Move over Paul the Octopus, there’s a new match-predicting animal in town.
Fancy a flutter on this weekend’s Champions League final? Why not follow the Llama?
A Llama at Ashdown Llama Park in East Sussex is being tipped as the next match-predicting phenomenon after successfully calling the result of this month’s FA Cup final and now hotly tipping Chelsea in this weekend’s Champions League thriller.
Check out the video below to see him in action
Disclaimer – this is a client video to promote a new range of Llama Snacks. We love it though. Nicholas the llama was amazing on set. Big thanks to Ashdown Llama Park for letting us come down and film
So it’s d-day today for the London mayoral candidates. The culmination of months of blood, sweat and tears to decide the direction of London for the next four years. Quite exciting really isn’t it? Well, not if you take a straw poll of the Launch office. There is a significant portion of people who aren’t going to be voting today. They have their reasons, but one can’t help but think, as Blonde_M pointed out to me on Twitter yesterday, that politicians aren’t doing enough to inspire people to want to be involved.
This election campaign feels like a real damp squib to me. Apart from a few flare-ups between Boris and Ken (including some rather amusing swearing), no-one is standing out. Maybe it’s due to over-familiarity with the candidates, but I don’t feel that any of them have made a real effort to separate themselves from the pack, to stamp their authority and their vision on their campaign. It’s (unfortunately) come down to personalities – who do you like? And if you don’t like any of them, what do you feel like doing? Exactly….not voting at all.
Obviously politics relies a lot on personality, but one really felt that after the General Election social media would play a huge role in UK politics in the future (as it does in the US). However, whilst the mayoral election race has generated a lot of conversation online (according to this anyway), and even predicted the result, it hasn’t been harnessed or crystallised by any of the parties or the candidates. Yes, Boris did an #askboris twinterview, but a lot of the questions were like the man himself – hugely frivolous. As far as our research here can tell, there isn’t even a hashtag that has been decided for interested people to group their conversation around. #londonelects is getting a fair amount of activity today (polling day), but it is nothing to the #GE2010 that captured imaginations two year ago.
Maybe I’m just being too unrealistic and idealistic, but I think it’s up to politicians and their advisors to explore new channels to come up with new ways of inspiring new people to vote and get involved in politics. If Obama and his team can do it, why can’t we do it in England? Admittedly, we don’t have Jimmy Fallon, but there are plenty of other options.
One of the most common questions we get asked as digital consultants at Launch is, as We Are Social noted this week, ‘Where should we start with social media?’
There’s no quick and easy answer, as every company’s challenges and opportunities. However, for complete newbies (newcomers), a social media audit is a great place to start.
A good social media audit should help you analyse your current position online and in social media, identify potential influencers to engage and fertile ground for active to be targeted at.
We’ve put together a short simple template to help guide your thinking. Of course, if you want us to actually carry out the audit for you, you’ll have to get in touch.
Pinterest is a social network that has been creating a lot of interest online in recent months, but what exactly is it and how does it differ from old favourites Facebook and Twitter? Take a look at our handy need-to-know guide below, and then look up Launch Group’s very own Pinterest page!
What is it?
Pinterest is a new social network that allows users to ‘pin’ the things they love from around the web into one place. These ‘pins’ are organised into ‘boards.’ Try to think of Pinterest as a great big interactive scrapbook where you can show off everything you’re interested in, and follow, as well as comment, on others with similar interests. Anytime you pin something, you are given the option to share it across your Twitter or Facebook pages.
Re-pinning, following and likes
‘Re-pinning’ works much in the same way as ‘re-tweeting.’ If someone has posted something you like too, re-pinning it will add it to one of your own boards. You also have the option of following other people – either every single one of their boards, or one in particular. Those that you follow will appear on your Pinterest dashboard when you log-in. ‘Liking’ a pin tells the person who pinned it exactly that – you like it! It does not automatically add the pin to any of your boards.
How does it work?
