I’ve been to quite a few blogger events; I also work in social media for a living, so that means we run events where we get bloggers/tweeters etc along to experience what we are trying to sell. What we talk about, a lot, is value exchange. How are we going to get people, who are not paid media, to write about the product…what value can we give them that is a valid exchange for a post/tweet/video etc that we are after. We spend a lot of time thinking about the best way to do this, so maybe I’m a little bit more critical than the average attendee?

The attendee was partly self-selecting; before Christmas, the various Virgin social media properties sent out a tease to sign up for a mysterious event in January. One of the people I connect with on Twitter brought it to my attention. My curiosity was piqued, as this seemed to be a different way to get people to blogger events.

• they asked for details of Twitter accounts, blogs, Google+ and Facebook etc. It was a very easy process and was seemless on the mobile version. So far, so good
• The self-selecting thing is a good idea, if you are after people who are going to be enthusiastic about writing about the event

The proposed attendees received an email last week confirming the time, date, location and the product. Now we knew it was for Virgin Money and that Branson would be present. They emphasised that we needed to confirm we were going, as we would not get in without our name on the list. They also confirmed we’d be able to get something warm to drink, as the event was going to be taking place outside. They appeared to have a great response, as there was talk about 200 or so people.

• There was no list. There was not even a general check to see if you were supposed to be at the event. Just a wave into the room
• I could have had soup, tea or coffee, but no water or soft drink, nothing else if you did not want caffeine or liked tomato soup. A jug of water would have been good – on asking, the staff did find a tap. You don’t have to provide the social lubricant that is alcohol, as many events do, but at least make sure there are alternatives

When I arrived, Branson was being photographed whilst the guests milled around the room. At some point there was a general wander to where the shoot was taking place and out came the cameras, then a surge outside to where the event was taking place.

• There was no announcements or information about what was going on, it was just follow my leader. There could have been some expectation setting, maybe a welcome with an indication of what was available. Could we interview Branson? Could we chat with anyone about the product? How could we recognise who to speak to?

Outside, there was some posing for photos and a short speech ab out how this would disrupt banking, before the show started, an animation projected against the building

• the animation and the projection mapping was suberb. It really used the UL Senate building to great advantage. It was so good, they played it twice. As the main atraction, it worked

One more round of thank yous and that was it. A quick wander round to see if there was anything else going on and home I went. The show would be replayed a couple of times, but there seemed to be nothing else happening.

• there was nothing available that I could see as information. Every blogger event I’ve ever been at has information available so that you can write about it, either on paper, more commonly now on USB sticks with data and images/video or at least an email. There was nothing at the event and nothing arrived yet. So all I’m writing about is the poor organisation.
• There was no real experience. It was standing round a courtyard, with no idea what was going on. There was no welcome, no-one to feel that our presence there was welcome, or that they wanted to help us. They just wanted people to tweet, video and post later.
• I really, really hope that the people who had spent money to travel to the event (it was said there were people from Cornwall, Manchester etc) got something out of being in the same room as Richard Branson. As that seems to be the only story they can tell.

Looking at Twitter, there was some ‘wow’ going on as well as some other stuff

@kmb2009 wonder if the social media crowd was just there as a ‘rent a mob’ to give the unveil of graphics & video a guaranteed audience #virginmoney

@mioomiuk Well that was epic! The whole University of London building just “blew up” thanks to #virginmoney! Video coming shortly!

@woggledog @jasonbetts You missed a great experience at @virginmoney event this PM. The video was inspiring. Not much else to the event though

So I’m left with the following. Branson is very smiley. Whoever produced the projection is very, very good. And Virgin Money may be trying to change the way banking happens but my impression is there’s no change, they’re terrible at understanding how to treat people.

Update: Got an email with a link to the video (as I said, the creative is quite nice). Apparently what we saw was the TV ad…they could have mentioned this! Plus the following:

We’ve seen lots of the video’s and pictures you’ve posted already and they look great!

Yep, single way value, no exchange!

“Foursquare has been brilliant for our business because we’ve used it to engage with customers in a whole new way and to offer them a better service.
“There’s a growing excitement about it in the UK because of the power it gives people to share their views and tips on bars, restaurants, airports, public buildings and many other locations. Social media means businesses are now forced to do their customer service in public and the best businesses will embrace this fact, rather than fear it.”

