Social Media

24
Mar
2014

Is this the end for the hashtag?

It might seem unthinkable, but if the rumblings that have come out of Twitter over the last few days are anything to go by, it looks like the company is intent on getting rid of the famous Hashtag and ‘@’ reply handles that have become so synonymous with the platform.

Twitter’s Head Of News, Vivian Schiller, recently described hashtags and @ replies as “arcane” and hinted that they would be ‘streamlined’ to help new users better understand the concept of Twitter. Removing the ‘scaffolding’ of the service as they call it, making it more like Facebook, who already use this approach re: mentions in posts.

Reaction has been somewhat negative so far among users and online commentators but my bet is that it will be the same as usual when there is a fundamental change on a social media platform, at the beginning there will be a few grumbles, but users will get used to it, get over it, and ultimately forget what it was like before hand.

twitter

Posted by Rob in Facebook, Social Media, Twitter
14
Mar
2014

Has social media ruined creative advertising copy?

I was lucky enough to have attended the Dubai Lynx Festival of Creativity this week (the MENA sister event to the Cannes Lions festival) and it only dawned on me, seeing so many fantastic advertising campaigns in one place, that the creative standard of the advertising that we typically see on a daily basis (mainly via the web) has seriously deteriorated in recent years.

While social media and tech capabilities have come to the forefront of the advertising world over the last three or four years, it seems that genuine creativity, at least as far as the copy of a campaign is concerned, has taken a back seat, having been replaced by gimmicky concepts aimed around getting the campaign shared. Creative and thought provoking copy, and it’s associated brand building benefits, has suffered with a move away from impact, to reach, and the folly of social ‘engagement’.

Humour can be used to great effect by some brands but it seems that more and more companies are opting for this approach, playing the role of the class clown, relying on Facebook Meme’s etc. to get their name out there, which is hardly a sturdy foundation to build your brand on (‘lads brands’ like Paddy Power excluded).

All is not lost though, as exemplified by the likes of the moving winner of the YouTube 7-Day Brief above, or the story of how a Hong Kong student rose from obscurity after a Steve Jobs piece received worldwide attention, and went on to create one of the most iconic adverts for Coca-Cola in the company’s history (below). Of course the online approach must be considered when developing an ad campaign but, as these ads show, this certainly doesn’t have to be at the expense of creative copy.

Creative advertising is still alive and well, even if it doesn’t show up in your Facebook newsfeed.

Coke Hands

 

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Social Media
25
Feb
2013

Dell Use Twitter to Facilitate Customer Feedback And Even Increase Sales

Although this video is not exactly new, it only came to my attention this week through a New York Times article by small business guru, Melinda Emerson, who singles out Dell as one of the first big companies to effectively utilise social media to both listen, and sell, to customers.

It seems that Dell has dedicated some serious resources (like Gatorade did in 2010) to monitoring their mentions on social media. And with the company mentioned more than 25,000 times each day, you can see why. Dell’s social media director Cory Edwards claims that the most important factor in being successful on social media is to really listen to your customers and show them you’re using their feedback to change the way you do business, which Dell has shown with its @DellCares Twitter presence.

On the sales front, by offering exclusive deals to customers through its @DellOutlet Twitter feed, the company is actually leveraging Twitter to increase sales. With ROI presumably easy enough to measure here, they can see what works and what doesn’t.  And with nearly 1.5 million followers, I can only imagine that the @DellOutlet Twitter movement is proving quite fruitful for them.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23WDGRQpi7s

Posted by Rob in e-Commerce, Social Media, Twitter
20
Mar
2010

Heineken’s Amazing Soccer Swindle

Check out this example of a fantastic guerrilla marketing campaign by Heineken that, in-turn, became a viral video hit.

Heineken staged a fake classical music concert at the same time as a crucial Real Madrid vs. AC Milan game and faced 1,100 unsuspecting Italian football fans with the predicament of either giving in to their girlfriends, professors and bosses who were to convince them by any means necessary to attend the concert, or to ditch the concert and watch the match.

Unsurprisingly, but much to the displeasure of the football fans, most were persuaded to attend the event instead of watching their beloved team in action only to be greeted with a nice surprise a few minutes into the concert.

With 1.5 million people watching their reactions on live TV, and up to five million more watching on the site devoted to the event, not to mention a great deal of news attention, Heineken garnered significant coverage out of this stunt online.

This is a great example of how on-the-ground guerrilla marketing campaigns can be perfectly matched with video marketing and the social web.

Posted by Rob in Social Media