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!
If you are looking for evidence that brands are losing a bit of their coyness when it comes to social media check out who is now using controversial video dating/exhibitionism site Chatroulette.
