A recent friendly tweetbate (me/Rich/me/Rich/me) on whether forums are ’social media’ or not, reminded me of my first post ever on the interwebs.
1995. I was an art director in Boston. Netscape Navigator, and the ability to display graphics, had helped forward thinking brands seek an agency that could build this new thing called a web site.
More importantly, people were using the net to do what humans have always done. Connect and share.
You don’t have to be from San Francisco or Boston to understand how iconic Jerry Garcia was across generations of music fans. (But it helps.)
The day he died, was the first time ever I got my news from a web site rather than from TV, radio or a newspaper. At work, we all gathered around a computer screen, the way we used to do around a TV. That’s when I knew that the Internet had changed things forever. And I made my first post.
candace
As much as we all use it, I find the buzz phrase ’social media’ woefully misleading. The web has always been social. And, while I wish I was smart enough to grab this screen shot 15 years ago, the truth is: I didn’t. It’s still there (thank you Google). Proof, if you will, that there is nothing new about social media. It’s simply people using technology to connect and share about the things they care about.
Interestingly this subject came up when a few colleagues of mine and I were discussing social media monitoring and the true value it offers our clients. A concern was raised, that questioned the true value of engaging in social media and the impact it has on ROI. Apparently, some of our clients are not convinced that social media is a necessity and somehow we need to prove that it is…
Then I came across this blog post from eConsultancy that discusses this exact question with the final comment from Convince&Convert’s Jay Baer , “Despite the constant bleating everywhere about the need to map precise ROI to social media, two-thirds of respondents to this large study feel measuring social media is less than critical.” How interesting… in fact rather amusing. Here we are banging our heads on how to show value (even though we can measure every click, view and level of engagement consumers have across most social media channels) and some brands are in fact saying that it’s not crucial; they’re just doing it!
First Direct is a great example of this by incorporating tweets from customers as a live feed, regardless of sentiment – very risqué for most I dare say! And not to mention the rise of new platforms such as foursquare and Gowalla, which hardly have a base in the UK and brands are already knocking on their doors.
So what do you say – do you think we’re being swept along by a phenomenon that goes against the grain of traditional marketing practices, where everything was about ROI but now seems to be more about looking good than doing good? It also has a slight taste of a decade ago when the value of PR was questioned, that hasn’t been resolved and yet here we are evolving.
I don’t know if I have the answer, and to be honest will keep on searching, which reminds me that I have several “social media measuring events” to go to where we will discuss the same thing and come out with the same conclusion – we don’t know.
I should probably try and come up with a better title than this. One thing at a time, though, eh?
This week’s selection of stuff is coming to you a day earlier than normal, as tomorrow I am taking the day off to recover from this charity fundraiser. Given that Haiti is still in an absolute mess, you may want to donate money to an appropriate organisation here or here – go on, you know you want to.
Anyway, this week’s (bumper) selection begins with…
AMAZING FLYING ROBOT LIGHTSHOW – Those amazingly clever people at MIT have put together a prototype video to show what can be done with an army of light-up miniature helicopters. Frankly, after seeing the potential of this stuff even 3d projection starts to look a bit lame…
Vogue iPhone app makes ‘Clueless’ a reality – remember in the film ‘Clueless’ when Alicia Silverstone’s spoilt California teen uses a computer programme to coordinate an outfit from her MASSIVE wardrobe? If you’re under 30 there’s every possibility you won’t, but no matter – Vogue has created an iPhone app that does much the same thing. What’s interesting is that it only allows you to input your clothes into the app if they’re made by one of Vogue’s current advertisers – smart way of keeping your paymasters happy and incentivising other brands to take the plunge and buy ad space with you.
AxeCop- this isn’t strictly speaking new (it’s been knocking about the internet for a month or so), but I want everyone in the world to see it and marvel at its beauty. AxeCop is the stories of 5 year old Malachai Nicolle, as illustrated by his very talented elder brother Ethan. It is basically the insanity of a small boy’s imagination, beautifully illustrated and turned into a comic strip. Read it and weep with laughter. A video taster is below:
Apropos nothing, a rather nicely designed poster for K-Swiss trainers
I like this (via http://bntl.co.uk/)
More Wonderful Scandinavian Creativity – I don’t know what it is with the public sector in Sweden and their ability to use social media incredibly well, but after the brilliant ‘Your Face Here’ viral from Swedish state TV last year they have done it again. The above is a link to a case study of a brilliant campaign by the Swedish Post Office to target the elderly, in part by showing them how easy internet shopping is (because if you shop on the internet, the post office benefits). Watch, marvel, inevitably try and steal.
In today’s FT it was reported that Dutch company DSM is to link top managers’ pay with sustainability and staff well-being as well as company performance, see here.This bold move comes after Dutch mail operator TNT launched a similar plan this week to put sustainability at the centre of their business. According to the CEO of DSM, ‘people’, ‘profits’ and ‘planet’ are the ‘triple bottom line’ for the company. This means that half of DSM’s short-term bonuses will be determined by the number of environmentally friendly products it introduces every year. Though investors are dubious, it made me wonder whether this thinking truly reflects consumer demand for more holistically sustainable companies and products. In any case their commitment is to be applauded. The bigger question is should every company adopt this approach?
