Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

This week we’re loving #blogadesh and Reynholm Industries

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Here’s our regular roundup of stories that have caught our eye this week – as ever, thanks to the Shiny team for some great suggestions.

Facebook Places

Lots of news coming out of Facebook this week about forthcoming features and changes to the service. Most notably, Facebook Places has launched in the US and just as they were influenced by Twitter to create the “what’s on your mind” feature, Mark Zuckerberg and his team have responded to the interest in location-based networks like Foursquare and Gowalla, both of whom they’ve partnered with for this launch.

As with Foursquare, Facebook Places allows you to check in to places like bars or shops, and if you wish, tell your friends where you are via your profile. You can also tag friends who are with you, and see who else has checked in there, with each destination having its own Facebook page. Users will get rewards and incentives for checking in, something that to date has been missing in the UK from location-based networks.

It’s a savvy move that will be coming to a smartphone near you soon, and yet again shows Zuck’s determination to make Facebook the only social network most people need – which in turn increases interest from brands, and advertising revenues…

Facebook will also be rolling out some changes to how profiles are displayed from Monday so if you start to spot some changes on familiar pages, don’t be alarmed!

Mummy Bloggers help Save The Children

Twitter’s been full of positive buzz around a great initiative from Save The Children to invite three mummy bloggers to Bangladesh to highlight the issue of child deaths from diseases including malaria. This has huge support from the blogging community, with over 40 supportive blog posts appearing in a matter of days, and a huge number of tweets using the hashtag #blogladesh.

The link-up is explained by one of the chosen bloggers, Sian To (who also organised Cybermummy), and you might have spotted Shiny Red alumni Jaz Cummins, now at Amnesty, giving the campaign her thumbs-up in PR Week.

Chatroulette bites back…

Our video of the week has to be this one from Lionsgate films which is a brilliant use of Chatroulette to promote The Last Exorcism. Teen boys watch expectantly as a girl flirts with them, only to freak out when all is not what it seems…(warning kids – contains strong language…) Subverting Chatroulette like this sees the campaign deliver genuine shock factor to exactly target the right audience who love a scary movie, and the video is a brilliant way of taking that to the wider world.

…and Reynholm Industries online

You might have spotted Aleksandr Orlov’s latest online venture, Compare the Muskrat, but our favourite spoof site of the moment is for Reynholm Industries, workplace of The IT Crowd. If you’re suffering from withdrawal since the show went off air a couple of weeks ago, never fear – Reynholm’s Facebook profile takes you through to Reynholm’s own site where Moss, Roy and Jen are dispensing their usual helpful advice …

Tags: mummy blogging
Posted in Digital download, Facebook, Foursquare, PR and Marcomms, Video, social media | No Comments »

The Perfect Pint… At Home – new Shiny Red video

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Our client Molson Coors has recently launched Home Draught, the biggest innovation in home drinking for years, and we’ve been helping them spread the word. If you haven’t heard about Home Draught yet, it’s a draught beer system filled with ten pints of beer that fits easily into the fridge for the perfect cold pint at home.

We’ve set up a dedicated page at www.facebook.com/homedraught where 5,000 lucky beer fans have already won free Home Draught units to try for themselves, and we have lots more activity planned for the rest of the year. One of our key objectives has been to get across how easy Home Draught is to operate – and one of the ways we’re doing that is through video, such as the clip below:

Of course, as part of the creative process, we’ve had to drink a fair bit of beer to get acquainted with the product. Life can be tough sometimes…

Tags: beer, Carling, coors light, grolsch, home draught, lager, Molson Coors, shiny red, social media, Video
Posted in Client News, Facebook, PR and Marcomms, Video, brands, social media | No Comments »

Digital Download – World Cup Special

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Here’s the Shiny Red team’s pick of the most interesting social web stories around the World Cup, seeing as things kick off (haha) today:

