Social media revolution updated

You'll all be familiar with this, but figure it had to be shared as it's been updated. This is the social media revolution v4. Usual gig, Moby soundtrack and lots of stats about social media and the changing world. Enjoy.

Nic

Fantastic response to Facebook 'rant'

This 'rant' was placed on Bodyform's Facebook wall, last week.

This was Bodyform's response.

Watch the video response here:

What a great example of a brand truly interacting with it's Facebook audience.

Thanks to Mikey for pointing this one out

Em

Social Media Predicting Stock Prices? Say What!

No one can dispute that social media is big, but is it big enough to predict stock market prices? Many traders are saying yes and the rise of start-ups offering financial sentiment analysis services based on social media platforms like Twitter are more than confident that it can.

Companies like SNTMNT,  HedgeChatter, DCM Capital and CrowdIndex (still in BETA mode) claim to be able to classify investor sentiment but how accurately can one classify emotions like fear and greed using algorithms? Pretty accurately actually as Johan Bollen, a computer scientist at Indiana University Bloomington, discovered. In a study published in 2010 Johan investigated whether measurements of specific moods derived from large-scale Twitter feeds correlated to the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) over time. The algorithms he devised actually predicted the direction of the Dow Jones closing price within 87.6% accuracy. His sentiment analysis measured mood in six dimensions (calm, alert, sure, vital, kind and happy). He discovered that the index rose over a few days of "calm" tweets and dipped after a few days of more "anxious" feeling tweets.

Pretty neat huh? The question is how long will it take for social media platforms to not only predict stock prices but actually begin to influence them? 

Parental Persuasion Program

NewEgg.com, an electronic website have come up with a 'Parental Persuasion Program'. It's designed to give students the tools to convince their parents to buy them new electronic goods for their education.

It's a clever use of personalisation, re-targetting and good-old fashioned pester power. 

After students have created a wishlist, a custom URL link is sent to their parents in a personalised email. Once the parents click on the link they are 'cookied' which enables the site to retarget them with online banners, with different messaging based on the profile their child has picked out for them (like penny pincher or helicopter parent).

Take a look here: http://www.newegg.com/back-to-school-shopping/

A Quick Snapshot of How it Works

They start by creating a wishlist of the goods they want.

Next they select which type of parents they have (penny pincher, helicopter parent, workaholic, BBF or geek..) This information is used to customise messaging in emails, banner ads and videos.

Then they give their parents names and email and their own name and email and approve email, banner ads and posters to be sent to their parents. 

Email example:

 Banner ad example:

thanks, em

An Augmented future...

A fascinating and fun short film looking at an augmented future. The fruit ninja chopping particularly good, as is the start of dating scene. You know this all could happen.

Enjoy, be frightened, scoff. Etc

Cheers

Nic

iPad Inspiration

Today we are straying away from a marketing related post and looking at a good dose of thought-provoking inspiration.

Like TED? Then take a look at their new venture - TED books for the iPad and kindle.

For those who don't know of TED its worth checking out. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. They bring together unique perspectives on the world around us through entertaining speakers and capture it all on video. Most talks are are between 7 and 45 minutes.

TED books is a series of ebooks which build on some of the most popular speakers at TED. The books are long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to be read in a single sitting, available on the Kindle and iPad. They are currently offering a 'founding member' subscription price on the iPad where you can download all the ebooks for 3 months for $14.99. Bargain.

Enjoy.

em

Many lightweight interactions over time

Here is a great talk on building relationships in Facebook. 

As you know, when you meet someone new it usually takes many small interactions to develop a relationship. Same thing goes for brands. So it makes sense that Facebook is most effective when brands make many lightweight interactions over time.

‘Heavyweight’, immersive interactive apps play an important role but because we are asking people to spend a lot more time with us it’s far more effective once you’ve built a relationship from many small interactions over time.Many brands launch with heavyweight apps, when they would get a lot more traction if they spent the time to develop relationships first. It’s like throwing a big party. It’s going to be a much bigger event if you invite people you’ve built relationships with, rather than strangers. 

Just one app does not make an effective social media strategy. We need to think about building relationships through many small interactions, over time, as well as the big hitters.

View the video: http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/2012/07/newcreativecanvas

Em

Mobile alarm app incorporates the current weather, time and day of the week into its wake-up music. Nice.

Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo have created a ‘social alarm clock’ for the mobile. It tells you what the weather is going to be like, the time and day of week, all mixed in with music to suit the day. The background changes each day. It also enables people to share via social media the time, weather and temperature at the moment they turned the alarm off. You can see a data visualisation of this from other people around the world.

It’s a nice way to remind people of your brand from the moment they wake up.

Website: www.uniqlo-wakeup.com

Em

What happens when you hit the Google search button

Ever wondered what happens on the interwebs when you hit search on Google? They've put together a handy little infographic that explains the process.

Image from Mashable.

A Twitter campaign for the boys

Needs little introduction. Enjoy.

Target predicts a teen is pregnant before her father

Recently New York Times ran a story about Target's data mining efforts. By looking at the historical buying patterns of mothers who joined the Target baby registries they can predict pregnancy amongst current Target customers. 

Target started to put together baby coupons and catalogues and sent them to those they predicted were pregnant. Target sent one such catalogue to a household with a teen daughter. The father called to complain about this, only to realise a couple of days later that his daughter really was pregnant. 

Target is now having to make the baby content in catalogues look a bit more random, like placing nappies near lawn mowing equipment, so people are not spooked by the fact Target has predicted that they are pregnant. 

Isn't it strange that companies are now getting so good at predicting what we need that they have to play it down? It does present a great opportunity for brand and organisations to serve the needs of customer before they even know they need it…

Em

P.S.

More info on the data-mining from NYT:

"[Target statistician Andrew Pole] ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged. Lotions, for example. Lots of people buy lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Many shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close to their delivery date.

As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.

One Target employee I spoke to provided a hypothetical example. Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse largeenough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug. There’s, say, an 87 percent chance that she’s pregnant and that her delivery date is sometime in late August."

Order Evian Home Delivery from a Fridge Magnet

Evian have created a digital object which enables customers to order deliveries to their home. It's a fridge magnet which connects to the internet via wifi. By placing it on the fridge Evian have come up with a practical way of keeping their brand front of mind and enabling customers to order more product at the moment of need.

Em

Interesting digital stuff

Hmmm not blogged for a while, and there's been some interesting digital work showcased recently and I wanted to at least share a few of them. Some of you may have seen these but always worth another look if you have. I like that two of these are heavily 'mobile led' as the more great mobile stuff we see, the easier it'll be to convince brands to invest there.


World's longest lasting click

I always like seeing new approaches to banner ads, as they often get met with a groan. This one from Stride gum really draws the user in, and keeps them there. One user interacted with this banner for 22 minutes, impressive!

Guinness QR

I get lots of questions about QR codes and on the whole I reply in the negative as consumers aren't seeing the value when they are used. Here's a rare cool example from Guinness that might change that. The code is in the glass but only works when it's filled with the black stuff. Clever. Read about it in full here.

Let's Dance

User content campaigns can easily bomb, particularly if you ask too much of your audience. This one for game 'let's dance 3' certainly didn't, recently picking up a Gold pencil at the one show. Great use of mobile, and some incredible social results.

Cheers
Nic

Facebook Offers

It’s safe to say that Facebook has had a busy few weeks. It purchased Instragram last week for $1 billion and now it’s finally launched Facebook Offers to a select few business pages. “Facebook has been rolling out Offers since fMC and it’s now available in Beta in Japan, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore,” a company spokesperson told VentureBeat.

The new feature allows business pages to post Groupon style offers into users news feeds, where they can “get the offer.” Once the user has selected to receive the offer, they are sent an email with the redemption details and they can either go in store with a printout or show the retailer the coupon on their smart phone.

So will Facebook Offers fair any better than the ill-fated Facebook Deals, which ended after only 4 months of testing? The process of seeing a deal from a company you already like, in your news feed feels like a relatively seamless way for the product to work, but if you’re not keen on seeing the offers you’ll have to hit the un-like button.

Offers come with some nice features for businesses though, including the ability to link an ad straight back to an offer and a pinning feature to allow you to pin the offer to the top of your page so new fans see it when they visit your page for the first time.

And for users, if you redeem an offer it will be shared with your friends on your timeline, so be sure to check your settings if you don’t want that information public.

Cheers,

Brighita 

Pinterest

Pinterest is now the third most visited social-networking site in the US according to a report released by Experian Marketing Services.

In Australia, according to Nielsen, the site’s audience members jumped from 140,000 in December to 360,000 in January. Even US President Barrack Obama has jumped on the bandwagon.

