure (to borrow / bastardise the title) "all your sins are not remembered" so don't get caught out in 2012

Consumer immersion, Reithian ideals, teleportation, invisible social and trust – is this the basis for the agency of the future ?

2011-12-29T16:05:00.000Z

At our recent away day, along with the customary Management Presentation (review of the year, objectives for next and inspiring vision) and less customary Come Dine With Me event in the evening (mostly super tasty results), we asked members of the team to deliver a 5 minute presentation on what the agency of the future looked like starting with a predefined point of view. The team’s presentations were brilliant and the outputs so incredibly interesting we thought it worth sharing.

The agency of the future is all about INSIGHT, by Michaela MacIntyre.

If brands want customers to love them and have an emotional connection with them, then they need to behave like people – not like businesses. This means not just telling customers why they should buy their product, but by demonstrating that they understand them and by doing so build a rapport.

To demonstrate that you understand customers, you need to incorporate insight into all your creative and communications. Strong consumer insight is the spine of any piece of work – without it, you haven’t got a solid brief, which results in poor creative output, and ultimately poor campaign results.

We all need to start thinking like consumers more and there are no excuses. You need to make the effort to go and find the insight by immersing yourself in the audiences’ daily lives and activities. And with the emergence of digital and social media never has this been so diverse yet also so easy to do.

The agency of the future is all about IDEAS, by Ben Carroll.

A more distributed creative process will mean that more creative's will work externally and remotely, controlled by a central creative director within an agency.

Increasingly disparate technologies will necessitate the need for larger pools of talent, working collaboratively to ensure all areas of ability and knowledge are covered - these communities are likely to exist purely online, a more formal and professional version of crowd sourcing.

The gap between purely creative advertising, and the increasingly scientific form of large-scale digital advertising (e.g. Facebook Ads) will increase and differentiate itself.

Overall tone-of-voice for advertising will drastically shift from the outdated urgency of messaging, towards a more informal and honest conversational style. A comparison could be made to the Reithian ideals (Educate / Inform / Entertain) of the BBC.

The agency of the future is all about TECHNOLOGY, by Sam Del-Prete

Teleportation is going to become a reality however that’s some way off so for now the future is Television!

There is a TV is almost every household in the UK and we believe that the future of the TV is certain – they’re here to stay. However the way by which we engage with our TV will change beyond all recognition.

Interactive TV will become apart of every household in the future as it will be able to sync up with other devices such as tablets. These devices will become the most powerful consumer device in the market as their intuitive interfaces and usability means that they are relevant to all ages from child to silver surfers.

Our new interactive TV’s will be able to know and use our personal information and will be able to communicate marketing messages that are personalised to our profiles and relevant to our interests. TV shows, movies and advertisements will sync and talk to a second device (such as the tablet) in order to engage with audiences. Possibilities include online shopping as audience is seeing on screen, interactive sport statistics /replays …

Teleportation is still a dream…for now.

The agency of the future is all about SOCIAL MEDIA, by Brady Polkinghorne

Four key themes;

UBIQUITOUS: The reach of social media will only continue to grow, across all mediums and platforms, some of which don’t even exist yet. This will present new opportunities for a) more commercial outlets and in turn b) new marketing mediums in which to communicate, engage and ultimately sell through (i.e. Zuckerberg Dollars).

COLOSSAL: The current major players (Facebook, Google, Twitter and Youtube) will continue to grow meaning marketing campaigns will no longer be labeled ‘integrated’ as they will have to account for these mediums from the inception of the idea and strategy. They will no longer be an afterthought or “nice to have”, but will instead drive the campaign from the start.

SMARTER: With technology getting more intuitive and constantly getting smarter so do the audience (important note: they should no longer be labeled consumers as this divides who they are as an audience, instead conversations will be king, regardless of whether they are in the market to buy/consume goods, e.g. Twitter, now the world’s best customer service channel). This means advertising and marketers will need to cater for more tech-savvy audiences and include not only great ideas but fresh, exciting new ways of presenting them.

INVISIBLE: Similarly to being everywhere, social media is already on its way to being a ‘normal part of life’. All people will have a touch point of some kind, and it won’t even be a phrase any more, rather it will be normal and assumed that if it’s messaging being taken in, it will be via one of these channels.

GLOBAL: The reach now surpasses any other medium that has existed. This will mean local activity will have to be more targeted and global messaging more considered.

The agency of the future is all about QUANTIFIABLE IMPACT, by Aimee Smith

Many clients feel they don’t know where to turn to for support in this new digital age where they can no longer simply shout about their brand and not listen to consumers. This confusion is compounded by the economic climate as client budgets are being reduced and now have to work harder for them.

Agencies need to deliver quantifiable results for their clients to ensure they build ‘trust’. These quantifiable results help the client to understand the evolving digital landscape, build more trust in the agency and justify ongoing financial investment. This in turn enables the agency to learn, grow and evolve with more innovative and challenging briefs.

The new agency model needs to account for a revised recruitment strategy ensuring a focus on quantifiable results. Not an agency full of analysts however analytical aptitude and understanding across the board is going to be imperative.

The agency of the future will also need to revise its financial model as the time based model loses traction with clients. As effectiveness can now be measured and is quantifiable, the new model will financially reward performance based on success not the hours you put in.

To conclude

The agency of the future is the one that thinks about the themes and challenges and evolves to ensure that they continue to meet client needs. Of course all our predefined starting points (Insight, Ideas, Technology, Social Media and Quantifiable impact) are relevant to every agency today and into the foreseeable future. However the way in which they are relevant has changed and will continue to do so as the media landscape continues to evolve, with us the people leading the way.

For us the agencies that win in the future will be those who are able to uncover insights, create brilliant ideas and execute these seamlessly across established and emerging technical and social platforms with a quantifiable impact. Easier said than done of course.

So here at Gravity Thinking we’ll be looking to do just this over the coming months in order to evolve and maintain the benefits and value that we currently offer to our clients. Our belief in our talented people as well as a strong independent culture based on being Genuine, Agile, Astute, Infectious, Confident and most importantly Devoted mean that we’re well placed to succeed.

The social media revolution gains pace – Part 2

2011-11-22T16:00:00.006Z

Following on from the here and now in part 1 of Gravity Thinking’s review of SoCon2011 is part 2 where we review how to monetise social media and the impact that social media is having on the way that we do business.

Monetising Social Media

This was a difficult topic with social media really still in its infancy and established models lacking however some interesting stats flew around.

• Nokia have directly attributed €10k to the value that an advocate brings to the business per year via seeding.
• John Horsley of Ace-A-Metric did some pre event research on Linked In and found that only 11% of people felt that social was integrated into the sales process within their business (this actually seemed quite high to us)
• Someone from the audience brought up the cost of not doing social with the Sony example of $420m lost revenue for not reacting within social media.

Integrating social within the business

Nokia systems and processes are truly impressive with the ability to listen, engage and measure the impact of social media in real time. What we loved was the fact that their social dash board is broadcast on screens within the office and that social actions are allocated and monitored in a controlled way through the organization. We come on to the future of social business later however this is a big first step in making the whole organization recognize the importance of and be involved within social media.

The power of the influencer

John Horsley (Chief Networking Officer, Ace-A-Metric and Founder of the Digital Marketing group on Linked In) had an interesting take on himself and the power he had as an influencer as well as realizing the commercial reality of that power (his group now has over 116k members). He certainly wasn’t shy in pointing out that he expects to be commercially rewarded for any recommendations and endorsements that he provides.

Social is not just another channel

Rich Sibthorpe from Warner Music has some interesting observations from his experience in the management of artists and bands. Social is part of everything that they do, they think of it as having a digital seamless dialogue with the fans. Here are a few of his rules;

• Offer exclusivity
• Don’t spam
• Be integrated
• Be entertaining
• Plan ahead
• Create a genuine dialogue
• Transact when relevant
• Analyse and understand
• Create global communities but local dialogues

Btw Rich states that TV is still powerful with significant peaks of traffic to social spaces when getting coverage and that mobile is the future with 85% of their activity taking place on mobile! All media is relevant and all media should be reflective of the social media context.

