The soft drinks brand 7Up came up with the brilliant guerrilla marketing idea of placing a “vending machine” made entirely of ice in the middle of a Buenos Aires street where, unlike here, it is hot. As the ice surrounding the cans melted, passers-by could grab a free drink.
There was of course a whole social media element round the stunt, with fans of the drink invited to place bets on Twitter as to when the last can would fall from the ice. The winner received a free six pack of 7-Up.
Why is everyone appearing in their pants this week? Firstly it’s Beyoncé in the O2 commercial in a state of undress, and this morning when I got off the bus on Oxford Street there was a giant screen in the window of H&M with David Beckham running around in just a pair of knickers.
David Beckham is an advertiser’s dream. The football hero, giver to charity (he’s donating his Paris St-Germain wages to a children’s charity), keeper of the Olympic flame and all-round good egg is keen to embrace endorsements and at 37 obviously well aware that his days on the pitch are well and truly numbered.
So partnerships with Sainsburys, Samsung, Burger King, Adidas and H&M are obviously vital to maintain his wealth.
The relationship with H&M is a new line in pants called Bodywear launched last Friday and the short film, directed by Guy Ritchie no less, is definitely going to make a splash as Beckham effortlessly jogs in just the said pants.
H&M uploaded it to YouTube on Wednesday and it already has well over a million hits. Interestingly the brand’s Facebook page doesn’t appear to have any pictures and very little activity but their Twitter account is far more active with 1.8 million followers.
I think H&M have hit the right spot making a short film – they don’t need a big mainstream advertising campaign when they have a semi-naked David Beckham running for them.
Have a look at the film and see if you agree with me:
As part of O2′s very broad consumer engagement strategy, the brand offers a priority ticket purchasing scheme for gigs around the country. So, if you are an O2 customer you can get excited about Beyoncé touring here in April and have the chance to buy tickets 48 hours before everyone else with O2 Priority.
Given the fiercely competitive world of phone providers, brands have to work incredibly hard to generate consumer loyalty and this is a clever initiative to persuade us all to shop with O2 - especially as their relationship with music is already so well established.
The ticket scheme is supported by the usual cross platform campaign from a TV commercial to tie-ins on Facebook and Twitter as well as a behind-the-scenes video available on O2’s YouTube channel.
I’m afraid I’m not persuaded by the TV commercial though – Beyoncé appears to have forgotten to put most of her clothes on and bears a striking resemblance to Barbie-as-Marie Antoinette (minus the dress of course).
Despite the glitz it is a rather underwhelming affair, but then if you have Beyoncé do you need to worry about the creative?
I’m sure her fans aren’t worried and I’m also sure that there will be a big consumer shift to O2 as a result.
Here’s the commercial in all its glory; and, by the way, Priority ticket sales open at 9.30am on the 21st February.
I defy anyone not to be a fan of UA client Robert Llewellyn - from Kryton in Red Dwarf to lift-giver-come-interviewer in Carpool, the man has many talents. Not the least of which is to educate us all about sustainability and share his passion for electric cars.
Robert is also an author, and I am sure because it is Robert, he has chosen Unbound as his medium for the publication of the second in his trilogy of utopian science fiction News from the Squares. (The first book News from Gardenia is now available from Amazon).
Robert’s From the Squares creates a very different world, another possible outcome for the human race that doesn’t require the total breakdown of society and a return to pre-medieval violence and disorder. I’m not going to tell you what this world is, you’ll have to watch the pitch video to find out. But it is eminently sensible!
Unbound uses the increasingly common use of crowd-funding to get books published. As with sites like Kickstarter and Crowdcube, users pitch their idea to us and we can choose whether to pledge a contribution towards the funding target.
These platforms have become unbelievably popular and now have a global presence. We can all join what feels like a community, finding great stories, and following a product all the way through from inception to production.
