Adspace Pioneers

11 trend predictions for 2012

2011-12-22T13:56:00.004+11:00

Ben Phillips and I looked into the murky crystal ball and pulled out eleven amazing trends/headlines/things that you will see in 2012.

1. The 1% fight back #occupycenterlink
2011 was dominated by the #occupywallstreet movement, and the 99% protesting against the gross inequality of wealth distribution in the western world. In 2012, the 1% will strike back. Expect a similar format of protest to what we saw in 2011, with a couple of minor variations. Whilst the disgruntled masses occupied the bastions of capitalism, the idle aristocracy will occupy benefit centres, fighting against the unjust support of the less well-heeled. In the #occupycenterlink movement, bankers, lawyers and other associated gentry will erect Gucci tents and don Ralph Lauren ponchos. Through Bose megaphones they will rally, arguing for a termination of the welfare state and a restoration of true laissez-faire economic policy. Whether this movement will generate the same momentum as its poorer counterpart remains to be seen.

2. G-Stalker
In an attempt to leverage recent facial recognition patents, as well as digitally enabled voyeurism, Google will launch G-Stalker. The G-Stalker application enables a stalker to obtain every piece of information about someone that they are close enough to take a photo of. It works as such: the stalker sees an attractive woman sitting 15 yards away from him in a restaurant. He is old, recently divorced and sexually frustrated, so he pulls out his smart phone with a 10 megapixel camera and activates G-stalker. He holds the camera subtlety in the direction of the stalkee and waits for the patented facial recognition technology to do its magic. 5 seconds later, he has a name, phone number, address and a URL of every social networking site she belongs to. He leaves the restaurant, follows her on Twitter and mentally prepares himself to retweet even her most inane utterances in a feeble attempt to be noticed.

3. The demise of European fashion houses
High fashion has been criticised for many things over the years but none have managed to dent its allure to consumer hoards around the world. Times however, are changing. If the internet has taught us anything, it’s that allowing the masses to create is always a better option than reserving it for those who have spent years honing their craft. Enter Etsy. Etsy has proven that a talented, experienced fashion designer has nothing on your best friend’s sister who is in fashion school and is crocheting beanies in her free time. In what truly is a modern day peasant uprising, expect these Etsy queens and their unfortunate boyfriends to topple 1000 year old fashion houses with ill-conceived dresses, blazers and scarfs. A Louis Vuitton designer, whom asked to remain anonymous, recently told me “This is the Youtube of the fashion world. Unfortunately for us, people just want to look like depressed, malnourished hippies”. Expect high street retailers to adjust their procurement policies accordingly.

4. Social media sentiment monitoring replace the election process in France
The French election is coming up in 2012. Given the relatively poor voter turnout in previous years, I forecast that the traditional, antiquated voting process will be cancelled completely. In its place, social media monitoring firms, with their highly accurate sentiment analysis, will survey opinions of French citizens across social networks, blogs and other online forums. Citizens will be encouraged to express their opinions of candidates, and these opinions will be monitored and evaluated by the powers that be. At the conclusion of this process, the firms will deliver the results of the election and the government will take its rightful place. This anticipated development is perfectly aligned with one of the most observable behavioural trends of an election year: an explosion of ill-informed political experts using their personal social networks to push an agenda.

5. “Goldfish syndrome”
There are too many screens in our lives. Laptops, second monitors, iPhones, Blackberries, iPads, screens in retail, screens outside, TVs at home, TVs in our bedroom. The effect of this is that our concentration is being pulled from flashing screen to flashing screen more frequently than ever before, undermining our ability to actually think and function. We now no longer have the ability to concentrate on anything for more than 10 seconds at a time and given the continued explosion of multi-screen culture, I expect Goldfish syndrome to finally hit critical mass in 2012. The effects of this will be varied and profound; GDPs will further plummet as we aren’t able to concentrate on a single task for more than 10 seconds. A new range of mobile phone tariffs around 10 second conversations will be introduced, ensuring we never forget who we’re speaking to. Books will finally be killed off for good as no reader can focus on anything more than tweet length, reducing the need for paper and enabling a healthy regeneration of the Amazon. The sophistication of cars will grow significantly; this new intelligent vehicle will remind their driver every 10 seconds where they’re going and what they have to do there. Dystopian futurists will label this “the broken record society”, but this author can see a range of benefits, most notably a decline in anger and frustration because we can’t remember the origin of our misery. (side note: this paragraph took 2 weeks to write)

6. First person uses a QR code
In what will be seen as a massive coup for the QR Code community, in 2012 the first normal person will use a QR Code. Steve Stuart will be caught at a bus stop taking a photo of a QR Code for access to the BHS of The Hangover 3. QR Code fan boys will make this into an exciting case study video which will be RTed for dayzzzzzzzz and used to slam down the throats of marketers why their billboard needs a code innit.

7. Groupon to get out of debt crisis
Greece will become the first Government to turn to Groupon to help solve its debt crisis. The Government will look to sell off one of their greatest assets the Parthenon. Offering bricks that will last a lifetime over the group buying site. The bricks will be at the ridiculous reduced 90% off price for only 2 days only. This will be seen as the first step of the Greek Government to take control of their problems.

8. Head of Mobile, we were wrong not ‘The year of the mobile’
On December 31st 2012, Phillip MacPherson, Global Head of Mobile Development Foundation will come out with a statement apologising for inaccurate statements provided to the media in 2001, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011 which have all alluded to it being ‘The year of the Mobile’. ‘Clearly we have got it wrong the last few years, we got a little excited when the Nokia3310, WAP iPhone, iAd, all coming out and thought it was our time.’ However MacPherson still has high expectations that mobile advertising will leap frog urinal advertising as the 13th highest revenue media environment in 2013

9. Amazon launches Kindle Phone
Off the success of the Amazon Kindle, Amazon make their first play into the crowded mobile telecommunications space. ‘We really tapped into something with the Kindle, people just wanted a device that just did one thing, people just wanted to read books on it’ stated Adam Right, lead UX for Kindle Labs. 'Amazon have taken this strong insight and have applied it to a mobile device that simply just receive calls and texts. Get ready for the game changer.'

10. 'I hit my internet peak 10 years ago' - Prolific emailer
On the 10 year anniversary of Jerrod Leon registering the email address hotmale@hotmail.com, he finally admits that he may have hit his Internet peak 10 years ago. I am your classic middle aged guy reminiscing on the time he was QB for his High School Football team, only I hit it on the internet. I am on the down hill slope afterwards, I thought I might be able to replicate the Internet Greatness with getting Facebook url '/MarkZuckerbergsMum' but none of my mates laugh anymore and they are getting tired of me pulling out my business cards at bars trying to impress girls.

11. Buzzfeed, Home of LOLCats, Memes and Celebrity Gossip becomes the most influential site in the 2012 US Election
Oh shit that is actually happening.

After industry blogging

2011-11-28T07:22:00.000+11:00

Industry blogging (Op-ed blogging) is definitely on its last legs. I think there are now three routes that I can see people taking if they still want to be having a voice in the industry.

Content Syndicators (Brainpicker, Digital Buzz Blog) this is a hard role as you have to be trawling a lot of content and on top of everything, the only big example in Australia that I have seen for this is Digital Buzz Blog.

Content Creators - Creating small projects that will get you attention. Usually these take a long time to create. Re: Digital Creatives doing Awesome Things

Become a News Source (Mumbrella, Campaign Brief) breaking news stories about the industry.

What other routes can people take?

Reviewing the success of the Occupy Wall St Communication Strategy

2011-11-18T07:53:00.001+11:00

It is amazing to reflect on how much the Occupy Wall St movement has achieved in just 2 months. You would be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't heard of the OWS movement. I think there is a number of interesting communication tactics that they have employed which have helped them gain a lot of coverage. Here are some of the stand outs to me.

Tactics
Occupying physical space - Occupying actual parks has given people a place to congregate and learn more about the movement, it has also helped to give a visual representation of how many people there are.

Occupy replication - The easy format for replication of taking over a public space was easy to mimic across the world. Hence it helped to spread the idea globally through local activations.
99% - The '99%' as an overall idea is perfect, it is an easy to understand concept which in nature is inclusive. It has been propelled through the tumblr of the same name.

Veterans on the front line - They have strategically put Veterans on the front line, this has made for amazing imagery as they are the first ones that the police confront.

They have also become some of the most vocal voices in this fight

Splintering the message - Similar to any campaign you need to give people new ways to talk about the message beyond the police brutality. This shows that they may be able to keep creating new ways to keep the message top of mind coming into the election year.

Capturing everything - For the last 2 months, one of the astounding things is that amount of documentation of the event. The media has really helped propel this and make it a priority for politicians.

I am looking to write a follow up piece to this, on the problems the OWS movement currently faces and how I see them moving forward.

4 Digital Creatives doing awesome things

2011-09-26T01:53:00.012+10:00

For most Advertising Creatives creativity does not stop at 5:30PM Friday, most have some kind of creative outlet outside of work whether that be writing children's books, tshirt lines or even setting up charities.

Digitally a growing trend that I am starting to see is Digital Creatives using the internet as their canvas. The type of art that I am most interested in is when Creatives are creating cultural statements through their pieces and capturing the attention of the masses. Here are some of my favourite;

1. Jeff Greenspan (Creative Director at BBDO)

Urban Traps (Hipster Traps)
The Most Exclusive Website (Mike Lacher and Chris Baker)
LetterBombing (Chris Baker)

2. Mike Lacher - Creative Technical Manager - Google Creative Labs

Mikala Bierma Youtube Channel
Waiting for Bieber
Shady URL
Geocities-izer

3. Ji Li (Creative Director at Facebook)
The Bubble Project
Goolery
Dummer

4. Chris Baker (Writer at Google Creative Labs)

The Likeable Constitution (Jeff Greenspan)
The Call to Action Generator

As I start to learn Photoshop and Coding I am hoping to start making some of my ideas come to life. Watch this space!

Digital Strategists learn Photoshop in 8 hours

2011-09-19T12:50:00.002+10:00

I am really trying to grow the creative side of my brain at the moment. As I discussed in my previous post on Strategy bullets, I have really been limiting the creative side for the last few years. One of the other main barriers to me being creative was I didn't have the skills to be able to execute an idea (e.g couldn't mock it up in Photoshop, couldn't code up the idea).

I was inspired by Pon Kattera, to change this the other day. He recently taught himself Photoshop via online tutorials on lynda.com. With his glowing endorsement I signed up.

I took the Photoshop CS5 Essential Training course and have taught myself the basics to Photoshop and completed my first mock ups for work on Friday. I was surprised with how good it actually was! It is cheap at a flat rate of $25 a month for all the courses you want. You have to give it a good 8 hours and it usually helps if you have someone with you who knows the basics of Photoshop.