The future of business is social

As usual the day overruns and the thought leaders in the business that you turned up to see get cut from 30 to 15 minutes. However they were still able to pack a punch!

Social is changing society not just marketing

Anthony Mayfield the Author and Founder of Brilliant was inspiring. Social Media is not a marketing phenomenon it’s a huge change in society and therefore has an impact in the way that we live our lives, the way in which we do business and the way we market brands.

Just think about managing your own reputation online. What can people see and how does this influence them about you and your organization. Does it convert or put prospects off? It’s the same principle whether dating or looking for new business.

He was also very clear about the need to set up the organization to move with pace and speed. What new processes are required, which people with what skills do you now need, which technology will enable and enhance business performance... Don’t underestimate the scale of change that needs to occur within your business and the impact that it will have on you as an individual.

Social is changing the world not just society

Finally Will McInnes the founder of NixonMcInnes took the social business concept on to a whole new level focusing on the global shift across all aspects of life. A new age for democracy where participation and openness between brands and consumers / between countries and residents / between world powers and every single one of us happens in real time. Where global movements are created and news passed along in matters of seconds.

Our take on SoCon2011

For us there were 4 big themes coming through from the day;

Mobile – we’ve seen the trend with our own clients however if you’re not thinking mobile then you’re missing a trick. Over 30% of Qype’s 20m users access the community on the move – that’s 6m people – and 85% of Warner Music’s audience follow them on a mobile device.

Resourcing – it never ceases to amaze me how much just 1 person with a focus on social media can achieve within any organization (hats off to Andrew Smith at The FA who is single handedly taking their social media on to a new level). However, the theme came through that there’s just not enough time during the week (and what about weekends) and that organizations need to rethink their resourcing strategies.

M&E – still the hot potato for the day however brands are starting to see their way through this. The immediate measures of reach, engagement, data capture and so on seem to be taken care of. However now we’re looking into the downstream impact of social media on purchase behaviour and the impact of layering media.

The role of the agency – one that’s obviously clearly very close to our heart. The general consensus was for company’s and brands to focus on getting their own houses in order and outsource specific elements when there was a lack of resources or expertise in house. When thinking more strategically or creatively about the role of social media engage an agency that genuinely understands social media.

Finally…

What this new world holds is not clear however thought leaders, creative thinkers and most importantly you and I as consumers and marketers are going to help define it. In fact we already have and are whether that’s as individuals or as a members of a group or community.

The rate of change within this space is amazing and will continue. What we all need to do is find the time to think about it, understand what it means to us and our businesses, and look for the opportunities that it offers us all.

No one person can see the social media future however we can all be part of it.

The social media revolution gains pace – Part 1

2011-11-04T15:47:00.001Z

Gravity Thinking attended SoCon2011 last month, which bought some of the best company’s, brands, agencies and people within the social media space together on a single day to share their views and opinions on the impact that social media has had and will continue to exert into the future.

So we’ve created a two part review of the conference for our blog which should help to keep everyone on top of the main themes and ideas being discussed. The first part focuses on the mainstay of social media ‘Building and nurturing online communities’ and ‘Driving consumer engagement through social media’. The second part focuses on the more ethereal elements with ‘Monetising social media’ and ‘the future of business is social’.

One thing that is certain is that the media landscape is moving fast and we’re all on the journey whether we like it or not.

Speakers; Nokia, Last.fm, Wunderman, Microsoft, Warners, SEOmoz, Qype, Steel, The FA, Ace-A-Metric, Dell, IBM, Ruder Finn, Brilliant and NixonMcInnes.

Building a nurturing online communities

From the three experienced speakers who have been at the coalface of online community engagement (SEOmoz, The FA and Qype) we were able to garner some excellent tips and advice. We’ll skipped over the usual start with the consumer, have an objective, be truthful, be useful, listen and learn, reciprocal linking and focused on four areas which we believe are where you can really make a difference…

1. It takes commitment and dedication

As Gillian Muessig the Co-Founder of SEOmoz stated you have to do it everyday even if you don’t feel like it. Whether it’s late, your tired or your struggling for inspiration you have to make it happen. Set reminders and make the time.

Andrew Smith from The FA also had some great advice when he stated that you simply have to make the effort, be there and make it happen. His example was content creation where he urged us all to take a picture, video it and record it even when it doesn’t seem worth it. His point being that you can edit the best bits later and generally there’s some absolute gold in there. Over 100k hits to a video of the England under 21’s training session is testimony to this.

2. Speed of response

We all experience the speed of social media and online communities everyday with news spreading not within hours but within seconds. Therefore you need processes and resources so that you can be on it and respond there and then in real time.

The FA are recording, processing and broadcasting content at a rate of knots to ensure that it’s timely and relevant to their audience, as well as offering their communities social ammunition and with that social kudos.

3. Be entertaining

What is genuinely going to be interesting and engaging to your audience? There were lot’s of examples however again The FA had some interesting takes on this with The Super Fan who get’s to go to every single event at the new Wembly stadium this year – from international football to concerts to American Football. This lucky chap has then been provided with the platform to share his experiences through social media. I also loved the fact that the FA used a football commentator on Twitter to make it more interesting and engaging – a nice twist.

4. Connect people in the real world

Qype had a lot to say about connecting people and so they should as this is the whole point of their product – referrals and references for experiences. However it’s an interesting point when taken more generally. We don’t live in a virtual world and so when the virtual world enhances the real world that’s a more positive impact on the audience as you’ve created a real life experience (they’re generally more valuable and memorable than virtual ones).

And that’s why we loved The FA’s promotion on Facebook to win tickets to a game at Wembly Stadium. Nothing that different there however the clever bit was that they branded the area and seats at the game. Do you think that everyone at the game suddenly wanted to join the group on Facebook? Probably.

Driving consumer engagement through social media

There were three very different angles on engagement so best to deal with each one at a time…

Don’t do ‘marketing’ do ‘socialising’

First up was Nick Bennett at Steel, who managed to get the whole audience blowing on a duck whistle and almost redefined ‘marketing’ as ‘socialising’, had a very creative spin on social engagement. Our main observation alongside ‘relevance’, ‘interesting’ and ‘creative’ was around ‘sharing’ and letting the consumer get involved in the campaign. His expression ‘leave space for the consumer’ was spot on. His example of a campaign for Greggs was interesting (doughnuts with personality) even if the results seemed a little light.

His main point was a change in mindset from a traditional marketing approach to a more social approach and having a genuine dialogue with the consumer.

Social media reflecting real life

After Nick came Matthew Hawn from Last.fm, an interesting brand and indeed an interesting man himself. He talked a lot about the value exchange between brands and consumers and more specifically the value expectation in currency terms. How much is my data, endorsement, recommendation… worth in hard cash.

However his take on your social profile mirroring your real life profile was most interesting. In life we act differently with family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances etc… and we do the same within social or do we? Is Facebook actually creating one ‘homogenous you’ with all these contacts in one place? Is Google + the better solution that let’s us express ourselves in different ways to different people?

Mathew finished on something very close to our heart and bashed Facebook a little. As a brand (or consumer for that matter) do you really trust Zuckerburg and his buddies with all your data? The consensus was NO however how many brands and consumers are doing just this.

Making sense of social

A tough couple of acts for Karl Havard at Wunderman to follow and this probably made his quite interesting take on the ‘Purchase Funnel 2.0’ and ‘how to influence the moment of truth’ much flatter than it should have been – after all he was talking hard nosed commercials. His key theme however was spot on and one we at Gravity Thinking focus on. How do brands use and act in social media?

1. Aggregate conversations in order to make sense of them
2. Harvest all the data points and then use modeling to make them actionable.
3. Use social as a research and insights tool.