BBC Radio 5 Live has kicked off a social media campaign calling for the public to join in creating a giant digital Mexican wave video for the World Cup, hoping to attract a younger audience and boost engagement with listeners. Fans can upload photos of themselves in one of four Mexican wave poses at bigmexicanwave.co.uk, which will turn them into 30-second videos showing members of the public alongside 5 live presenters and celebrities. Celebrities including Dizzee Rascal, Justin Lee Collins, LL Cool J, Miley Cyrus (!) and Richard Hammond are backing the campaign, which will also run across BBC Radio 1. The images are then being beamed onto the network of 19 BBC Big Screens across the UK. Users can then share the finished result on Facebook, Twitter and via email. The video will be available to watch on YouTube.
Meanwhile over on Twitter there’s a special hub where fans can view live tweets from around the world. In typical Twitter-style, they’ve kept it quite simple: click on a flag to see what everyone’s Tweeting alongside upcoming match times. If you’d like to join the conversation, use the relevant hashtag- #eng for England and so on. In fact Twitter have just introduced icons that appear alongside the hashtags every time they’re used – a small change, but a fun one.
Mashable have pulled together a useful guide on how to follow the tournament on Twitter – including lists of the best people to follow, the most used hashtags, and the best news and views from across the network. Along the same lines the team at footie blog Whoateallthepies has pulled together guides to top showboaters as well as best players and hard men – if you’re a footie fan, agree or disagree and if you’re a bluffer, great if you want to do some quick World Cup swatting.
If you’re interested in stats, this article shares some fascinating numbers around the World Cup, including Nike having the biggest share (30.2 percent) of blog, forum and social network mentions when compared against the other sporting brands, despite not being an official sponsor.
Sticking with big brand involvement, there’s an introduction here to Adidas’ digital strategy for the tournament – involving Facebook, Youtube, auctions, and a virtual comic. They’re giving away prizes to fans who accurately predict the outcome of various statistical and skill challenges – so one for the true football nuts.
The FA themselves have got some nice stuff going on, including a new Facebook page that allows fans to get their own team number, create a shirt, and show support. In addition they have a branded Youtube channel with interviews and behind the scene clips (including a popular one of Becks getting a dressing down for kicking the ball), and an official Twitter presence sharing teams news, updates, and links to all other channels.

And finally:

Best ever world cup England song, World in Motion – can this really be 20 years old? And why oh why did John Barnes wreck a beautiful thing for Mars money?
My personal favourite of the many ads / virals flying around trying to tap into World Cup fever – if only for David Beckham still managing to sound like a wally with only one line.

Tags: blog, football, news, shiny red, social media, south africa, world cup
Posted in Digital download, Facebook, General, New Media, social media | No Comments »

The Not Rules of Managing Facebook pages

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Here at Shiny Red we’re lucky enough to manage several high profile Facebook Fan pages including Cobra Beer’s ‘We Love Curry’ page, a page Facebook themselves frequently cite as an example of best practice. The 61,000+ fans of the page have strong opinions about beer and curry so can be quite a handful!

As the number of branded presences on Facebook increase, it’s undoubtedly getting harder and harder to cut through in light of competitors and really hit the target demographic. However from our experience, it’s about knowing your audience and what interests them.

I’m not going to preach ‘100 rules to make your page the best in the world ever’ as I don’t believe there are any die-hard rules in social media, every brand is different, ever page is different. Instead, here are a handful of tips that might help:

- Read the Facebook T&Cs: You risk ending before you’ve even started if you break the rules – for example did you know you should only run Facebook competitions through a Facebook app (such as building your own tab) or on an external Facebook page? Anything else will lead to your page being deleted…

- Know your audience: When you first start the page experiment with your updates to what interests your fans, see what they like and don’t – you’ll soon get an idea what’s working

- Use Facebook metrics: They’re not perfect but they’ll still give you a pretty good insight into the above – e.g. what time of day should you post updates for maximum interaction or what content has proved most popular in the past week

- Ask questions: It’s an obvious one but it’s an easy way to interact with your fans. Just make sure you don’t ask anything that could lead to dodgy answers…

- Keep content fresh: Link to news stories that might interest fans, update photo galleries when you can link to videos

- Make it as interactive as possible: At a bare minimum upload interesting and engaging images or video, if you can build a tab to host more then that’s a bonus! Anything that your fans can comment on is a good start

- Keep learning: it’s an art not a science, listen to your fans and you’ll be fine!

So there you have it. My ‘not rules’ for Facebook. What about you? Any other not rules for Facebook?