On a side note if you haven't watched 'You suck at Photoshop' tutorials before you need to watch them!

The new data capture - Emotional DNA Data

2011-09-07T11:35:00.013+10:00

Collecting and creating meaningful conclusions from personal data seems to be all the rage at the moment. One area that seems to have been overlooked but of interest is emotional data capturing. Emotional DNA is left on everything photos, places, people, foods. All these can elicit powerful emotions from people.

My work colleague Kendra Salvatore came up with an interesting concept of emotional geographic mapping. Basically what if we were able to visualise the emotions we tie to different places.

One of the exercises that she does is to manually map emotions from different places. I have had a stab at it for Melbourne and Sydney which was a pretty interesting task. However I think this would not need to be a manual thing, you could hook it up to Foursquare or Facebook Places and give a little emoti on what you are feeling at the time (think Nike Plus).

'Going to your happy place' could now become prompted by technology, with a mechanic that understood what places are that happy place. Fornino's and their White Truffle Oil Pizza

Putting down the Strategy Bullets

2011-08-25T10:13:00.001+10:00

'Strategy bullets are the fastest way to kill an idea.' That guy, 2011

One of the biggest brain shifts I have had moving to BBH, is changing from a strategy mainframe to a creative led position. Strategy is a very left brain activity, coming up with creative problems is definitely a right brain activity.

A lot of Strategy revolves around looking for patterns and the inferring meanings from these patterns, whereas creative requires you to look forward and look for new patterns. This creates a lot of tension when the two parties meet.

I noticed in creative concept meetings, I was able to kill a number of thought starters and ideas as I was looking for all the holes of where it wasn't technically possible or the lack of insight of the idea.

After being made aware of this I have really started to train myself to try and find the good in an idea, virtually ever idea has at least a kernel of goodness that you can bounce off. This has also made me be more proactive in thinking about digital ideas outside of work too, so hopefully like Zac Martin I can start moving fast and breaking things.

Super Hero Clubhouse chat solving a number of fundamental problems to online chat

2011-08-09T01:55:00.000+10:00

Super Hero Clubhouse is a new site/thing from the people from Texts From Last Night/Bnter it is a massive step forward in the online communication/relationship space. Anyone who has had to study online communications will most likely be surprised at how many fundamentals online problems they have solved with this product.

Please go have a look around and then come back. Here is the massive problems that I see that they are resolving.

Problem - Lack of conversation starters/passion points
Most online communication are usually formed around a passion point - (Forums - IntheMix - Dance Music, 4Chan - Anime, BigFooty - AFL). With ChatRoulette where they struggled was having a passion point (which wasn't wangs). SHC starts in a role play scenario - you can talk about superheroes but they compliment this with 'Ice Breakers' which are conversation starters which you can drop into the chat.

Problem - Creeper Stalker Pedo Stigma
Online chat has always struggled with the Creeper Stalker Pedo Stigma, SHC starts conversation in a state that is the furtherest place away from creeper single stalker male territory, role playing superheroes. We aren't going to get to A/S/L questions of the bat.

Problem - Sign Up processes suck
Signing up is slick, Facebook Connect - remembers you for the long term. Then finishing the sign up is a bit of a game in creating your own character, which is a nice easy process.

Problem- Actually connecting with people after the experience
You can reveal your mask at the end of it, such a nice simple fit with the whole superhero theme

They have a created a number of nice solutions/mechanics which I will be taking and using in future projects.

Q: What's after Social Media? A: Social Data Curating

2011-08-02T00:34:00.000+10:00

You know when three of the biggest Digital agencies in America start putting out projects using the same technique that something is about to change. CP+B, R/GA and Zeus Jones have all created Social Data Curated projects for brands in the last 3 months and it feels like it might be a growing trend.

We have come to a point where we have so much data thanks to Social Media and there is a real opportunity to make this data meaningful. Enter Social Data Curating - the ability to take these numbers of present it back as a by product that adds value to consumers.

Social was always a difficult one for Digital Agencies to get their heads around, they needed to get new resource in, Community Managers etc, the metrics for success were quite different. However the current trend of Social Data Curated Projects in which Agencies are now creating products/applications/websites lets coders and developers get back front and centre and involved in Social. The following are three projects that are going down this road.

CP+B and Jello

Jello Pudding Face aggregates the number of :) and :( tweets and then in turn effects their Jello Pudding Face meter, which is also a billboard. When the global voice goes :( they start giving away pudding to the people who have tweeted :( to try and make them happy again. Great tie into sampling, CP+B were also great at doing this with Kraft Mac + Cheese which gave away the product when two people tweet Mac and Cheese at the same time.

R/GA and Nike Basketball

Nike Basketball have arranged their athletes in terms of the how many tweet per hour that player gets, so that the data visualisation captures who are the most popular players of the moment.

Zeus Jones and Cheerios

Cheerios have taken the data around what people were searching for on the internet around Cheerios and made their website to answer those questions

Design for Entrepreneurs and Hackers

2011-07-26T11:08:00.003+10:00

I did a great course 'Design for Entrepreneurs and Hackers' at General Assembly when I first arrived in NYC. The course was run by Jack Cheng and David Cole from Disrupto and I have finally got around to doing a write up on it.

They have got a solid framework on what makes good design. The basis of their theory is that good design is making and breaking patterns to achieve desired outcomes. A large portion of the course was talking about patterns. Patterns are recurring solutions that solve common design problems. They are shortcuts that people understand, similar to schemas. They had a number of great resources on patterns for mobile and web;

Mobile
Pttrns
Mobile UI Patterns

Web
Pattern Tap
Welie (User need patterns)
Yahoo's Patterns

Here is a great site on Dark Patterns, they are patterns that deceive the user, if you have ever had that feeling that a design is being tricky, then there is probably a case study on this site of where it has hurt a company online.

When designing anything for online they suggested there were three layers that designers needed to think about - Product Strategy, Product User Interface and Visual Design, within these you want one of these objects to be remarkable and then the others to be patterns that people are familiar with.

On a side not, on a scale of 1 to mind blowing how good is the K-Swiss/Kenny Powers entertainment????

Digital Strategy Training Guide - Using Social for Insights Mining

2011-07-13T12:48:00.006+10:00

This is the second chapter of my MacGyver Digital Strategy Handbook

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Introduction
One of the oldest forms of Marketing Research is Discourse Analysis, the study of the written word. With the advent of Social Media it has given marketers, the opportunity to capture real time conversations. Understanding how people will talk about your brand/product/category can be very insightful and help to uncover new territories for the brand.

Tools to be used
Keywords Discovery
List all the names for the product and the category, using Google Search Insights (Similar Search) you will also uncover other words that people use to search for you product. Create a list of these words.

Social Media Mining
Once you have worked out your keywords it is now time to mine Social Media sites to find out what people are saying around these topics. The important thing here is to look out for common themes, start transferring all the data to an excel spreadsheet, using common theme tags to highlight the theme.

There are a number of great tools that you can use to do this.

OpenFacebook - Allows you to see what people have been writing in their Facebook Status Updates, it is estimated that about 3% of the FB population have open accounts, this still gives a good idea of how people are speaking about the product.

Example – Pens

Twiter Search - Check the search terms in twitter, the great thing about Twitter is that it shows the most tweeted tweets using those key terms. This will help uncover the common themes.

Example – Pens

Facebook Search - One of the great things about Facebook is that anyone can set up a Page/Group, what has happened is that a number of people have set up what is called 'Statement Pages' which are small everyday truths. Understanding what people agree on around a topic can be very insightful. Use the search bar and then narrow the search by looking at ‘Groups and Pages’ for those keywords.

Example – Pens

Disrupt Something And Do It Now - Guest Post from James Aviaz

2011-06-15T09:48:00.002+10:00

James Aviaz is a Community Manager at Uber NYC

The new darlings of the tech world, and rightly so, are so-called 'disruptive' companies. Heck, New York just played host to a 3-day conference called Techcrunch Disrupt.

So, what makes a disruptive company? Essentially, these disruptors are taking old, broken industries and using innovative tech to fix their problems. Along the way, most of these companies come up against regulatory issues, requiring them to show serious cojones and nimble thinking.

These companies are also revered for their revenue models - they take real money for real services. Something most startups only dream of when asked: 'So, how are you going to monetise this thing?'

Here's a selection of disruptive companies to check out:

1. Square

Founded by Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Square turns any iPhone or iPad into a mobile credit card machine. With a card reader attachment plugged into your audio jack, you can literally take card payments anywhere / any time. Square takes 2.75% of each transaction. Yep, it's fucking genius.

2. Uber

Ever tried getting a yellow taxi in San Francisco? It's a nightmare. Two entrepreneurs Garrett Camp (StumbleUpon) and Travis Kalanick (Red Swoosh) took the challenge on-board and turned a dormant, disparate network of luxury cars into a fully-functioning yellow taxi alternative. Now in NYC, Uber has Seattle, DC, Boston and Chicago next in its sights.

(Disclosure: I'm the Community Manager for Uber in NYC).

3. Airbnb

Starting as a marketplace for finding air mattresses to crash on people's floor, Airbnb founded by Brian Chesky has in the last two years become a genuine hotel alternative. Apartment owners list their cribs online for short-term rentals, and then savvy travellers snap up the awesome rooms. Just raised $100m with a valuation of $1bn. NBD.

4. Skillshare

Americans pay a shitload to go to college with diminishing returns, so Mike Karnjanaprakorn decided to 'start an education revolution'. His contention is that college success does not equal long-term job success, so he's building a learning marketplace where students take take highly-targeted classes at competitive prices.

Now ask yourself: What makes you facepalm each day? What industries are broken? What can you fix?

At a time when the tech world is on the verge an IPO bender, disruptive companies are poised to make a lot of noise. Disrupt something and do it now.

List of Australians in NYC Ad Agencies

2011-06-05T10:15:00.015+10:00

It feels like there is a lot of Australians over in NYC doing interesting things. I decided to give a little bit more visibility to who is over here and created a list of Australians who were working at Advertising Agencies over here.