We couldn’t agree more.

A note on M&E

What was interesting was each speaker take on measuring the impact of social media. Nick’s take was about the value of ‘time spent with a brand’. Matthew used an interesting analogy to research ‘think of social as qual not quant’. Karl opened a whole can of worms when thinking about the layering of different media and the combined impact on purchase behaviour – one for another day.

Finally find the time to visit these websites for a little inspiration of ideas that truly harness the power of social media at scale - kickstarter.com / fashionastake.com / kiva.org – all courtesy of Nick Bennett at Steel.

To tweet or post, perchance to blog...ah there's the rub

2011-11-02T18:01:00.003Z

Something funny has happened recently - I have lost my desire to blog :-0
I know it sounds like social sacrilege but it appears to have left me and I can only point to the influence of Twitter and Facebook as the suspects.
There have been many posts and articles over the last 6 months declaring the death of the blog most of which refer to an increasing trend to send short quick witty messages via social networks and it seems I am not immune to the same influence.
This prompted me to an article I was referred to recently written by Douglas Rushkoff entitled ‘The internet makes me think in the present tense.'Rushkoff's premise is that ‘the internet pushes us all towards the immediate. The now. Every inquiry is to be answered right away’. He really hits the nub of the issue when he says "The now-ness of the Internet engenders impulsive, unthinking responses over considered ones, and a tendency to think of communications as a way to bark orders or fend off those of others'
So there the rub, everything is now so fast paced that we don't have time to stop, think and contemplate things but rather shoot off quick reactions to events, articles etc.
All the points are valid and relevant to my current predicament but I am not sure that this is really the cause - in fact I think that blogging is not really dead it has just evolved and it now takes multiple forms.
According to Wikipedia the definition of a blog is "Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video" so I guess the take out is why should a blog be a static site but instead be a selection of places that we use to engage with people for different reasons - and for that read Twitter, Facebook , You Tube, Linked In !
Sounds like a great new social network idea - although it seems someone else
is on to this....

Socon2011 Event

2011-10-24T22:37:00.004+01:00

We attended the Socon2011 event last week and here’s a link to the live stream – you can select the specific speakers yourself – people worth watching in this order...

Anthony Mayfield, Author and co founder ,Brilliant – thought leader
Will McInnes, Founder, NixonMcInnes – thought leader
Nick Bennett, Managing Partner, Steel – v creative approach
Matthew Hawn, VP of Product, Last.fm – interesting take on use of data
Tejal Patel, Global Social Commerce, Nokia – interesting how a global brand does it

Written review to follow.

Completely useless ...yet interesting !

2011-09-26T17:39:00.001+01:00

What does Pb mean or stand for ?
The answer is of course lead....
Why do I know that ? well back in school I remember a dog eared poster that showed the Periodic Table - little did I know that this was my first brush with "Information Graphics" (as they were known then) - since then they have entered daily life more and more - from tube maps to weather charts and signposts to IKEA construction. According to Wikipedia, the first examples of infographics can be found on cave walls. They are visualizations of information or data with the purpose of bringing to light a point in a format that is graphically appealing. As our world moves towards a faster pace of life, the need to communicate a message quickly through visualisation is becoming more pronounced.
Over the last few years we have been overloaded with infographics with every company trying a new angle to get their place in sharing, distribution, communication, and marketing themselves - there are even websites dedicated to them to the point that I have become desensitised to them.
So I wearily clicked on a link entitled "How To Use Facebook To Market Your Brand - the description didn't disappoint using usual "infographic" flowery over the top speak "it lays out some of the more subtle aspects of the entire "like" dynamic. It lays bare the different species of fan, and concludes that each one should be approached with a slightly different pitch in mind" So I was not surprised that the first 5-6 points were pretty obvious re-hashed info but my patience was rewarded when I came to 2 elements at the bottom - the Fan Engagement Spectrum and Edge Rank.
The Fan Engagement Spectrum whilst v simple gives an interesting perspective on how a brand should view their fans from converted advocates to friends of "likers" - something that a brand should consider v carefully when planning FB and associated activity.
Edge Rank is something that i was vaguely aware of but I didn't know the formula which apparently takes into account how close you are with the original poster, how much the actual post gets liked, and the time since it was posted - check it out it is definitely worth a look - there is also a page dedicated to checking your own edge rank out.

A sheep in wolf's clothing

2011-08-26T17:48:00.001+01:00

Big, beautiful and amazing ? or stupid, bad and evil ? according to crowdsourcing site brandtags that is how Unilever are viewed by the general public. Admittedly the sample involved in this study is probably small and pretty skewed but it will be interesting to see how people will feel the same about their new crowdsourcing Facebook initiative Unilever VIP.

Since 2006 when Jeff Howe first coined the concept of crowdsourcing it has given rise to songs, ad campaigns, recipes, companies, new products and, in the case of Iceland recently even a country’s constitution. So I guess it is no surprise that Unilever are moving on from the big splash they made dropping Lowe in favour of “social think tank” Idea Bounty, I just can’t understand why it took them so long.

After all their great competitor Procter & Gamble can be vaguely forgiven for their saccharine “proud sponsor of Mums” by the fact that they have been utilising crowdsourcing for a while via its own platform Connect + Develop and the open initiative Innocentive. Apparently this has resulted in more than 50% of its product initiatives and more than 1,000 active agreements including “World changing” inventions such as The Swiffer, and initiatives such as less calorific food and how to moisten toilet tissue for better cleansing.

So why does this initiative leave me feeling a bit cold? I don’t have an issue with this coming late to the crowdsourcing party, indeed I have a personal bugbear with people proudly announcing “I have worked in digital for over 15 years” or “I started blogging before blogging was even invented” or because of the hyperbole used in the site but rather because I am confused as to whether the focus is on crowdsourcing or simple coupon based rewarding.

Now don’t get me wrong I think both routes are entirely valid and I understand that they need to reward involvement but a quick search on Google for “Unilever VIP” results in a primary link to the cathedral of deals - Money Saving Expert, which features above even the Facebook page link. It only takes a visit to page 2 on Google to see it is filled with the usual suspects of rpoints, hotukdeals, freebiestuff etc. To me this means that the majority of contributors will be coupon junkie housewives leaving the minimum info they need to get their next voucher fix.

If Unilever were truly interested in crowdsourcing they would put their money where their mouth is and properly reward really innovative ideas in the way that Innocentive do with payments of up to $100k per solution rather than a £150 shopping voucher. However I may be proved wrong in which case it will be interesting to see how Unilever will deal with the results from this venture and show consumers that they have not only listened but also acted. Starbucks have been roundly criticised for only implementing 150 of the thousands ideas that mystarbucksidea has generated many of which are pretty anodyne.

If Unilever do “walk the talk” I think they need to carefully negotiate the fine line between giving their consumer a real say in their ongoing product development and a potential pyrrhic victory where they are forced to implement initiatives that could ultimately destroy their fantastic brands.

A social room with a view

2011-07-25T17:53:00.002+01:00

Geo-tagging. How many times have you heard someone in marketing evangelise about location-based offers recently? Everyone with a Smartphone has been literally been sprinting towards the nearest brand and encouraging everyone to get involved – PLEASE can we all stop for a minute and think about how we can use this channel intelligently?

Which is why I was so interested to read a recent thought piece by Ethan Zuckerman whilst on my internet ramblings. Aptly titled “Desperately Seeking Serendipity” (http://bit.ly/lQ6WHv) - Zuckerman refers to the very same software (Creepy) that ousted the cheating husband in my last blog post and explores how “cosmopolitans” (people who live in cities) experience serendipity. If you have some time on your hands, I’d thoroughly recommend a read. He suggests that despite living conditions in cities offering a plethora of options to eat, shop & play, we are naturally creatures of habit and we will stay well within our comfort zones, doing the same thing and going to the same places a lot of the time.

