Search

Bits and Bytes

Thoughts on digital, running rambles and photos

Open Search

How things go viral, Bieber fury, your new Facebook and this week’s bits and bytes

Horse meat on social: The guys over at Digimind have pulled together a great little infographic of how the horse meat story has developed on social since it broke in mid January. As a Sainsbury’s colleague, I am of course proud to see that our name has rarely been connected to the issue.

Gorkana really doesn’t like AVEs: they’ve published 16 reasons why AVEs don’t measure PR. Solid stuff.

How does stuff go viral? A marvellous feature by Al Jazeera’s The Stream about how videos like Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake go viral. It’s a half hour clip, so sort out a cuppa and get comfy before you get started (as an aside: just check out how the 30 minutes brings together broadcast, Google+ and Google Hangout, Twitter, Skype… very cool).

Misogynistic algorithm screws Amazon: Last weekend, Amazon got itself in a spot of bother when it was found to be selling thoseoh-so-hip ‘Keep Calm and…’ t-shirts. Not only are they entirely naff, these particular ones were emblazoned with charming sentiments such as ‘Keep Calm and Knife Her’ or ‘Keep Calm and Rape a lot’. The shirts were being sold through Amazon by a third party company called Solid Gold Bomb and were quickly removed after the online retailer received a barrage of tweets and complaints. Solid Gold Bomb quickly apologised. How could this happen? Well, turns computer algorithms rather than people that generate different versions of the ‘Keep calm…” slogan automatically and prints them onto shirts when somebody clicks on buy on Amazon. I suspect they will be coding a misogyny filter very soon…

Belieber fury: so, like, OMG, Justin totally showed up late to his gig because he thought he’d, like, be all rock and roll and stuff. While I’m working on how I can get a refund on my TV license fee after the BBC spent two days reporting on the total non-story of Bieber pissing off little girls (and their parents), have a look at this brilliant piece of opportunistic advertising by GetTaxi who sent a cab to Bieber’s hotel to make sure he’d at least be on time for his remaining three O2 gigs (HT ‏@GoodandBadPR).

Also, the best ever photo of a dad at a Justin Bieber concert (HT @Pandamoanimum)

Murdoch blogging: well, technically, his chief of staff Natalie Ravitz, who posts updates of the media mogul’s activities. From shooting clay pigeons, to checking out CES, to shearing a sheep – running an empire is hard work.

How Search Works: Google has launched a new interactive website giving you a look at what goes on behind the scenes everytime you Google something: how it crawls the web and indexes over 30 TRILLION pages, its alogrithms and ranking strategy, and how it fights and removes spam.

New Facebook Newsfeed: Facebook have announced a new design for their newsfeed. It will be met with millions of people complaining about how crap the new design is and how much they want the old layout back. Petitions will be created. #iwantmyfacebookback will start trending. Fast forward 12 months and it will all happen all over again. But what’s new?

  • the new design will look exactly the same no matter which device they use to access their feed
  • videos and images will now be offered more space and prominence
  • the new newsfeed will allow many more options to filter content; including, just stuff from friends, close friends, or according to different media types (photos, music), and also – finally – ALL posts, regardless of their Edgerank (for those that like to believe they are in control of their feed).

Why do this? Friendly Facebook people tell you why in this video.

Videos of the week: the best celebrity interview the world has ever seen features the wonderful Mila Kunis and a star struck and underprepared yet entirely charming interviewer from BBC1;

The Onion questions if you’re dynamic enough to work in a marketing firm; and then there’s Jamie Oliver’s Food Tube interactive video where not only can you smack Jimbo, you can even make him shove a chilli down his pants (HT @susieod).

And finally: Go to www.gizoogle.com. Enter your Twitter handle, the URL of your favourite website, or just do a web search. I searched for Sainsbury’s. I’ve not stopped giggling (HT @TomParker81).

1

Twitter is for PR, giftastic Jennifer Lawrence and this week’s bits and bytes

Sainsbury’s Twitter faves: Here are my favourite tweets about Sainsbury’s from February 2013. You’ll see some amazing Red Nose Day cookie creations, Goktastic reviews for collection 6 and lots of love for Lulu Guinness’ Red Nose Day totes. And, of course, a few customers declaring their undying love for our cookies. 

Twitter for PR, Facebook for branding: Sir Martin Sorrell, the WPP Group chief executive, spoke to the Harvard Business Review about everything from where we are with the advertising business, to social media and emerging technology like Google Glass. He also said some interesting things about Twitter and why it’s a PR medium and Facebook and how that is a branding medium.

