Posts Tagged ‘shiny red’

Digital Download – retail special

Friday, August 6th, 2010

A round-up the digital / social media stories from the last seven days that have caught our eye, this week focusing on news from the retail sector.

Supermarkets first, in the week that the battle for your mobile handset steps up a gear, with several of the biggest chains announcing new plans for their mobile shopping services. Tesco, for instance, have revealed plans to launch their first transactional app, which will allow shoppers to browse the store’s full range, and create / update shopping lists. Mobile commerce is likely to become a huge priority for all the players in this field, with Tesco having made £136m profit from online sales last year, and recent research suggesting that the number of people shopping via mobile handsets will reach 106.8m worldwide this year. The app will launch next week on the Nokia Ovi store, rather than via Apple’s App Store, in a bid to target a mainstream mum audience rather than the typical iPhone user.

Full story with additional info can be found here: www.nma.co.uk/news/tesco-brings-mobile-shopping-into-the-mainstream/3016603.article

In addition Asda have confirmed this week that they’re looking at ramping up their mobile offering, which will likely soon include an iPhone app, which will bring their services more in line with those of competitors such as Marks and Spencer, and Ocado, the latter of which has reported that their iPhone app has generated 4.4% of orders since it launched last year. Waitrose have also launched an iPhone app and mobile website following a rise in consumers accessing Waitrose.com via mobiles. Both will offer exclusive recipes from Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal, and details of latest in-store offers.

To add some context as to how lucrative mobile commerce is becoming, Amazon’s most recent earnings report revealed that the etailer has just become the first company to generate over $1bn solely through mobile channels. Crucially, as well as a dedicated iPhone app, Amazon has covered all bases with a mobile optimised website, to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. The site also now had Facebook Connect capability, allowing shoppers to share information on their purchases / wishlist with their friend network.

iPhone app vs mobile-optimised site? Story is from Feb but a useful snapshot: http://econsultancy.com/blog/5481-mobile-commerce-should-you-have-a-site-or-an-app

Sainsburys, meanwhile, unveiled their big digital campaign for the summer this week, which is taking place on their Facebook page on a new ‘Summer Ideas’ tab, and will see weekly recipe episodes showing the ‘Tiny Taste Team’ challenging shoppers to try new recipes. Clicking through to Youtube from the page, however, reveals the to date the first video has been viewed just 1,329 times, with only 258 of the views coming via the Facebook page, suggesting this one might be a slow-burner rather than instant hit.

If you need a ‘Scrummy Picnic Idea’ for the weekend the Facebook page can be found here: www.facebook.com/sainsburys

This week Argos have kicked off a London-only trial of a same-day delivery service, which claims to be able to deliver items from a 14,000-strong product range within 90 minutes. This follows a recent announcement that 22% of total sales were coming via customers using the online store and reserving items for pick-up, so can be seen as a natural extension of this offering. Curiously, this new development will put Argos on a similar footing to the high-end fashion retail site Net A Porter, who also offer a same day delivery service within London. So, if you wished, you could order a gorgeous Argos ring and a lovely Gucci snood in the morning, and have both delivered to wear around the office in the afternoon. Tempting I know.

And finally… not strictly a retail story, but one we wanted to include for the nostalgia factor: Nestlé has kicked off a major integrated campaign to launch a new version of Milkybar aimed at adults: Milkybar Raisin and Biscuit. The Ungrow Up campaign, which began this week, prompts adults to impersonate the iconic Milkybar Kid by uploading their own versions of the Milkybar theme to milkybar.co.uk. Visitors to the site can also record a version via a webcam which superimposes the Milkybar kid’s glasses and hat on them plus access downloadable content to advise on how to create the most distinctive videos.

The (very slow to load) website is here: www.milkybar.co.uk

Tags: brands, Digital download, Facebook, iPhone apps, Mobile, New Media Age, shiny red, social media
Posted in Digital download, Mobile | 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 »

World Cup fever: we’re Shiny Red and White for charity

Monday, June 7th, 2010

As you might have seen from our new-look logo, Shiny’s gone football crazy ahead of the World Cup.

For the next month or so, we’ve changed our name to Shiny Red and White to support the England football team and our official charity Centrepoint.