And whilst ‘Creepy’ might not be great for those wishing to hide an affair, it seems like it might be pretty great for brands and marketers! If you can track key influencers (e.g. Beauty bloggers) online and see an aggregated output of a typical day for them, and if what Zuckerman says is right (i.e. We all do much of the same) - you can make a real impact learning about them and then influencing their day in the right place at the right time.

To engage consumers, particularly a niche audience, you could track their movements and activities and begin to serve location based offers when it is right for them – which makes for a smarter activity than just blasting offers every time they walk past a store. Just because you are walking past a Starbucks, doesn’t mean you want a 1/2 price coffee. But if you stop there every morning at 09.03am, and the Costa next door sent you an offer at 8.55am when you are on the approach, you might be inclined to swap.

Let’s offer consumers the best solutions that are right for them and at the same time try and make it measureable and of real value to the bottom line for a brand? For me, it’s about more than just ‘Location, location, location’ – it’s about what’s relevant to me. The pay off for me sharing where I am with you should be that I only receive offers that are not just right for me but delivered at the right time – not just offers.

Which is why I really like Whatser – in-app word of mouth – location based offers and recommendations from your own friends, making the city yours. Whilst they aren’t the Google of location apps just yet, I’m keeping an eye on them. OK, so it’s not brands being clever about where you are, but it can’t be denied that here is another niche community of people sharing and reviewing your brand and services – and you should have a voice/ place there.

Eli Pariser has written a whole book on the subject of tailored communication based on your own preferences and activity patterns. “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You” seems to put location and personalised services into layman's terms. I haven’t read it yet, but you can bet I’ve just clicked ‘order’ on Amazon – I’ll keep you posted! (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594203008/downandoutint-20)

As a marketer, I am in love with social media and location based services and very excited about the future of intelligent marketing. I can’t help feeling like we’re on the cusp of something immense and that we are very lucky to be working in this industry. So - come on everyone in marketing - let’s bring a bit of that magic back and start using social media intelligently and strategically – and let’s get some bang back for our bucks as marketers!

Love, revenge and geo-tagged martinis

2011-06-10T11:25:00.015+01:00

I love social media. And by that catch-all ‘social media’ phrase (which is a bit like this decades upgrade on ‘I love the internet’ – i.e. don’t we all, love?) I am referring to sites, applications and technology that enable me to connect and share more easily. So much so that last week, someone said something funny to me and like a social super geek I squeaked “RETWEET!”, with some gusto out loud. It wasn’t my finest moment. But despite being a social media lover, and having over 14 different social accounts and log-ins, I still avoid geo-tagging my tweets, checking in anywhere on facebook/ foursquare or geo-tagging any of my phone pics. I am still very cautious about letting the world know where I am at anyone time.

Why? Well, originally, I was concerned about security. But now, I am wondering if in fact there is something else we should be considering when making location-based posts. More recently, I’ve been thinking about the implications of social media & technologies on our behavior within society, and ultimately on how this will affect us as consumers.

Geo-location offers are the latest buzz-chat of the social industry right now but where do the boundaries around locative privacy truly lie? A quick example of how location based services can completely change the course of life was presented to me this weekend by a friend. Two weeks ago, she suspected her husbands’ late nights at the office were a clichéd front for a sordid affair. So what did she do? She decided to appoint Chief Inspector Social Media to the case and scoured the interwebs to quickly stumble upon some open software called Creepy - a geo-location information aggregator:

“...creepy is an application that allows you to gather geo-location related information about users from social networking platforms and image hosting services. The information is presented in a map inside the application where all the retrieved data is shown accompanied with relevant information (i.e. what was posted from that specific location) to provide context to the presentation....”

Within minutes she had a detailed account of all of the locations her husbands’ social interactions had been made from. Alas, very few tweets were from the office. Needless to say, we checked into the nearest cocktail bar for some espresso martini therapy and she re-categorized his office on FourSquare to a ‘strip club’ in a truly glorious example of modern revenge. Vodka and a spot of social vengeance seemed to soften the blow a bit. But whilst she starts her week off picking up the pieces of a broken marriage, I can’t help but muse over whether we can ever truly be private in this age of social sharing.

What are the social implications of being able to be tracked 24-7? No longer can you let a friend down gently if you don’t want to go for coffee with the “I’m not feeling well”. Will we have to start being completely honest and saying “I just don’t feel like listening to you prattle on about your new baby today”? Or would you just have to check-out of all social interactions to cover our backs? We might be starting to evolve the common or garden white lie right out of modern society with our addiction to sharing. Interestingly, in age where talking about and sharing about yourself is standard and expected, it seems that those who choose not to share will be the new radicals.

Lastly, I recently saw an article in the ES Magazine, which hinted towards a movement of reputation management of the individual online. The article was titled ‘Jobs of the future’. They suggested that the future will see a plethora of ‘Reputation Groomer’s who will charge top Dollar for their services as someone who will improve your personal ‘cache’– i.e. The info about an individual that can be found on the internet. In the future you say? Hell, I’m thinking my friends (ex) husband could use one of those guys right now! And by the way, most social & PR agencies are already doing this for brands.

As a marketer, and with brands tripping over each-other on their way to Ye Grande Location Based Offer Shoppe, I am both fascinated and flabbergasted at how quick we all are to jump into the deep end without considering the options. Just because LBM (location based marketing) is new and has had some traction, does not mean it is right for all brands and products. Shock, horror…. What if your target consumers don’t want to share their offer redemptions with the world, or worse still, are desperate to redeem but don’t want the world to know where they were when they did? Whilst I love the idea of using LBM as part of a richer mix of activity, I do think that brands will need to be smart about it.

So, is all fair in love, advertising and geo-tagging? I’d say so.

Futurescaping - dystopia or utopia?

2011-05-23T11:36:00.003+01:00

We were recently asked to give a senior Client some thoughts on what the future of social media looked like - here are the thoughts -- utopia or dystopia for brands ?

1. Web 3.0 will be driven by social media – the future is all about semantic web where most info in search and networks will be driven from our friends and networks

2. Sharing data will only increase as people become willing to share more to get involved with social media more – FB connect is now 2-3 years old but developments with “like” everywhere and FB becoming the no1 referrer to many articles mean people have to be connected and are willing to share their data to be part of it. The flip of this is that there needs to be defined rewards for sharing and Privacy needs to be taken v seriously.

3. If Content is king aggregation is definitely Queen - as content proliferates across all areas (not just news but articles, games, competitions, apps etc etc and sharing is enhanced within social media people will want aggregation to make sense of it all and to guide their way through it.

4. Portable friends networks will become more prevalent as people want just one place to connect, connect, and socialise – FB are winning this game at present but who knows who might nail this one.

5. Influencer marketing will only increase in importance as consumer power increases and people want true recommendations coming real people

6. Location based activity will grow an grow – the success of Foursquare and Facebook Places is testimony to this and with the advent of RFID people will want to tell everyone where they are and expect appropriate rewards for doing so (this this only enhances the data story)

7. Mobile will continue to the touchpoint for social media – mobile is now 25% of all web traffic and as smartphones reach the mainstream mobile marketing will finally come of age (this only enhances location based developments)

8. Social media will become more pervasive as increasingly people us it to tell them everything that is going on from news to sport to gossip and recommendations – brands will need to have defined social media policies to cope with this including clear escalation procedures.

9. Social media monitoring will become the norm – connected with the point above brands will need to have ongoing listening services to know what is being said about them and their competitors and tap into the treasure trove of info in social media.

10. Social commerce will become the norm as people react to recommendations from friends and brands they will want a one stop place to browse, recommend and buy.

11. Finally the growth in social media I think will also beckon a new golden age of creativity as it becomes increasingly tough for brands to not only reach their consumers but to elicit a reaction – this coupled with the huge increases in tech developments and the challenge to make ideas work cross platform will drive better creative ideas and execution.

How fast can you read this?