First of all, you need to download the ‘Pin It’ button from the website and add it to your browser. That done, it’s incredibly easy to use. When you’re browsing the web and come across an image or a video you like, hit the ‘Pin It’ button. This brings up a window with all of the available ‘pin-able’ content. Select the image or video you want, choose which of your boards you want it added to, add a short description and BOOM! You have successfully pinned an item. When others click your pin, they will be directed back to its original source, which is great news for brands who have had pins taken from a product page and will benefit from the back-link.
What are the demographics?
According to Mashable, 42 per cent of users are aged between 25 and 34, and of those 56 per cent are male (versus 44 per cent female).
Why are people using it?
Pinterest is a slightly different kettle of fish from your Facebook and your Twitter – primarily because the emphasis is on being inspired. People flock to Pinterest for ideas on what to have for dinner, how to re-model their bathroom and what they should wear to a friend’s wedding. In this way the site gives its users vicarious pleasure in taking a look at what other people – all over the world – like. Visitors are also already in a ‘buy hungry’ state of mind by the time they arrive at Pinterest, which offers a not insignificant opportunity for brands.
How could brands use it?
Showcase ‘exclusive’ never-before-seen content
Let followers get involved in curating brand content by selecting the function that allows others to add to your boards
Request images or video of followers with a particular product in return for rewards
Run image and video competitions
Run focus groups and use the comments functionality to collect feedback
Promote new products and campaigns in a visually interesting way
Upload a selection of coverage
Inspire a brand lifestyle by going beyond simple product-pushing. We really like the Whole Foods Market Pinterest page, which inspires not just on the culinary front, but across exercise, well-being and environmental too
Friends and colleagues haven’t been able to escape me talking about Mad Men recently. I’m EXTREMELY excited about season five kicking off on Sky Atlantic on March 27th. It’s the best show on TV at the moment, and not just because it resonates so strongly with people like me who are in the business of client servicing.
The promotion of the show’s return has been carefully orchestrated, with a range of teaser images and videos appearing on both sides of the continent. In America, this has ramped up considerably of late, with AMC and various US media devoting huge chunks of space to interviews and other behind the scenes gossip. So far, so standard.
What Matthew Weiner and the execs at AMC couldn’t have expected (but potentially SHOULD have) was the effect that the show’s fans would have on the hype that is surrounding season five. First there was the minimalist poster that appeared around NYC, which was swiftly converted into a meme by creative street artists (check out the best of them here. I like the Superman one the best).
Then this weekend a new Tumblr was set up full of people ‘draping’. Draping, in case you’re not familiar with it, is people uploading pictures of themselves in the classic Don Draper, ‘one arm across the back of the sofa’ pose.
People on Twitter were asking whether these two (especially Draping) were marketing/PR stunts. I doubt it. You could make a cogent case to say that the white background of the teaser poster was an invitation to creative and street artists, but I doubt this was the defining factor in their decision.
Both memes are happy by-products of a TV show that has captured people’s imaginations, and become so important to people’s lives that they want to create content of their own volition. It’s the purest form of advocacy. When we’re putting together an all-channel campaign for our clients, it’s our holy grail.
What AMC and Matthew Weiner will be conscious of is the fact that, however careful they are with their own promotion of the show, this kind of unplanned fan activity only serves to ramp up the expectations around its come back. Already delayed by a year, season five will have to kick off with a real bang to escape the inevitable ‘jumped the shark’ accusations.
I have no doubts it will more than live up to the hype.
(my Mad Men Yourself photo is below. A great example of AMC’s marketing!)
I know I’m a bit late to be commenting on the Snickers Twitter hornet’s nest from a couple of weeks ago, but today’s announcement about the new Digital Trading Standards Group and the post-Super Bowl buzz threw everything back into focus.
In case you missed it, the Digital Trading Standards Group has been set up to develop a set of industry-wide principles aimed at reducing the risk of ad misplacement at impression level. And in case you missed them, the Super Bowl showcased the usual headline advertising campaigns, alongside a record number of mentions in social media.
Back to Snickers – the reason its ‘takeovers’ of celebrities caused so much debate, and a certain amount of opprobrium in certain quarters, was that it was using Twitter PURELY for awareness building, rather than encouraging any form of action or advocacy. Most people follow brands on Twitter to get something from them – special offers, customer service, competitions, even just entertainment (as with someone like Betfair).
