Social media best practice

October 1, 2008 | 6 Comments

twitter-brand

I have been tagged by Neil in the `Best practices in Social Media‘ meme (thanks Neil).  As Neil quite rightly points out, Social Media is not a channel but an approach.  A channel insinuates a one to one dialiogue which granted, many companies who enter the world of social media do try this approach.  Have a look at some brands Twitter profiles.  Notice how many have a lot of users following their updates but don’t actually follow user updates themselves?  This is a prime example of not understanding the game before joining in.  Don’t you rember trying to do that when you were at school?  The other kids didn’t want you to join in did they? Do you see where i’m going with this?  My best practice: Understand the medium before forcing your way in uninvited.

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Brand, Social Interaction, Thought pieces 

When a brand just get’s it #2

September 2, 2008 | 6 Comments

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Last week I wrote this post explaining how EA had monitored what was being said about them online (namely a video posted on YouTube) and answered it with an even more entertaining piece of content which was golden.  This stirred up some good feelings from you all about brands who actually listen to what is being said about them by us humble (dare I say it) consumers.  Yesterday I had another of those wonderful touchy, feely experiences that came from a blog post I wrote back in March called `Do brands feel my love?‘  I described how although I wouldn’t neccessarily buy Becks beer as i am not a big fan of the taste, I love the brand because of the Becks Fusions experiences they create therefore I love what the brand stands for.  I questioned if the love I feel for the brand, counted to them as a company even though I am not what they would class as a typical consumer.

Well, I can tell you that the answer is yes.  Yesterday Becks contacted me and said that they were searching the internet to see what people had been saying about the Fusions events they create.  (Firstly, brownie points for listening to what is being said).  They have invited me to their Fusions event this weekend to join them in the VIP area and the after party, as they do actually value me as a consumer.  Now Massive Attack are playing who are one of my favourite bands so naturally I am going to be thrilled a the prospect of seeing them, but a company taking the time to not only listen to what is being said about their brand, engage with their audience and then offer an experience that money can’t buy is bloody fantastic and is something that I harp on to all marketers when I talk to them about how to approach that myth that is `social media’.  I am heading to Manchester on Saturday to the event so I will update you on my time when I get back, but can we please start to see more brands listening to what consumers really think and invite them into a two-way conversation?

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Brand, Events, Social Interaction 

When a brand just get’s it

August 21, 2008 | 18 Comments

This is fucking brilliant (and yes it does justify the swearing).  YouTube user Levinator 25 thought he had found a glitch when he played EA’s Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08.  He posted a video on YouTube (which can be seen here), showing Tiger Woods walking on the water within the game to take the nicknamed `Jesus Shot’.  Now admittedly this is quite funny but not as funny as the response that EA have given.  They have posted their own video shown above stating “Levinator 25, you seem to think your Jesus Shot video was a glitch in the game”.  They have then produced a real video of Tiger himself walking down the fairway, onto the water reaching the middle of the pond to take his next winning shot.  Golden.  It is one thing for brands to actually use tools such as Twitter and Google alerts to see what is being said about their brand, however this is a prime example of tackling potential negative publicity and turning it into an opportunity of getting talked about in a positive way amongst the hard-core EA fans.

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Brand, Games, Video, Viral 

Product Placement Through Digital

August 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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I was recently having a discussion with Charles, about capabilites of increased product placement through digital channels and it reminded me of a great example I saw whilst presenting at Plan.net’s I-day event in Munich.  Floaded is a platform for short films, which are co-financed by the brands featured within them.  Whilst watching a film, users have the ability to turn on the `brand layer’, a function which places an icon over the brand within the film.  If users wish to find out more about that brand, when clicked the icon will pause the video and will take them to that products brand page within the site.  I find this a really interesting concept as it really opens up the door for brands to take content creation to the next level, and I hope in the not so distant future, we will start to see brands creating their own full-length features, moving away from the traditional short-film route.

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Brand, Film, Product placement, Video 

Brand tags

May 26, 2008 | 1 Comment

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Noah Brier writes one of the best blogs around and has developed an experiment called Brand Tags.  The interface displays a brand logo and asks users to insert the first word or phrase associated with that brand.  Noah has included a list of all the brands added to date on the site, and if you click on a particular brand, you can see a tag cloud of all the words entered surrounding that brand.  To date over 700,000 tags have been added.  Great work Noah, I know this is keeping you really busy so hang in there!

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Advertising, Blog, Brand, Innovation, Social Interaction