Rachel Clarke, head of amicable media at twentysix

I just love the term amicable media, a good description for some of the activities we do.

The Work

Photochains is simple, it’s all about the inspiration. Start with one image and get inspiration from it to create the next. They started on TV and then moved online, encouraging people to upload the next image in the creative chain or start their own. Over 20k photos were uploaded, as they encouraged people to encourage their friends to load the next image, to join the chain. The site showcased the increasing number of chains and the campaign moved back offline, demonstrating what had been created.

I love this, it’s all about the social object – an image – and how it fits in with your community and the wider network. By adding your photo, 2 objects are created, the image and the new interpretation of the chain. The connection with others activates the human need to share and create. It’s the same motivation behind previous campaigns such as the Google email video, or the longest football passing chain video, but the constraints of those efforts, passing an object across media are removed, it’s all about the inspiration and creation for something new

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.

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

• It should be a strategic component of the communications toolset.
• It should be integral to all marketing actions, not just a bolt-on at the end of planning just because it’s ‘hot’
• That in many cases the budget set up is wrong – it should come out of customer service budgets as well as marketing budgets. It applies just as much, if not more, to post-sales work as it does to getting people to consider your product or service.

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.

But I was sold on the gameplay description and the trailers, not the actual experiential elements. They’re a little less successful in my case, but I’ve seen they are definitely catching the eye of many.

The experience is a variation on uploading your photos and appearing as part of the trailer/video. The difference here is that you don”t choose which photos to upload but that it grabs them from Facebook. To take part, you have to link your Facebook profile to the game page, using Facebook Connect, a variation on OAuth where you don’t have to give out your password to anyone.

Prototype Login (screenshot from site)

It then runs a trailer for the game, pulling your photos in from the service and interspersing them throughout the action. they also include all your details, the personal information. As I only have 1 image on Facebook, I thought they wouldn’t have much luck but what it does it goes and trawls your connection and brings in their photos as well. You can’t share the video or embed it anywhere as far as I can see, so I think they’re mainly avoiding the copyright and privacy issues that this ‘borrowing’ of images and use of personal details entails, but I was surprised that the system would do this.

After watching the personalised trailer, you get to answer some questions to win a game copy and an XBox360 and then you’re then asked to spread the word, using your choice of network – Facebook or Twitter. This seems to be a requirement of the competition entry, but as I can’t see any terms and conditions, I’m not sure

Prototype Spreadability (screenshot from site)

This is the second campaign I’ve seen this week that has built in the ability to autopost to your status stream, so it’s looking like it’s this quarter’s hot trend. It’s a savvy call to action, although if too many in your network do it, I can see it not quite having the desired impact. Making it compulsary is problematic; the experience should be good enough to get people to want to share it, not making them do it because you don’t trust your stuff is good enough for sharing.

Elsewhere on the site, you can get a story overivew, see some trailers and get some great artworks to download. Most importantly, you can pre-order, but only from specific retailers (Smartoys which is French, fnac, Game Mania, both Belgium.Dutch). So despite being able to see the site in English and it being big in English blogs, you can’t actually by in the UK. The site has been done in Belgium by Sponge and 1MD, so it looks like it is for that market only, although there’s no indication until you’re deep into that it does not apply to you, but again, no T&Cs so I’m not sure if I can enter or not.

Prototype Scene (screenshot from site)

I like this, it’s far more authentic than the dance ones, where they’ve hired a bunch of professionals to turn up and do the dance. This really was a flash mob, called together through teaser videos, some judicious seeding and word of mouth. Apparently 13,500 people turned up to sing-a-long. As demonstrated by the many videos on YouTube and images around, many of them had cameras and phones. I;ve seen a lot of buzz about this, so I think it worked for them, at least from a brand awareness side. Given the current company situation, I think they need it!

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.