I get myself in deep doo-doo when I say this, but Facebook to my mind is not an advertising medium. It is a branding medium. So if I can get you to say something nice about WPP or me or one of our companies on Facebook to your wife, your friends, or whoever, that’s good. But it’s a long-term mechanism. Compare that with Google. Say you’re searching for a car: We know that up to 90% of car purchases in the U.S. are search-influenced. Depending on where you are in the purchase cycle, that number one ranking on Google seems more important than a Facebook “like.” This doesn’t deny the potency of Facebook. But it has to be seen in the context of a long continuum of brand building.

I’m going to get myself shot again. I think it’s a PR medium. Again, it’s very effective word of mouth. If you look at the Olympics in London, the big winner was Twitter. It wasn’t Facebook. It wasn’t even Google. We did analyses of the Twitter feeds every day, and it’s very, very potent. But—and this is the old fart speaking—I think because it’s limited in terms of number of characters, it reduces communication to superficialities and lacks depth.

The fail trail: This great infographic from social media monitoring firm SDL illustrates really well some recent case studies of how Nestle, Dominos and United dealt with their respective social media crises.

Social media magic: Two things you need to fulfil to have a chance at creating a successful social media campaign are the need to be loved and the need to be heard.

Oscars! The Internet fell in love with Jennifer Lawrence for being so darned down-to-earth and genuinely lovely – and heck, if you can recover from falling up the stairs of the stage to collect your award for best actress that gracefully, then you deserve all the adulation you can get. My theory though: Jennifer Lawrence is just animated-gif fodder.

Source: justnormalfangirl.tumblr.com

AAANYWAY. In terms of predicting winners, turns out that social media beat Google. Looking at the top categories (film, director, actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress) Google got 4/6 and social media got 5/6 right.

Pope wiped: So the Pope finally said his goodbyes this week and the holy social media quickly changed the name on the Papal Twitter account to ‘Vacant Seat’, and wiped Benedict’s tweets. No chance for Ratzi to walk away and do the disgruntled former employee thing with the 1.6 million followers. But what about all those (well, 39) tweets Pope Benedict? Worry not digital Catholics, all of his have been archived on the Vatican’s news site and you can read all of them in nine different languages.

Source: @Pontifex

I want to be a cop: When looking for inspiration for clever web design that puts people and their stories at the foreground I immediately think of Coca Cola and their new(ish) site. Seriously. Google ‘corporate website story telling’ and whole first page is nothing but links to articles about Coke’s page. So when @davidjstocks emailed me a link to the Milwaukee Police’s website, I was a bit surprised. But within about 5 minutes I was looking for how to become a US citizen and sign up to join the men and women in blue. The site uses some of the slickest combination of parallax scrolling and floating navigation I have ever seen alongside gripping photography and a fantastic arrangement of infographic type visuals to convey the PDs story. Well worth a visit.

Source: Milwaukee Police

On Twitter? Don’t break the law: An overview of some court cases that suggest that ordinary social media users need to have a grasp of media law to make sure they stay out of trouble (HT @a_little_wine)

Videos of the week: Samsung are working with Tim Burton on a new flick about the ‘Unicorn Apocalypse’;

Nike combined GPS data, maps and Facebook to drive their ‘Run Like Me’ campaign (it’s from Nike Japan, so it’s especially mental);

and Heineken conduct probably the best intern interview process I have ever seen!

And finally: Ever been to Starbucks and they totally mess up your name when they write it on your cup? You’ll love this (HT @stangreenan).

0

Hacking Burger King, social content and this week’s bits and bytes

It’s finally happened. The awesome colleagues in Sainsbury’s Washington have pulled off a great version of the current Harlem Shake craze. Even better: it’s for Red Nose Day so watch it and donate!

The advertising campaign is dead – A must read article in the Harvard Business Review about how the campaign-based model of advertising, perfected over decades of one-way mass media, is headed for extinction. The Oreo moment at this year’s Superbowl is seen as just another reason why advertisers should act more like newsrooms, reacting to current events not only in real-time but with useful and appealing content. What to do? Create just the right piece of content at the right moment by bringing the day’s zeitgeist together with your brand ethos and your audience’s expectations.

Memories and brands – A fantastic and inspiring report by Franck Sarrazit, Global Director of TNS’s Brand & Communications practice about how we make memories and what that means for brands.