2011-05-17T09:36:00.002+01:00

Let me start by saying that I love technology and social media and how it enables us to find out everything we need at the click of a button. Social networks and chats are making us communicate instantly and keep in touch with anyone anywhere in the world. A few characters and you are connected, updated, informed.

Then I received a newsletter this morning that both really annoyed me and made me stop and think. No, it wasn’t about politics, the economy or even the wretched alternative voting system…just a newsletter offering a discount for a product. The email I received carried a promotion for a Speed Reading Course. “Annoyed about speed reading?” I hear you say? Yes I am.

I don’t understand why people feel the need to learn to read faster. Surely reading is something to enjoy and take time over. The feeling of losing yourself in a book, or in an interesting article is…well…priceless. Even when reading something for business, I would prefer to understand it and take the time to read it entirely rather than just speed-read it.

‘I took a speed-reading course and read “War and Peace” in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.’ Woody Allen

I know we’re supposed to be living in a commercial world of 140 characters…time is money people, lets get to the point in as quick and clear a fashion as possible! But I don’t want to learn to read any faster, and I find it unhealthy the way our lives are being sped up in everything we do. I already live in one of the fastest and most chaotic cities in the World. I take a fast tube crowded with hundreds of people every morning to go to work, people rush past you in this crazy race to get to work, to get back home, to get out for a drink, you buy convenience food to eat quicker, you even take sleeping aids to get to sleep quicker! Everyone is rushing, all the time. Speed-reading, touch-typing, fast-food, and most fast things to me are all part of an unhealthy lifestyle and one of the biggest reasons for today’s increases in stress, anxiety levels, addictions and family breakdown!

I am not saying that all the things that are now available straight away are bad. On the contrary, as I said technology and social networks are making our lives easier and more connected and I love them for that! But I believe that it would be great to find the right balance and use all these amazing tools to keep us all up-to-date with what goes on but to use them in our own real time, rather than just succumb to the craziness of increased velocity.

Good, to-the-point, concise communication, yes. Speed-reading offer? Thanks, but no thanks!

A blog about a blog

2011-05-13T09:07:00.003+01:00

The concept of niche blogging is not a new one, but lately there seems to have been an explosion of what could be called bizarelly specific single-topic blogs. An enduringly popular example focuses on the singular joy of witnessing Tom Selleck, a waterfall and a sandwich within the same locale.

Or maybe you’d just prefer to look at Jim Jong-Il looking at things?

My own experience at harnassing this niche appeal came when a private joke between friends, combined with the accessible simplicity of the Tumblr blogging platform, gave creation to the worlds first extensive catalogue of animals riding other animals.

A silly little idea it may be, but even I, a long standing supporter of this majestic yet rare event, was shocked at the seemingly instant appeal I had managed to achieve through absolute simplicity. Having made the initial blog and populated it with a dozen or so images, and casually submitted it to one minor link referral website, I was not expecting more than a few views from friends. 24 hours after I had built it, Google Analytics informed me there had been 2700 unique visits across the globe. Within a week a link had been tweeted and retweeted several hundred times, and featured on dozens of different websites.

It was a unique lesson for me about the very different meaning ‘niche’ has in terms of the internet. To date, over 30,000 people have stumbled across my contribution to the world of memeblogging, without any promotional efforts on my part. It struck me that if you can come up with an appealing concept that can be described and understood in three words AND incorporates funny pictures of animals, then you might have just found the key to these internets.

To Twog or to Blitter?

2011-05-01T09:30:00.001+01:00

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 !

Nice nice baby

2011-04-20T11:21:00.002+01:00

Following the theme of songs I saw this and had to share it - I don't usually (or ever really) re-post others blogs in full but I saw this one from Peter Kim (I subscribe to his feed as he writes some great social media pieces. I thought this was both hilarous and spot on so sharing in full here:

I'm in Miami. And when I'm in Miami, I think about the city's heyday in pop culture, during the mid- to late 1980's. And when I think about the music from that time and see signs for A1A, I think about Vanilla Ice.Whether he knew it or not, Mr. Ice was a social business visionary. Allow me to translate the knowledge he dropped twenty years ago that should guide us today.

On strategy: "All right stop collaborate and listen"

On new tools: "Ice is back with my brand new invention"

On work ethic: "Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly"

On social's staying power: "Will it ever stop yo I don't know"

On bad tools and process: "killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom"

On quality control: "Anything less than the best is a felony"

On scalability: "Love it or leave it you better gain weight"

On getting things done: "If there was a problem yo I'll solve it"

On authenticity: "Quick to the point to the point no faking"

On agility: "Burning them if you ain't quick and nimble"

On guru rockstars: "I'm on a roll and it's time to go solo"

On MySpace: "The block was dead"

On Twitter's spam followers: "Girls were hot wearing less than bikinis"

On Facebook detractors: "Reading for the chumps on the wall"

On leadership: "Conducted and formed"

On social business design: "This is a hell of a concept"

On effectiveness: "slice like a ninja / Cut like a razor blade"

On how to celebrate wins: "Ice ice baby"

On ROI: "Word to your mother"

To take a drive down memory lane this morning and be astounded by Mr. Ice's prescience, click here.

"Crowdsourcing" ....The Movie

2011-04-14T13:25:00.000+01:00

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.......

Time, truth and hearts

2011-04-08T10:05:00.001+01:00

"If you work in media and marketing and you don't think it is exciting then get out" - not my words but rather the words of Paul Hayes from News International at the recent Changing Media summit that we attended and I have to say I couldn't agree more. We set Gravity up a few years ago to do something different, to try and challenge the norm and ultimately to deliver better work to our Clients that produced the results that we felt that agencies were not offering or indeed Clients were not demanding. I have to say it has been a rocky road starting up in a recession but we have kept true to our principles and this has helped grow the agency despite the economic challenges and most of this has been driven by a curiosity and excitement about the huge changes in the industry over the last few years. There are however 3 principles that spring to mind that are perfectly summed up in one of my favourite songs - "All these things that I have done" by the Killers - namely the phrase "Time, truth and hearts". I know these are guiding principles that ultimately define any display of greatness but i think they are also great principles for anyone running an agency in the "second decade".

TIME: As anyone knows success doesn't happen overnight - it takes time build a quality agency with great staff, put the processes in place to do great work and ultimately sell this to new Clients. On top of this the times are moving and you need to stay on top of the hugely fast moving environment out there and not get left behind - offer Clients the next new (but relevant) solutions and stay ahead of the pack.

TRUTH: Principle are tested everyday but the overidingly you have to stay true to your self and your ambitions and do the right thing for your Clients and yourself and stick to what you believe in. For us this has meant the development of a close network of partners who can offer the very latest in technology and thinking as this simply can't all live under one roof and any agency that tries to tell Clients that is not being truthful.

HEARTS: Words like passion, dedication and commitment are easily used but not so easily demonstrated and shared and this is at the core of any agency - as Troy Young from SAY MEDIA said at the CMS - you need to have a commitment and goal and try and take everyone with you on that journey and most of all believe in it. I think that concept of curiosity best demonstrates this and it one of the guiding principles of Gravity.

Interestingly Nike used the Killers song the phrase came from in one of their commercials recently focusing on the other great line "I've got soul but I am not a soldier" - their supporting line was "everything you need is already inside" - which I guess says it all !

Another political Twit and a lesson in website development

2011-03-31T22:11:00.000+01:00

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.

Do TV and social media really mix ?

2011-03-30T12:25:00.001+01:00

I saw the new TV ad for IKEA last night and I have to say I loved it - great insight, well executed, lovely tone of voice and perfectly relevant to the product and the audience with huge opportunity going forwards and most of all a great social media connection ........or at least so I thought - I visited the Facebook page and was greeted by a simple landing page asking me to vote linking to an app (again spot on) BUT to date it only has 2,200 "likes" and despite some comments on "who is messier" it all felt a little flat. To see if this was a one off I thought would look at a similar approach I have seen recently from B&Q who have been running DIY disaster ads - nothing new but nicely done although a little annoying when the impressions count goes above 3 and there is no variation ! - interestingly they only have 9k "likes" on their page and the "funny" disaster video is nowhere to be seen !