George Gallate, Global Chairman at Euro RSCG
Nick Law, EVP and Chief Creative Officer at R/GA
David Droga, Founder and Creative Chairman at Droga5
Julie Atherton, Global Digital Leader at WPP Team Colgate
Jane Barratt, President of Young and Rubicam
Matt Eastwood, Chief Creative Officer at DDB
Mark Pollard, Director of Planning Innovation at Saatchi and Saatchi
Jonny Baeur, Head of Strategy at Droga5
Neil Heymann, Interactive Creative Director at Droga5
Matt Donovan, MP at McCann
Matt Turnbull, VP of Mobile at Tigerspike
Alexander Chung, Senior Strategist at Undercurrent
Aisea Laungaue , Planning Director at Anomaly
Kat Wong , Senior Strategic Planner, BBDO
Melanie Wiese, Senior Planner, Grey
Andrew Boal, Creative Director, Digitas
Sammi Needham, Creative Director R/GA
Paul Dery, Associate Creative Director, R/GA
Lauren Bugeja, Senior Interaction Designer at R/GA
Pon Kattera, Senior Interaction Designer and Digital Strategist at R/GA
Glenn Rogers, Interactive Senior Producer, Razorfish
Alex Bodman, Associate Creative Director, Razorfish
Kate Gwynne, Community Inspirer at McGarry Bowen
Coco Caspersz, Associate Director at Ogilvy Interactive
Andy Catchaturyan, Interactive Designer
Alex Trevor, Account Director at The Barbarian Group
Lexi Peters, Communication Specialist at The Barbarian Group
Ben Clare, Copywriter at Johannes Leonardo
Gemma Pollard, Global Communication Manager at JWT NYC
Karl Stanton, Senior Developer at HUGE
Tom Markham, Digital ECD at Lowe and Partners
Julian Cole, Strategy Director at BBH NYC
Michaella Solar-March, Splendid
Leo Premutico, Co-founder at Johannes Leonardo
Matt Jones, SVP Strategy and Creative at Jack Morton Worldwide
Michael Canning, Creative Director/SVP at Leo Burnett
Kieran Antill, Creative Director/SVP at Leo Burnett
Robertino Zambrano, Art Director at RGA
Anthony Moss, Group Creative Director, Managing Partner at Gotham Inc
Laura Agricola-Moss, VP Management Supervisor, USA at MRM Worldwide NYC
David Ahrom Hong, Sr. Art Director at Saatchi & Saatchi New York
Brad Cohen, Design Director at BBDO NY
Lara Abelsohn, Business Manager at Saatchi & Saatchi NY
Thorsten Hayer, Experience Design Director at AKQA
Hana Nguyen, Senior Producer at Rapp Collins Worldwide
Gully Flowers, Account Supervisor at Berlin Cameron
Mark Davies, Technical Lead at mcgarrybowen
Cameron Dunnet, Copywriter at Interbrand
Dani Simpson, Account Director at Berlin Cameron

Media Agencies, Client Side and start ups
Ed Sanders , Global Marketing Manager, Creative Lab at Google
Nat Ma, Director of Digital Marketing at Burberry
Emily Butler, Associate Director of Digital Marketing, Sony
Mitchell Holder, Insights and Planning at Sony Music's Global Insights Labs
Sarah Fitzgerald, Digital Account Manager at Sony Music US
Paull Young, Director of Digital at Charity Water
Gary Hardwick, CEO of Ikon3
James Aviaz, Community Manager at Uber NYC
Fiona McIndoe, Client Sales Manager at Specific Media
Sarah James, Associate Media Director at Mediacom
Richard Christiansen, Founder and Creative Director of Chandelier
Amelia Trumble, Executive Director at Mac Cosmetics
Ross McNab, Director of Global Business Development at MediaMind
Mick O'Brien, VP Sales & Client Service North America at MediaMind
Annabel Rawson, Global Smirnoff Experience Director at Diageo
Malcolm Carfrae - Head of Global Communications, Calvin Klein
Matt Sproul, Director of Marketing at Redken 5th Avenue

I have made it into a Twitter List which you can follow it is called the 'E3 Winners', 30+ Australians working in Digital/Strategy at NYC Ad Agencies.

Let me know if there is anyone I have left off the list and I will add them

MacGyvers Digital Strategy Training Guide

2011-06-02T07:15:00.008+10:00

So this break between jobs has been really good, I have been able to really have a think about the processes that I use in my job and what the hell I actually do and how I articulate that.

One of the good things that I have started to do is map out the insights mining process that I go through for a brief. I am actually going to write an e-book on the process and I am also thinking about making it into a course, I presented some of this thinking at Strateday, but there is heaps of courses like Skillshare that I am thinking I could teach this through.

Anyway I am calling it the MacGyver's Digital Strategy Training Guide. The aim is to be able to come up with killer insights using only free tools that are at your disposal (including your brain). I have got three pillars – Discourse Analysis, Relationship Mapping and Capital Auditing.

Here is a small excerpt to the Relationship Mapping chapter, every chapter is going to be based on one of my favourite marketing/sociology academics and then have two to three exercises with how you can draw insights. This chapter is based on Susan Fournier.

1. RELATIONSHIP MAPPING

Introduction
Marketing academic Susan Fournier came up with an interesting discovery in 1998, she found that people have relationships with brands the same way that they have relationships with other people. She suggested that there were a number of different styles of relationships that people had with brands from seeing a brand similar to your best mate to being your father.

What you need – Target Market Profile

Tools to be used
Relationship Peaking
Think about the target markets life and the major life moments that they have, what role does the brand play in these interactions. Map from life to death what role does that product or service play with the target market.

Relationship Mapping for BIC pens
In this example I take the product of a pen. As you can see there are a number of massive times in a persons life that they share with a pen. From getting your pen license, to signing your first job contract. This should help give you some ideas going into a brainstorm of territories you might want to go down.

More about Susan Fournier

While Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School Susan wrote her seminal paper on Brand relationship. Prior to that Susan was a VP and Director at Young & Rubicam Advertising; she also held positions in marketing research at Yankelovich and marketing/advertising at Polaroid Corporation. She now is currently the Associate Professor of Marketing at Bsoton University.
Read Susan Fournier journal article 'Consumers and their brands - Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research'

Any thoughts? Ways that I could make it better or things I should think about?

Zagging NYC – My new job in NYC

2011-05-23T14:15:00.001+10:00

So one part of the NYC puzzle has been solved. On Friday I signed on with BBH New York. My new role is Strategy Director and I will be leading the Digital Strategy for Sprite, Axe (Lynx), British Airways and Baileys. There were three things that attracted me to BBH, the people, the clients and the company.

People
I will be working under Saneel Radia who is the Chief Innovation Officer at BBH. He had the idea for the new role which will make me a mixture of both Strategy and Creative working very closely with the creative teams for the different brands.

There is a number of really smart Strategy people at BBH that I am really looking forward to learning from, a few that I have already met that are on the Twitters – Griffin Farley, Heidi Hackemer , Dating Brian, Colleen Leddy and definitely follow BBH Labs

Clients
I am really excited to be working on Axe, I think they have done some really great stuff in the past few years. The other massive positive is that Old Spice has brought a lot of digital creativity to the category and no doubt Axe will probably be looking to really hit back with something great this year.

The other big one for me is Sprite, I loved working with Coca-Cola at TCO and one of my favourite projects to date was at Naked, 'Sprite Truth Hunters'. Also I am a sucker for hip hop music, I was a massive fan of their work with Drake. So heres to hoping Mac Miller is the next face of Sprite!

They are also doing some really great work on Google Chrome at the moment.

Company
I had always admired BBH for the innovation that they brought to the Advertising Agency model. One of the things that I was most influenced by was BBH Labs and their Internship program (BBH Barn). I took the idea of their labs and brought it to TCO with TCO Labs. They also have a great business called BBH Zag, which is a brand invention business. They create and launch brands that they think are awesome. Almost like a small venture capital company.

So as you can probably tell, I am stoked to start working at BBH.

Learning the Social Principles of an Idea

2011-05-10T06:09:00.003+10:00

I am seeing a lot of Digital/Creative Agency structures now being set up so that graduates come into the business as Community Managers and then work on to being Social Media Strategist/Account Manager. I think that there is a ceiling for anyone who is going to work in Social Media at an Agency however I think that employees who have worked at the coalface in Social Media have a real edge when it comes to being a full service Strategist.

Whether they know it or not, working in Social Media helps you to have a greater understanding of the Social Principles to an idea. The Social Principles of an idea is the understanding of how people react to ideas, content and media not just consume it. Releasing small ideas everyday to the target market and gauging their reactions is an invaluable learning curve (E.g status updates and the reaction in comments and likes to that ideas). These learning then better inform the next idea you go with.

That response model from your consumer is something that is sometimes missing from traditional ideas where you can make a whole campaign and the only persons reaction you are after is your internal team and the client.

So when the next generation of Community Managers start flexing their strategic muscle over other forms of media, I believe we are going to see really strong social ideas that are taking into consideration the reaction from consumers not just the way they will consume the message.

Another phase of Social Networking

2011-05-04T15:17:00.003+10:00

This is a guest post by Grace Gordon who is a Social Media Manager/Strategist at Soap Creative
Much is often speculated of ‘the next phase’ in social media: what comes after Facebook. We’ve watched previous social networks rise, experience a glory period and then a decline. I know everyone has their 2 cents on when and if this will happen to Facebook, but I thought I would throw my view out to the world and see what comes back.

In the last 6 months I have observed a radical shift amongst my peer group pulling back from social media. They still use it heavily, but there is a stronger emphasis on privacy. Many of my close friends have turned off their Facebook walls and opted to password protect their twitter accounts. The networks have become less of an exhibition and sharing space, and more of a necessity to stay in touch with people.

What is being picked up in lieu of the all-encompassing Facebook is a tighter-knit alternative to social networks: my creative friends interact via comments and ‘likes’ on Instagram. Other friends socialize via matches of Words With Friends and playful accompanying banter in the Chat box. Instead of texting, Facebook chat and messaging or otherwise, we’ll have private group chats on WhatsApp. It’s a return to a smaller, more engaged network rather than the beast that is Facebook.

What does this mean for brands? Probably not to rely simply on being involved in the space with the greatest reach, but to ensure you are active in smaller and more relevant networks to your niche.

Is anyone else noticing a shift away from the larger networks?

What do you see being picked up in your peer group?

NYC bound, Miss u Sydney/Melbourne

2011-04-08T13:43:00.004+10:00

In early May I am making a move over to NYC. I am super excited as in my eyes it is where a lot of the culture that I am influenced by comes from and in terms of work it really feels like I could get some amazing opportunities with a number of smart people in the city and the chance to work on global accounts.

It will be hard leaving Sydney, I have had a great 2 and half years here and really love the city. I am a sucker for the amazing weather and all the different beaches. Thanks to everyone who I have worked with over the last two years. It was not easy moving to here and it was all thanks to the people I met through Social Media Coffee, Gutter Club and around the traps that made it so easy.

If you have any tips or people that you think I should meet, shoot me an email julianwcole@gmail.com

What site does Google predict after one letter?

2011-04-07T11:35:00.005+10:00

With Google now predicting as you type, I thought it would be interesting to see what comes up after one letter. This is for an Australian search, I am having a guess when I say that I think that it would be based on traffic to these websites as opposed to SEO (I looked at Google Insights on search traffic but that did not support the findings). It is interesting to see that Lasoo got up there for the letter 'L' it would suggest that you should probably look for a starting letter with not much competition if you were choosing a brand name which obviously would have low awareness.