Bang with Friends – Remember the scene in ‘The Social Network’ where Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg hot-flipflops it back to his dorm to add the ‘Relationship status’ field to Facebook profile pages after realising that in real life, there’s no easy way to see if someone is available or not? Well, I can’t believe it’s taken this long, but there’s a new Facebook app called ‘Bang with Friends’ that takes things one step further. Boasting to have already generated 100,000 ‘hook ups’, the app allows you go through your friends and mark the ones you’d like to, well, bang. Unlike other Facebook apps, this one works in private, matching friends that have expressed a mutual interest in, you know, banging each other. Once matched, the two prospective friends with benefits are notified by email and go about their business…

Source: Bang with Friends

Meanwhile, people on Facebook are hiring fake girlfriends so that they can change their relationship status to ‘In a relationship’ and make their lives seem romantically complete – even if it’s just virtual. WTF.

Social content that works – An excellent presentation by @JeremyWaite from Adobe about the social media purpose pyramid – or why social media does six things really well: emotional messages (entertain, challenge, inspire) and rational messages (inform, solve, educate). Jeremy notes that understanding what motivates people to share is at the heart of every successful social marketing campaign.

You could argue though that there should be one more element to the social media purpose pyramid, one that LinkedIn capitalised on these last few weeks. Social media provide you the perfect platform to brag about how great you are. A simple enough email then from LinkedIn to their users congratulating them that they are one of the most viewed profiles on the network. That ego boost was gratefully accepted and shared by many LinkedIn users, resulting in over 80,000 tweets mentioning individual greatness. TechCrunch takes a closer look at the LinkedIn email campaign (HT @tomparker81).

The King is hacked – Another week, another Twitter disaster. This week it was Burger King’s account that got hacked (apparently their password was ‘Whopper123’) and while it did get them 30,000 new followers in one day, it probably wasn’t worth the hassle/brand damage. Of all the many articles, Gizmodo probably has the best summary, including the wonderfully smug tweet from McDonald’s saying they had nothing to do with the hack. The lesson is clear: use a strong password, change it regularly and don’t use the same password for all your accounts.

How to create a strong password? XKCD has the answer.

Source: xkcd

A quick side note on hacking – this interview on the BBC with Jeff Jarvis was supposed to feed into the usual media panic of ‘oh my God, we’re all getting hacked’. It doesn’t quite go to plan. You can almost hear the Facebook PR team cheering in the background…

Also: is the Beeb really that precious that it feels it needs to cut an interview short because the interviewee has used such vitriolic insults as “crap” and “BS”?

Creative CVs – Could you get your whole CV across in 6 seconds? Aspiring journalist Dawn Siff has published her CV on Vine. Other recent advances in CV formatting have brought us Philippe Dubost’s Amazon page and Sonya William’s eBay page. Meanwhile, Enterasys – a wireless network provider – is considering applicants for a six-figure senior social media position, but no paper résumés will be accepted. Instead, the company has decided to recruit solely via Twitter.

And finally: You had one job.

0

9 miles on a sunny Sunday morning

7°C and sunny, with a few scattered clouds. 9 miles, 1h20m11s, 8m54s/mile – via Strava

Continue reading “9 miles on a sunny Sunday morning” →

1

The Harlem Shake and this week’s bits and bytes

Sainsbury's Giraffe Bread
Source: Sainsbury’s

What does Sainsbury’s have in common with Apple, Zappos, Trader Joe’s, the Ritz-Carlton and Lexus? According to Business Insider, they’ve all shown examples of big businesses actually getting it right. Some really wonderful stories, all showing that going above and beyond customer expectations will generate a lot of positive sentiment towards a business.

I’ve talked about the growing trend of second screening. 80% of Twitter users in the UK us the service via their mobile – or to put that differently, they tweet from the sofa and while they’re on the move. Twitter recognised this and even published a book on the link between TV and Twitter – how people talk about what is happening on telly while it’s happening. Not a big surprise then that Twitter acquired a social analytics start-up that measures just those two things what’s happening on TV, and what’s happening on Twitter.

The Harlem Shake is the newest Internet meme to take the world by storm. The 1-minute videos have already amassed over 44 million views on YouTube in two weeks. The meme is a combination of a track by Brooklyn-based DJ Baauer that was released in 2012 and the popular dance move from the ‘80s, both called ‘Harlem Shake’. It all seems to have started with a video by DizastaMusic where a group of people wearing bizarre outfits dance to the an extract of the track. Since then, the meme has mutated slightly, with videos now following the pattern of one person dancing while the rest are either going about their business or there’s no one else in shot. Then, once the lyrics kick in, everyone goes into a frenzied dance off. Completely mental but obviously brilliant fun for those taking part – and YouTube. There have been versions from Westpoint Cadet’s, the Norwegian Army, Western Uni students and the British Army. My favourite has to be this one from two DJs who incorporate their entire audience.