Tags: Cobra, Facebook, fan pages, managing Facebook pages, We Love Curry
Posted in Facebook, brands | No Comments »

The social web and the General Election: How Labour, Conservatives and LibDems shape up

Friday, April 9th, 2010

We hope we’re on to a (vote) winner with this week’s digital download as we take a look at how the social web will play a central role in the General Election.

All the main parties have seen how Barack Obama mobilised US voters through social media, integrating Facebook groups and Twitter alerts with mass media set piece broadcasts and milestone policy statements. His campaign successfully activated a groundswell of activists, bringing them together in each other’s homes and at local events, who in turn went on to get out the Democratic vote.

Here, the social web will play a similar role if the parties can successfully integrate it into their campaigns, and use it to augment what is happening via the established mass media. And the audience they’re particularly hoping to engage this way is first- or second time voters: research from Lightspeed published this week suggests 46% of 18-21-year-olds and 41% of 22-25-year-olds are now more interested in the election because of increased political activity online.

Each of the three main parties have staffed up with social media insiders: according to the FT the Conservatives have nine digital specialists in-house, to Labour’s six, with an unspecified number of additional advisers and agencies. Expect these to be increasingly active both proactively and reactively as the campaign continues.

Social media is an opportunity to lend a running commentary on the 2010 campaign, with Twitter proving the channel of choice. John Prescott’s streetfighting style makes him a feisty Tweeter, while Alastair Campbell casts a weary comms guru’s eye over how the story is being delivered. Former Tory leader William Hague provides upbeat updates from his tour of the nation via his mobile phone and the Lib Dems’ Vince Cable dispenses pithy observations on the economy, attacking Labour and Tory alike.

Comedians too – who unsurprisingly have taken to Twitter like ducks to water – are finding the election a source of entertainment. The Thick of It’s Chris Addison has taken to acidly Tweeting along to the BBC 10 O’Clock News while Phill Jupitus has been sharing some Viz-style voting top tips.

Politico bloggers are enjoying the spotlight, with mainstream journalists closely following them for breaking or leftfield news – and it’s a win-win as the mass exposure that follows gives the blogger a hugely increased profile. Five sites that are worth watching over the next few weeks either as opinion-makers or as aggregators of party news and views:

Iain Dale (Cons) http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/
Labour List http://www.labourlist.org/
Lib Dem blogs http://www.libdemblogs.co.uk
Labour Home http://labourhome.org/
Guido Fawkes http://order-order.com/

Despite this, all the parties are still looking to control the message, and the Tories most notably have a direct-to-consumer brand in Webcameron that’s been regularly updated over the last couple of years. We’ve already seen though that the social web becomes national news when people are subverting the top-down message, as with the multiple spoofs of the David Cameron posters via a dedicated website. (The politicians themselves aren’t above taking the same approach – this week’s Labour effort, portraying Cameron as DCI Gene Hunt was rapidly respun in a positive light by Conservative Central Office.) Expect more web-to-news crossovers in the next few weeks, particularly if politicians use the web to create their own banana skins – the unguarded Tweet or rash comment on a website will be this year’s Prescott Punch…

If you’re still undecided on who to choose, there’s a few new web tools to help you choose. Vote For Policies a pro-bono non-partisan tool, asks a series of questions relating to issues that matter to you to reveal which party you’re most aligned to. After 60,000 surveys it appears the UK is a nation of Greens…meanwhile the Vote Match tool from Telegraph.co.uk is now on Facebook’s UK Democracy group (a central focus for debate on the network) where voters click through 30 questions to see which party most closely echoes their views.

Finally, a Facebook fact: if the election was decided by Facebook friends the Tories would be romping to victory with 34,723 fans compared with Labour’s 14,971 and Lib Dems on 13,589… compare and contrast Kate Moss’s 276,493 and Lady Gaga’s 6 million…

(As ever, my vote of thanks goes to the Shiny team especially Matt, Lewis, Gill, Alex, Nina and Kate for contributing to this week’s update.)

Update: Twitter…banana skin…prospective Parliamentary candidate Stuart MacLennan has just been sacked by Labour after some extraordinary Tweets (some about bananas funnily enough), Paul Waugh at the Standard has the story.

Posted in Digital download, Election 2010, Facebook, Social Networking, Traditional Media | 1 Comment »

The rise of social gaming: can brands harvest success on Farmville?