Along with our parent company Red (now Red and White) we’re aiming to be the UK’s most football friendly workplace and raise enough money to fund 25 Centrepoint rooms for the young homeless for the next year. We will be making donations for every goal England score and for every front page snap of a WAG, and hoping to raise £3,000 for Centrepoint along the way.

We’ve also launched a World Cup-themed Twitter feed, @redwhiteconsult – so come and follow us! And let us know what you’re doing to show your support for England over the next few weeks.

Tags: fifa, football, pr, redandwhite, shiny red, soccer, twitter, world cup
Posted in Blogging, General, New Media, PR and Marcomms | No Comments »

Shiny Red’s take on the iPad – is it worth the hype?

Monday, May 17th, 2010

As iPad frenzy builds ahead of its UK launch on May 28 the Shiny Red team have been getting a sneak peek and playing with a rare US import. It’s fair to say we’re pretty divided here, with a few of us completely won over and planning to buy our own as soon as they hit the shops, but others less blown away.

Elements that have gone down particularly well with the admirers in the office include:

The overall design – the iPhone owners in the office all love the look and feel of the iPad, perhaps unsurprisingly, as it’s more or less a supersized version
The apps – from what we’ve seen the choice of apps is already very promising, with a great selection on offer for both fun and practical purposes, to keep gamers and less frivolous users happy

Having said that though, there’s some obvious potential problems that, in our view, may deter some potential purchasers from investing in a first-gen iPad. For example:

No Flash – thanks to the ongoing squabbles between Apple and Adobe, you won’t be able to access any content that requires Flash on your iPad, which means many websites end up full of holes when viewed, and perhaps more importantly: no iPlayer
No camera – the size and portability of the iPad mean it feels naturally suited for using with Skype video chat, but the lack of camera renders this impossible. A good reason to wait for later incarnations of the iPad for sure…

UK prices have just been announced and feedback has been less than enthusiastic, as we’ll be paying a fair bit more than iPad purchasers State-side. Even despite the cost difference, it’s worth comparing the cheapest iPad (£429) with a similarly priced netbook, as you quickly realise the netbook can actually do more.

So to help you decide whether to buy or not to buy here’s our guide to the iPad in action:

Tags: Apple, digital pr agency, iPad UK launch, iPad UK price, iPad video demo, shiny red, social media agency, social media marketing
Posted in Blogging, General, Mobile, New Media, Traditional Media, Video, iPad, social media | No Comments »

Shiny Red’s research into the UK Mummy Blogging community

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Conversations With Mummy Bloggers

View more documents from Ashleynorris.

One of the biggest growth areas in social media in the UK is the so called Mummy Blogging sector. This is where bloggers share their experiences of parenting (among other things) with a growing and vibrant community.

Mummy Blogging’s roots are in the US with writers like Dooce who now attract hundreds of thousands of readers. It has however grown significantly this side of the pond, and we think that there could now be as many 1000 parenting blogs in the UK.

Mummy Bloggers are also becoming increasingly influential with core writers attracting thousands of readers each month and creating posts that generate large numbers of comments. There is also a very powerful social media footprint emerging around the Mummy Bloggers powered not just by Twitter and Facebook but also by the Ning community site of The British Mummy Blogger network.

As an agency Shiny Red has already worked on several campaigns that have involved talking with mummy bloggers. This autumn though we decided that the time was right to take the temperature of the UK scene by surveying 20 of the key bloggers and engaging in conversations with several others. We also gleaned a lot of information about the scene by simply reading their blogs.

Among the questions we asked them were

Why they blog?

How they feel about brands approaching them?

How they use social media?

Where they go for advice and support?

This presentation was developed a for a Mummy Blogging event that we hosted along with our sister agency The Red Consultancy on October 20^th. Here we gave representatives from brands and government agencies the chance to not just hear our views, but more importantly to meet and have a conversation with two of the UK’s leading mummy bloggers.

It is hard to sum up our findings in a couple of sentences. However we feel that the Mummy Bloggers are powerful and vociferous community, but one that is ready and willing to engage with brands, but only on their own terms. They are also well educated, influential women who between them wield an awful lot of economic power.

We also noted there is also a splintering of the Mummy Blogging community with a new breed of writers emerging who are much more focussed on monetising their words than some of their contemporaries.