The Snickers activity was a self-contained package, with a message, but didn’t add any value to any conversation or provide anything but a message to the celebrities’ followers. And it was created and executed by AMV BBDO, which is an advertising agency. Spotted the link? It was essentially an advert. Played out over a series of tweets.
It grabs your attention, keeps it going for a short amount of time, before revealing the denouement. Just like an advert.
There’s nothing wrong with it – it’s a perfectly fine piece of awareness building (and almost as newsworthy as some of the Super Bowl ads), but it’s slightly disingenuous of Snickers to have not paid Twitter for the placement (I’m sure the celebs were handsomely rewarded). We could spend hours debating whether or not it affected Snickers bottom line, but that’s probably not really the point (I very much doubt it did affect sales). The guerrilla ‘ad placement’ is an issue Twitter themselves need to sort out – all the trading standards groups in the world, or the ASA, won’t stop creatives trying to get out of paying for placement – especially when they can get so much for free at the moment.
Monitoring specific websites and keywords online is critical to keep up to date with the latest trends associated with your clients, as well as understand what your clients’ competitors are talking about.
Using a combination of manual searching and automatic tools, it is relatively easy to keep up-to-date with what is being said about your client and relevant topics.
However, as well as monitoring conversations, it is also important to identify who your top influential – client friendly – bloggers are, who you should be regularly engaging with, as well as being aware of any potential negative bloggers. This will enable you to monitor for relevant posts, understand the sentiment around an issue and tackle any potential situation early on.
After all, one of the best ways to identify and tackle a problem, that may escalate if left alone is to ensure you track online conversations about your clients.
Below are some essential tools and tips to help you monitor conversations effectively:
Google Alerts: In addition to setting up daily or even hourly alerts for a series of keywords that you have identified that may be relevant for your client, you will also need to set-up alerts for your key spokespeoples’ names
Whilst Google Alerts can be very helpful, they can flood your inbox with results so it is important to only set keywords alerts and review them as soon as they hit your inbox – do not put it off!
Twitter: Identify and follow the influential journalists and bloggers relevant to your client, as they will be the ones most likely to spot issue and make them public. Tweets often create specific hashtags when an issue is breaking (e.g. #hacking) and these can be picked up by Google. Twitter also has a basic search function where you can set up automatic alerts. TweetDeck is the best tool for monitoring mentions on Twitter
Key industry and enthusiast websites and blogs: Identify who these are, and regularly check RSS feeds. Ensure you know which sites are likely to be negative. Monitor these very closely anyway, but particularly during any announcement. Tracking an RSS feed from these sites can help to alert you when a new post has been written
Now that you understand what tools to use to monitor and track local noise, it is vital that you define your objectives. Monitoring anything in isolation is a pointless exercise. You should incorporate the insights and information gathered to your advantage, to enhance your communications plan and enable you to reach a larger audience.
Do get in touch if you’d like to discuss our all-channel approach in more detail and how we can help you with your online conversations.
Online communities form whenever people with common interests are able to interact. This could mean the ‘community’ is a forum, profile page, blog, group or any other similar space, and these interactions can take the form of buying, selling, collaborating or simply the coming together of likeminded individuals around a specific topic.
When they come together, these groups can have a huge impact on businesses – both positively and negatively. For example, a negative review left by disgruntled customer could dissuade others from engaging with the same company, but a group that have independently assembled in support of a company, product or service represent a golden opportunity to utilise their passion. By managing online communities themselves, brands are in a position to influence public perception and build long-lasting relationships with influencers – the results of which can be incredibly fruitful.