Now I have sat in a lot of talks and read a lot of studies about the huge rise in simultaneous multi channel consumption and was led to believe that people are seamlessly moving between watching TV and surfing and brand comms should be very aware of this indeed if this video is to believed then social will become the way we interact with V in the future.

Maybe it is too early to say how successful IKEA activity will be or even that the rest of the population has to catch up with marketers dreams and ambitions but I think we have to keep trying and one day success will come.........

The unstoppable force moves the immovable object

2011-03-16T18:30:00.000Z

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.

PHD's Big Society

2011-02-26T13:35:00.000Z

Recently there have been a few big agencies with big budgets releasing videos combating the charge that they are old school and lost in the past - last year Saatchi's produced the "Last Ad Agency on Earth " and when i came across Thisvideo via Charles Firth's blog I I felt compelled to react strongly - I resisted the urge for a few weeks to see what the fall out would be but now the hiatus has died down I thought I would consider in a rounded and less emotional manner.

I must say my immediate reaction was "What the f@@@ is a traditional media agency doing sticking their head above the parapet?" they must know what they are doing........it seem not - they not only produced a toe curlingly awful video they removed comments that were negative and had no response strategy in place when (inevitably) the stones were thrown (sticking with the parapet analogy) -...not counting the fact that they used children and planted words from long in the tooth planners who are far too used to the sound of their own voices.

That said they did get 148k views and 200+ likes BUT to date there are also over 1,600 dislikes and the first 4-5 pages of Google are dedicated to blogs, articles and comments roundly criticising the exercise and their reaction.

I have thought long and hard about why I hate it - over and above the obvious - and I have decided that I feel the same about this as I do about "Call me Dave" 's Big Society - it smacks of everything that is wrong about the establishment trying to dance with the kids and become relevant by claiming it knows what is going on and it can do something about it at a time when even those integrally involved are not sure - does PHD have the same view on the impact of a digital generation that Dave has of the struggling classes from Notting Hill, Stow in the Wold and Downing Street ?

On the flip side part of me applauds that both PHD and Dave are at least trying the acknowledging an issue that won't go away- only time will tell if they start to walk the talk and act on their rhetoric.

2011 Facetox anyone ?

2011-02-16T12:54:00.000Z

By Michaela MacIntyre, Account Director.

“Leaving” facebook because you are fed up with the changes to the privacy policies? Or have you all of a sudden decided that facebook is a hateful energy sponge and not the intelligent social network you would like to brand yourself with? Some people are indeed very marmite about it and have vehemently left ‘the book’ shortly after signing up. This is not new news, infact we referred to it in a blog re: our predictions for 2010. Facebook have been dominating headlines at least twice a year since they launched with regards to their revised privacy policies. And we’ve all moaned about it. But up until very recently, I haven’t seen many people in my network “leave”. In January, I did resolve to remove any personal information from my page, tighten up my privacy settings and stop using ‘Places’ for fear of alerting spammers and thieves as to when I’m not home and have certainly been more selective about what I share. I’m on a facetox.

But, is it just me, or is there a bit of a trend growing? No, it’s not shoulder pads or the revival of white leather brogues, but rather a quiet exodus from facebook. Prompted by this video I saw recently , I’ve been thinking a lot about leaving facebook, and have noticed more and more people disappear from my friend list with dramatic, final status updates telling the world they are leaving. The video I mention earlier is written by Ross Gardiner and produced by Sonny Side Films – it’s a humorous, but poignant look at why he decided to leave facebook 6 months ago. Within a few days, the views skyrocketed from a few hundred to over a million. Michaela likes this.

In 2010 I must admit I hardly noticed anyone leave, or consider leaving. But 2011? Oh it’s positively de rigueur. So far this year, I’ve seen just over 10% of my “friends” leave facebook. And more and more people (clients, suppliers, the gentleman who runs my local Chippie...) are talking to me about their recent account deactivation. The leavers all state that they were deleting their accounts because they were either concerned about their privacy, or they were sick of it consuming their lives. Start typing ‘how to delete’ into Google and the most popular auto fill is ‘how to delete my facebook account’. Personally, I have invested a lot of time time uploading photos to facebook (over 200 albums in fact) - the last 5 years of my life are documented there - and no where else! For that reason alone, I am not sure at what point, for me, the privacy issues will outweigh the value of a single destination that is storing all of my photos.

Last year, you may have seen the campaign: http://www.quitfacebookday.com/. They had just over 38k people sign-up and commit to leaving on the same day. I don’t know how many of those 38k actually left facebook, but I’ll wager not many. I also saw a brief report from Tech Crunch in 2010 about a mass exodus of early adopters - many of them Google Engineers. Did one of them scare the rest? Did Google decide that being on facebook was a sign of disloyalty? Or do they know something we don’t? Read it here.

This begs the question: When people leave facebook, where are they going? A quick search on twitter reveals thousands upon thousands of people either considering leaving, or rejoicing in having left. Natural churn or increasing trend? Although still in Alpha, will sites like Diaspora gain popularity with their “Share what you want, with whom you want.” approach? Should facebook be worried? MySpace weren’t, but should have been. According to many facebook users in forums, have have recently left or have tried to leave, facebook are making it harder for you to leave, technically – the deactivate button is hidden in layers within your settings. And when you leave, facebook displays profiles of people you interact with most and in a final attempt to get you to stay, they tell you that “Sarah XXX will miss you!”. How cunning. Faceguilt.

And of course, being a marketer, I have been asking myself if brands should be taking note of this? The number of people leaving is probably overshadowed by the many more thousand signing up every day but with brands and services investing heavily to increase their presence in social media, it’s worth a moments consideration. All of a sudden every agency in London has an Social Media offering and everything from your favourite yoghurt to your choice of toilet roll seems to have a facebook page. At a social media conference I attended recently, facebook UK’s David Parfect reiterated facebook’s vision not only to become your homepage, but to increase it’s search function to rival Google’s. All the Brand Managers at the talk seemed reassured that their investments into developing pages was money well spent. My personal opinion is that a brand page on facebook should serve only as a portal into other brand sites and destinations, not replace micro-sites. Why? Well, you have no control over where the data, or the apps and programs you are developing are stored. It is not your, or your agencies server. If facebook crashed and went under tomorrow, you would lose everything. Brands and agencies would do well to remember this: Use facebook as nothing more than an elaborate and interactive banner ad, for want of a better metaphor – it’s a way of driving people to your website. Nothing more.

So I guess it’s apt that after a month and a bit into my facetox, I’m falling off the wagon and am right back into the swing of social addiction. I’ll probably be with facebook to the bitter end, and I know I’m not the only one. There will of course be Mark Zuckerburg and Andrex.

I have been an overuser, fanboy and complainer

2011-02-11T16:20:00.000Z

I have had an iPhone 4 now for about 9 months after doggedly holding nto to my HTC Touch kidding myself that the operating system was better - safe to say that I am now a huge fan. Of course they are not perfect and my perennial issue is the battery but on balance it is now completely indispensable. So seeing this really struck a chord - I reckon I have been most of these.....which are you ?

CMO cheat sheet

2011-01-21T17:17:00.001Z

I came across this recently that I thought I would share - it is from cmo.com and published earlier in 2010 but still relevant. The info in pretty topline and includes some quite subjective points of view with little reference to objective eg if you were a B2B company then LI would definitely be the most worthwhile of all these sites but you might find it useful for an overview.

Social media a force for good or subversion ?

