Social media

Momentum and strategy

Advertising, behavioural economics, Brand, Social media, Strategy 0 Comment

I’ve always thought that the single most valuable skill of a strategist or planner, if you prefer, is the ability to be constantly on the alert, noticing things and then interpreting them.

This is called having insight.

It doesn’t have to be an earth shattering revaluation, just ‘apprehending the true nature of things’.

Our thanks then go to our Tahlia, in the Sputnik Insight and Planning Lab, who noticed this yesterday and pointed the rest of us to it.

An excellent short sequence of heavily loaded tweets – posted below – from the Obama 2012 campaign that clearly demonstrates that – despite Cass R. Sunstein’s recent departure from the Obama camp – applied behavioural economics are still very much part of the Obama strategy. Read More

How Much is a Like Worth?

Advertising, Brand, Social influence, Social media, Strategy 1 Comment

Nothing. Zero. A Like on Facebook has zero value.

Yet so many brands are obsessed with Likes, as if this is the ultimate indicator of social media success. In award entries I judge, there are boasts of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of likes, which to me has all the credibility of a businessman boasting to his friends that a stripper in a gentleman’s club (has there ever been more of a misnomer?) winked at him. I know the love, or in this case the like, was bought. Most of the time, the more dollars you put into attracting (buying) Likes, the more Likes you will get. And Likes by themselves are of no value.

Before you slam me in 140 characters, let me explain. Read More

The Twitter twits

Social media, Uncategorized 1 Comment

A funny thing happened last week in the Twittersphere, something that has gone unnoticed by most.

There was a lynch mob. There was baying for blood. There were rallying cries against the big corporation. People were saying how ignorant the big corporation was, how the big corporation didn’t understand social media, how the big corporations didn’t understand online marketing.

The funny bit is that all these “experts” were wrong. They had been the ones sucked in.

I am referring to the ArcticReady website, and the reaction it caused. Read More

Have memes gone mainstream?

Advertising, Brand, Creative, Marketing, Social media 0 Comment

[Original post by Sam Harris]

Richard Dawkins invented them, but the internet super-sized them. And now the question to savvy marketers is: could the meme actually be an effective vehicle to tell their brand story?

Whilst a great idea on the face of it, advertisers might want to think twice before they attempt to set a lolcat amongst Keanu Reeves’ pigeons.

Like most social marketing plays, the obvious watch-out for marketers is audience subversion, where your message quickly gets flipped by the community.

The internet is littered with the carcasses of such ‘campaigns’. Who could forget the eco-takeover of Chevrolet’s SUV competition across YouTube, or recent Twitter fails at #QantasLuxury and #Coles. Just this February, Coke was left mopping up the spills when its invitation to create a “happy story” on Facebook through a trail of one-word comments, was hijacked by ‘fans’ with a less virtuous vocabulary. Read More

Introducing the 8th of the mass media. Augmented Reality comes of age.

Design, Social media, Technology 0 Comment

Presumably everyone noticed Google announcing it’s initial experiments with augmented reality glasses under the codename ‘Project Glass’.

I’ve included below the video that demonstrates the anticipated capability of the ‘device’ that shows voice commands being used to send messages, take photos, share to G+, see the locations of friends, view maps, get product information and so on and so forth.

It’s been accepted for some cosiderable time now that the next evolution of computing is likely to be ‘wearable’. We’ve all seen the speculation and prototypes around wristband iphones, bendy tablets and all the rest. Read More

The Voice: Australia’s best example yet of social TV

Advertising, Marketing, Social influence, Social media, Social TV 1 Comment

[Posted by Rodd Messent]

I am an addict of Channel Nine’s hit show The Voice. Such is the extent of my addiction I seriously think my housemate might kick me out of our apartment for the semi-frenzied yelling and tweeting that ensues in our lounge room each time the show airs.

It’s the first time in almost three years that such disagreement has resulted in less than civil behaviour towards one another, and it’s made me think it might be a microcosm of the large volume of online debate about the show and, correspondingly, an explanation for its success as a social TV experience.

Monday night’s first live performances saw #thevoiceau trend worldwide on Twitter and the performance of contestant, Karise Eden, reach number one on the iTunes pop charts.

Love or hate it, The Voice is arguably the best mainstream example of social TV we’ve seen so far in Australia Read More