I admire the way Robert engages so successfully with his admirers. As someone in his fifties, he is outside the stereotypical age associated with an expertise in all things virtual and a useful weapon in my arsenal (Jane Asher is another) when people moan about being too old to come to grips with the online world.
As well as active on Unbound, Robert is a supremo on Twitter with over 100,000 followers, and has a great blog. He understands his global audience and is a perfect example of how to use new technology to reach them.
Felix Baumgartner’s hideously terrifying jump out of a balloon 24 miles above New Mexico on Sunday saw him reach a top speed of 833.9 miles per hour as he broke the speed of sound.
The stunt was sponsored by Red Bull and attracted eight million concurrent views on YouTube, the highest-ever concurrent viewing figures in the site’s history.
Whilst Felix was plummeting to earth dressed as an astronaut, Nestlé cleverly piggybacked on the event by sending a four-fingered KitKat 22 miles into space as a way of keeping Baumgartner’s “spirits high”.
The camera footage was shared via the KitKat Facebook page and on Twitter, where users were encouraged to use the hashtag #breakfromgravity.
I was interested to see that Flora have been busy over the past few months extending its traditional commercial campaign to include extensive social media activity. The company now has a presence on Pinterest and Twitter as well as Facebook.
In an effort to engage more closely with its consumer base, the company brought out a cookbook on Friday called Let’s Get Cooking which features 30 recipes using Flora Cuisine “cooking liquid”. The recipes were chosen by brand ambassador Jean Christophe Novelli from hundreds of competition entries.
Billed as a cookbook by mums for mums, the competition ran on Facebook earlier this year and you can download the recipes free from the Flora website (have to admit I was quite tempted). 750 copies of the physical book have been available free since the weekend on the Flora Facebook page (although when visiting the page I was surprised to see a picture of many chocolate bars celebrating National Chocolate Week!)
Flora have also partnered with Asda to promote the book – shoppers can pick up hardback copies through an on-pack promotion until the end of December.
I think this is looks like great low key through-platform campaign with consumers driven to spend time on the client website and Facebook page, as well as being enticed to buy the product itself instore.
Mercedes has created a new campaign for their new A-Class car to air during ITV’s X-Factor on Saturday night.
In an effort to attract a younger consumer, the company has decided to engage with Twitter asking users to determine the action in a series of 3 commercials.
At the end of the first two ads viewers will be asked to choose what the characters should do next. They will be able to vote on Twitter using the hashtag #YOUDRIVE.
Fronted by East London rapper and actor Kano, the commercials feature a musician (Kano) and a professional driver chased by the authorities on their way to a secret gig. UA client Ritu Arya is also in on the action.
The first 60-second spot will air during the first commercial break in the X Factor and the second ad will follow during the next break.
The final 90 second commercial aired during Sunday’s X Factor will reveal the ending voted for by Twitter users. The percentage of viewers who voted for each outcome will also be integrated into the final ad.
Each spot will direct viewers to a YouTube channel where they can view the ads and create their own story.
David George, from Mercedes UK, said the new A-Class vehicle represents a new, younger, more dynamic Mercedes-Benz brand, which is reflected in this campaign. It’s a modern Mercedes-Benz that encourages people to do what we know they enjoy – to get involved. In doing so, we hope to really cut through, and create a positive, lasting impression on their view of the brand.
Mercedes will certainly be airing their commercials in front of a large audience but I’m wondering whether the demographic is the right one for the brand? I’m assuming that a male consumer is the target audience, but according to research, X Factor has a broad appeal, particularly to women for whom reality and magazine formats are popular.
I’ll be following the outcome of this experiment by Mercedes with interest.
Now I have to admit that I am not a golf fan, not one little bit.
However, I could not fail to notice that Europe have won the Ryder Cup by a hair’s breadth (well, seems like a hair’s breadth to me).
I also heard that Irish bookmakers Paddy Power muscled in on the action, enraging the American team with a series of tweets. Not online, but in the sky over the golf course.