Despite the obvious power of online communities, many brands still struggle with the concept of interacting with customers and would-be customers in this way. Here are our top community management tips:
Engage: Managing, or simply contributing to online communities gives you the opportunity to engage in multi-way conversations. However, it should never be considered merely as a channel topromote your latestproduct or service. Communities give you the chance to grow relationships long-term and provide your members with something genuinely useful and interesting (think news, images, video or a unique point of view). Before creating or engaging with a community you should consider just what exactly you will be offering your audience in return for their interest
Dedicate Resource: Communities take time and patience to grow, and this means that you need a committed resource manage it. The absolute biggest inhibitor for any community member is the feeling that their contributions are going unheard or unnoticed, so it’s vital that community managers ‘show’ their faces on a regular basis. This means finding a way to engage with your audience on their level
Show Personality: You may be in a position of authority, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a personality. In fact, we’d say it’s mandatory. Consumers are far more comfortable engaging with a familiar face as opposed to a nondescript company ‘entity’ that shows no warmth or passion. All of your interactions should match the personalities of the audience you are engaging
Monitor, but don’t over-censor: Of course there needs to be clear rules for the community you are managing, but there is a fine line between maintaining a calm space and debilitating freedom of speech. Outline at the very beginning what is acceptable and what is not
Be Adaptable: Communities are living, breathing entities,and you should expect them to grow and change.Keep members in the loop whenever this happens, such as when new features or tools are being added or removed. Think hard about your audience – how can your community better serve them?
Measure Performance: This is essential in growing your community and adapting content when necessary. Everything from sentiment analysis to Google Analytics will highlight opportunities for improvement and areas that aren’t working as hard as they should
It’s the end of the year, and I’m a big fan of making lists (I always do my top ten albums of the year without fail), so I thought put together a short list of my favourite All-Channel campaigns from the past 12 months.
Not in any particular order (although obviously all of the Launch campaigns would be top of the list if we were ranking them). And also, even though my own specialism is digital, this is not a list of ten digital campaigns. However, most of them do have a strong digital element (but of course)
Here we go:
Betty Crocker – Whoopie Moments
You can read more about our All-Channel Betty Crocker campaign in the case study here, but to give you an executive summary: we built a bespoke Facebook app on the Betty Crocker UK page for fans to ‘share’ or ‘give’ whoopie moments (little bite size moments of joy) in celebration of Whoopie Pies launching in the UK. 12,000 new fans and 750 competition entries later, we’d spread joy around the UK (and Ireland) and made a considerable splash for Betty Crocker.
Heinz Get Well Soup
OK, so I did say this wasn’t a list of ten digital campaigns. However, I reserve the right to put digital campaigns in here. And I absolutely loved the simple genius of We Are Social’s Heinz Get Well Soup campaign. Launched at the beginning of cold and flu season, users could go onto the Heinz Soup Facebook page (using a specially designed app) and send sick friends a personalised can of Heinz soup. That’s it. A sentiment perfectly in keeping with the brand’s identity, and real ROI for Heinz (they obviously charged for the service). Very clever.
The Vaccines – User generated Instagram music video
Another campaign that I have blogged about before (complain if you like, but it’s my list) but it really was an inspired piece of theory and execution. The Vaccines partnered with Instagram and encouraged fans and photo-enthusiasts to upload their summer festival pics to a bespoke microsite. From the resulting images, a music video was cut together showcasing the best of the work. Great user generated content, viewed by (as of December 2011) one million people, saving Sony Music cash (real ROI) in the process. Genius.
Launch were approached by Virgin Holidays to generate mass awareness for their January sale, so we put together a big, quick-to-execute All-Channel campaign that secured coverage in the Metro, Daily Mirror, Evening Standard, The Times and The Daily Star. We took the idea of a ‘summer holiday’ in December as our motif, and held the world’s largest ever swimwear queue outside Virgin Holidays brand new swimwear emporium on High Street Kensington. It’s a great example of our all-channel approach, bringing together experiential and social media that results in fantastic media coverage.
Jay-Z – Decoded
At Launch, we’re well-schooled when it comes to combining experiential and digital, so it made us all warm ‘n’ fuzzy to see an outdoor + digital campaign rewarded at this year’s Cannes Lions awards. For the launch of Jay-Z’s autobiography, ‘Decoded’, agency Droga5 put every page of the book in a real world location. The digital element of the campaign came through a Bing Maps-enabled scavenger hunt, allowing the audience to uncover clues and locate pages.