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

This week, a Bulgarian worker has been sacked for milking a cow at his desk while playing Farmville: could this be the 2010 version of being Dooced? The growing popularity of Farmville means that many skiving workers could be at risk. At the moment, more people play Farmville than use Twitter. The social game is currently dominating the Facebook Application Leaderboard with over 82,394,053 monthly active users – which dwarfs the 18 million estimated users of Twitter.

In case you haven’t yet played the game, the idea about Farmville is that you cultivate and manage your own farm by growing crops, keeping animals and building stables and sheds. You sell your crops and animal produce for coins so that you can buy more things for your farm, and most things you do earn you experience points which go towards unlocking more crops, animals and experiences for you to try. Growing pretend aubergines and milking cows made out of pixels may sound like a crazy way to spend your time – but it’s oddly addictive. Games that focus on gaining points through experience can have an odd hold over people – just look at some of the most successful games of all time: Final Fantasy, Pokémon and World of Warcraft are broadly similar, showing how popular that this style of gameplay is.

How Farmville differs from traditional gaming is its social element. While video game companies have been working on collaborative gaming for years, with Farmville all you need is computer access and a Facebook account – meaning anyone who’s curious and near a computer can try, rather than many potential gamers who are priced out by expensive consoles. If you’re on Facebook, Farmville is nearly impossible to miss as Farmvillle’s creators Zynga have ensured that relentless promotion by players themselves is sometimes key to gameplay – anyone who’s bothered you with their updates isn’t just doing it to be annoying (well, not always, anyway).

So why is Farmville important? Because it’s a great example of how social gaming is going mainstream. Maggie Shiels reports for the BBC that the growth of social gaming was the big news at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week, demonstrating how important it is becoming in that space. Another interesting fact is that the average social gamer is not who you think she might be: she’s a 43-year-old woman.

Given that players of Farmville hold more purchasing power than you might think, it seems like accessing Farmville’s audience could be a great opportunity for brands. Bing certainly thought so – this week they ran a game which offered users free “farm cash” if they became a fan of Bing on Facebook (as reported on Econsultancy). This earned them over 400,000 fans – but there’s not much on their Facebook fan page to entice them in any further. Farm cash is a valuable commodity on Farmville and hard to come by without paying for it with your own money – so as a method of gaining Facebook fans, it’s very effective. I’m just not sure how many actual fans they’ll win in the process.

Another noteworthy point for brands is that Farmville has recently launched its own site, away from Facebook.com. This means that we’ll have to keep a close eye on what happens – if Zynga successfully lure Farmville fans into their own space, any collaboration with Facebook pages might have to be re-considered. Personally, I suspect that successful integration with Farmville for a brand will take careful matching (Bing’s link is “you can search for Farmville information on Bing”, which is true but hardly different to any other search engine) as well as considered thinking about what a brand wants to achieve. If you want some numbers, then a partnership with Farmville would definitely deliver if you throw a gaming incentive their way – but if you want an engaged audience for what you have to offer, you might be better off taking lessons from the game rather than try to piggyback on it. Unfortunately, the main lesson is to create something compelling – and that’s the sort of thing you can’t just grow.

Tags: Facebook, Farmville, social gaming
Posted in Facebook, social media | 1 Comment »

Can social media save BBC 6 Music?

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Today Twitter and Facebook are buzzing with responses to the news that the BBC is rumoured to be closing down its 6 Music station. Although the corporation has said nothing to confirm the move, it was lead story in The Times this morning and apparently has already sparked a bidding war with Absolute Radio the frontrunner to buy the station.

The move to close 6 Music is part of a plan that has allegedly been proposed by the BBC hierarchy to rein in some of the corporation’s activities. Other potential changes include halving the size of the BBC website and introducing a cap on the amount of money the BBC can spend on sport. As The Times suggested this morning the BBC’s management is clearly hoping that buy making cuts now it can avoid what many media watchers are predicting will be much deeper cuts after the next general election.

It is however the possible mothballing of 6 Music that has sparked the greatest amount of online activity. Jon Morter, the man who masterminded the Rage Against the Machine Christmas #1 campaign, has now established a new Facebook campaign called “Save BBC 6 Music”. Inspired by recent pronouncements about the possible demise of the station it has already picked up over 56,000 vocal members. By mid afternoon another 7000 people had joined the group.

