Digital Stuffing

Miss Geeky points out the T-Mobile are planning something new, following their Liverpool St Dance Flash mob.

They’ve got the Facebook Group and the YouTube channel promoting their next event. Cue dramatic music and a call to action – be at Traflagar Square in London 30th April at 6pm to see what they have in mind.

Update: there’s seems to be some desire to flashmob the flashmob. I’ve suggested taking signs for other networks, others like Chris are suggesting something more

Update2: It happened and looking around it seemed to have been fun. T-Mobile brought along the singer Pink, performed karaoke with the crowd and the big screens . So the new T-Mobile advert with Pink, Trafalgar Square and ‘you’ will be shown on Saturday at 9.

ul class=”delicious”li
div class=”delicious-link”a href=”http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2009/04/run-with-nike-and-you-run-alone.html”This Blog Sits at the: Run with Nike and you run alone/a/div
div class=”delicious-extended”Nike Plus allows me to interact with other walkers in only one way. It helps me compete agains them. It does not allow me to treat my miles like a social capital and make them fungible for various purposes in various markets. It does not allow me to find them or walk with them. Walk with Nike Plus, and, sorry, but your walk alone./div
div class=”delicious-tags”(tags: a href=”http://delicious.com/RachelC/Marketing”Marketing/a a href=”http://delicious.com/RachelC/socialnetwork”socialnetwork/a a href=”http://delicious.com/RachelC/socialmedia”socialmedia/a a href=”http://delicious.com/RachelC/community”community/a)/div
/li/ul

By osmosis (well, me talking about it a lot) the New Business Team in the office have been using Twitter more and more. This afternoon, they took the initiative to do a real time marketing response following a Tweet from MarketingUK

Marketing UK Cupcakes (Screenshot from site)

They dashed out, bought a bunch of cupcakes from Patesserie Valerie, stickered them all up and delivered them to the Marketing UK‘s office. The response:

Marketinguk Cupcake Response (screenshot from site)

• (tags: bbc UGC )

Pizza Hut Twintern (screenshot from site)

Go to the front page of Pizza Hut and you’ll see this advertisement – they’re looking for a Twintern, someone who is being paid to Twitter for them. I’m pretty sure this is the first time a temp job has been advertised on the front page of Pizza Hut, but this is not just an job ad* it’s a marketing tactic in its own right.

The job itself if pretty straightforward. Attend relevant events and twitter about them. Monitor the service and other social media outlets and report on the activity and sentiment. Plenty of agencies offer this service and enough companies are using it. However, the clever thing is turning the ad into a PR-able event. How many other low-paid short term internships make the New York Times

The Twintern must also play social-media defense, monitoring Twitter for any mentions of the brand and alerting superiors whenever anything negative about the Hut is being said. (Applicants should study last week’s YouTube gross-out video posted by Domino’s employees, which was quickly passed around Twitter, to understand why.) The successful applicant will speak fluent OMG and LOL and correctly use the terms DM (direct message), RT (retweet) and # (hashtag).

The job ad is a little more restrained. They’re taking it far more seriously:

Candidates should be a junior or senior studying for a B.A. or B.S., preferably with specialization in marketing, journalism, communications, public relations or a related course study. Demonstrated knowledge of social media is a must. Selected applicants will be required to submit a portfolio of social media know-how.

They’ve tapped into the social media theme, the Twitter zeitgeist, the Domino’s pizza incident and wrapped it all up into a package that interests reporters. Brilliant PR. So far, so good. But the proof is in the pudding as they say – how are they going to be using this person and what is the long term role of social media within the company?

*it’s an M&S ad job! (Sorry but the Marks and Spencers slogan does stick in the head)

• Swine flu: Twitter#039;s power to misinform | Net Effect
  A global personal publishing platform means rumours and incorrect information spread far faster.
  (tags: twitter journalism media socialmedia communication)

YouTube is still full of Britain’s Got Talent and the odd bit of Miss California. But highest rated product video is this ‘flash mob’ from Trident, with 100 Single Ladies dancing to Beyonce’s Single Ladies. Yawn. Another ‘flash-mob’, made up of the most un-casual group of people hanging around Piccadilly circus with what looks like press already invited. I would have just done this as an ‘event’ with out the pretend surprise element. It’s time to move on!

This is to promote Trident sponsoring a Beyonce concert. Add the last 4 digits of your barcode and you get entered into a ballot to get one of 3000 pairs of tickets to an exclusive concert at the London 02 arena.

That’s it, a most uninspiring list this week, with multiple versions of the same thing. I need some more creativity.

• Crisis PR: Assessing the Domino#039;s Reaction to YouTube Hubub – Advertising Age – News
  (tags: socialmedia brandingPR crisis)
• i blog, you blog, they blog, weblog » Twitter versus the Telegraph: you can’t stop the lulz
  Tom reviews what happened with the Telegraph adding a Twitter search
  (tags: twitter socialmedia)
• Direct2Dell – Direct2Dell – DELL COMMUNITY
  Lionel on the last 2 years of Direct to Dell
  (tags: socialmedia customerservice)

With all the posts I write about Samsung I think it’s time I got to play with one of their gadgets! But the different bits of the company keep producing great stuff for online marketing.

Here’s another one from the phone division for their new I8910 HD phone, a camera trick. I’ll have to admit, if I hadn’t been in a discussion with someone recently about something very similar it would have taken me time to guess what the trick was. What do you think it is?

They’re going to release a ‘making of’ video in a few weeks, explaining it. Meantime, join in the conjecture about how they did this.

The first challenge this week is to get though the multitude of Susan Boyle videos, of which there are a lot. She’s definitely hit the big time in terms of online (and offline) attention – she totally owns YouTube this week.

Highest ranked product video is this one from Patrick Doyle, President of Domino’s USA doing damage control after a video was uploaded of two employees adulterating pizzas. They’ve also launched a Domino’s Twitter feed which seems to be doing a good job of being conversational

Another fast food brand and another controversy, this time Burger King upsetting Mexico with its ad for the Texican Burger. Apparetnly, it’s because they are using the flag incorrectly; they’re replacing the campaign, used in Spain and the UK, as soon as is ‘commercially possible’.

Finally, the Microsoft PC ads are currently making enough of a stir to have a parody made, always the sign of an ad that has hit home one way or another. Here’s Homeless Frank trying to find himself a laptop for under $1000, from Landline TV