A big idea, a truckload of ambition (exactly what you’d expect from Jay-Z) and big client demands all resulted in a truly innovative and memorable campaign.
Capital One – Credit Made Clearer
If you mention credit cards to people, they’ll probably talk about their latest purchases, or how they have a mountain of debt to pay off. They probably won’t know their current APR or what travel insurance cover they have as standard. That was the challenge Launch faced when Capital One asked us to help build consumer awareness of their Credit Made Clearer initiative. So we put together an All-Channel campaign that mixed handing out information to people in airport departure lounges, organising competitions and a blogger panel with a range of family, parenting and personal finance influencers, alongside three media relations stories that looked at lack of awareness around the detail of credit cards. The results? 18 pieces of national coverage, 502 pieces of coverage overall, and credit card awareness in the front of the paper, instead of the back.
Something of a theme here, with campaigns using maps APIs to create great content. Red Bull’s collaboration with Google Street View is another example of simple ideas always being the best. Red Bull used its clout to compile a database of the best street art from around the globe, then created a simple web portal that uses Google’s Street View technology and allows you to view the art in situ. It’s almost like being there.
Looking a little further afield, this campaign from Australia caught my eye. The National Australia Bank, to try and dissociate itself from the other major Aussie banks, publicly broke up with them on Valentine’s Day. This simple idea was moulded and adapted into an All-Channel approach – 60 couples broke up in public places, creating news stories and video content. The campaign also extended to press, outdoor, radio, mobile billboards, street teams, street chalking, and helicopter banners. The effort also ambushed execs from the other banks in their offices and elsewhere. Bold, typically Australian, but undoubtedly effective.
The NatWest Secret Cricketer
Sometimes, marketing campaigns simply make you smile. This is exactly what NatWest’s Secret Cricketer videos did for me. The bank signed up former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan, and persuaded him to dress up as an old man, and turn out for officially the worst cricket team in the UK. Their opponents needed to be none the wiser, and so he strode out into the middle and unleashed his signature cover drive. I would suggest you watch the video to find out what happened next.
Heard of The Banker? It’s an FT-owned publication, and as such, is subject to media compete issues when it comes to securing coverage. Launch ripped up that issue this year when creating awareness around The Banker’s annual ‘Top 1000 World Banks’ industry rankings. Using a mixture of briefings, news hijacking and good old fashioned news hooks, we secured 22 pieces of national / international coverage, as well as nine pieces of broadcast – across BBC, CNBC and Sky News. Highly targeted, highly talkable and hugely impressive. Even if we do say so ourselves.
Put together an all-channel PR and digital campaign to launch the new range of Betty Crocker Whoopie Pies in the UK
Challenge
Both Betty Crocker and Whoopie Pies are already well known in the United States, neither has strong penetration in the UK
Strategy
Working closely with General Mills, Launch Group helped come up with the concept of ‘Whoopie Moments’: those little unexpected and amusing moments which make you ‘whoop with joy’. It could be the time you baked the perfect brownie for someone special, or when your partner surprised you with a gift
Launch Group designed and built a bespoke Facebook application for Betty Crocker’s UK page. It allowed fans to ‘Share’ their Whoopie Moments for a chance to win prizes, or ‘Nominate’ others to receive a Whoopie Moment of their own
The Facebook application formed the focus for ALL of the marketing around the launch of Whoopie Pies: TV advertising included a call to action to ‘Share your Whoopie Moment’, as did the radio advertising. Facebook advertising and PPC activity (run by Launch) also helped to drive traffic to the app
A full PR campaign, including a launch XP event at the Good Housekeeping kitchen, perfectly complemented the digital and ATL activity – providing mainstream coverage with a call to action to visit Facebook
Results
750 competition entries across the two mechanics housed within the app
An increase in 12,000 fans of the Betty Crocker UK Facebook page
34,000 views of the Whoopie Moment tab
4,800 people talking about the page at the campaign’s peak
17 pieces of PR coverage (including the Mail Online)