2011-01-06T15:24:00.000Z

The year is only 6 days old and already social networks have been at the top of the news not just once but 3 times - on the positive side Facebook and Twitter were used to successfully find Serena Beakhurst, a 14 year who ran away from home, using celebrities such as Rio Ferdinand and Stephen Fry conversely Simone Black announced here intention to kill herself on Facebook on Christmas Day and was goaded by some of her (supposed) 1048 friends - she eventually carried out her desire to fatal consequences. Then only yesterday the police announced that they are to use Facebook advertising to try and find some clues as to murder of Jo Yeates - in a statement they said “The majority of people these days are spending time on Facebook and other social networking sites – it has become part of everyday routine, This advert allows us to point people to special features on our website and contact our incident room.” The force said using the site was also cost-effective.

Head of E-services Scott Fulton said: “There have been over 63,000 views of the news updates on our website, a further 18,000 on the dedicated Jo page and over 70,000 views of the CCTV clips on our YouTube channel.” The case (at the time of writing remains unsolved).

So it certainly looks like the predictions of social networking (and in turn social media) reaching the mainstream in 2011 are spot on - however this does bring with it the murky issue of privacy. I blogged back at the start of 2010 that privacy would be a major issue during the year and indeed it was - from Zuckerberg declaring in Jan 2010 that the "age of privacy was over" to the stubborn approach to sharing settings and although they did publicise the ability to opt out of various initiatives - it was just that - an opt out not an opt in !

In the past I have had a relatively blase attitude towards privacy - I always viewed it as necessary to evolve online experiences - semantic web being a large element of this however an article in The Sunday Times this week woke me up to the more subversive nature of how some organisations are using the internet (and more importantly social media) to track dissidents and mould people's thoughts. The article is an overview written by Evegny Morozov for his book The Net Delusion, in it he claims that many authoritarian Governments are using the internet for keeping their populations under surveillance and in line - something that runs directly counter to the claims that the internet will set us free. He cites the Iranian election of 2009 where the Western media pronounced it a revolution led by Twitter and the fact that the "crowdsourcing" undertaken by the multitude of smartphones helped the Government pinpoint and arrest all those involved. It didn't stop there, according to Morozov, they also used Facebook to find those supporters of the Green party living abroad and threatened them with harm to their relatives in Iran plus manipulated Twitter messages to increase support for Ahmadinejad. Other references included how easy it is to predict the sexual orientation of someone on Facebook by their friends (interesting in countries where it is illegal) and the 50 cent army in China which is apparently 280k strong and paid to blog and steer ideological discussion in the "correct direction". The West is not immune to this - GCHQ and the Hone Office have used the targeting of terrorists as an excuse to read everyone's emails (and maybe social network status too) and the US aggressive reaction to WikiLeaks speaks volumes.

So what of 2011 ? I think privacy will become one of the hottest topics of the year - indeed the year start with Data Privacy Day at the end of January ! - it could be the tipping point for many to leave the mainstream social networking sites and start smaller more niche groups (Ning'esque) - whatever the outcome is privacy is going to become a buzzword as surely as Facebook and Twitter did in 2010.

Video review of 2010

2010-12-12T19:35:00.000Z

Great review from You Tube for 2010 http://bit.ly/hmayCX

Exploding teen myths

2010-12-09T19:05:00.000Z

Interesting blog from Mediapost exploding the myth of marketing to teens which I thought I would share verbatim - The broad brush nature is slightly misleading (there is a huge difference between 13 and 19 but the principles are interesting as is the "exploding the myth" approach';

Myth #1: All teens want smartphones

While it is true that teens want phones, smartphone adoption has only reached 31% as of 2010. If 90% of teens own a cell phone, why aren't they buying smartphones? The answer is actually pretty simple: texting. Teens send an average of 3,339 texts per month, and typing that many messages on a touch screen is a lot more difficult than typing on even the most basic phone keyboard. That's why BlackBerry is one of the most popular phones for teens.

Myth #2: Texting is the way in

We already know that teens love to text. What some marketers fail to realize is that teens only love to text with their friends. Only 10% say they want companies to contact them via text message. There are some instances where a brand can use a texting campaign to engage this audience, but most teens see texting as "too personal," and aren't inviting brands into their personal space.

Myth #3: Teens use Facebook the way we use Facebook

Don't count on just your Facebook page to reach teens. Teens interact with brands on Facebook if they feel there is a real benefit to them for doing so. They're not "liking" every brand on Facebook that they purchase, and even if they do, they're not likely to come back to your page after the first visit.

Myth #4: Teens are going to join Twitter

Recent findings from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project show that only 8% of teens have embraced Twitter. Other studies also show that most teens don't have any interest in joining Twitter in the future (76%). By the time they decide to use Twitter, they probably won't be teens anymore.

Myth #5: If you build it, teens will come

Great ideas go to waste when no one knows about them. Many marketers believe that creating a social experience for teens will spread itself through word-of-mouth and online sharing. A good social media activation can always benefit from a mass-media driver.

Myth #6: Teens are online all the time

Teens spend roughly two hours per day on the Internet, and almost half of that time is spent on entertainment. Teens don't need the Internet to interact with their friends -- they see them all the time, and if they're not with them, they're texting them. If you want to reach teens online, you have to find a way to bridge their online and offline experiences.

Myth #7: Teens don't watch TV

Teens watch over 100 hours of television per month -- most of which is not viewed on TiVo, Hulu or Netflix. They may be texting or playing games while they watch TV, but they're definitely still watching it.

Myth #8: Teen word-of-mouth happens online

Teens do not spend most of their online time communicating with their friends. In fact, over 80% of teen word-of-mouth happens offline. If you want to tap into teen word-of-mouth, find a reason for them to talk about your brand offline.

Myth #9: Teens love online video

Teens use the Internet for entertainment, and online video is an important component of that. Branded video can be a great way to engage with teens as long as it doesn't come off as one long commercial. Teens aren't going to be tricked into thinking that your "viral video" is anything more than an advertisement.

Marketing Director's social media cheat sheet

2010-12-06T17:17:00.000Z

Some music companies just don't get it !

2010-11-17T14:03:00.000Z

Just noticed that the You Tube link to a "Life on facebook" I blogged about this week has been suspended due a copyright claiM by ABKCO who I believe own the rights to "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Stones - don't they consider how this not only introduces a great song to a new audience AND drives sales....or am I missing something ?

A life on Facebook

2010-11-15T12:02:00.001Z

This video is currently doing the rounds and although currently at a few thousand views I have no doubt it will go mainstream very soon. The video shows a life lived through Facebook and although the soundtrack is a little dark (Paint it Black by The Rolling Stones) the sentiment is positive - it is interesting that the first "half" of Alex's life covers the majority of the video with the rest - kids and growing old - being portrayed as photos - will this be the case as Facebook grows old with its users ?

Appy Daze

2010-11-11T11:25:00.000Z

One of the predictions we wrote about for 2010 (see 11 social media resolutions for 2010 post) was this finally being the year of mobile and after a few false starts it appears that the prediction is coming true.

This is inevitably being driven by the huge growth in penetration of smartphones. Last month it was announced that smartphones now account for a massive 19 percent of all the handsets shipped worldwide – a 50% growth on 2009, indeed GfK figures for June shows smartphones are steadily growing in the United Kingdom and make up 73.5 percent of the UK contract market, which is up 55 percent in Q1 2010.

In the number of "smart mobile device" sales, Symbian devices are the market leaders. Statistics published for the second quarter of 2010 showed that Symbian devices comprised a 41.2% share of smart mobile devices sold, with RIM having 18.2%, Android having 17.2%, and Apple having 15.1% (through iPhone OS) [8]

One of the biggest drivers of the success of smartphones has been applications – the stats are awesome:

- Apple to date have achieved 7 billion downloads from the 225K+ applications on their app store – up 50% in last 6 months (it took 2 years to get to 4m and 6 months to double this)

- 30% of people in Europe have downloaded an app to date with 8% downloading ten or more and nearly one in five use them on a daily basis.

Consumers are starting to view apps as essential - from finding the best routes to viewing their Facebook account and from “checking in” at various locations to playing addictive games like Angry Birds According to a Nielsen report (see image) from Aug this year games are by far the most downloaded application with weather, maps and social networking being the other most popular.