A - ANZ
B -BOM Bureau of Meteorology
C- Centrelink
D-Domain
E-Ebay
F-Facebook
G-Google
H-Hotmail
I-iTunes
J -Jetstar
K-Kmart
L-Lasoo
M- Myer
N-Netbank (Commonwealth Bank)
O - Optus
P-Paypal
Q-Qantas
R-RTA (Road and Traffic Authority)
S-Seek
T-Telstra
U-UAC - University Admission Centre
V-Virgin Blue
W- Wotif
X-xe
Y-Youtube
Z -Zmail - UNSW Email

Canv.as - The ultimate tool for young creatives (Part 2)

2011-03-30T13:20:00.000+11:00

Another strength of Canvas for creatives is the way that it reflects the ideas process within agencies. Ideas are usually thrown around at agencies and are built on and changed a number of times. The backbone for Canvas is that you can consistently remix ideas.

The system of contributing is very easy too, working on a very similar system to MS Paint which means that most people can get involved with the system. Here is a great speech from Moot explaining Canvas at SXSWi.

TCO's Rhys Edwards has already had success with one of his images Hipster Libyan trending on canv.as and getting over 110,000 views on Reddit in 24 hours. I have two invites for Canv.as so let me know if you are looking for one

Canv.as - The ultimate tool for young Digital Creatives (Part 1)

2011-03-21T11:48:00.000+11:00

Canvas is the new project from 4chan founder Moot, It is a SFW version of 4Chan and heaps more. The best thing about it is that they have a reward system where people can vote for their favourite pieces of content by giving them ‘stickers’.

This feedback system presents a great opportunity for future Digital Creatives. It helps to give feedback on their ideas/remixes. I believe this will help to sharpen the brains of Creatives to be more on point. Canvas has a specific audience – a conservative 4chan audience, so it is the job of the creative to work out what is going to trigger this audience.

7 killer examples of online to offline campaings

2011-03-11T10:29:00.003+11:00

The other week IdeaWorks launched Improve your plant/life balance, this is a great exmple of offline to online action integration. I love when there is a clear role for both online and offline within a campaign and when one area can affect the other. One of the areas of interest for me is where we can have online actions that impact offline events. The following is a list of 7 such cases;

1. Selector3000
A lot of great ideas happen on company time here is a great one from DTDigital, every present you picked up and transported into the sack, $20 was donated to charity.

2. Vodafone Pinata
People got to choose what move they used to smash the piñata, great execution that got people coming back to the Application waiting to see if the damn thing had burst.

3. Sydney Festival Your Names in Lights
People could sign in and ask for their name to be put up in lights. This seemed to have big traction with people posting photos to Facebook of their name in lights. A simple idea that worked well because the value of having your name in lights is quite high on the novelty factor.

4. Mentos Intern / Kit Kat Desk Jockey
Two very similar campaigns, where you could get a man to do anything for you, from making a restaurant booking to singing you a song.

5. David on Demand
Leo Burnetts sent Recruiter David along to Cannes. The only catch is that he would be completely controlled by the Internet. He would do absolutely anything that you wanted him to do, he even got a Fail Whale tattoo.

6. Nike Bot

7. Old Spice
Token entry

Selling clothes through Facebook

2011-03-03T11:14:00.001+11:00

Vintage Marketplace is a Facebook Page of 24,000+ fans which is selling vintage clothes online. The admins post up photos of items they have for sale with punters being able to put a ‘sold’ in the comments under the item they want.

This is the first time I have seen this style of e-commerce through Facebook, I can imagine it probably contravenes some Facebook guidelines (probably the one about contacting people directly) however I think it is awesome what they have done here. It also makes for an interesting predicament because Facebook have been allowing Ads from Vintage Marketplace so they would probably be liable for the money they have invested.

With the idea of posting items up as photos and seeing all the items which have been commented on as ‘Sold’ it creates a feeling of scarcity with the items. Hence people feeling like they have to rush to get the purchases.

Check out Julian Lee’s succinct wrap up of the whole topic here.

Branded content without the brand

2011-02-23T11:42:00.001+11:00

Rear View Girls is such a great idea. However what is the point of making a clip like this and getting 5 million views if you cannot even talk about the brand?

According to Colenso BBDO ‘Levi's tells us it's the fastest, most successful viral campaign Levi's has ever done, and it's only just started, so we're pretty chuffed.’

I cant see how this is the most successful campaign when there is no talk about the brand. The thing about Youtube is that no one uses the ‘subscribe’ functionality so that they will no longer come back to hear the full story when the brand is revealed.

A great way of integrating the brand into the clip is with the latest clip for Nike’s Black Mumba clip where they even suggest that product placement gives us a bigger budget. Bigger budget, bigger explosions (1:38). In the clip it seems to work with the style of narrative that they have chosen to tell the story with.

I dont think that people care if it is branded content as long as it is entertaining.

Five point Social Media idea checklist

2011-02-14T17:59:00.002+11:00

A few questions to ask yourself before going ahead with that Digital/Social idea

1. The real pass on question
The usual question people ask themselves with online content is, will people pass this on? The question should really be what are the people going to write/say when they pass this on. What will it look like in a status update.

2. Working off schemas
Using Schema as shortcuts. Use things that people are familiar with.

3. Is it tapping into a tension points
Try to find something that will raise a debate/engage the audience. Will talk more about this in another blog post

4. 10 second rule
Everyone suffer from ADHD when it comes to online, you need to capture their attention in the first 10 seconds. If they don’t get the idea by then, you have probably lost them.

5. Insurance policy
As Social Media evolves the risk of having an idea that bombs is less and less likely or harder to detect as brands can now buy media to make sure that the idea get seen by the target audience. Make sure you have the insurance policy on the table when signing off the budget.

Cultural Touchstones and ImMrTeddy

2011-02-03T11:46:00.000+11:00

Cultural touchstones are moments and objects that define a generation of people. Online is playing a large part in creating new cultural touchstones for Australian teens (here is a great post on memes as cultural touchstones).

The latest hype in the Australian Vlogger community is around the 17 year old boy Im Mr Teddy, he is on the observational humour train, doing rants. However what I like about his content is that he is has gone around talking about the cultural touchstones for teens in Australia e.g Facebook, Public Transport and High School. Whether he is funny or not is debatable but what he is good at is giving great insights into 13-17 year olds in Australia.

The theory of nostalgia and Australia's biggest Page

2011-01-25T11:52:00.000+11:00

The biggest Australian Facebook Brand Page is Bubble O'Bill Ice Cream with over 850,000 fans, maybe a little surprising at first as they do not seem to have a strong brand or digital leaning. However one explanation for this is nostalgia.

According to the great blog Psychology of video games which looked at nostalgia in videos games,

‘Research suggests that we engage in nostalgia because it has psychological benefits. It makes us happy and improves our state of mind, especially when we need that kind of mental pick-me-up.’

We seem to engage in nostalgia specifically to make us feel better suggests that we may be unconsciously biased towards remembering things that make us happy and against remembering the things that don’t. We have a remarkable propensity towards that kind of thing.

An additional wrinkle in memory’s landscape is that the emotional footprints of positive memories tend to fade more slowly than those of negative ones.'

So it is good news for you if you have a nostalgic brand.

Soap Creative who look after the Bubble O Bill Page just came out with a great Dummies guide for Facebook Pages that is well worth a read.

Facebook Brand Pages For Dummies

View more presentations from Soap Creative.

The rise of the Digital Cypher

2011-01-11T11:03:00.000+11:00

I love Youtube Highest Rated Comments.

One interesting side effect to this is the increase in “digital cyphers”. A digital cypher is when Youtubers freestyle rap in the comments section over the music video clip that is playing, usually these are over instrumental beat to a famous song (examples here here here). Highest rated comments motivates people to rap comments as the best ones will be ‘liked’ and go to the top of the page and showcased to everyone else who is viewing that video.

4PM is the best time for a Facebook Update

2010-12-21T13:55:00.000+11:00

TCO Labs came out with their first report on Facebook the other day it has some great findings for anyone who is looking after a Facebook Page. One of the things that was always surprising to me was the lack of industry benchmarks around Facebook Pages. Hopefully this goes some way to providing some.

So here are the highlights of the research;

The industry benchmark for the number of responses (likes and comments) to a status update is 0.15%, however what we noticed was that it changed depending on the category. Alcohol brands got the highest response with an average of 0.21% and Entertainment clost behind on 0.20%, the worst performing category was Food and Beverage which was 0.07%

The best time to go out with an update was 4-5PM however this changed depending on the product, alcohol was better with night updates 6-9PM.

You can download the report here for free from The Conscience Organisation Facebook Page.

Top 5 Australian Memes/Virals of 2010

2010-12-16T11:01:00.000+11:00

5. Alf Stewart's Rape Dungeon

4. Crazy old man barking like a dog

3. Awkward Lean

2. Jaydos

1. Kate's Party

Industry Blogging slowing up

2010-12-07T11:10:00.000+11:00

One thing I noticed when I was compiling the Top 50 Blogs was the lack of posts from bloggers who were on the list, I did a quick check of people who were on blogspot and had yearly post counts and amongst the bloggers, I found that there was a 40% drop in posts from 2009. This was a common theme when it came to the comments on the list as well.

I think Industry blogging in Australia is on the decline for three reasons.

Twitter
Twitter is now taking away a lot of the short form of blogging, if you have a cool link that you want to share with your audience you will release it on Twitter rather than blogging it anymore.

Mumbrella and the news sites
Mumbrella, Digital Buzz Blog, B&T, AdNews and Campaign Brief are all doing an amazing job at reporting on the day to day of the digital advertising industry. I think there was a time when the digital industry probably felt like they did not have anywhere to go to hear about the latest news relating to their industry, now they do.

The Social Media hype is dying
There was a lot of hype around Social Media when it first really took precedence (late 2008- 2009) amongst the early adopters. People loved to chat about the theory and it felt like it was moving so fast. However now I feel like we have had a year or two with not much change.

Anyone else got any clues to why it is slowing up? My feeling would be that this is actually happening across the whole Australian blogosphere, does anyone has any stats on what is happening?

