Digital marketing, engagement, transmedia, games, fun
I like this
(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.
The first round of awards have been announced at Cannes. Loving how much social media and digital there’s in there.
Replay
Gatorade found not as many 30+ people were exercising and therefore not buying the product. So they looked for a way to re-ignite the athletic spark by replaying a high school match that ended in a draw. They used the website to tell the stories, produced portable exercise content and used Facebook to allow you to find your old team mates from school. It even encouraged more replay matches to be organised. (Won PR and Promo/Activation)
Orcon and Iggy Pop.
Iggy Pop is not just the face of Swiftcover Insurance. In New Zealand, he’s involved in Orcon Broadband. The premise was to record a version of his song Passenger, using Skype over the broadband. Using ads across Facebook, outdoors and display they called for musicians to upload audition tapes to a special Facebook app. The 9 players chosen then recorded the song, which got used for TV and more. (Won Direct)
On the recruitment market, there’s a lot of movement for social media people, specialists in the area. But I think the first set of winners demonstrate that we are moving beyond the specialist into having people (ie social media) far more integrated into the work than ever before. There’s always a need for expert knowledge, but not as a separate element. As the website was often seen as an afterthought, so was social media. That is now moving to be part of the whole, integrated from the start.
The US Navy continue to be leaders in using social media to connect with service members, potential recruits, fans and other stakeholders. Here’s a presentation they’ve put up with some concrete examples and action plans we can all take something from
You Tube are taking cyber bullying seriously; as part of that they’ve produced a simple video about it, over at oceanking97′s account. You need to go to the site to see it working.
A nice and simple execution, leading through to the safety centre. Although I think it’s more for people to report the stuff, the bullies are unlikely to pay much attention.
Looking at You Tube this morning I saw You Tube now has a trending terms widget. Not sure how new this is but I’ve not seen any comments about it. It’s interesting, Google adding a real-time search element to the site. You’ve long been able to see what people are watching ‘right now’ but this is an extra dimension – what people are searching for, an indication of the external drivers to the videos.
I’ll have to admit I’m not entirely convinced yet. This morning’s snapshot is not necessarily the most interesting. However, I would expect to see a bunch of trending search terms based on TV shows (especially the reality ones), celebrity deaths and sports events, all of then time-relevant areas, where mention in mass broadcast channels drive people to look for things.
You Tube Trending Terms
Apologies as I seem to be going through a blogging crisis, so much so I’m not blogging anywhere. Which is strange given the large number of open tabs I have sitting across the various browsers and machines I have all ready to be written about.
I was going to kick start it again with my regular reviews of videos. However, with YouTube seemlingly now not letting me see worldwide lists and firmly only giving me a UK perspective plus the end of summer and what looks like a lack of videos out there, there’s nothing to talk about. So I’ll go back to thinking about writing about all the other stories I have ready to go and share this slide show with you. It’s not the tools you use but how you use them that matters
PS: I think the UK site needs more display advertising. At the moment it’s defaulting to 2 text ads – for Tampax and Mazda car scrappage deal. I’m wondering how I fit into both targets.
You Tube Text Ads (not real clickable ads)
Anyone who’s heard me speak on social media or spent time chatting with me should know that I’m a strong believer in using social media across the board when it comes to companies.
I often draw the diagram below as a situation I would see as ideal. A foundation of ongoing activity, a combination of customer service and just conversation presence in social media areas, complemented by peaks of activities associated with campaigns, when new things are tried, when a brand extends what it is doing (with apologies for my poor graphing skills) Red is campaign activity, blue is service and general presence.
Social Media Activity over time
The same sentiment was reflected by Jamie Coomber yesterday when she tweeted:
Have been asked “what agency does great social media campaigns” 3 things wrong with the wording,
It’s all tied up with the thinking that marketing is just something that gets done by agencies on a campaign basis, instead of something everyone in the company who comes into contact with a customer or potential customer does all the time.
But what does Rackspace have to do with this? Well, last night they demonstrated how a company that integrates things across multiple channels can work when it comes to service. At Ale 2point0 last night, sitting in a pub with James Cridland, who runs mediauk.com, he was annoyed because his site was down and he’d had no communication from support. One tweet later and there were a bunch of people on it, including the official Rackspace account
@rachelclarke @jamescridland need immediate assistance? DM me and I’ll help route to right people ~ call +1.210.548.5616
James meantime had also raised a ticket and that was also picked up by the US based team and monitored to ensure it was resolved. Taking a look at the whole stream, that’s just what these guys do all the time; keep an eye out for mentions and get problems fixed
@gabeanzelini we’re real people, 24x7x365+
Thanks for the shout-out
Overall, completely impressed with the reaction and eagerness to get things sorted. This is the difference between a brand that uses the tools for campaigns and those that live and breathe them throughout what they do. One you treat slightly cynically because you know it’s just a short term thing that’s trying to get you to do things, the other will be there in the long term for when you need them to do things for you.
Pear Analytics have just completed a study about the types of things people talk about on Twitter and made what was, to them, a surprising conclusion. It’s not as surprising to me though.
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!
Last night, meeting Simon Darwell-Taylor, we were discussing previous lives and talking about his time at The Creative Greenhouse with Body Shop. One tactic he used was to send out cassette tapes, full of great content – but only on one side. There was encouragement for the customers to use the blank side to record their own contribution to the story. Of course some did and sent them back to the company. Not a lot, but the urge to create and add to the brand was definitely there. enough so that they posted a physical object
Today, the web makes it all a lot easier, with few barriers to creating things and sending them onto the company. But it’s still tapping into the same behaviours as when people posted letter and objects to the company so they could enter into a dialogue.
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.