There was a time when mobile was included as an after thought in most presentations but the time has come to sart thinking about how mbile can be an integral part of the plan and think how brands can use this burgeoning opportunity to their advantage and create the ultimate advertising – as Dr Peter A. Johnson, vice president of market intelligence at the MMA recently said in an interview

“Marketers must focus on not just getting their app downloaded, but on making it a part of the consumer’s daily life by creating something that is compelling, entertaining and useful while on the go,”

This doesn't mean just integrating a flashlight, a TV remote, a battery charger or a mirror (although these are available) it means really thinking about how a brand can be relevant and useful.

Interestingly I instinctively thought that I had not let brands into my mobile life but when i looked at the branded apps on my iPhone I found at least 15 branded apps including Stella (with their AR bar finder) and John Smiths (with their Darts game) Barbie (my 5year old daughters favourite honest!) BA, RAC, Nike, Speedo, Adidas, Waitrose, Sainsburys, Orange, Sky, and BBC - 50% of which I use on a weekly basis.

However the biggest barrier that we have found as an agency is persuading brands to invest in this area - often this is less than £10k and can pay back many times over and whilst I think ROI is important sometimes it takes a leap of faith to experiment and see what huge opportunities exist for brands that can get it right.

Right..... now back to seeing how I can get to level 4 on Angry Birds !

When location, Twitter and running came together

2010-11-05T14:02:00.001Z

It seems that location based services are increasingly in the news nowadays as the service starts to become mainstream - as it was one of the 11 predictions we wrote about at the end of last year it was good to see 3 great examples of brand using these services to promote themselves - interestingly only 1 in the UK.

- The first was from Argentina for the Nike+ The human Race 10k which was experienced live as told by the runners themselves in action. For the very first time, the comments of 5 celebrity runners were broadcast live using a combination of voice data, Twitter and Google Maps to share on the web what was going on in their heads during the race without interfering with their performance. Using an iPhone strapped to their arms and an earphone, simply by pressing a button, the runners were able to share their experiences with the world in real time. The voice message was turned into a text message that was automatically published at thehumanrace.com.ar/envivo/ in their Twitter accounts, and banners on sports vertical portals and news sites.

- Next was a very simple but effective activity from Gap in the US who followed up their Foursquare campaign in the Summer, helping Facebook Places claim their place as a viable Foursquare contender, by giving away 10,000 pairs of free jeans. the activity simply asked people to show up at your local Gap store on November 5th, check in using Facebook Places. Show the cashier your check-in acknowledgment and get a coupon for free jeans as long as you’re one of the first 10,000 customers.

- Lastly a new outdoor campaign to promote Cheryl Cole’s new album and concert tour included a call-to-action encouraging fans to use Facebook Places to check-in at the billboard for a chance to win two free tickets plus travel and hotel to one of her X-Factor shows. Once you check in you get taken to her Facebook page and can enter into the comp.

It will be interesting to see what other brands start coming up with......watch this space !

Never ending creativity

2010-10-14T07:56:00.000+01:00

I came across thisfascinating presentation from Google Creative Labs courtesy of Digital Buzz Blog and depite it being 109 pages it enthralled me for 2 hours last night with a selection of recent inspirational ideas and web projects covering advertising, history, politics, sport, art etc. under the one main subject CREATIVITY. highlights for me were:

- A TED presentation that shows how you can control shapes using your mind

- A visual representation of the World based on different subjects such as child labour, living over 100 etc.

- A piece on Ridley Scott's "life in a day" You Tube project

- "iButterfly" - an entertaining iPhone application using AR, motion sensor, and GPS functions to collect coupons.

- A really simple idea based on seeing where your Facebook fans live

- An online challenge to build a web app in less than 10 kilobytes.

There are hundreds more I urge you to take a look - I am already looking forward to the next one......maybe featuring a Gravity idea ?

Video killed the web based shop ?

2010-10-04T09:19:00.000+01:00

31 years ago The Buggles topped the charts with the song "Video killed the radio star" - a song about about the end of a radio singer's career when TV arrived, according to Wikipedia it "referred to a period of technological change in the 1960s, the desire to remember the past and the disappointment that children of the current generation would not appreciate the past". It was this song that sprung to mind when I saw the new French Connection You Tube Boutique or rather twee'ly names "Youtique" - it made me think - is this the future of online shopping and the end of the static web based shop or is it "one hit wonder" (like The Buggles!)

The Youtique is really interesting to follow despite the cheesy presenting and gratuitous "yoof" references - it allows you to pick outfits according to occasions / event / season etc., see them modelled and then purchase them there and then with a link through to the FC site - as a bloke this has massive appeal - if I think of how easy it makes online clothes shopping and the multiple application to products such as sports equipment but also maybe online betting (see the last few matches highlights then bet?) or even supermarkets. However the videos have received a limited amount of views, and the transaction process still requires users to leave the video experience to enter the shop BUT considering Google TV's recent announcement I am sure all this will change.

So all being well it seems we may well be writing wistfully in 10 years time about the "good ole days" of static online shopping and the failure of those retailers that did not embrace the new ways of enticing people into their shops - "I saw you on the web back in 2010......"

Blast from the past

2010-09-20T10:55:00.000+01:00

My name's Andrew and I started my career in Sales Promotion - there I have said it and it doesn't feel as grubby as some will have you feel. But it does feel like a World away from what I do now .....but strangely still very relevant. The reason for the nostalgia is that last Thursday I had a trip back to the "belle époque" of Sales Promotion with firstly an invite to the launch of Colin Lloyd's book "Beyond Redemption" (see image) and secondly a reunion of my old agency (now defunct) Interfocus. The evening was great fun with lots of old faces and catching up made 10 years ago feel like only yesterday - good times and forgotten friends.....

Anyway less about the past and more about the present - the point of the post is that it got me thinking about why when sales promotion was so successful and helped create an industry worth £26.5 billion* in financial year 2007/08, a staggering figure in comparison to the UK advertising industry spend of just £18.6 billion did it became such as dirty word especially when it is the basis of so much of the work that we (in the broadest sense) do today.

Over the years the reasons I have heard range from the lack of science to the blunt nature of the tool and the lack of sophistication or control over the outcome - indeed as one of the CEO's I have worked for used to always refer SP to dressing up as a clown with big red nose and feet !. I can't disagree entirely with any of these assertions but I think Colin sums my feeling up well in his book when he says “Sales promotion is one of the most powerful tools available to the world’s companies. It is a dynamic sector that pervades the marketing process, influences brand propositions and touches almost every citizen in the UK dozens of times a year". Indeed it is a fact that we have become a promotionally reliant society through the last few years with all companies relying on principles and mechanics of good old fashioned SP to drive interest, traffic and sales - just look at the variety of campaigns over the last few years with SP at their heart from Walker's "Do us a Flavour",to Tesco Clubcard and Orange Wednesdays.

Of course there is an argument that all this is "just marketing" and SP sits alongside clever channel selections now and better creativity to gain public awareness and interest but I think this misses the point, the reason that SP was so successful in the 80's and 90's is due to the creativity it demanded and exhibited - just remember the classics from Tango Man, to win a house with Heinz, to the Hoover Free flights promotion - most are in Colin's book. Indeed I think he perfectly sums it up what he calls "the exhilaration of creative entrepreneurialism"

And I guess this is my point the marketing World is a very different place to what it was 20 years ago but the fundamental principles still apply and you can do a lot worse than looking to SP to understand and learn how creativity is the still the foundation and the SP industry of the 80's and 90's had it in droves !

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

2010-08-15T12:21:00.001+01:00

Saw this today and loved it

Social media creative brief

2010-07-17T15:33:00.000+01:00

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

2010-07-15T19:48:00.000+01:00

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

2010-06-21T09:11:00.001+01:00

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

Social Media stats

2010-06-21T09:11:00.000+01:00