Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category

Our pick of the Cannes Lions, and World Cup finale

Friday, July 9th, 2010

The annual Cannes Lions awards celebrate the best worldwide PR, advertising and marketing creativity amid a frenzy of networking, partying and sunshine. This year, I wasn’t swanning along La Croisette but sunning myself in Cornwall when the winners were announced, so I’ve (slightly belatedly) picked out a few favourite campaigns for our regular end-of-the-week update – click on the links for short showreels. And of course, after weeks of footie fever, we can’t let the World Cup Final pass unremarked…

Facebook Showroom – Ikea Sweden

This smart campaign to drive awareness of a new store opening shows how Facebook’s ability to tell your friends what you’re doing can be harnessed for brands. It centred around a Facebook profile created for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson where showrooms from the store were displayed . By becoming a friend of the manager, Facebook users could then tag any product they liked the look of, from sofas to crockery, and win it for themselves. Their own Facebook friends would be notified that when they’d won something which in turn drove them to Gordon’s profile to do the same. This showreel tells the full story of this campaign that went on to win a Gold Cyberlion for successfully taking the brand into social media in a compelling way.

Chalkbot – Nike Livestrong

A good example of an idea that had physical outputs based on digital input, in this case crowdsourcing via the social web. Writing messages on the road in chalk has long been part of the Tour de France so to promote the Livestrong foundation, Nike’s team created a Chalkbot – a giant robot that would leave messages sent in by its fans via Twitter, web banners or SMS, often from people living with cancer, or their loved ones. Here’s a video of the Chalkbot in action. This campaign picked up a Grand Prix in several categories.

Twelpforce – Best Buy

US gadget and tech retailer Best Buy prides itself on the knowledge of its sales team or “Blue Shirts”. While lots of brands have played with using Twitter as a customer service tool, Best Buy embraced it wholeheartedly by turning its 2,000-strong workforce into a 24/7 Twelpforce on hand to answer any questions from the public. The result was sales targets smashed during at the back-to-school buying time, a drop in customer complaints, positive consumer and corporate PR – and a well-deserved Titanium Grand Prix award.

Facebook footie buzz

And finally – Alex spottted this great World Cup visual tool from the New York Times that shows which players are getting most Facebook talkup by showing images of the players proportionate to the number of mentions they’ve had. Sadly if you click on June 12 you’ll see Robert Green dominates, while Ronaldo had lots of buzz yesterday – maybe for modestly calling his baby boy Cristiano?

Posted in Events and Conferences, PR and Marcomms, Social Networking, brands | No Comments »

Hung Parliament shortcuts and General Election update

Friday, May 7th, 2010

We’re a bit bleary-eyed at Shiny Red after a night spent watching the political and media world grapple with the outcome of an extraordinary – and still unresolved – General Election. So for this Friday’s Digital Download we’ve got some social media shortcuts that will help you make sense of a fast-changing landscape over the next few days, as well as a snapshot of key online news from polling day.

What happens now?

Traditional media owners have done a superb job of getting journalists to write live blogs with real-time updates from the campaign front line. Two I’d recommend as events unfold are The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow and The Times’ Judith Evans both of whom are hard at it today despite blogging into the wee small hours this morning. These are unbeatable as fast pull-togethers of events, combining the analysis you’d expect from good writers, with the personality and commentary that mark out great blogs. Nick Robinson for the BBC has also been feeding into Auntie’s election blog.

And of course there are also the politico bloggers and tweeters we mentioned a few weeks ago too…

What happened where I live?

For a drill-down into what happened in your constituency, the BBC has an excellent map that allows you to zoom into your area and get a detailed breakdown, as does the Times (again).

I voted and I’m proud!

In a poll where turnout was always going to be key, Facebook became a hub for getting out the vote with 14,000 people registering after seeing ads on the site. That number was dwarfed by the 1.8m Facebookers who proudly clicked the “I’ve voted” button on the home page yesterday. Over on Twitter, around 25,000 people used the hashtag #ukvote yesterday to declare where they’d voted according to Tweetminster, with around 27% hailing from London.

I couldn’t vote and I’m furious!

Twitter beat old media in reporting lengthy polling station queues last night, and now the angry students of Sheffield and other disenfranchised voters have taken their stories online via Facebook (the student’s group has more than 3,000 members) and YouTube. Citizen journalism from the front line…

Looking back…and forward

The first election with digital at its heart saw traditional media breaking the biggest stories: the raised profile of Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems post the leaders’ debates comes to mind, as does Bigotgate. Social media then added live engagement, debate – and humour: Twitter provided a gag-fuelled running commentary on events, demonstrating the renowned British love of a good joke, while online games and video spoofs lent an irreverent slant.

On which note, here are a few web funnies we’ve found – happy weekends all!

If Nick Clegg was called Nicholas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuxaiaxkLQA
Leaders’ wives react to the result: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GLW4weHrj8&annotation_id=annotation_145191&feature=iv
Downing Street Fighter game – now with added Gillian Duffy: http://www.t-enterprise.co.uk/flashgame/playgame_new.aspx?id=dsf
Leaders’ speeches remix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmNpEdSqPxs

Posted in Blogging, Broadcast, Digital download, Election 2010, Social Networking, Traditional Media, social media | 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 »

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 »

Why Facebook will continue to grow

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

It has been a big week for Facebook which announced it had reached two major milestones. Firstly it has passed 300 million worldwide members and secondly its monthly revenues now covered its costs and the company was starting to make money.