The stunt involved five planes “writing” 40 tweets originally posted by European fans in the sky over the final two days of the tournament, with the messages visible from more than 20 miles away. The planes flew wing to wing with a complex computer program allowing the tweets to be accurately constructed in a similar manner to the way ink jet printers transfer content onto a page.
Tweets that appeared in the sky included: Spirit of Seve, a reference to Seve Ballesteros; Mrs Dufner is hot, referring to the wife of US player Jason Dufner; and Retweet this Poult, about Ian Poulter.
Must have driven the American fans mad, but I’m sure had nothing to do with the tournament’s outcome, and I expect Paddy Power’s consumer-base absolutely loved it!
An interesting example of engagement if ever I saw one.
I have to say this made me laugh – a brand apparently caught off-guard by the wonderful unpredictability of Twitter.
Waitrose decided it was going to do what everyone does and engage with its consumers on Twitter. Their idea was to throw down a challenge earlier in the week using the hashtag WaitroseReasons asking shoppers to finish the sentence: I shop at Waitrose because …
Instead of a nice, moderate response, the challenge went viral unleashing a storm of critical humour aimed at the brand.
Some of them were hilarious including:
I shop at Waitrose because Clarrisa’s pony just WILL NOT eat ASDA Value straw or I shop at Waitrose because darling, Harrods is just too much of a trek mid-week and how about: I shop at Waitrose because it makes me feel important and I absolutely detest being surrounded by poor people.
But of course, as they say, any publicity is good publicity. As news of the ‘hijacking’ spread around the web, intrigued onlookers flocked to the Waitrose Facebook page and Twitter stream to see what the fuss was about. There then followed a heated debate amongst Twitter users asking whether the reaction was a social media success or disaster.
I had another look on Twitter last night and the jokes and comments were still coming in.
I think Waitrose have been rather clever. What do you think?
I watched the Paralympics opening ceremony last night on terrestrial TV, along with 11.2 million other people (apparently more than four times the viewers of the Beijing event and Channel 4′s most viewed programme of the decade).
I was of course following on Twitter at the same time – second nature for so many of us now. Watching TV becomes a communal experience as the audience shares it views with each other in real time.The Paralympics of course have their own Twitter feed which you can follow HERE.
And last night there was a lot of activity – lots of praise for the ceremony as well as loads of complaints about the commercials which punctuated the ceremony. The media spend must have been significant for the brands which had bought airtime.They included Lloyds TSB, Dolmio, Vauxhall, EDF and official sponsors of Channel 4’s coverage BT and Sainsbury’s. Reminded me of the annual American Superbowl advert frenzy.
Channel 4 paid £9m for the rights to broadcast the Games so I suppose they had to make up their income somewhere.
Their coverage leading up to the opening has been spectacular and I take my hat off to the activity which I am sure all of us have been touched by in some way.
Their adverts were memorable and moving, and I loved the outdoor nod to the Olympics!
I don’t begrudge Channel 4 the ad breaks – with or without them we are getting the opportunity to watch world-class athletes, many with inspirational stories who will hopefully inspire a whole new generation of people to take up a sport.
I’m abandoning London for 2 weeks (I hesitate to say in an effort to avoid the Olympics after being forced to put 20p in the office Olympic swearbox for being negative about the Games).
I’m going to leave you with a really useful Twitter tool which my partner recently discovered. Listorious has of course been going for ages and I feel very behind-the-times but maybe I’m not the only one who’s a bit late to the party.
Listorious addresses one of the biggest problems for us Twitter fanatics: finding users who are interested in the same things as us. From a work perspective I am always searching for people who could be useful, who can provide me with information I can’t get anywhere else. It’s invaluable but the searching can be a pain.
Listorious is a directory where you can find anyone by topic, location and expertise. It seems to provide a broader source of lists to Twitter’s own Suggested User List (SUL), which offers new users a selection of people to follow.
I was sitting on the bus today coming into work when I happened to look up and see a huge poster for something called Brandon Generator dominating Old Street. My interest was held by the fact it appeared to be an online series.
