Shinyred

Posts Tagged ‘brands’

Poke and changing behaviour through social media

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

I’ve been looking at a couple of ambitious and compelling new campaigns from the good folk at Poke.

The first, Orange People Project, is a new Facebook app that makes it easy for people to join together and do something. By going to where the audience exists – 20m FB users in the UK alone – this is a natural way to create new communities by matching unmet needs to willing helpers. It’s early days but has the potential to be something special.

The second is for children’s charity Barnardo’s and features teens talking about the reality of their lives. Often demonised by the media, the Teens’ Speech allows the adults of tomorrow to communicate directly with anyone willing to listen, and go beyond the stereotypes. Find out more on the Poke blog which has links through to where the content is being played out ahead of an alternative to the Queen’s Speech on MySpace during Christmas Day.

Both campaigns pack a punch because they genuinely have the power to change behaviour and perceptions among their audience. And actually “campaigns” is kind of the wrong word, because they will evolve and grow beyond a short-term timeframe… nice work guys.

Facebook now the major social media destination for brands

Friday, November 6th, 2009

There’s a roundup of some new interesting advertising based facts by the team at Econsultancy. Some are quite surprising too, with IAB reporting that UK online ad spend actually went up in 2008, though I wonder if that increases will be repeated in 2009.

The one that most caught my eye though was from a survey which reports that Facebook is the destination of choice for online retailers who want to engage with social media.

The report into the US market, dubbed Social Commerce on Facebook, Twitter and Retail Sites, indicates that 57 per cent of companies in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide have a presence on the website.

It also concludes that as many as 75 per cent of these firms utilise at least one of the major social networking sites or social shopping sites to advertise or make their brand known.

According to Jeffrey Grau, who penned the report, said: “Retailers need to place their virtual storefronts where their customers congregate.”

It would be every interesting to see comparative figures for the UK. I guess that many top retail online sites do have a presence on the social networking site, but that figure probably isn’t as high as 75%.

It would be even more interesting to disover figures for non retail brands

Since Facebook changed its offering for brands earlier in the year it has become an excellent place for companies to create pages which not only engages Facebook users but also act as online hubs that pull and push content from other websites like Twitter and YouTube. Shiny Red has worked on several of these types of sites now (like this one)  and they have proved very effective at bringing brands closer to their customers.

Why Seesmic is useful for brands with Facebook pages

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Just as Facebook is adding more and more Twitter style features and acquiring things like FriendFeed which collates Twitter activity, so more and more Twitter apps are enabling users to control their Facebook pages.

Probably the best of the bunch is Seesmic which today has announced an upgrade to its Facebook capabilities. Seesmic started out as a video based website, but then the company snapped up Twitter API company Twhirl and launched the very useful (over 2.5 million downloads so far) Seesmic Twitter app. It works in a similar way to our favourite Tweetdeck in displaying Twitter updates, replies and searches etc in a very easy to use grid format. You can also use Seesmic to update your Facebook page too. It also has very good web and mobile based services too.

The latest Facebook revamp – version 0.6 – is great news for people who control Facebook fan pages, What the app enables you to do is manage activity on Facebook’s fan pages as well as personal profiles, so you can update them at the same time as you update your Twitter accounts. It is another reason why Seesmic, and its rivals like Tweetdeck, are becoming a very useful tool for social media PRs.

Shiny Red’s mummy blogging event

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Over the last few weeks we have been thinking a lot about mummy blogging. As an agency we have always keep a watchful eye on the mummy blogging phenomenon and even pitched a campaign to key mummy bloggers as far back as 2007.

Recently though with parenting media very much in the headlines at the moment, we decided to undertake some research into what makes British mummy bloggers tick. We asked 20 of the key UK mummy bloggers to fill a questionnaire asking them why they blogged, how they thought mummy blogging would evolve and how they wanted to engage with brands.

The research threw up some very interesting insights. It is clear that there is a strong, engaged and dynamic community emerging and that its members are becoming increasingly influential, not just in blogging but also on Facebook, Twitter and other areas of social media.

Today we presented that research to representatives from many high profile brands. We also listened as two of the top five UK mummy bloggers, Jo Beaufoix and the writer of Potty Diaries shared with us their thoughts on where mummy blogging had come from and how it was changing.

What is clear is that there are now two fairly distinctive types of mummy bloggers and that they have a very different approach to both producing content and engaging with brands.

We will stop being a tease later this week when we place the results of the research on the blog. So pop back the for some very interesting insights into what is fast becoming a key social media channel.

Case studies

Bassetts Becta ebay McDonalds National Lottery Panasonic Pfizer Sky Very Cobra Beer

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