Meanwhile on Twitter #BBC6music has been trending all day with comments like these

#BBC6music threatens commercial radio?? It can only be a good thing! When has there ever been a decent commercial radio station? #save6music

BBC continue to pay Wogan, fund garbage like ‘Total Wipeout’, ‘Strictly’ & Webers free publicity shows, yet threaten to cut #bbc6music. Huh?

Some tweeters are already sporting save 6 Music badges on their profile pics

So will this new campaign have the same impact and be able to help save BBC 6 Music?

From this juncture it is very hard to tell, but with this amount of activity inspired by what really is little more than a rumour at the moment, it is clear that BBC 6 Music fans are going to fight very hard using social media tools to save their station.

From using Twitter to source opinions for Radio Five Live phone ins through to its Facebook pages and blogs the BBC has worked hard to incorporate social media into online output. It’ll be interesting to see how responsive it is to a very vocal campaign that uses the same tools it already harnesses so effectively.

Tags: bbc 6 music, facebook campaign, Jon Morter, radio, social media
Posted in Broadcast, Facebook, Social Networking | 2 Comments »

2009: how it was for us

Friday, December 18th, 2009

The office has been full to bursting this week with mince pies (thanks Lewis), birthday cakes (courtesy of Tara and Gill) and home made Christmas cake (from my Geordie gran). Amidst the crumbs and tinsel, we’ve been reflecting on what’s been a busy and incredibly productive year, so I thought I’d share my take on Shiny Red in 2009.

Without doubt there’s been a real growth in demand for digital innovation, driven by consumer brands and public sector clients who now expect to choose from a portfolio of online comms services. We’ve constantly evolved our offer to meet this demand, and looking back, it seems as if the year unfolded as distinct social media seasons.

So spring saw us creating social sites for two quite different clients. Yell.com wanted to encourage people to and around the site so we developed Sort Your Life where each month an expert guest blogger would write on a theme like fitness or fashion. For Reckitt Benckiser, the brief was to inspire graduates about available career opportunities, so our approach was to develop a site where new joiners from around the world could talk about their front-line experiences.

By the summer, web video had really come into focus, and we worked with fashion stylist Louise Roe on a series of films to help launch social shopping site very.co.uk. We also got to meet Peter Crouch at an East London soccer skills academy and filmed him in action for the National Lottery Promotions Unit (an edited version is on our homepage video). Video was also a powerful way for us to showcase a new interactive Piccadilly Circus sign for McDonald’s to bloggers and photography communities (thanks, Leo Burnett!).

Autumn was the season of microblogging: we helped Habitat relaunch the brand’s Twitter feed, which now provides offers, updates, and store news. We also issued a major report into online buying behaviour for eBay Advertising, and asked the great British public for messages to put on advertising billboards around the UK for Cadbury Wispa Gold.

Everyone needs warming up in the winter, so our Twindaloo app for Cobra that analyses your Twitter profile to find out what type of curry you are provided a welcome touch of spice to our lives, as did managing the brand’s 60,000-strong Welovecurry Facebook group. We went live with Pfizer’s Man MoT to give men health advice from doctors via an online surgery, and partnered with MySpace for the NHS Teen LifeCheck campaign that asked teens to take a quiz and find out how healthy they are in return for the chance to win a gig by R+B artist Chipmunk at their school.

Of course talking to bloggers and web communities was – and is – still very much on the agenda for clients including Molson Coors’ Bittersweet Partnership which looks at women’s attitudes towards beer, and Odeon which saw us we targeting film bloggers and heavy metal fans to promote Iron Maiden’s Flight 666. And in one of PR Week’s digital campaigns of the year, we unveiled the wedding of Bertie and Betty Bassett for Red Allsorts via Facebook and YouTube.

I could go on because there’s so much more great work that the team has done this year, but the end of the year is time to look forward as well as back. Ash has been gazing into his crystal ball and will share his some thoughts about what 2010 will hold next week.

Meanwhile (and apologies for a slight touch of the Oscars …) huge thank yous go out to all the lovely Shiny Redders for making 2009 a vintage year, to our colleagues at Red for all their amazing support over the last 12 months, and to you the reader for being part of it with us.

Merry Christmas, and have a happy, healthy and social New Year!

Posted in Blogging, Client News, Facebook, PR and Marcomms, Video | No Comments »