Once at my desk some digging revealed it is a web experience to enjoy and immerse yourself in. You get the chance to help shape the story and the artwork as Brandon’s Random Adventures unfold.
Brandon Generator is the brainchild of writer Edgar Wright (creator of Shaun Of the Dead) illustrator Tommy Lee Edwards and LBi.
And it is funded by Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer.
Brandon is a would-be writer whose world unravels as he seeks to overcome writers’ block and let ideas flood out. He needs inspiration. He needs an intervention. And he needs help from the people watching the series. Users can interact with the story by submitting prose, drawings, and audio messages to help guide the character in future episodes which debut every few weeks incorporating the best submitted ideas.
Here’s episode 1:
Fans can follow Brandon on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with the action. And cleverly, to access exclusive content , you need Windows 7 and IE9.
This is the perfect example of the natural switch from terrestrial TV to online – the platform is ideal for this sort of format.
Viewers get to immerse themselves in the series, having a richer involvement with the story and characters. And it is funded by a brand.
But the association is subtle and sophisticated and I’m sure no-one is put off by the fact that Microsoft has its name over the door. A very interesting experiment and I’m sure the future of online viewing.
In March I wrote about a Google-initiated campaign which updated classic commercials. Coca Cola’s iconic I want to teach the World to Sing was translated into a campaign which allowed users on a dedicated website to buy Cokes for random people in far-flung places around the world, delivered via vending machines.
And the vending machine idea has popped up again in South Africa.
This time the machine is controlled by Twitter activity and it dispenses a South African iced tea rather than a fizzy drink.
The machine is called BEV and is currently standing in Wembley Square in Cape Town.
Anyone who sends a tweet to the machine containing the hashtag #BOSTweet4T while standing in front of it will receive a free sample of BOS Ice Tea.
Clever isn’t it? And this is apparently how it works: The BOS ice tea robot connects to the Twitter streaming API and registers the configured hashtag as a filter. All tweets containing the hashtag on the entire Twitter network are then streamed to the BOS sampling machine. It then checks every Tweet’s location settings, and compares it with its own location boundaries (also configurable).
When a Tweet is found to be within the boundaries, a drink is dispensed, and the machine deactivates itself for a set period. During this time, the screen name of the tweeter is displayed on the LED display, alternated every five seconds by the number of seconds left before the machine becomes active again.
I have to admit I am a football follower, albeit a late convert to the beautiful game. Watching the Scotland v Netherlands match in Euro 1996 did it for me. It was also the first time I’d seen large numbers of Englishmen weep unashamedly in public when we went out at the hands of Germany.
Sixteen years later, and I was rather relieved at England’s performance against France last night.
But we are only at the beginning of the tournament, and these days I can keep in touch with all the action online if I can’t get to a television or the pub.
The presence of social media has changed the way we follow football. England and Germany lead the way with an incredibly active and popular Facebook and Twitter presence. 1.4 million of us have signed up to the England team’s Facebook page and there are 166,000 Twitter followers. Similar numbers follow Germany.
Interestingly, the same can’t be said for some of the other countries in the competition. Croatia, Portugal and Denmark have entered the fray without any recognisable social media presence at all, in fact Denmark has banned their players from social online activity. Russia has attracted a paltry 658 supporters to its Facebook page but has managed to double that number on Twitter.
Euro 2012 has its own Facebook page which is also popular, but no Twitter feed for some reason.
Luckily the hashtag #Euro2012 owns more than 70% of the Twitter conversation and you can get every possible angle on Roy and his 3 weeks in the job as well as discussion on all the other matches as they happen.
I enjoyed the French chatter last night almost as much as the English!
I have to admit being a bit of a food lover and sitting down with a glass of wine and a good cookbook is one of life’s great pleasures.
In fact, cook books are the only books I don’t buy on my Kindle and I must have the real thing for the kitchen.