Facebook has enojoyed a huge growth spurt this year attracting another 50 million members in the last 75 days.This does of course beg the question – how big can Facebook get? Well much of its recent growth has been in its core markets of North American and Europe. Its levels of growth outside those spheres have been less impressive. There are some hot spots such as Indonesia, but in many big emerging country markets Facebook’s growth is limited.

One of the problems it faces is that in key territories there are already local social networking sites that have a Facebook style stranglehold already. In Korea Cyworld, with its 24 million members, has managed to keep Facebook and its rivals at bay. In Central America the big player is Sonico and further south in countries like Argentina Hi5 sets the agenda. There are also problems for Facebook in China where the authorities apparently perceive the site as very western and a unwanted influence on its people. Ironically Friendster, the original social networking site which predates Facebook and Facebook, is now performing well in Asia.

They key then to Facebook’s growth could prove to be India and its surrounding countries. It has been suggested that much of the reason for the launch of Facebook Lite last week was to push the social networking site in the region.

Zuckerberg and his team’s other big problem is keeping notoriously fickle Westerners coming back to his site. The acquisition of FriendFeed and the move to incorporate Twitter-style micro blogging elements on the site show that Facebook is ready to meet challenges to its hegemony head on.

It is worth remembering though that every big social networking site so far has peaked and then started to fall. In the UK Friends Reunited had spectacular fall from grace.

Facebook’s one huge advantage over its rivals is the huge amount of content and data that users already have on their pages, so it makes it much harder for users to move to another site.

Overall though there may be a few wobbles in the US and Europe in the next couple of years but with new markets emerging all the time Facebook is clearly going to continue to grow for sometime yet.

Posted in Social Networking | 1 Comment »

The web on your tellybox – an update.

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Adapted by the author from an original post at social Probiotic

A few months ago I wrote a piece on my own blog about internet content making its way to the TV screen. Not in a Media Center box kind of way, but a way that is done from the point of view of the television industry. It’s now time for the other big event of the braodcasting calendar, NAB in Las Vegas, which unfortunately, I’ll not be attending. There was however, a chance to see some of the things that will be on display there at the IPTV World Forum in London last month. Once again, for a show that is about using internet technology, there was disappointingly little about internet content to see. But here’s a run down of what some of the TV tech companies are doing with social media.

Accedo: This is more of an update from what they showed me at IBC, essentially, they’ve taken on the ‘app’ model for Facebook and Twitter so that you can view a cutdown version of these applications as a sidebar during your normal TV watching. In the same way that online applications such as thwirl and digsby recognise that some things need to be kept in the background while you’re focusing on your main task, Accedo will sit completely unassumingly until you want to share what you’re doing with your network. It also integrates with your EPG, so that just using the coloured remote buttons, you can update what you’re watching. Neat, look:

SeaChange: as a company I’ve done some work with before, I was curious to know what this middleware provider was up to in the world of web content. They’re showing off Affinity, a social networking engine for video-on-demand, essentially a tool that allows you to make and take recommendations for stuff in a VOD library, the idea being that people will discover pay-per-view content that they might not normally find (= extra revenue for operator). The problem I have with this is that it seems that the recommendations are done via collaborative filtering (i.e. you share what you like with your friends and vice versa), which means that the solution is only good when your friends like the same stuff as you AND they happen to have an Affinity enabled TV service. If it was linked to a social network’s API, there would be a lot more value from this and it wouldn’t necessitate the latter point.

Ericcson: Yes they do TV, in fact, they were showing last.fm on TV – not the actual videos, but essentially, it’s an ‘app’ built for playing music through your TV when you get very bored of adverts for ringtones on VH1. I’m not entirely sure where it sits in the network because they don’t seem to be talking about it in any of their literature or website, which is a shame. I liked the demo though, it looks pretty slick and my TV has better sound quality than my PC, so I’m all for taking this particular service to the living room in another way (I currently use the last.fm app on my iPod quite frequently for that type of thing. Pic below:

CompleteTV: Now I have to say I’m more than a little disappointed with these guys. Despite having a fairly nice booth at IPTVWF, and splashing the YouTube Logo across it a couple of times, looking at their site, I fail to see how that was any more than lip service to online media making its way to the TV in any genuine form. Fear of content producers… perhaps. Now, that might sound harsh, but here’s the thing… CompleteTV makes boxes – not a great start… boxes for the consumer (even worse, since most of this stuff will migrate to the network in 3-4 years), which, with the whole wealth of social media goodness out there can do all this: “browse the internet and act as an email/instant messaging client”. Wow. I’m hugely underwhelmed.

Finally I wanted to quote a great article from the March/April issue of Future Media, in which Jonathan Webdale has interviewed Anthony Rose, one of the big cheeses behind the iPlayer, who said that “2007 was the year the BBC chose what you watched, 2008 was the year viewers chose what they watched and 2009 would be the year your friends choose what you watch.” As long as it’s not the rest of the Shiny Red team choosing, I’m keen to see how it goes.

Tags: future media, nab, social media, tv
Posted in Social Networking, Video, Web 2.0 | No Comments »