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.

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!

Free online tracking tools: We recommend Socialmention.com, Monitter.com, Blogsearch.google.com and omgili.com for tracking mentions of specific keyword terms

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.

Brief

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)

The answer to the question – ‘which platforms should I be using in social media?’ – is pretty simple really. Most digital practitioners would agree (in broad terms) that it’s merely a case of identifying where conversations relevant to you are happening online, and then coming up with a way to join those conversations without intruding and causing a backlash.

Social media, at its core, is no different to other comms channels. As our CEO Johnny Pitt pointed out in his recent all-channel PR post, the key to creating a successful all-channel campaign or presence is to select the right channel to reach your target audience. This is equally true whether you are integrating social media into existing marcomms activity, or putting together a standalone digital campaign.

Additionally, having an idea of what the endgame is going to be – what success looks like – is key to using these digital channels effectively. Consider your use of social media and digital channels in marketing in a similar way to the process of writing a good story. You should know what the ending of the tale is going to be before you start.

It might be that you want to generate product sales through digital advertising, or protect your reputation through the effective monitoring of conversations online. Whatever you do, be rigorous with your measurement and evaluation, and be realistic about what you can achieve. Success doesn’t happen overnight, even if in some cases it seems that way.

That’s exactly what we believe in at Launch. Identifying the key channels-to-market and communicating a message to a specific audience. This means working with our clients collaboratively to put campaigns in place, not pushing them down a particular route to fulfil our own agendas. Setting ambitious – but realistic – targets that are going to make a tangible difference to our client’s bottom line. And above all, doing great work that is backed by brilliant thinking.

Rushing into setting up a Facebook page or building a microsite may seem like a good idea initially, but if you truly want to build a long term, successful presence in the digital world, putting time and effort into identifying the best channel and tying down your key message ise of paramount importance.

Get in touch if you’d like to discuss our all-channel approach in more detail

Social media channels

Launch started life as a consumer brands project PR agency in 2001.  We were one of PR Week’s best new agencies of the year, attracting great people and great clients alike.

In 2005, our offer began to integrate media relations, digital and events.  We launched our corporate team around this time too.

And now, towards the end of 2011, we’re talking to people about our all-channel PR offer.

Innovation is good in business.  In fact, if you don’t innovate, your business quickly loses its shine and appeal.

All-channel PR?

It’s logical – whatever you have to communicate, to whichever audiences, we consult around the key PR channels-to-market to do it.  And we have all the capability in-house.

Clients should be guided, clients should be advised, and they shouldn’t feel hampered by one dimensional offers.  There’s too much at stake in the real / virtual / consumer / corporate inter-connected world and the relationship between experience / content / digital and media needs to be well explained – and bought in part (if that’s the need against the audience), or in whole.

Some clients come to us and say – ‘we’d love a bit of that.’  And that’s great.  Others come saying ‘we’re not sure, you tell us’.  And that’s equally, if not more exciting.

One size doesn’t fit all.  Having all the channels open and available has to be in a client’s best interest.

Add amazing people, brilliant thinking, collective culture and nice coffee and you’re probably on to something.

Recently I’ve found myself watching hundreds of videos by brands from all over the world – this might have something to do my new obsession with Twitter – but it’s got me thinking…

I’ve noticed a pattern emerging which goes against what traditionally experience / events are measured on.  Before the explosion of the digital age, brands focused on how many people they could get to physically engage with their brand experience – the more the better.  Yes there are numerous variables, but the fundamental goal was volume of engagement.  Direct brand experiences for the masses is still a core component to the experiential marketers toolbox, but now we have new exciting shiny social medial tools to play with.

These new online tools allow us to turn the engagement theory on its head.  No longer do we need thousands of willing consumers to interact with a brand for it to be a success. All we need is a few willing participants to have an amazing experience which they’ll want to share.  You then capture this experience and stick it online for people like me to OOO and ahhh over.

BUT…  Is it really that simple?  And do massive consumer engagement experiences have a shelf life?
The answer, surely, is to combine the two, but if you haven’t got the budget to engage large numbers then the second option isn’t a bad one.

Give them a great experience.

Capture it in a compelling way.

Share it.

More to come from the Launch XP and Digital teams soon.

It gave me great joy this week to finally see the fruits of the collaboration between The Vaccines and Instagram come to life online, and not just because ‘Wetsuit’ is one my favourite tracks from their ‘What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?’ album.

No, the other reason for joy was that, working in digital as I do, you spend a lot of time discussing ideas such as user generated content, community building and online platforms, and not as much time putting theory into practice.

In case you’re not familiar with what the campaign was about, The Vaccines (and label Sony Music) put together a joint collaboration with the popular photo app/sharing service Instagram. Fans of the band were invited to share, via Instagram, an image which encapsulated ‘the perfect summer of music’. A microsite was built for images to be showcased, and all people had to do was tag their images with #vaccinesvideo, and they were in with a chance of their image being featured in a bona fide music video.

You can check out the final results below –

Here’s why l like it so much –

1. Devastatingly simple idea

2. Simple and flawless execution

3. Uses a new platform in an interesting way

4. Tapped into two growing communities – Vaccines fans and Instagram users

5. Generated a great piece of content (and probably saved Sony Music a few quid as a result)

The competition had 2,433 entries, numerous pieces of coverage and the video has nearly 300,000 views since it was uploaded on Thursday. Clearly spreading the word about both parties involved far and wide.