As you know I am also a big Twitter fan and I was very pleased to hear that UA client Nigel Slater has taken the plunge and joined the online community.
A great way for all us fans to engage with the master at close hand, and having looked at Nigel’s recent activity he appears to be a natural. I now know what to do with all the beautiful elderflowers at the bottom of my garden, and will be making a risotto with duck and lots of peas and pea shoots.
Yesterday I wrote about how the marketers of Prometheus had missed the point of Twitter.
I saw this morning (on Twitter of course), that another film due to open this year is using the platform in what I think is a far more effective and fan-engaging way, with not a terrestrial TV set in sight.
The new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises is released in cinemas in the US on the 4th May, but dedicated Batman fans can see it early by taking part in an imaginative online marketing campaign in the form of a game.
The Dark Knight Rises is set eight years after the action in The Dark Knight. Batman, played by Christian Bale, is on the run after taking the blame for Two Faces’ crimes.
The viral campaign is a Gotham City police investigation into the crimes, with Batman graffiti planted around the world for fans to find.
Clues are contained in “leaked” police documents which can be viewed on the film’s official website thedarkknightrises.com.
Solve the clues and you can find seven pages of addresses online where Batman graffiti art can be found in major cities.Fans are eagerly searching their cities for the pictures of The Dark Knight Rises graffiti on the street.
They can unlock still frames from the trailer by tweeting photographic evidence of the graffiti related to any movement in support of the vigilante’s return.
The submissions will unlock frames which can be viewed on TDKR07202012.com.
Pictures must be uploaded to Twitter with the hashtag #tdkr07202012 (the numbers relate to the film’s release date) and fans must enable GPS-location services on their cameras so there’s no cheating.
Blogs and super fans will of course be spreading the word online.
Compared to a rolling view of tweets superimposed over a film trailer in a TV commercial break, this is brilliant engagement with fans on a familiar platform and in a way which cannot fail to build expectation and reinforce loyalty to the film.
Did anyone else see the oddest use of social-media advertising on terrestrial TV last night?
I was watching Homeland on Channel 4, in real time with all those annoying ad breaks, when a promotional trailer for the new Ridley Scott blockbuster Prometheseus literally burst onto our screens.
Not only was the entire 3 minute commercial break populated by this trailer with its thunderous music, there was also a portentous invitation to tweet your response to the trailer with “lucky” viewers having their tweets transmitted live in a 40 second slot in the next break.
I have to say I think this was a clunky use of social media, an uncomfortable marrying of a traditional platform with the global opinion-sharer site.
I can’t see the point of having tweets rolling across a TV screen in an ad break. It is such an unimaginative use of the medium.
Bad enough to have the action of an engrossing drama trampled all over for an entire ad break by a commercial for a film, even worse to attempt to take viewers’ attention away from the drama after the break. Shame on them!
I saw on Twitter this morning that the Brazilian footballer Kaka is about to hit the 10 million follower mark – the world’s first athlete to do so.
He plays for Real Madrid and is obviously a football superstar, but I’m quite surprised it was Kaka and not say a Manchester United player who has garnered this place in Twitter history (Wayne Rooney clocks up a paltry 4 million followers).
Maybe it is something to do with Kaka’s command of English … except I see that he tweets in Portuguese.
His Twitter moniker is @kaka if you are tempted to sign up.
After I noticed that Kaka was the athlete with the biggest following, I decided to have a look at who had the largest fanbase of all.
It’s not a world leader or philosopher but, wait for it, the pop icon Lady Gaga who has over 23 million loyal followers.
In fact if you look at the top ten it makes for rather depressing reading.
Apart from Barack Obama in at number 7, the world follows a group of rather unoriginal American singers, a reality television star (also American) and Youtube. The following ten are equally uninspiring (Kaka squeaks in at number 17).
What does this say about the world at large? Given the chance to connect on a global level, we choose to hang on the every word of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.
It is one hundred years since the Titanic, the largest ship of her time, sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York killing over 1,500 passengers and crew when she hit an iceberg.