2010 Top 50 Australian Marketing Blogs

2010-11-22T22:05:00.002+11:00

Blog Name		Pioneer Score	Google Reader	Alexa Score	Total
1	Digital Buzz Blog	9	7	9	25
2	Mumbrella	9	5	9	23
3	Bannerblog	7	7	9	23
4	The Inspiration Room	7	6	9	22
5	Campaign Brief	7.5	5	9	21.5
6	Marketing Magazine	8	4	8	20
7	Servant of Chaos	9	4	7	20
8	B&T	6.5	4	9	19.5
9	Laurel Papworth	7	4	8	19
10	Young PR	8	3	8	19
11	Personalize Media	7.5	3	8	18.5
12	Adspace-Pioneers	8	4	6	18
13	Better Communication Results	7	5	6	18
14	Media Hunter	8	3	7	18
15	Amnesia Blog	5.5	5	7	17.5
16	Life. Then Strategy	8	3	6	17.5
17	Online Marketing Banter	8	3	6	17
18	acidlabs	8	3	6	17
19	Talking Digital	8	3	6	17
20	Consumer Psychologist	8	4	5	17
21	Brand DNA	8	4	5	17
22	Digital-Media	8	1	8	17
23	Get Shouty	8.5	3	5	16.5
24	Gold Coast Web Designers	6	3	7	16
25	Shifted Pixels	7	2	7	16
26	A perspective	8	2	6	16
27	Angus Whines	7	3	6	16
28	Dan Pankraz	8	3	5	16
29	WayCoolJnr	8	3	5	16
30	AdNews	8	0	8	16
31	Publicis Digital	7.5	3	5	15.5
32	Gourmet Ads	7	1	7	15
33	PR Warrior	8	2	5	15
34	FRANKthoughts	8	2	5	15
35	PR Disasters	7	3	5	15
36	Matthew Gain	8	1	6	15
37	Zakazukhazoo	6.5	1	7	14.5
38	EcioLab	7.5	2	5	14.5
39	Corporate Engagement	6.5	3	5	14.5
40	Dominique Hind Collective	7	2	5	14
41	Tim Longhurst	6.5	2	5	13.5
42	Pigs Don’t Fly	7.5	2	4	13.5
43	The Flasher	8.5	1	4	13.5
44	Three Billion	6	1	6	13
45	Marketing Easy	6	1	6	13
46	Who is in conrtol of your b****	8	1	4	13
47	Sticky Ads	6.5	0	6	12.5
48	Mark Neely's Blog	7.5	1	4	12.5
49	Business of Marketing and Branding	6.5	2	4	12.5
50	CIIMS	7	1	4	12

Welcome to the 2010 Top 50 Australian Marketing Blogs, I have made a few amendments since last time. I have taken out the Technorait Authority and Reactions because lately Technorati has been inconsistent. Instead of Google Page Rank, I have now gone to Google RSS Subscribers. I have also cut the list back to the Top 50 rather than the Top 164.

If you think that you should be in the Top 50, AKA If you go to Alexa and your blog is in the top 1,000,000 and you have more than 250 RSS Subscribers please email me at julianwcole (at) gmail.com

Guest Post: The Crusaders of happiness

2010-11-15T22:13:00.001+11:00

Nicola Swankie is an Account Director at Host and an active member of the Sydney Community Managers Meet-Up and writes the great blog Happiness we share

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want." (Zig Ziglar)
(HT to Scott Drummond for sharing this quote)

Brand communities have been around for years, Tupperware parties, Harley Davidson conventions, I believe I may have even been a member of the Spice Girls fan club somewhere back in 1990s… Even things like your favourite coffee shop or the fact you spark a conversation with another Mum at playgroup about the fact you both have the same brand of buggy.

People connect around brands they like because we enjoy finding people who like or use the same stuff as us in our lives. This stuff is part of our identities, how we view ourselves as people. So having that in common with someone else helps us connect, which is great, because as human beings connection and feeling like we belong makes us happier people.

The internet has made this all even easier.
“The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all, but instead what its allowed, is silos of interest.”
Seth Godin – Tribes TED talk Feb 2009

Now we’re seeing more and more brand communities emerge online. What urls are the ones you go back to time and time again? My Dad spends more time on findafishingboat.com than watching TV now. These silos of interest, have become the places in which we like to spend our time and we want to connect with the communities we find there.

“The point is you can find Ukrainian folk dancers, and connect with them, cause you wanna be connected”
Seth Godin – Tribes TED talk Feb 2009

But, communities need people to lead and facilitate them. It can happen organically, but generally there needs to be people building a sense of community around these interest points. How do you make sure your communities stay thriving and happy? Dipping back into my university Social Science books I found this definition, even though it was written in 1986 – I still found it very relevant for what is going on today.
Sense of Community - McMillan & Chavis theory (1986)
Membership
Membership includes five attributes:
▪ boundaries
▪ emotional safety
▪ a sense of belonging and identification
▪ personal investment
▪ a common symbol system
Influence
Influence works both ways: members need to feel that they have some influence in the group, and some influence by the group on its members is needed for group cohesion.
Integration and fulfillment of needs
Members feel rewarded in some way for their participation in the community.
Shared emotional connection
The "definitive element for true community" (1986, p. 14), it includes shared history and shared participation (or at least identification with the history)
My favourite barista does all of this brilliantly in his business, making me feel completely at home in his shop every time I pop by and I always leave with a smile on my face.
So taking these principles and thinking about what we like to experience in real life, who’s doing this for our online communities?

Community Managers are the people working hard in the online communities you are a part of, perhaps without you even realizing. They are the ones managing and building that sense of community, fulfilling their members needs, solving problems, answering questions and dealing with the inevitable frustrations we have too. But the thing I love the most about all the Community Managers I know? They are the most passionate people I have ever met about making people happy.

You know how you have that one friend, that no matter what’s happened they have some sort of amazing ability to see the bright and seem to thrive on helping people solve their problems? That’s them.

I am lucky enough to get to hang out with these happy people on a monthly basis at the Sydney Community Managers Meet-Up. We had our latest meet-up this week and had a pretty open discussion about just what online Community Management was all about. A multitude of areas were covered, but what came through strongly was their shared motivation in why they do what they do. Their collective desire to create emotional connections with people, not just problem solve for them, relishing the challenge to turn haters into champions, to create places of play and relaxation and overall to make and keep their communities happy.

With more people choosing to spend time in online communities, there’s a big opportunity for brands now to become something more than just a service or a product provider for their customers. Threadless are one brand who are now placing more importance on their community rather than the sale. Zappos are another famous for their community approach. Whilst this may not be realistic for every brand, I think it does demonstrate a positive shift. Yes, some brands have practicalities with their products and operational service issues that will inevitably bring negative sentiment into communities, but when problems are aired in this space with proactive people trying to solve them, done right, it can have a positive effect.

Overall, it is really exciting to see brands realising the potential they have to make a difference to people through enabling connection, and with the work of the Community Managers, make these communities a positive place to strive for happiness for the greater community, a community that includes the business too.

8th Century Homeric memes and how they affect your social media strategy

2010-11-04T10:06:00.000+11:00

This is a guest post by Michael Goldstein, follow him on twitter at MickeyG77

In the 8th Century BC Homer’s Iliad was communicated to the public via Bardic tunes; organized so that they were particularly easy to remember and pass on. Interestingly this communication form is not dissimilar to how information is disseminated today. The only difference is that instead of rhythmic passages, today’s information is condensed into simply recalled tweets. In this post I am going to examine the advantages and disadvantages of compressing information into more palatable forms.

In Plato’s ‘Republic’, the author viciously attacks the rhythmic communication form, asserting instead that facts and information are lost through the oral tradition, whereby poetic expression becomes a fractured product of various sub-collective psyches and mores. Put simply; one orator would deliver a poem to a crowd, that crowd would then internalize that particular poet’s version of the poem and proceed to spread it, ultimately resulting in many versions of the same story travelling throughout the Greek empire. This, incidentally, is remarkably similar to the re-tweet system: one influential twitter account will be re-tweeted by many, going on to form disparate echo chambers as certain groups within the twitter community are exposed to a selection of ‘truths’ on any particular issue.

Such poetic delivery is known as mimetic form, a technique that exploits rhythm, meter and other techniques to achieve a desired affect (read: influence) from the listener. Similarly, today’s difficulty lies in the ability (or inability) to negate a tweet, the twitter form simply isn’t conducive to thorough debate and the only way to effectively argue against a tweet is to find a theoretically opposing blog post or other source and tweet that, however this will only be received by your followers not the followers of the initial tweeter. Hence a fracturing within and amongst online communities occurs.

Today we witness a return to the mimetic form. Not unlike the way in which ancient poetry was altered and modified from listener to listener due to the lack of concrete, written texts, today’s internet texts are revised from person to person as a result of remix and meme culture. Interestingly then, despite living in what has been generally dubbed the most advanced era for information intercourse to date, we find ourselves returning to archaic modes of communication!

Ironically, this seems to be the only way to rationalize the overwhelming and ever changing nature of information availability on the internet. Here is a small, simple example: two of the facebook pages that I manage have completely different ‘rules’ of engagement. For instance, one forum is appropriate to an older audience, which means that the most effective time to post is often completely different to that of the other page, which garners an audience of mainly under 18 year olds. This is because one page has socially active fans, meaning that all our engagement feedback is usually seen within an hour of posting, whereas on the less socially active page the likes and comments keep rolling in for up to 12 hours after posting. This can be attributed to the fact that the fewer friends one page has, the longer our post remains prominent on their newsfeed. So in this case it is clear that there is not one correct rule for receiving feedback, but rather two equally valid ‘truths’. Hence, differing versions of the facebook poem are equally valid and must be heard accordingly.

In the digital landscape we still work very much in cowboy territory - there are no rules. This is why mimetic forms of communication are occurring on a more frequent basis; no one is privy to any concrete, universally applicable data, and if they say they are, chances are that they are probably getting ahead of themselves due to the fact that everything is changing so quickly, and numerous digital horses run on numerous digital courses. Mimetic communication, whilst recognised in ancient times as inferior, is possibly the only way to effectively communicate digital and social media knowledge today, as there is no single objective truth, but rather many, ever changing, competing and subjective ‘truths’, that will drastically shift between user experiences. The nature of history is such that it exists in constant repetition of itself, and the role of the Homeric Bard has risen once again - so instead of searching for a single definitive answer, take everything on board, and celebrate the return of the mimetic tradition.

Best Australian video content creators of 2010

2010-10-28T16:18:00.001+11:00

There is still a lacks of real depth to the Australian vlogging community, you could count the number of Youtubers who get over 10,000 views a month on one hand. So finding talent is a bit of a mission

However here is a group of awesome content creators getting up in 2010!

Jaydos is getting a lot of hype online at the moment, he has done some amazing videos lately

A steady performer is Alex Williamson who has a AFL comedy focus

My mate Kirk Docker from Vive Cool City just got put up for a Walkely for his piece on the Gang of 49

JerkSYD are bringing the Jerk style of dancing to Australia via the Youtubes

Six tips to nailing an internship

2010-10-20T16:30:00.000+11:00

Here are six things I have learnt along the way on how to nail it at an internship

1. Always bring a paper and pen to everything
It is such a small thing but makes the biggest difference, if someone rocks up to a meeting without a pen and paper I automatically think they are not taking notes and are going to forget everything I say. This pisses me off.