Despite some copyright issues, which prompted Pinterest to amend their T&C’s, the site is being embraced by users as well as brands throughout Australia.

Tourism Australia hit Pinterest last month and yesterday Kleenex Australia announced it was running a brand campaign on the social network which will end with the “world's fastest 'Pin to Make A Difference' pinning competition.”

So what do you need to know if you’re thinking about plunging into pinning?

• Make sure you familarise yourself with the T&C’s particularly the copyright and trademark conditions
• Know your audience. Who is using the site, who should you follow, who is likely to follow you and what do they want to see? 
• Categorise your boards correctly. This makes it easier for users to determine which boards they want to follow. Pinterest also recently changed the way the boards are displayed, allowing users to select the image that best represents the board.

• If you’re a website owner, make sure it’s pin-friendly. It’s not possible to pin images from flash site so if you think your target audience is using Pinterest consider switching to HTML. 
• And most importantly, determine if Pinterest is right for your brand and organization. Heather Sundell wraps it up perfectly when she asks “is your brand visual?” Without the right content, dedicating someone to manage another social networking site may be a waste of a valuable resource.

SXSW: The future according to South by Southwest

As the sun sets on my inspiring trip to Austin, all that is left is to wrap up some of the emerging trends to paint a picture of what the short and long term future might hold.


Importantly, we need to stop looking at digital as a channel, as HP's global CD Greg Johnson put it, "digital isn't a medium, it's the age we're in". This was consistent throughout the week, from the flurry of 'always on' location based social app launches to futurists calmly telling us we'll all be chipped pretty soon.


The importance of data was hard to ignore this week. All brands are sitting on an incredible wealth of data, be that marketing databases, ecommerce, social, web analytics and so on yet few are making the most of it. Those brands that do realise the power of data to create truly personalised experiences will inevitably succeed.


The keynote sessions on Monday were packed full of big names focusing on social media for social good, from Al Gore, Sean Parker and Twitter founder Biz Stone. Gore in particular rallied the crowd and suggested a connected online community can 'occupy democracy'. Stone went one further stating "I believe the future of marketing is philanthropy. This is going to actually help your business" (easier to do when you're worth $200 million).


This is all proof that social media has truly come of age, and that it's time to really drive change. There's obviously a lot of hope the Kony work can back that up.


More immediate is the world of 'Solomo' (social location mobile) and the concept of connecting you with people around you who are like you. Highlight, Glancee, Sonar and more all drained our batteries and got some traction without really taking off. Strangely, the most interesting thing about these services is they all rely on either Twitter or Facebook to be of use, further cementing those platforms importance in the social sphere.


As for looking way forward, there was certainly a lot of future gazing about how humans and technology will interact, not anything we've not read about (or seen in the movies) but it was resoundingly covered. Cyborg anthrapologist Amber Case highlighted that we need technology to get out of the way, so we'll use the human body, gestures and geo location as our interface for technology. Much of this is already there through applications such as Kinect and Sixth Sense for example, but her play is more retina displays than anything.


Respected futurist Ray Kurzweil certainly challenged the brain, but the message was along the same lines, a life living alongside computers rather than us merely using them. Kurzweil believes computers will ultimately become smarter than us, and will even be able to understand the nuances of irony and wordplay. The consumption of information certainly isn't a problem as Watson the IBM super computer can already call up every fact from Wikipedia in 3 seconds. Here's a couple of Kurzweil nuggets, the latter left me a little sad as it basically means we are now so intertwined with technology that we aren't bothering to use our memories anymore (Google it syndrome).


"In the future, search engines won't wait to ask, they will already be listening with your permission."
"Our cultural memories have been sourced to the cloud, freeing us up to do other things."


This kind of future is probably best displayed through video, one such example is Keiichi Matsuda's take on the hyper augmented world from 2010




So that's the SXSW wrap, see you back in Sydney.


Nic Chamberlain is writing for AdNews from the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

SXSW: A re-brief creatives will like

The show rolls on here in Austin, and you can feel the buzz building as the music festival kicks off Wednesday, so as the nerds start to pack up, the cool cats start to roll in. Shame to be leaving tomorrow.

Saying that, we continue to see some cool stuff from the digital world, both in terms of the speakers, exhibitors and brands. BBH Labs have courted controversy by creating Homeless Hotspots this week, which is basically homeless people wandering around the festivals with MiFi devices, inviting people to introduce themselves, make a donation and connect to their 4G network.