For many people, the film Titanic was the date movie of the nineties, with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio causing many tears as their brief love affair foundered in the icy waters of the Atlantic over 3 1/2 hours of, at the time, ground-breaking special effects.
To mark the centenary of the maritime disaster, James Cameron’s iconic 1997 blockbuster is in cinemas again – this time in 3D and tonight is the London premiere at the Royal Albert Hall before nationwide release on the 6th April.
Fittingly for our digital age, the event will be streamed live to fans around the world from 5pm today. As Alex Zane hosts the red carpet arrivals and never-before-seen footage is interspersed with the live coverage, tweeters at home will be able to join in by submitting questions for arrivals and providing their own commentary using the hashtag #titanicredcarpet.
If you can’t join UA client Kate Winslet at the official premiere, fear not as you can watch the webcast HERE.
WordPress tells me that today I am writing my 100th post.
It seems to think I need encouraging, and every time I publish a new post it gets excited – not sure how it will congratulate me today – fireworks maybe?
Did you know that the very first blog is Links.net, created by Justin Hall whilst he was a college student in 1994 and still going strong. He didn’t of course call it a blog, that term was not coined until 1999.
The original blogs were updated manually, often linked from a central home page or archive. This wasn’t very efficient, but unless you were a programmer who could create your own custom blogging platform, there weren’t any other options to begin with.
In 1999 there were 23 blogs on the internet. By the middle of 2006, there were 50 million!
This explosion was helped by the creation of special off-the-shelf blog platforms like Blogger and WordPress which made the format accessible to anyone with a computer.
Since the mid 2000s, the number of blogs has grown incredibly, with more than 152 million blogs active by the end of 2010. Virtually every mainstream news source now has at least one blog, as do many companies and individuals. Blogs are at the very centre of how we communicate and of course the micro-blogging sites like Twitter and Tumblr attract even more users.
I think blogging is here to stay, but it will be interesting to see how the format develops over the next ten years.Have a look at this mindmap to see what people are thinking.
From 23 to 152 million in just over ten years. Astounding!
With all the zeal of the convert I can tell you that tomorrow Twitter will break the 500 million users barrier.
In just six years the site has revolutionised the way we communicate on a global scale and I for one am addicted.
From the way the current US presidential election campaign is managed (social media presence in political campaigns has increased by 78% since the 2008 election); to watching world events as they happen in real time, we are all connected in a way that no-one could possibly have imagined even five years ago.
Twitter is here to stay and will even inform the way we are recruited for jobs.
A site has just gone live which will render traditional recruitment search methods obsolete. 400 jobs a minute are posted on Twitter and new company Workfu intend to harness the opportunities out there.In their own words WorkFu create a beautiful, super simple, free web platform that recommends opportunities and talent to you based upon the networks you use everyday.
Currently we are using Twitter as our principle network and we feel that this is the right network for launch. We are looking to add more but we’re picky about the networks we integrate and how they effect your experience.
All you have to do is sign up, add your own keywords and links to build a description of yourself and your skills. WorkFu will do the rest with their Web app that orders each job posted via WorkFu to Twitter by its relevance to you and lets you apply with one click.
It also works for employers who can accurately match their requirements to the profiles registered on WorkFu.
You can of course follow them on Twitter @workfu
So to all of you social media resisters just look what you are missing. Go and have a walk round Twitter today – I promise it will change your life!
I never understood why so many people got excited about Twtter until I joined the fray only recently.
As someone working in a world where social media is seen as an important resource, I was forced to take the plunge.
My only reaction? Why on earth did I resist for so long? Twitter is a wonderful community where you hear about everything that’s going on in your chosen world as it happens.
The soft drinks brand 7Up came up with the brilliant guerrilla marketing idea of placing a “vending machine” made entirely of ice in the middle of a Buenos Aires street where, unlike here, it is hot. As the ice surrounding the cans melted, passers-by could grab a free drink.