2. Match the style guidelines
Make sure you understand the style guidelines of the brand and follow it – what is the agencies font? How do they like to display pictures in powerpoint? No one likes having to clean up a presentation after you.

3. Present in front of the boss
One of the biggest factors to you getting hired will be if the boss likes you. Presenting in front of them will help to illustrate the good work that you are doing and show why you should be hired.

4. Do not leave at 5:30
I don’t care what you do, never leave at 5:30. Personally, It shows to me that you are not working hard enough and that you are clearly not committed. People notice when you leave at 5:30PM. Staying an extra half hour will make a difference.

5. Never say no
Be a yes man, people love to be around positive people who are always willing to help with absolutely anything.

6. Ask for feedback
On every piece of work you do, ask someone to give you genuine feedback on your work. Ask the question, ‘what could I do better on this piece of work?’

Anyone got any more tips?

I have a few super smart friends who are just about to finish their degrees and are looking for internships in creative agencies (account coordinator/junior strategist positions) in Melbourne. If anyone knows of anything going, please shoot me an email julianwcole@gmail.com

Twitter Lists as Social Capital

2010-10-14T11:00:00.000+11:00

When I did my thesis on Facebook Pyschology way back when. One of the areas I studied was the communication of Cultural Capital through Social Networks. Basically Sociologist Bourdieau came up with a theory that suggested that people were analysed on three criteria – their Social, Cultural and Economic Capital (read more here).

Social Capital is how valuable you are in terms of who you are friends with and how they can help out the person analyzing you. In terms of Social Networks, it was judged in two ways through Social Networks. First being how many friends you have and then who those friends were.

People have realized the power of this form of capital and have often tried to game it. With Twitter this has happened with a number of spammers running script so that they can inflate the number of followers they have (check the Top 100 Twitterers in Australia – you will see some questionable people in there). However one thing that helps people evaluate someones Social Capital on Twitter is lists, the number of lists that someone is in, usually gives a good indication whether they are gaming twitter or not.

Although lists seem useless to most, they do have their role in reference checkings someones Social Capital at the very least.

Smarties 8 Colours of Fun and the online narrative

2010-09-21T11:33:00.003+10:00

One of the latest project TCO have been working on is the Smarties 8 Colours of Fun campaign. One of the most important choices was how to structure the content. It was initially going to go out as episodes following all 8 artists at once, we made two changes to this, we put out episodes following one artist and child at a time and decided to release all the content at the start of the campaign.

Twelve months ago, I would of done the opposite. However one thing I have picked up on in the last few months is that stories told over time do not work online.

R.I.P The Online Narrative

You need to give the audience everything at once. Don’t think that they will come back to look for additions to your story, even if you have them hooked (via Facebook Liking, Youtube Sub or Twitter Follower). This has been supported by the fact that there has been a high number of cross over viewers from one video to the next, this out weights the number of views that could have been brought through the number of new subscribers.

If you are not following the campaign, become a fan at Smarties Australia

All you need to know about Apple iPing

2010-09-03T11:00:00.001+10:00

This is a guest post by TCO's Community Manager Michael Goldstein - follow his brain at @MickeyG77

Background
Before the internet people were living in a musical dictatorship run by the Radio. Because it was the only source of new music what they decided to play was what the public heard, and eventually, bought. This is why genres were so defined and strong, because people simply didn't have other options of musical discovery.
Then the internet came and changed all that, all of a sudden we are exposed to thousands of genres, it's no wonder that most people proclaim to 'love all types of music' on their Facebook profiles.

So with a plethora of music floating around, the question of how to organise all these tunes has been largely ignored. There are a myriad of blogs claiming to host the newest music, as well as Hype Machine which is organised by 'Hype' not taste and has been criticised by musical aficianados as a fast food musical outlet.

Facebook is one of the most popular places to share new music, with news feed's littered with poor quality YouTube clips of buzzbands. Twitter too has musical links shared till kingdom come to sites such as Soundcloud. However none of these platforms offer truly integrated music sharing and purchasing options.

What is Apple Bing?
The Apple Ping is Steve Jobs' latest software innovation that catapults Itunes into the social networking world. It's almost a hybrid of Facebook, Twitter and Itunes, a social site that revolves around music.

Users will be able to show off their musical taste and get credit for their online musical finds. Music lovers will no longer rely on a random and sometimes un-reliable feed of music from a blog, but can source musical inspiration from their friends. This site has the potential to totally remove the need for FM radio as not only will people, as they do now, discover music before it hits the airwaves, but they will also be able to purchase a high quality copy of it.

Logically it makes sense, people share so much music already online, this should be a seamless, streamlined way to do what people already love doing.

But will it work?
Apple does have the assets for a successful social network, 160 million Itunes users and the status as one of the most respected brands in the world will make it easy to attract users. They are also not trying to wipe out or even directly compete with Twitter and Facebook, both of which serve separately defined purposes. Interestingly this is where Ping's biggest problem lays, whether people have the capacity for three seperate social networks, is an interesting question that time will answer. The key to the success of Ping is how seamlessly it can integrate with other social networks, it could be a question as simple as how many steps it takes to move between networks, or a more complex psychological evaluation of social networking values.

Rising Talent of Youtube

2010-09-01T11:36:00.000+10:00

In February, I covered the rising talent on the 5 Rising Stars on Youtube Australia. When I saw the Justin Beiber cookie cutters, I also noticed a few new additions to the list.

Here is the new additions and a little on what they are doing.

6th Most Subscribed – Jayesslee (81k Subs)

Australian Korean Twins Jayesslee, sing covers and are good looking that is about it, probably helps that they are Hillsong as well – there is strong community support online for Hillsong artists.

13th Most Sub - Keshen (45k Subs)

Keshen does animated lego videos which are really high quality it is no wonder that he has such strong support. Great videos.

Dillonp23 (39k Subs)

Dillonp23 makes me think that there is a way to game subscribers because the content is pretty weak to say the least. His two latest videos have less than 9,000 views combined yet he has 39,000+ subscribers.

If you haven’t noticed they have changed the face of Youtube in the last week. It looks like they are trying to segment the content into four fields ‘Shows' (another names for channels), ‘Movies’, 'Music' and 'Videos'. This is going to have some massive effects on how videos and vloggers find their audience, so stay tuned for a post on it when I have some more time to analyse the effect.

What you need to know about Facebook 'Places' in Australia

2010-08-24T11:36:00.008+10:00

The basics
The way it will work will be similar to other geo-locating social apps such as Foursquare where you can notify your friends of where you are via digitally 'checking in' to physical locations. The difference with Facebook is that you can also tag your friends who are with you, making Facebook Places a more social geo-app than Foursquare.

Limitations
Places requires users to have Smart Phones, with only 5% of Australians accessing Social Networking site on their phones, I think we should proceed with caution in regards to the uptake of this functionality.

Edit:
According to Nielsen Internet and Technology Report 2009, 43% of Australian Internet users owned an Internet capable (“3G/Smartphone”) / which can mean Nokia N95 or iPhone or Blackberry at Dec-2009. Hat tip Sam Granleese

Also as Nic Hodges points out, that number of people accessing Social Networks from phones is closer to 18% (using Nielsen latest stats as a guide). That sounds about right to me.

Businesses and Facebook
You can also integrate a Facebook Page to Places (click here for tutorial), allowing you to further spread company presence and also show how popular your company is in the real world rather than simply online.

Side Effect
One side effect is that it may take away from organic growth for Pages which has recently been going crazy for brands. The early word from the States is that the organic growth will look to decrease by half as they give more priority to Facebook Places in the Facebook Newsfeed.

Word from Facebook Australia
In terms of a launch date in this market, the word from my mate at Facebook Australia is that the US has not given them an exact date for roll out however they are working with a local Retailer to roll out an execution. My hunch is that it will be in the next month.

This post was collaboration between TCO’s Community Manager Michael Goldstein (Mickeyg77) and I. If anyone knows a launch date, please share.

The Justin Bieber Cookie Cutter

2010-08-17T11:31:00.000+10:00

I am genuinely surprised at how easy it is to copy this formula of success that Justin Bieber has created, Cody Simpson and Jordan Jansen are two Australians who are following the exact formula of success as Bebs. Launching their careers on Youtube, uploading covers to the site, they have the same look, same style of music (Cody has even taken the next step of collaborating with a popular rap/hip hop artist Flo Rida. Even the style of video is the same.

Cody Simpson

Jordan Jansen

I thought that it would not be as easy to replicate such success, but both artist have over 60,000 subscribers on Youtube and are currently in the Top 10 Most Subbed Australian Youtubers?!?! Wow!

Forgetting the Distribution Strategy.

2010-08-10T11:39:00.002+10:00

There has been two great pieces of online Australian created branded content that have caught my eye recently. It has got me really excited that we may be seeing a second coming for branded online content. However I am worried we may be falling into the same trap that we did 2 years ago when the first bubble burst.

Burn

Walking Tours of Melbourne

Marketers have been wary to reinvest in online content with one major problem....scale. Spending $100,000 to get a few thousand views of content is not equitable.

I think this problem is due to the creators of content not having a distribution strategy in place when they create the content. I think for projects to kill it these days they need a solid content distribution strategy that has a mix of seeding and paid media making sure that the content flies online. Aden picked up on this as well with the latest Bacradi project which was amazing content with little to no content distribution strategy.

Cannibal Trolls

2010-08-05T11:08:00.000+10:00

According to Wikipedia 'A troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response'.

E.g All the comments that lead to this....

However there is a new species of people called Cannibal Trolls. They are people who lure trolls into their trap and make them waste their time baiting who they think is an innocent victim when really they are thriving off the attention. The best example of this is Angry Ginger kid. He is very measured with his response and knows exactly what he is doing when he is provoking this response.

I think we have seen this recently on Mumbrella with Jothy Hughes with his baiting of all the usual Mumbrella commentors with his 'Guaranteed Model of Publicity'.

Clinchers in Online Video Content

2010-07-27T11:31:00.000+10:00

I was watching 20 to 1 the other night and realized that they have a really good content format. They somehow hook you into watching the whole episode, you need to know what Number One is. The Clincher. I think that all online video content needs a clinchers. I think this is a great example of creating the clincher. I might even try this for my next update of the Top 50 Australian Marketing Blogs

via Tobler1one

Computer Geeks are the future leaders

2010-07-22T11:37:00.000+10:00

This is an amazing presentation on time, geography and the effect it has on different cultures and their outlook on life. (via Nicola Swankie)

I always thought that I wanted to live somewhere where it was Summer all year around but this makes me happy that I live in a seasonal city.