Feel free to read through the deck and tell us what you think in the comments.

Tags: mummy blogging, Mumsnet, research, shiny red
Posted in Blogging, New Media | 2 Comments »

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.

Tags: brands, Jo beaufoix, mommy blogging, mummy blogging, Potty diaries, shiny red
Posted in Events and Conferences | 1 Comment »

Shiny Red Allsorts campaign praised by PR Week

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

PR Week has just put together its state of social media/digital PR universe for 2009. And as part of its research it asked agencies to submit their best/most imaginative campaigns.

Well we are delighted to say that Shiny Red made the top ten with our campaign to relaunch Red Liquorice Allsorts and boost awareness of the Allsorts brand.

You can read the full story here, but essentially the campaign featured the wedding of Bertie Bassett with his true love Betty. Shiny Red worked on highly successful Facebook profile for Betty and hosted a Facebook wedding which was witnessed by more than 21,000 online guests and generated more than 75,000 responses.

Tags: Allsorts, Facebook, PR Week, shiny red
Posted in Client News | No Comments »

A warm Shiny welcome to Adam Lewis

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Our latest recruit joined the Shiny Red team this week.

Adam Lewis has just graduated from the University of York where he studied advertising and communications, and caught our eye with his blog Flawless Buzz. After spending a couple of weeks with us around Easter and showing his flair for social media, we offered him a full-time role.

With perfect timing, Adam joins us a few days before our summer party!

You can follow Adam on Twitter here

Tags: adam lewis, flawless buzz, shiny red, twitter
Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Three thoughts to mark Shiny Red’s third birthday

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

We’re celebrating our third birthday this week and my goodness, what a lot’s changed since we launched…

Back in August 2006 Facebook was still a niche US college network, Twitter had just made its debut to an unsuspecting world, and Shiny Red emerged blinking into the light, a response from The Red Consultancy to the twin trends of declining offline media consumption, and people spending more time online.

Now there’s no way we can claim anything like the stellar growth of Facebook and Twitter, but in our own quiet way we’ve learned a few things from providing social media marketing to an incredible range of brands and public sector clients. So here are a trio of outtakes from the last three years.

1 – Goal first, channel second: We’ve always tried to steer clear of recommending our clients dive headlong into the Next Big Thing in social media (remember Second Life?) just because it’s fashionable. Instead we try to start with the same simple but essential question: what’s the business objective? Which also means drilling into the sorts of territory you’d find in a typical PR or marketing brief: what’s the timescale, what’s the story, what creative cues should we take, what’s right for the brand…

At the same time we rely on the collective Shiny Red hive mind to stay abreast of social web innovation so that we can consider new tools as part of our strategic response – but only if they offer the right route for the brand.

2 – Clients are upping the ante: In the last 9-12 months I’ve noticed a real sea change in the sorts of client conversations we’re having. Three years ago we worked mainly with tech brands like Nokia and Microsoft who saw their brands and products being debated online by tech bloggers and wanted to join in. Now the mix includes FMCG brands, global names in pharma, online retailers and the public sector. Each has a range of consumer and industry audiences to reach, and each needs a nuanced approach to social media.

Clients increasingly look to us to deliver greater levels of innovation for many intertwined reasons, not least that their own hands-on experience of social media has grown. And unlike three years ago there aren’t many meetings I sit in today where prospective clients need convincing that their audience is online. Like us they’re seeing an explosion of brilliant and effective digital campaigns that are constantly raising the bar for the whole social media marketing sector – which is good news for all of us working within it. As a result, creativity remains at a premium.

3 – Offline doesn’t have to mean anti-social: We’ve always worked on a mix of campaigns, some of which are online-specific, others that are fully integrated across on- and offline media. Clients want to maximise ROI, while offline media is increasingly influenced by the social web.

An example: we recently worked with our colleagues at Red on behalf of MySpace to pitch a story about voter intentions ahead of the European election to political bloggers. Minutes after we contacted Iain Dale, he popped up on Sky News as an interviewee, namechecking MySpace twice in a matter of seconds. Serendipity, yes, and also a reminder that content doesn’t just sit in a box called “digital” or “traditional media”.

Tags: birthday, Iain Dale, milestone, shiny red
Posted in General | 1 Comment »