Cheeky Valentine’s Day advertising from Ikea in Australia: a free baby cot (some assembly required, I’m sure) for babies born on 14 November 2013. All you need to do is show them the coupon and a birth corticated.

Source: Coloribus.com

A great stunt from Nivea in Germany for the launch of their new ‘Stress Protect Deodorant’. Titled ‘The Stress test’, the stunt plays out in real time as an unsuspecting passerby is photographed and their image used to create newspaper splashes and breaking news reports showing that same person as the main target in a nationwide manhunt . It’s an idea that’s been done before in different guises but I think this execution in a German airport, bringing together a host of extras is excellent. You can really see the panic in their eyes increase, especially when the PA system announces in minute detail what they are wearing. And they say Germans don’t have a sense of humour…

Econsultancy provides a good overview of some of the common pitfalls for brands and their social media initiatives. In summary, stay away from campaigns that are only geared to gaining followers, promoting a purchase, offer a lame prize, or only serve to make something simple more difficult.

And finally: Love reading the Guardian but can’t quite come up with an appropriate comment? Try the random Guardian comment generator.

0

Digital dualism and this week’s bits and bytes

Source: mediabistro.com

It’s not often that a study in a journal on ethics gets much attention outside of academia, but if your study finds that PR professionals are in fact guiding the ethical decision making in organisations, that’s a different ballgame. In fact, when properly understood and practiced PR is ethical by its very nature.

Another week, another social media meltdown. After HMV it was Applebees’ turn in the US to go up in flames in front of the eyes of the world, in real time. A long post by RL Stollat on his blog, it goes through the timeline of how it kicked off and all the mistakes that the Applebees social media team were making in excruciating detail.

Who doesn’t love to hate corporate jargon? We all do. And I’d argue we’re all guilty of it at one time or another. Econsultancy has pulled together a list of horrors where, I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I’d be able to refrain from slapping some sense into the speaker. I mean, ‘phablet’? Really? Apparently this is such a problem in PR, that digital agency Twelve Thirty Eight have created the ‘Buzz Saw App’: a web-based tool that strips out all the jargon, providing you with the total number of buzzwords used and a percentage score.

I have nothing but love for Lego. They just get this social thing. Just in case you didn’t think they were awesome enough already, to celebrate their 55th anniversary, they came up with a series of 55 minimalist posters of nursery rhymes, stories and pop culture references — all in glorious Lego! See how many you can get right – this is not just your average, boring ‘like-bait’.

It’s social media philosophy time – hooray!

Two articles by @nathanjurgenson caught my attention this week. The first is about the phenomena of digital dualism, where he argues that the scale of how people see their interactions with digital extends from one extreme – strong augmented reality, where they see as digital and reality being the same thing – to the other – strong digital dualism, where digital and reality are kept strictly separate. Confused? Read his post and take the digital dualism test (personally, I feel most comfortable at the mild augmented reality end).

The second, is a follow-up piece to the digital/reality scale and the consequence of more and more people living in total augmented reality. Instead of watching your favourite band play your favourite song, you’re filming in on your smartphone to be posted later on YouTube. Instead of enjoying the view from the peak of that mountain you’ve just climbed, you’re taking a photo to share with your followers on Instagram. Instead of having a good old chat with a friend, you’re tweeting that great one liner you just came up with. Nathan argues that like photography before it, social media changes the way we perceive the world. Have you ever asked yourself: “Holy crap, this thing I’m doing/I’ve seen/I’ve heard/I’ve read would look great on my [insert social media profile of choice]? He writes: “social media users have become always aware of the present as something we can post online that will be consumed by others”. Or, asked in the form of a question: Are we more concerned by our own social media history, that we forget to enjoy the moment?

The aptly named Creativity Online recently posted a collection of 10 projects from 2012 that expertly combine creativity with technology – while keeping the customer front of mind. The list includes some great examples from retail, my personal favourites would be Red Tomato’s Pizza Fridge Magnet button. The button is given to the only the best customers and programmed with their favourite order – all they need to do is press it and their order is delivered.

Then there’s Hellmann’s Recipe Receipt, where customers in Brazil who bought Hellmann’s mayo at a participating supermarket would get a recipe using Hellmann’s and the other items they’d bought printed on their receipt (HT @cdceniza).