Anyway, I think this is a great presentation however I think Philip Zimbardo might go overboard when he starts talking about kids who play computer games having no social skills. There is a lot of research that suggests that playing multi player computer games such as World of Warcraft help to teach you invaluable business skills of teamwork and leadership. Just look at Stephen Gillett, CIO for Starbucks and avid WOW player.

Influencers and Splendour in the Grass

2010-07-20T11:02:00.000+10:00

I am speaking at the Influencing Online Communities AIMIA event next Wednesday (July 28th). I am speaking about Blogger Outreach and identifying Online Influencers. I think it will be a great panel as I am also speaking with Matt Hehman from Facebook and Grace Gordon who has guest posted on here a number of times and has just been hired by Soap (who have just done a great presentation on breaking down the Facebook Myths).

Soap Creative - 10 Facebook Myths Busted

View more presentations from Soap Creative.

I am also very excited to be speaking at Splendour in the Grass (best speaking gig ever!). I will be speaking on the Privacy and Social Media panel, in particular the effect it has on getting a job and bosses Facebook Stalking. If you have any good stories or pearls of wisdoms on Privacy and Social Media feel free to share.

Top 10 4Chan Memes

2010-07-13T11:31:00.000+10:00

I am writing a piece on 4Chan for my old University Newspaper Esperanto at the moment and I made a list of the top 4Chan Memes. I find 4Chan really interesting check out the TED Talk with owner of 4Chan moot.

1. LOLCats

2. Sending Justin Bieber to North Korea via an online vote

3. Introduced the world to Tay Zonday - Chocolate Rain

4. RickRolling – 4Chan created the meme of RickRolling people

5. Tracked down a cat abuser who was posting videos to Youtube.

6. Time’s Most Influential People of All Time – 4Chan have hacked the public online vote for the last four years and put their leader Moot (creator of 4Chan) before the Dalai Lama, Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela for the last 5 years.

7. Hoaxed a story about Steve Jobs having a heart attack, the story got all the way to CNN and it sent Apples share price free falling for 24 hours.

8. Helped Zach “the wheelchair bound lady magnet” to win a contest to be a guest host on Oprah’s show.

9. Pedobear making it into a Polish Newspaper

10. Longcat is Lonnnnnggggg

Animated GIFs the most engaging form of content on the web

2010-07-06T11:11:00.000+10:00

Animated GIFs are small animation based on successively displayed images.

In my opinion the most engaging form of content on the web because

- they are short fast snippets means they get straight to the point

- they're looped which means that you are hit with the joke over and over again.

- they are also eye catching as they are animated without the user even having to do anything on the page.

In the meme dungeons of the Internet (4Chan and other forum boards), GIFS are prevalent. However they never really get critical cross over into the mainstream Internet as they lack the important ingredients;

- hard to replicate or create,

- Facebook currently doesn’t allow this type of file for good reason to, if you remember all those heinous designed Myspace Pages, most of them were GIF.

However it is good to see BrownCardigan and The Vine Best of the Interweb are pushing these out there.

2 years of grafting (time capsule)

2010-07-02T11:45:00.002+10:00

It is coming up to two years of full time work for me. I have learnt a lot in this short amount of time. I think I am going to answer the following four questions every 2 years (or for as long as this blog lasts).

What are the biggest learnings from the last 2 years?
People
It is all about the people around you, if you have a good team you are going to be able to do amazing things.

Social Media Disconnect
There is a massive disconnect between why people initially get sucked into Social Media and what it actually is. The Social Media Disciples (I used to be one of them) who blindly believe that Social Media is the answer and the new form of marketing are living in La La Land.

Some hard bitter truth pills;
Blogger Outreach is a lot of hard work for not a big return
There are no solid Social Media Monitoring tools for Australia
Twitter is a waste of resource for 95% of companies

Best campaign you have seen?
I think the Toohey’s Extra Dry Birds vs Humans was amazing in terms of the launch, I think it definitely lifted the bar in terms of Digital Outreach. I was amazed it didn’t pick up more Awards.

What agencies are capturing your attention?

I have always had massive respect for Naked and Droga. I love the way that One Green Bean and Host work into each other, they always seems to come up with great ideas. I am interested to see what MediaCom do with their full house of superstars. If I were to start my career the other agencies that would be high on the list would be Holler, Three Drunk Monkeys, SOAP, and BMF. Overseas – CP+B, Undercurrent, R/GA, Barbarian, Goodby, W+K

What do I want to be doing in 2 years?
The latest campaign that I have done for Boost Mobile, I have been the creative lead on the project. I have loved every minute of this it. The ability to come up with the ideas and then lay out the whole plan and channels is definitely something that really interests me. I guess I could see myself as a Creative Director for Engagement Campaigns.

I think online content (especially video) is going to have a revival in this market. I definitely feel that there is a real opportunity for a company/individual to step up and own the online video content space in Australia, I am really going to concentrate on making TCO the go to company in this space.

The Twitter Backchannel and Limbic Resonance

2010-06-30T11:12:00.000+10:00

I saw this great presentation from Cannes by Kevin Slavin on the Limbic Residence and its impact on consuming media.

Slavin created the MTV backchannel (a social game - read more here)

Limbic resonance suggest that the meaning of an object is not just made up of our own interpretation of that object but in part what other people think of it. We look at other people’s reactions to that object to help form our meaning.

In his presentation Kevin states that the limbic resonance has a major impact on how we consume media. He suggests it dates back to the inclusion of the laughing track in television shows, they helped to fake the ‘people around you’ environment. However he goes onto suggest that this could be the power of social media in particular the back channel of Twitter, which can help amplify peoples interests in show and make it feel like they are watching it with a bigger audience.

Personally I know this was the case with Survivor for me this year (miss u). I think more shows should be embracing the back channel one of the better ones at the moment would be QandA which promote the #qanda hastag in program and they also have a great engaging site.

4 social media tactics that club promoters use on Facebook

2010-06-17T11:23:00.002+10:00

I think nightclub promoters were one of the first groups of people to really get Facebook and how to make it work to benefit them. It is always good to watch how they are communicating with their fans. The following are four things that I would ensure I did if I was setting up a club night.

1. Set up as groups
It always surprised me that you could never set up events from Pages and invite all the members. For this reason it is better for promoters and club nights to set up a group so they can send out a mass invitation to all of their followers/fans.

2. Give away a sample
Halfway Crooks puts on a hip hop night in Sydney, in the lead up to their night they give away a free online mix of hip hop, a great way of getting back in contact with your attendees.

3. Latch onto a bigger brand
Some cunning promoters in Melbourne have set up Party Club for all of the universities in Melbourne. They are then running events which look like official parties off the back end of them.

4. Photos afterwards
Quite simple, but adding photos afterwards and tagging people in those photos works well for gaining attention for club nights.

Good content is not always good content

2010-06-15T11:07:00.001+10:00

There is a big difference between watching a piece of content on television and online (Youtube for this case in point). Therefore you must make content for the medium, content producers must understand the difference.

The two differences are the mindframe of the audience and the context of the content.

Mindframe of the audience
Your audience is active when they are online, when they are watching television they are quite happy to sit on a couch for 60 minutes and not do anything except light a bewg and watch CSI.

However online they have many more distractions and they're not used to watching content for longer than 3 minutes. One of the leading online content creators in this country 'Community Channel' has worked to decrease the time of her videos realsing the audience has less time to watch.

Context of the content
Content is also placed in two different environments, online it has a title and description of what is happening in the video, there is also related content sitting there waiting to distract you. It would be the equivalent of watching television on a screen that lets you see what is on all the other channels at once. I do not know many people who watch television like this.

Some examples of Good Content which is not always good content

The Wire – would you watch this online for an hour NO, would you sit back on the couch and watch the whole of season 3 on a Sunday afternoon, YES
Would you watch this online? YES would you watch it in show for 30 minutes of similar footage? According to Australia probably not, until Funniest Home Videos it would be safe to assume that this Australians do not always want to see this type of content on television.

Thanks three billion for making me pen my thoughts

The Algorithm of a Meme

2010-06-11T11:14:00.002+10:00

The last post I talked about the different components of a meme (Stimulus, Conductor and Pushers).

Pick Up of a Meme = (Amount of influence of conductor and pushers) + (the relevance of the idea to the individual)

The chance to be influenced by the meme is ditacted by two components – how influential the conductor and pushers are to you and your network and the strength of the stimulus.

For instance, I automatically latched onto the idea of The Awkward Lean and was a massive fan, my friends has also become pushers of the idea.

JTL – the idea was not as strong but the people pushing the idea had been on a lot of past memes that were good so I gave it an opportunity.

For more good meme related reading check out Kripy's post on A meme with a difference

The Internet is ripe for the memes

2010-06-08T11:46:00.001+10:00

So there have been a few micro-memes popping up over the past week that I have noticed.

1. Yeah_lad – A Twitter account that is set up to imitate the lads of the western suburbs of Sydney.
2. The Awkward Lean – A tumblr picking up on the insight of girls who awkwardly lean their body or head in photos
3. Ask JTL – One guy who will answer any question, with straight down the line answers

A meme needs three important components to be created and nurtured.

Stimulus – An idea that is remixed with a common theme tying all the pieces of content together.

Conductor – The conductor is the person who controls the idea who can help dictate the direction of the meme.

Pushers – Are the support networks to the conductor who help to promote the idea through their network to help get the idea/meme out there.

I think subconsciously, people understand their roles in helping to push memes and making sure that they get the best opportunity to flourish.

In my opinion, Twitter is better at pushing memes because updating your network with a tweet about memes can be done more than once whereas on Facebook people would be less inclined to update their community more than once about a meme.

The 5 best flash mobs of all time

2010-05-31T11:47:00.001+10:00

Being less than 10 years old a lot of people are suggesting flash mobs are dead but after the weekend it is evident that there is still a chance to go bigger and better.

5. Valentines Day Pillow fight
One of the earliest flash mobs recorded to Youtube back in 2006 in San Francisco.

4. The T Mobile Dance
The first brand to nail a Flash Mob, it is also one of the most successful viral videos on Youtube at the moment

3. Improv Everywhere
This put the group Improv Everywhere on the map, it was also one of the first flash mobs to get real mainstream success in early 2008, it now has over 21 million views

2. Black Eyed Peas and Oprah
The biggest flash mob of 2010, they added another layer by including a band in BEP. It is amazing the sheer size of this dance.

1. Eurovision 2010
Marek pointed me in the direction of this video on the weekend. My jaw dropped as I thought about the amount of pre-production that would of have gone into creating this.