It’s not the first UK swarm, it’s been done at sports events and conferences, but they’re claiming the first deliberately planned business event that reached those numbers. The owners are busy leveraging all the tools at their service to drive traffic to their business and doing it well. Here’s one clear case of digital/social media leading to direct sales.

So if you’re going to try this, what needs to be thought about:

• Consider your audience; they have to be checking into the location for any promotion to have an imapct. So sign up to the service and see who checks-in
• Claim your business on the service and get the description, address and geo-tags set up correctly
• Make sure the offer is relevant and obtainable. Setting out something just for the mayor is great, unless your staff claim mayorship, or the title never changes. Metrodeco have a simple offer (free tea or coffee at lunch) for everyone who checks in
• Make sure your staff are aware of the offer. In a single location like this, it’s simple. Larger promotions by companies such as Gap and Starbuck have had bad press as staff were just not aware of the deals.

Remember to have some fun as well; it’s a new tool to play with, be creative and you may be surprised. Next up for Metrodeco? It has to be the Superswarm for 250 people.

(via Faris) form Cake.

A nice run through the evolution of marketing, to today’s ‘incorporated’ brands. There’s still a lot of the sellers, the interupters, the ‘what’s best for you’ advertising out there, and it works, for some, sometimes,in certain cicumstances. But as the video says, the best brands also talk to you, listen to you and engage with you.

One of the sponsors this year, is Actimel, one of the ‘pro-biotic’ drinking yoghurt with lots of live bacteria, and they’ve been busy setting up Twitter and Facebook profiles promoting the cycle ride.

Twitter

It’s a fairly new account at ActimelUK and the main focus is a contest, where you can win a trip to Paris the weekend of the ride, where I’m guessing you’ll get to see the final part of the ride. You just have to follow them and tweet to them about what your morning would not be complete without, (coffee, it has to be coffee) to be entered into the random draw. The account is chatty, responding to entries and comments whilst slowly following people to get the word out.

Facebook

You can also enter the contest via their Actimel Facebook page. On their the conversation is a lot more product focused than the Twitter feed, although it seems to have a change of policy or writer recently as the earlier posts were more random.

This seems like early steps into social media marketing for the brand and so far they’re heading in the right direction, taking it easy, not doign follow spam and trying to find their voice. It’s not an easy product to work out how to use social media, as how many people really want to talk about a yoghurt drink, but by focusing on the associated benefits and a great sponsorship, they’re on the right track

Study: took a random sample of 2000 tweets over a 2 week period (not that many really). Reviewed to see if Spam, News, Self-Promotional, Pass-along, conversational or pointless babble.

Hypothesis: That Twitter was being used predominantly for self-promotion, pushign a product or service

Conclusion: The most popular tweet type is the ‘pointless babble’, just random stuff about people, with 40.55%. Second was conversational types, with 37.55

They’re surprised, I’m not. Most people exist in a small group, they have <100 followers, many of whom they will know. They don’t tweet too often but there’s a lot of them so it adds up. It’s all between these communities, it’s gossip and passing of time, it’s stating what they are doing to their group. It’s the ambient intimacy thing, bring people closer together.

The number of people who use Twitter with an active purpose has alsways seemed to be to be small. Yes, they’re active and they can drown out others if you have them in your stream, but they are not the majority. For brands, the natural way of acting is not the way that most of the rest of Twitter works!

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)

Whist some may trumpet this as a victory of new media over old media, it isn’t. You could call it old media building on new, or old just plain co-opting and taking all the digital stuff for themselves. Via Doc Searls, I see a piece that describes what is happening in some places where brands, companies and celebrities are all playing in the space, from Steven Hodsen

As a result people are beginning to think that social media is nothing more than a round table with corporations, marketers and public relation people deciding on what the conversation is all about. Once more we are finding ourselves being talked to even though it is carefully couched in terms of openness and transparency.

This isn’t what Social Media was meant to be. Just ask people like Doc Searls, or Chris Brogan, or even newcomers like Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins. They’ll be among the first to tell you that Social Media isn’t about the tools or the services. It is about empowering the voice of the individual above that of the companies. It is about the socialization of all types of media in such a way that any individual if they try can be heard like never before.