Controversial? Many think so as BBH Labs have received a fair bit of heat about it, despite this being an experiment and it not (yet) being linked to any brand (well, apart from the agency). You'll probably find most agencies around the world have thought of this kind of idea before but have never had the balls or found the right client or environment to launch it. I'm not going to get in to the right or wrongs of this idea here, as you can make you're own mind up, but this could be a step towards Big Issue 2.0? Check it out here http://bbc.in/ykBtQx

You can't help but love a rather less controversial project here this weekend - 'Google Rebrief', finally a re-brief creatives will enjoy!

The project is a collaboration with legends of the ad game from the 60's and 70's, giving them a chance to help re-create their classic TV campaigns in today's digital age.

The brands included are Coca-Cola, Volvo, Alka-Seltzer and Avis. Google released the Coke and Volvo executions at the festival, and that content plus the other brands will be released in the next two weeks. The Coke revamp is of the classic 'Hilltop' campaign from 1971, where the 2012 version has a social spin with cans of coke being shared with people around the world via SMS and special vending machines.

A fantastic project as it both pays homage to classic advertising and shows how to create engaging work in the modern age. Check out the hype video below.



I didn't want to forget the bull*** job title game, and I think I've found four beauties here: transmedia creator, chief scientist, word nerd and connective tissue director. Coming soon to an agency near you.

I'll be wrapping up some key conference themes tomorrow as my final day in Austin comes to a close. Stay tuned. For more news and stuff you can follow me at @nicchamberlain

Nic Chamberlain is writing for AdNews from the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

SXSW: #Endlessrain at South by Southwest

It rains in Texas, who knew? I clearly brought the monsoon weather with me from Sydney, as it's done nothing but rain since we arrived. Somewhat unsurprisingly rain has been the trending topic on Twitter, and every other new social network for that matter (of which there are many, I have about 10 new social apps to play with).

No matter, I'm sure we'll survive, what of the festival?

It is huge. I was warned about the sheer size of it but you really have to see it to believe it. Meltwater were reporting over 300,000 mentions of SXSW on Saturday alone which should give you a feel for the enormity of the event (or the over sharing of the attendees...).

Picking up the badge took 2 hours, and once I'd finally got that I went along to a couple of sessions and was locked out, too many people! Mental note, get everywhere super early.

You get a feel for the quality of the content when using the official app. The easiest thing is to favorite the sessions you want to go to, and there I was at 9.30am and there was 11 things I wanted to see. I need a clone.

Without a clone, you just have to pick a lane and hope its a good one, which invariably they are. I've seen comedians talking about creative process, UX specialists, the tech guys from Mashable to the Cyborg Anthropologist, who was absolutely fantastic. You can read about her here http://caseorganic.com/ or search for Amber Case on TED, it's well worth it.

There's exhibitors galore, so endless fliers, competitions, vouchers and free drinks thrown at you, but it was the brands giving away ponchos were invariably the most popular though.

One standout campaign launch here is AMEX, who have kicked off a neat promo called Sync, Tweet, Save. Current cardholders just have to link their card to their Twitter account to receive exclusive offers and deals, which they load straight on your card, no printed vouchers, no fuss. A really nice example for financial brands in the social space, and it's certainly generated quite the buzz at the festival.



There's plenty to cover about key themes and speakers, but I'll do that tomorrow as the rain has stopped and Austin has come out to play.

Nic Chamberlain is writing for AdNews from the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

SXSW: A sea of tweets and check-ins

For those in the digital and tech industry South by Southwest is the event of events in the calendar, where 'digital creative minds' meet. For those not in the industry it's basically a major nerd fest, often dubbed "nerd or geek prom".
We don't care as we know geek chic has been in for years now, so I'm joining 24,000 others in a tweet up like no other. Undoubtedly there'll be more hashtags, checkins, status updates, blog posts, swarm badges, smartphones and tablets than you can poke a stick at.
I'm already a little overwhelmed by the number of apps, events, parties and volume of tweets I'm faced with, anyway – first world problem.
You'll be hearing from me over the next few days, giving you a rundown of the key themes from the event, the next tech explosion and must have app or social network. I'll also be checking out the most ridiculous job titles at the conference... a couple of early leaders I've seen include "Cyborg Anthropologist" and "Chief Quixotic officer" - watch this space.