This is my first post on Hill & Knowlton London’s community blog, so it’s a bit sad that I’m going to use it for a crisis management post when I already have a whole other blog already dedicated to that.
But, this is far cooler than proper crisis management because it involves an iPhone and the app I’m loving today, which is the Harvard Business Review’sManagement Tip of the Day (check it out in the iTunes App Store). Yes, I am completely geeking it up right now.
The app itself is really quite simple – each day you get a new management tip, most of which seem to involve three bullet points that summarise a much more comprehensive blog post or article from the website. You can also access the tips by following Harvard Business Review on Twitter, but that’s not quite as cool.
More importantly, I now have a new source of inspiration for my own blog posts – we’ll take a look at this topic in a bit more depth later in the week.
YouTube videos can be so much more than wedding dances and Susan Boyle. Here are six examples of how people are being creative with online videos:
ThruYOU: An online video music project launched in 2009 by Israeli, Ophir Kutiel. He takes random YouTube videos, edits and combines them to create original songs.His first creation, “Mother of All Funk Chords” has attracted nearly 1 million views to date
The Subs’ Videocast: Belgian band, The Subs, have taken a novel approach to using annotations in their videos. Viewers are encourage to check out other YouTube videos throughout their videocast – if you don’t fancy clicking, just keep watching.
In Bb 2.0: A collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls. Users can play select videos and adjust the volume to create original tracks.
BooneOakley.com: Well known but still worth a mention. The advertising agency turned the concept of having a website on its head and decided their home should be a YouTube video.
YouTube Street Fighter: Perhaps not the greatest game you’ll ever play but the novel approach to a fighting game has attracted nearly 7 million viewers / players.
Have you ever observed a dinner table where everyone is talking over each other? It works for the individuals sat around the table but as each person tries to be heard the volume increases, and increases, and increases. If you’re not already involved in conversation, the table become nothing but a wall of noise.
It’s the same for brands on social platforms like Twitter and Facebook – if they shout too loudly, too frequently it becomes difficult for consumers not currently at the table to join in. Worse still, if you continue to dominate the chatter your guests will be silenced completely.
Brands should act like the perfect host – bring people together, spark lively conversation, stand back and smile.
Hello. I’m Matt – I am a Digital Consultant here at Hill & Knowlton. No, I don’t really know what that job title means either – let’s just ignore it for now.
Each week I am going to chuck together a collection of (hopefully) interesting things that I have found online, all neatly collected into one blog post for your amusement and edification. I hope you feel as thrilled about this as you ought to.
I’m always on the lookout for recommendations as to places I can find more of this stuff, so drop me a line and let me know if you have any content motherlodes out there that you think I should be aware of. Anyway, without further ado, onto this week’s selection:
Choosing An Email Subject Line- I know, I know, it doesn’t sound interesting, but I promise that it is (well, if you do online comms, at least). A simple, step by step look at how to choose a subject line for an email that people might actually want to open. Lessons which can be applied to optimising web content in general, frankly.
The Code Organ – Far less filthy than it might initially sound, this is a very cool little tool put together by the folk at advertising agency DLKW (also the home of minor Twitter celebrity (sorry Dan) @adlandsuit). It basically takes the code of any webpage and parses it through an engine that turns that very code into MUSIC. Not only a very nifty bit of coding and a nice creative, but a great piece of PR for the agency – this went EVERYWHERE on Twitter on Thursday. FYI, this blog sounds like this, apparently.
WWF Advert – Just a great creative, simply executed.
Augmented Reality Maps by Microsoft- The ever-amazing TED (Technology Entertainment Design - they run talks by interesting people on interesting topics, basically) showcasing a presentation by Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas on some frankly jaw-dropping augmented reality mapping software. This is the future.
Chatroulette – if you haven’t heard about this yet, you will shortly. Coded by a 17 year-old Russian boy in his bedroom, this site basically allows pairs strangers to videochat with each other. The caveat, of course, being that the selection of who you get paired with is entirely random. It’s worth checking out at least once – just incredibly compelling, if only from a curiosity point of view – but NOT AT WORK. I was on there for 10 minutes on Monday night and saw a lot of penises. Not metaphorical penises, but real ones. That might be your cup of tea, but it’s probably not your boss’s. You can get a flavour for the weirdness here (NSFW due to occasional, slightly grainy nudity).
A REAL LIFE DRAGON!!!!! – courtesy of the fascinating Science Punk Blog
DRAGON!!!!!
And finally, my song of the week – She Said by Plan B
When was the last time you took a risk on that BIG idea? With budgets being squeezed and marketers under pressure it is all too easy to go with the safe option. But, nothing has ever been acheived through box-ticking mediocraty.
A big idea doesn’t mean a big budget.
Thanks to the nature of the social media, the costs associated with executing a “big idea” has dropped to such a level that the risk of failure should now be acceptable. Consider, arguably the biggest comms. campaign from 2009, “The Best Job in the World” – it started off with a small classified ad in local newspapers. It was only after the global community responded that real investment was made and boy did they get a return.
BJitW wasn’t the first marketing campaign Tourism Queensland deployed – there were probably hundreds before it, many probably failed. However, by thinking differently and being willing to fail they struck gold and created something that has become a benchmark in the industry the world over.
Accept failure into your brand and success will be easier to come by.