The plain fact is that neither Kutcher nor CNN could have got this number of followers without old media, either in broadcasting pleas to follow on the news or in the years of mainstream coverage to build a fan base. This is not an either/or situation, this is new media being lassoed and brought into the fold so that it can be used in the same way. 1 million followers is not a ‘social network’, it’s a broadcast channel bigger than many newspapers or TV audiences. It does not empower the voice of the individual above the celebrity or company, it just ties them into more of the same.

Brands too could follow this model; they’ll think if these people can do it, or if Oprah can do it (she is going to do her first public tweet ‘live on TV’ today). But the reality is that brands rarely have anything to offer in the same league as celebrity ‘gossip’ (or an insight into the lives), or news. Broadcast mechanisms won’t necessarily work for them and the exchange value of a follow is not on their side. So I think all the current publicity about Twitter should not go to the marketers head. You still have to think very carefully about why you would use Twitter, how you can use it and what value you are adding to it.

Update: It seems that NMA just got far too excited about this story and forgot to check with Twitter, who have issued a statement saying there is absolutely no affiliation between them and this new company.

However, the name, branding, and suggestion that Twitter has some kind of equity partnership or an agreement of any kind in place is misleading and wrong. We’ll be working with Peter and his team to clear up this confusion.

Twitter backs first UK partner. Or so says the front page headline on the New Media Age (no links to them..they do not appear to like links). It’s all about a new company called Twitter Partners, which is ‘affiliated’ with Twitter and has apparently signed up some UK companies such as Gorillaz, Paramount, Universal Pictures and Lionsgate.

From the site they are:

building a suite of apps, tools and services to help brands, media companies, and celebrities harness the power of the Twitter ecosystem

So it’s a high profile launch of a branding and social media consultancy agency, which will be building stuff on the Twitter API for companies to help manage their reputation on the service. The only reason I see this being front page news is that it has a lot of interesting people on the ‘About Us‘ page and NMA have got blinded by the word Twitter. There are a lot of tools and companies out there that already do what they do. But with backing and a profile, they are in a position to go out to brands and sooth them, tell them it’s all OK, this Twitter thing is scary but they can help them through it.

Help and outsourcing of experience and skill is the reason why companies employ advertising and marketing agencies in the first place – but is there any reason to have a Twitter agency only? No, not really. Twitter is just one tactic in a whole sea of social media; it needs to be seen as part of the larger communication structure and built into the communications plan. Hiving it off to a separate agency can only lead to difficulties if they don’t work well with the others or if it’s not considered as a customer service route (that’s in towards the company) as well as a marketing route (out towards the customer). Although, if they are focusing on consultancy, maybe that’s one of the messages that Twitter Partners will be saying.

PS: it’s obviously a new company that has not yet got enough Googlejuice to register on search yet. But they’re at least savvy enough to buy the ad

Chris had a similar reaction to me, bemoaning the fact Virgin Atlantic forgot to put in a good way for the video to be shared over and above the YouTube copies. He also says in the comments:

Who’d have thought it. Relax gone from banned by the BBC to advertising another British institution.

Zoe did not like it at all, with her reaction and conversation about the ad on Twitter.

Oh Virgin, if only your ad was ironic and post-modern, rather than dated & sexist.

I had a bunch of different reactions on Twitter:

Andresvarela: Customer 15+ years but don’t understand why they’ve done this (so overtly). Was the ‘VirginAtlanicHubbaHubba’ domain taken?

emmapotter: Very cool. Maintains Virgin’s brand positioning as glamorous and fun. Beats its competitors out of the water, as ever

Brodie_san: Asteroids! Awesome! Also, the tallest women I have ever seen. With the biggest aura too!

A completely different reaction from another who focused on the background, not the main images

“A blast from the past!! Our Price records!! Bought many an album there… Ahhh Vinyl!”

Over on Scamp’s blog, you’ve got a whole load of reaction, from it being sexist, to numerous sexist comments about the women in the ad to the absolutely pedantic:

Does anyone know what the record is that the lad in OurPrice store is holding?

Big Country – Steel Town. Released in November 1984 so about 11 months early for a 25th anniversary ad.

Is it good? Is it sexist? It’s definitely noticeable, cutting through a lot of the stuff that’s on in the ad break.

But the key thing? It’s being talked about, it’s polarising and people seem to love it or hate it. The worst thing for a brand is apathy, nobody interested in one way or the other.