As our entry says:

We wanted to promote what we can do, a bit more subtly than overtly branding a viral or a digital DM piece. It’s more a technology viral. We had ideas that we had no client for. The aim was to get people using it, interested in it, liking it and then wondering who had done it. We also then knew we had something that we could enter into various competitions such as yours and promote via, twitter, design charts, facebook and any other social media methods.

We achieved FWA site of the day for the election day and were listed on many design blogs, which brought in more people. We also targeted political parties and the media that reports on them via social media. So we were listed on Guardian site and had liberal and labour parties following us and tweeting. We also targeted well known celebrities with large twitter followings.

I think it promoted exactly what we can do with out us having to list abilities or overtly tell people who we are. Demonstrating start to finish methodology and ability using our combined agency knowledge. We also then have some very good stats to promote after the event as everything was captured and tracked. – Guy Sharman

To keep us all up to date, here’s a great calender we’ve found, from Marca. Pick by date, stadium, stage or country and it tells you all the relevant information. Lovely design here.

World Cup Calendar (screenshot from site)

The original music is from Black Sheep , The Choice is Yours.

X-Factor vs Rage Against the Machine

Jon and Tracy Morter decided they had had enough. For the past 4 years, the number 1 single at Christmas had been whatever song X-Factor had produced. This year they decided it wuld be different. They set up a Face Book group Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No.1 and then went all out to promote and push their chosen song to beat the Simon Cowell record. For the past week it has been the power of the internet vs the power of the marketing machine behind getting Joe McElderry’s The Climb to the top spot.

The internet won! RATM beat The Climb by over 50000 sales. Although in reality, Sony BMG won, as they ultimately control both artists. There’s another winner as well, with Shelter picking up at least £70k via a JustGiving campaign plus band profits from the sale of the music.

This is a perfect case of using social media to rally people around a cause that they are passionate about, using Facebook, Twitter and a lot of imagination that people can make a difference. There’s nearly 500k members of the Facebook group and over 500k copies of the song sold. Around 17 million watched the X-Factor final and they only sold 450k, which has to be an indication of the engagement factor surrounding this race.

Eurostar

On the other hand, Eurostar provides us with a case study of what happens when you ignore social media in your crisis planning. Five trains stuck in the Channel Tunnel and Eurostar had enough operational issues to get to grips with, but there was a growing online reputation issue to be dealt with, as reported by the Techcrunch article

Reading tweets this morning I was struck at how many people felt like they had no idea what was going on. The lack of information on suck a big accident was staggering.

Meanwhile, the Eurostar Twitter account, which could well have been used to communicate to passengers about what was going on – and loved ones at home – is being used by someone in Shanghai.

For the people on the trains, Twitter would have been useless, as there was no reception., However, for the increasing number of people who were waiting and who were due to travel, it was a information source that many were looking for – especially as the company were on Twitter at two places @little_break and @creamoflondon. But as both of these accounts are marketing accounts, they were not being used by any of the Crisis team as a communication channel.

This was not a social media issue as such, their communication issues were far larger than that; they did not get anything on their website until late in the day and were often completely absent from traditional media channels. However, the concern over the lack of information on social media channels by people who use social media channels and the way this managed to make the mainstream news is indicative of how the choice of channel in PR is no longer the company choice. You have to go where your customers are.

Eventually, these twitter accounts, plus the Little Break blog started being used for travel information. In the case of Little Break, this was being done despite the fact that they company managing it had never been contracted to provide these services, their remit being only the campaign. As Robin Grant of we are social explains

When we first met with Eurostar, as we do with all of our clients, we talked to them about the need for to put a real-time social media listening and responding programme and crisis plan in place, and proposed a conversation audit and consultancy project to help them implement such a programme. As is common with any business at the early stages of coming to terms with social media, they could see the long term benefits of such a strategy, however as adapting their existing processes had wider implications across the business they decided to start small by moving forward with the Little break, Big difference campaign, to learn from the experience of engaging in conversations in social media.

However, they ended up going into the Eurostar office

Since lunchtime, we’ve been sat in Eurostar’s St Pancras offices alongside Emma Harris, their Sales & Marketing Director. As things were changing so fast, we had be very careful not to communicate incorrect information, which restricted how much we could say, but we did pass on via Facebook and Twitter any news we could the minute we received it.