In this week’s videos of the week, the new Mercedes CLK will make you want to make a pact with the devil to get it and all the sexiness that comes with it – but watch the clip before you sign away your soul. Also, my apologies for not already including this last week, but I just had to include it.

Microsoft launched this clever Internet Explorer ad for all the children of the ’90s. The snappy wristband thingies? The 56k dial up modem? The chunky yellow water-proof Walkman? And the pinnacle of awesome, the Supersoaker? I loved them all. Will the clip make me switch to Internet Explorer and turn my back on Chrome? Who knows…

And finally: the best think you’ll read this week (besides this email, of course): Simon Rich’s fantastic short story ‘Sell Out’ from the New Yorker (HT @TomParker81). So good, I immediately bought Simon’s book afterwards.

0

#SocialBrands – my thoughts and slides

Today I had the great pleasure of speaking on behalf of Sainsbury’s at the Social Brand Conference in London. A packed day of brands and agencies talking about all things social media. From best practice customer service, content strategies, legal frameworks and ROI – there was just so much information to take on board and digest.

I spoke about how in today’s digital age, every crisis is now social, global and viral. I’ve embedded my slides below, but before I get to that, I wanted to put to paper some of the thoughts and inspiration from the other speakers that stayed with me.

Hats off to @Larssilberbauer from Lego for the work that his team has been doing. I’ve mentioned them on my blog before and I was very excited to hear first hand about how they go about social. What stuck with me the most was his deceptively simple approach to developing a social media strategy for Lego: If you understand people to be hard-wired to be social, then you have to understand what your customers social needs are. In the case of Lego, this is the need to build together and to show off that sense of pride you have when you’re completed your creation. Combine your business strategy with your customer’s social needs and hey presto, you have a social media strategy.

The results speak for themselves – just check out Lego’s brilliant “Brickmented Reality” campaign.

Lars then went on to talk about the simple yet entirely brilliant Lego social media driver’s licence. Put simply, a day-long course at the end of which Lego executives have to pass a theoretical and practical exam on social media. And much like any driver’s licence – if you mess up, it can be taken away from you.

A big theme of the day was that of agile social media teams (or SWATT – Special Weapons & Twitter Tactics, thank you @Jeremywaite for that bit of awesomeness) that sit somewhere between PR and Marketing and are not only plugged in to the big events and news stories of the day, but have the authority and resource to develop creative content for their brands to be a part of the bigger conversation.

With the Superbowl powercut fresh in people’s memory, no wonder then that it was Oreo’s ‘You can still dunk in the dark’ Tweet – created, approved and posted within minutes of the lights going out.

Other examples were Lego’s tribute to Neil Armstrong, Spec Saver’s cheeky ad on the back of the Eden Hazard/Ball boy incident and some more from the Superbowl:

@Jeremywaite provided the best definition of ‘Return on Investment‘ I’d ever heard at a social media conference: the actual definition of the concept, which was a very pleasant surprise.

ROI%  = ((revenue gained – investment) / investment) x 100

That definition coupled with his 1 slide social media report (Who is saying it? What are they saying? When are they saying it? Where are they saying it? and Why are they saying it?) will prepare you for any budget meeting with the CFO.

Finally on to @BruceDaisley from Twitter who showed a great clip about how the news of the recent helicopter crash in central London was shared on Twitter. The visualisation clearly shows how initial tweeters are at the centre of the story at the start, but then the power of trusted sources on Twitter during breaking news events such as Sky News and more prominently BBC Breaking News become hubs for the news (as I’m sure both Sky and the BBC will be happy to learn).

My mind is still buzzing from all the input, inspiration and ideas so I’ll leave you with my take on crisis comms.

4

My Hamburg Marathon training plan

This is the kit I wore to run the Edinburgh Marathon in 2011, so I thought it would be appropriate to use it again here. This time I will a fourth if not a fifth Gu packet. I only had three in Edinburgh and by the last 4-5 miles I was relying on the kindness of strangers holding out gummibears and any other sugary items to keep myself going.

Continue reading “My Hamburg Marathon training plan” →

0

104 miles in January – on my way to the Hamburg Marathon

My January runstreak lasted 17 days before I had to give in to particularly nasty combination of long work days and dangerously slippery walkways around my flat. I managed to pick things up again for a bit while on holiday in Philly (running with Momo is huge fun!) and I felt proud of having cracked the century mark for the first time in my years as a runner.

Continue reading “104 miles in January – on my way to the Hamburg Marathon” →

0

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