It's worth noting the festival isn't all about nerds though, and its actually more famous for film and music, which has been running for 20 years or so. The interactive component was added around ten years ago and has grown each year since, and in that time Austin has been given the name 'Silicon Hills' because it is such a major hub for tech start ups. In fact, Twitter really came to the fore at SXSW in 2007, and although it didn't officially launch there many believe it was the conference that really put it on the social map.
Early indications of what's going to be big this year include location and social context, and the concept of co-sharing through social.

'Highlight' looks like it could be one such darling this year, it's a social network (do we really need another?) that uses information from your Facebook account to find your friends or others users near you who like the same stuff as you, from which you'll be sent push notifications about people in your nearby radius. Take a look here http://yhoo.it/ABVGyL

And Co-sharing through social takes lending your hedge trimmer to your neighbour to a whole new level, read more about that here http://bit.ly/zEL8nx

That's plenty for now. For more news and stuff you can follow me at @nicchamberlain or #sxswi

Nic Chamberlain is writing for AdNews from the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

Facebook Timeline for Branded Pages

Yesterday Facebook announced its latest updates to branded pages. This essentially brings Fan pages inline with personal pages. Overall it is an exciting new way for brands to engage with their users. That being said though pages that regularly provide interesting content should see great benefits. Pages that ignore their Facebook fans will not get anything from the new Facebook changes no matter how amazing their new cover picture is.

Some of the keys points you need to know:

• All Fan pages will be forced to switch over to the new timeline on 30 March
• You can log into your page and preview what your Page would look like now by using this link
• Timeline is currently not available on mobile devices but should be switched over soon

Some of the key new features/changes of Timeline include

Cover Pic – This is a large (851x315) image that sits at the top of your new page. Obviously great from a visual point of view there are however a few restrictions in the type of messaging you are allowed to place in this image.

Tabs - These have been moved to sit just under the cover pic on the right hand side. As previously, this allows you to link to your own facebook applications. There are 4 spots visible to the user with the ability to show 12 applications view in a dropdown menu. Out of the 4 spots the first one is always Photos.

Pinned Posts – You can pin key messages to the top of your timeline for 7 days which prevents important stories not getting lost through other regular updates.

Milestones – As all the content is placed on a timeline it’s obvious that you can now go back in history and set up key milestones. These milestones can be another from when the store first opened to when your fan page reached a certain number of fans.

Applications – You are not able to set an application as the default landing page any more. However there are now 2 different sizes you can design your application to. A narrow 520px and a Wide 810px version. This will allow developers a little more freedom in the way they present content through applications.

Private Messaging – The new Pages allows admins to send and receive private messages to users.

There a many more changes in regards to stories and the administration of Pages. Download the full user guide click here. Or for a step by step tutorial you can check this out

Brands that have already changed over

Nespresso


Spider- Man


Windows


Manchester United


Florence and the Machine

Guardian - Three Little Pigs

I just really enjoyed this, so thought I'd share it.

Guardian use the Three Little Pigs to showcase their 360 journalism, integrated channels. You get the thing. What do you think?

Facebook mobile advertising - coming soon

I'm sure it's long been a concern at Facebook towers that they make no advertising revenue from their reported 425m Mobile users. And it seems the recent IPO announcement has pushed forward their plans to start to make income from the platform. Totally understandable given the incredible growth in mobile usage over desktop.

Reports from the FT suggest that Facebook may launch some advertising on Mobile as early as March. The options are reasonably clear, classic display advertising lent from their desktop ad model, bookmarks for third party applications, which Techcrunch reported on recently or a less intrusive approach through sponsored stories. 


What do you think? do you prefer using Facebook on mobile now as it means no ads?


Cheers
Nic

User Generated Content

To promote Axe's new woman's fragrance they are creating a graphic novel on youtube thanks to partnerships from Aspen comics and Razorfish digital agency. One of the great things about this campaign is the involvement they are getting from their visitors. People going to the youtube channel are able to help make choices on Characters, storyline and plot by either voting in polls or leaving feedback. All this information is collected by the story writers and then each day new panels are added to the novel.

The Bark Side

Little bit late posting this one, but just in case you haven't seen it yet. Here's our friends at Deutsch Lowe's teaser campaign for this years superbowl following up on the incredibly successful Star Wars campaign from last year.  It's dogs barking the Imperial March, of course.


Looking forward to see what the guys come up with on the day. What do you think?


Cheers
Nic