Some lessons to be learnt from this:

• Communications cannot be confined to the channels that you as a company want to work in, they need to be done over the channels your customers work in. This includes social media like Twitter and Facebook.
• Even if you only currently use these channels for marketing, expect to have to leverage them in a crisis. Crisis management planning should take a holistic approach and be aware of all the tools that could be used – and have access to them.
• Monitoring is needed Knowing what the wider public is saying about you is just as important as knowing what they are telling you directly.

So, two examples of how communications and marketing continue to change on a continuous basis with the increased adoption of tools and channels that mean the customers can connect with each other. How are you going to learn from them?

It’s the end of the year and coming up to Christmas. Here at twentysix, we’ve launched a new site, based on Twitter, which tracks and counts which seasonal subjects are garnering the most conversation – our Christmas Tweets site. Each subject is represented by a different character and they chase each other round and round the world based on the rate of tweets.

• Commercialism – Is Christmas about spending, commercialism and consumption?
• Credit Crunch – Has the recession taken its toll this Christmas? Will the credit crunch cast a shadow over Christmas festivities?
• Religion – Will this year revert back to the true meaning of Christmas and be focused around the religious festivals?
• Christmas Spirit – Can Christmas still be about celebrating the occasion and enjoying the season of goodwill? Is the fun and magical aspect of Christmas still alive?

By clicking through to each character, you can see a breakdown of what the key words at the moment. So with Christmas Spirit, all talk seems to be about buying the Christmas Tree. Other popular subjects are Christmas shopping and presents, but elsewhere people have no money

We love the characters we’ve created. You can use these images if you want for a blog post, or go to the site and download a pdf to make a desktop version of them!

Religion

Commercialism

Credit Crunch

Christmas Spirit

NMA Article (image - copy from magazine)

Lovely to see the NMA picking up on our guys’ recent challenge (although it has been commented on how the words in bold aren’t always spelt correctly)

Mo Bros, supported by their Mo Sistas, start Movember (November 1st) clean shaven and then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache. During Movember, each Mo Bro effectively becomes a walking billboard for men’s health and, via their Mo, raises essential funds and awareness for Movember’s men’s health partner – The Prostate Cancer Charity. At the end of Movember, a series of Gala Partés are held to thank Mo Bros and Sistas for their support and fund raising efforts.

But not everyone may take part, so to encourage some growth, this collection of possibilities has been put together.

Movember

• Anonoblog: A blog site authored by a person or persons who don’t publish
  their name.
• SMO: Acronym for Social Media Optimisation, a term coined by Rohit Bhargava
• Troll: Someone who writes inflammatory comments and posts on sites with the sole purpose of creating disharmony and argument. Do Not Feed the Trolls.
• Vlogs: A form of blogging using video
• Widget: A stand-alone application you can embed in other applications, like
  a website or a desktop, or view on its own on a PDA.

If you want to know more, you can download the pdf of the Social Media Glossary

• Advertorials – where content is created about a product without disclosing that the advertiser or agent has paid for the promotion
• The advertiser or agents disguising themselves as a consumer without disclosing the relationship

This impacts a lot of fake blogs (flogs) and a lot of commenting, when companies just created personas and posted statements about products and services without disclaimers. Many of them were really bad at it, so it they were quite easy to spot after a while!

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission released changes to their guidelines about advertising practices this week and they’ve gone a little further, regarding social media commentators as potential endorsers. Reading the 81 page (pdf) Guide to Endorsements and Testimonials, here’s some key points. They may not be a legal requirement here, but there’s some good information here to be considered as best practice.

• A blogger (or other commentator in social media space, eg video, social networks etc) can be considered an endorser of a product if they are directly paid, if the value of a product or service provided is high or if they regularly receive free products from companies for review as they are considered ‘influential’; also if they are part of ‘professional’ Word of Mouth networks run by brand companies or their agencies. Although they only endorse if they say positive things about the product.
• Advertisers are responsible for statements made by endorsers, even if they are not under their control. So are the bloggers – if they make false claims off their own initiative, they can be liable.
• It is the endorsers responsibility to disclose the relationship. Advertisers need to put in place procedures to monitor such disclosures and take steps if they are not taking place

Three things that are WOM/Social Media best practice, that responsible marketers and bloggers should be following anyway – it’s all about transparency and credibility.. But too many people don’t follow them, either wilfully or because they do not know about them. With the threat of prosecution now, there’s no excuse.