Category Archives: Social Media

Social CEOs run more competitive companies

Posted on May 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

The way the C-tier of a company behaves, greatly influences its everyday work style. So this should be a no-brainer: when a company’s leadership is engaged with social media, the rest of the business tends to be more flexible and exchanges thoughts freely.

An IBM study confirms that this also translates into a more competitive company. One that is more in touch with customers, able to deal with change and innovate its products and services.

Social CEO study by IBM

Social CEO study by IBM

As a Forbes article put it:

“Simply put, CEOs and their executives set the cultural tone for an organization. Through participation, they implicitly promote the use of social technologies.  That will make their organizations more competitive and better able to adapt to sudden market changes.”

Boss Tweeting

So if you can spot your bosses being active on Twitter and LinkedIn, that’s a good sign. If they’re mixing it up on Soundcloud or Last.fm they might be showing there’s more to life than work. But if they start posting their kids’ lunches on Instagram and want to be your friend on Facebook you might see more of them than you really care for.

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Posted in Social Media, Strategy

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Is President Obama’s Dashboard the ‘holy grail’ ?

Posted on May 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

There is much talk about President Obama’s re-election efforts marking a new pinacle of digital marketing. He has wowed the world with his original success of almagamating thousands of online supporters and donors in 2008. Now his team is on the verge of releasing a new milestone in digital grassroots marketing. Simply called ‘Dashboard’ it is the work of statisticians, predictive modellers, data mining experts, mathematicians, software engineers, bloggers and internet advertising experts.
obama

All this was made for the organisers to have a real-time master view of the effect their campaign has. And to predict where more effort is needed and where they can relax. It makes it easier for local organisers to tap into an existing supporter base and it even contains competitive elements (gamification anyone?) to compel supporters to outdo each other. No wonder then that this American election is being called the ‘Facebook vote’ or the ‘data election’. Check out and register for a test run here.

obama2

This ‘dashboard’ makes me draw parallels to software like ‘Spotify’ that can predict a better tour schedule for up-and-coming bands, based on the listening history of fans using the streaming service. And the truth is, the better you can predict how your messaging reverberates and model your efforts accordingly, the more success you will have.

In politics as well as advertising.

via

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Posted in Social Media, Strategy

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The Future of Filmmaking: Iron Sky

Posted on May 15, 2012 | 4 Comments

OK, that’s a big statement. But have a look at the well-produced case study of Nazi-SciFi-spoof ‘Iron Sky’ that is hitting cinemas worldwide at the moment.

The German-Finnish-Australian co-production had about 75% traditional funding and manged to rake in the rest via crowd-sourcing and crowd-investing. More interesting from a creative stand point is how listening to the audience and working with the supporters led to a a quicker, yet visually high-quality production  that was going to please the followers. At the same time it minimised the need for traditional film marketing. Now I am already liking the film for actor Udo Kier’s character name: Wolfgang Kortzfleisch. Probably the worst name in the history of film making. Check out one of the teasers below:

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Posted in Social Media, Strategy, Video

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Have a Pintermission with Honda

Posted on April 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

Honda is one of the first brands entering social network Pinterest.  In line with their CR-V ”Leap List” campaign, they do it strangely enough by asking top pinners to take a break and get outside. You might remember the campaign through the Ferris Bueller sequel video. So this Pinterest part of the campaign is all about getting out and living life to the fullest.

Pintermission

Pintermission

Honda is offering $500 each to the most active pinners  if they’ll take a 24-hour break from Pinterest and do the things they normally pin about. And then pin/post about those. Which in a way brings us full circle to the question: ‘How much pinning is too much?”

I liked the personalized invitation via an @ mention below, showing true blogger outreach, with effort going into research, personalised and engaging through craft. See all invites after the jump.

Pinterest invitation

Pinterest invitation

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Posted in Advertising, Social Media

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Circus 2012 – Festival of Commercial Creativity storified

Posted on April 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

I used Storify for the second time, on this occasion not in the lead up to but during an event itself. Circus, the Festival for Commercial Creativity went into its second year and the organising Communications Council had again brought some heavy hitters in terms of keynote speakers and Big Thinkers. And outside the theatre a strategist would rub shoulders with a client, content producer, set designer, folk musician or a clergyman. Here is a nice summary of three of the speakers on CampaignBrief.

What surprised me when using Spotify on the iPad was that it didn’t feel distracting but more like a new way of note taking. I was curating out of the stream of real-time tweets and pictures and added some background videos while at the same time listening to the presenters. And I like how you can draw in the people you curated by automating an @message with the Storify-link.

Have a read of my three days here and be sure to check out Decoder’s analog sketch-notes.

I don’t know where Storify will go in terms of features, but a manual doodle/sketch section for creating images like the above might be nice. Follow Storify’s blog for updates here - fittingly all posts are Storify stories in themselves.

I will be sure to use it again at Sydney’s VIVID festival where MPU’s ‘Snake the Planet!’ will play a major role. That next time pictures and videos will surely feature a bit more in my Storify.

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Posted in Advertising, art, Social Media, user generated content

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