The remote audience

2010-05-25T10:25:00.001+10:00

Something that I didn’t think much about before I began at TCO was the remote audience. The remote audience are the people who do not attend an event but view the event through media at a later stage. An important part of event amplification.

One of the best examples I saw of this was Diet Coke's Real Woman. It was before my time at TCO. They were tasked with filming the Rosemount Fashion Week for Diet Coke, instead of just filming the event they chose to create a story out of the event - 'Real Woman (watch the 2min video here)'. They found a girl of the street and made her into a catwalk model for one day. A more compelling story for the remote audience.

Another good example is Dr.Pepper's Chatroulette Cheerleader - (Zac has a good post on short term activity too)

Have you seen any other good examples of content for a remote experience?

Event Amplification Online - Case Study - Alienware Clan Challenge

2010-05-05T12:08:00.006+10:00

So one of the projects that I have worked on recently is the Dell Alienware Clan Challenge. It is a great example of taking an offline event which has a rich experience for a small number people and using online to help amplify it to the masses.

The Conscience Organisation and MediaCom Sydney organised and ran the Alienware Clan Challenge 2010 which saw the best Australian Call of Duty players congregate in Sydney to battle it out.

Off the back of this we created a highlights reel of the event. We put a content distribution strategy in place and had a great result of getting the video to the third most viewed clip in Australia (April 29th) and most viewed Australian Gaming video (Daily and Weekly). It has currently had over 60,000 views and is increasing by the day.

Why you need to be following Justin Bieber

2010-04-29T11:27:00.000+10:00

Justin Bieber and his management team are some of the smartest people going around at the moment.

Justin started out posting dozens of homemade videos on YouTube in 2007, he racked up over 10,000,000 views doing covers of famous artist. This was purely from word of mouth. He then got signed by Usher and Island Records and has become the biggest thing to hit teens since Twilight. via Wikipedia

Hypebot wrote this amazing post on why Justin Bieber is so big.

Basically he sipping on the Lil Wayne syrup of – ‘Release more songs, more often.’ He has been in the eye of teenage girls for the last year releasing new material every month, be it a new song or video. He never turns off.

A couple of the other points of interest from the article, about Justin's songs, such as:

• Short Intros - the longest intro to one of his songs is 14 seconds, but "One Time" is only 7 seconds before it gets to the meat of the song. Always a good thing if you want to your song to chart.
• Chord Changes - There's not a lot of changes in his songs but according to Frank, they happen when it counts - at around the 2 minute mark. This is just about the time that a bridge would enter, so it makes sense. Good songs tend to have a bridge.
• Repetition - If you want to chart, repeat the title over and over. In fact, in his hit "One Time," Bieber repeats the title 32 times in the song and the word "one" another 17. via Bobby

Endorsed by the established

One of the other things that has stood out for me is his alignment with established artists. He has collaborated with Ludacris, Usher, Taylor Swift, Sean Kingston, Nick Cannon, Drake, P.Diddy, Wyclef Jean, Asher Roth and gets the endorsement from The Game?!!?

Hidden Talents
The boy can Rap
On Sunrise the other day and rapped Ludacris’ whole verse, this is a rapper who has been rapping for 20 years and Bieber puts it down with no trouble.

Comedian
For April Fools Justin Bieber took over Funny or Die and renamed it Bieber or Die, I was genuinely surprised I thought he was going to be average but he is actually quite funny.

Bieber Takes Over from Justin Bieber

Who cares if he is a one hit wonder? He has absolutely nailed it, with this one album. This boy is pretty much owning at the game of life and I take my hat off to him.

Kate's Party - Meme jumping for money

2010-04-27T11:10:00.001+10:00

You may have got a Facebook invite to Kate’s birthday over the weekend.

According to ericritic

‘What was supposed to turn out to be a small birthday party for a woman named Kate at her small apartment is turning out to be an event of the century. That’s because over 60,000 (as of this writing) random Facebook users have taken it upon themselves to invite themselves to Kate’s party.

The event’s description now reads:

“WTF??????????
WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? WHY ARE THERE 10000 PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN INVITED??????
THIS IS A PRIVATE PARTY AT OUR APARTMENT.”

Tons of groups are forming related to Kate’s birthday party, including: Which Turban should I wear to Kate’s party?, Who needs a ride to Kate’s party?, and best of all: Who in the hell is Kate?’

Meme Jumping
I think it is interesting the people that jump on the back of these memes and try to make some quick money of them. Kate’s Party is a good example of this. The model is simple, catch the trend, secure the most SEO friendly URL, publish a little bit of relevant content and set up the advertising on the site.

The new 4Channers?
Facebook users are getting a better understanding of the platform now and with this knowledge they are better able to play pranks and have a laugh. Expect to see more of these style memes start to pop up. It is very 4chan-esque.

Update: I have it on good word from Asher Moses that David Thorne of 27b/6 fame (Spider Drawing and Dear Neighbour) is behind this prank. Amazing!

The effect of ‘fan’ to ‘like’ on Facebook Ads

2010-04-22T11:29:00.002+10:00

Which one of the following three is an ad for a Facebook Page?

It is near impossible to figure out which is an ad for a Page or an external website.

If you are running Facebook ads prepare to see a decrease in action rate (how many people become a fan without clicking through to the site). The action rate accounts for about 70% of your fan growth, with the rest coming from people who check out the site and then fan or get an update in their newsfeed.
I can understand why Facebook did this because they realized the language is not right, you do not become a fan of KFC, you become a fan of a Sportsteam, you like KFC. However calling it a ‘like’ which is the same as the rest of the external ads on the site seriously effects the amount of people who will click on those ads or the direct fan action that we used to see.

I have got some live campaigns running at the moment, so I will let you know if I see an effect.

R.I.P Become a fan ads

Illegal Facebook Promotions

2010-04-20T11:00:00.000+10:00

The following activity is illegal on Facebook and could result in your page being permanently deleted by Facebook;

A promotion that requires a user to;
- tag themselves in the photo.
- to change their status in any way
- to change their profile picture
- to answer a question in a status update
- any kind of response in the status
- like a photo or an update
- add friends
- respond with a photo not in a specific application

All promotions need to run through an application that does not use any of the basic functionality of Facebook.

However, I have not heard of any Brand Pages being deleted for this type of activity. I am not game enough to take any chances though.

Types of media - owned, earned and bought media

2010-04-15T11:00:00.002+10:00

I thought I would just do a quick post on something that is pretty much owning my working life at the moment. Bought, Owned and Earned Media.

Simply put these are the three ways that content is getting passed on for brands.

Bought Media – Buying adspace off publishers with audiences! E.g Banners

Earned Media – Media that your audience pass on for you, think passing on a youtube clip/article to a friend. E.g Viral Video

Owned Media – Are a brands direct channels with their consumers, this could be their email database, Facebook Page or employees

2010 has really brought Owned and Earned Media to the fore.

Owned Media
The biggest effect for Owned Media has been the introduction of Facebook Branded Pages, brands are now getting scale and audience which are rivaling their bought media channels. Other smaller brands that didn’t even have email databases are going straight for these channels.

Earned Media
A lot of people think that earned media is something that brands cannot control. It is up to the quality of the content. Wrong. Getting to the front page of Digg, the most viewed clip on Youtube or on a highly trafficked blog is not a fluke for a number of agencies but now a product that they are selling. Understanding and having the relationships to hit these earned media sweet spots is becoming a valuable commodity in this market.

Here is a great post on Mashable on Social Objects and Earned/Bought and Owned Media

Carsales AFL/NRL iPhone App – The 3 stages brands can get involved with Properties

2010-04-13T11:00:00.000+10:00

I recently saw that Carsales have sponsored Rugby Live (NRL) and Footy Live (AFL) iPhone Applications. Last year the applications were selling for $1.19 in the App Store and is now free.

CarSales have also made a number of improvements to the app which have made it the closest thing to having Rex Hunt/Ray Warren in your pocket.

This got me thinking about brands sponsoring properties. I really think that there is three distinct times that brands can get involved with a property. When I say property I mean an idea, artist, product, event, sport, application, meme.

Embryonic Stage
This is where a brand can come up with a property or get involved with a property before it launches.

Positive – The brand is intrinsically linked to the property from the start

Negative - Higher risk, if the property is a flop, they have invested a lot of money in the idea.

Example – Rexona Ultimate Athlete,– V Festival

Infancy stage
Brands have identified the property on their radar and get involved with the property after it has had a small amount of success.

Positive – Chance to get involved and linked to the product before it hits a critical mass

Negative – Property may be seen as selling out
- May have hit its peak without the brand knowing it.

Examples – CarSales Footy Live, RedBull Air Race

Maturity Stage
This usually looks like a sponsorship of an established property. The brand does not get a lot of involvement in shaping the property.

Positive – Lowered risk of reaching the desired audience as the property is established and they have good knowledge of the size and type of people who are involved with their property.

Negative – The brand has to fight hard to define how they are adding value to the property otherwise consumers may only see it as a marketing activity

- There is usually a number of brands that are involved with the property so clutter and cut through are an issue.

Examples
Toyota AFL, KFC Cricket

Wanted: Social Media Marketing Intern/Bro/Sis

2010-03-30T15:12:00.007+11:00

Stolen word for word from Arturo's blog

TCO is looking for a hungry digital native looking to get experience working with some of Australia’s top brands – think Fosters, Westfield, Art Series Hotel Group and Coca Cola, to name but a few - in the exciting world of social media marketing.

You’ll be working alongside some of the brightest little brains this side of the sun, being the kids at TCO, specialists in strategic thinking and idea generation across content, human experience, both offline and right through the digital eco system.

Specifically, we’re looking for a bright and passionate intern to support our Digital Strategy team. As the Social Media Coordinator, your role will be to coordinate social media campaigns, blogger outreach, Facebook community management, measuring and reporting. You’ll also be involved in digital strategy and idea generation.

Sound good so far? Hungry yet? You better be. Start pimping your Facebook and better get a Twitter account because they will be scrutinised. Got a Tumblr, your own blog, Flickr account, Foursquare mayor of everywhere, you can see where we’re headed with this right?

You get to hang out with us one day per week for 3 months. Note the position is unpaid but you will get props galore.

To apply, email your CV and a photo to hr@theconscience.org. Better yet build a CV online, mail us a life size photo of you hanging out with some dinosaurs, PDF a deck of why you should be our ninja … show us why you want this so bad.

When was the first time you saw an SMS?

2010-03-25T11:08:00.001+11:00

Technology - Do not want
I think out of all the technology that has come along, SMS melted my brain the most.

I was about 11 years old and at a Scout Camp. We were just getting ready for bed when one of my scout leaders got his phone out and was using it to send messages to another of the leaders in another tent. I remember they were using it like an online chat, every 2 minutes a new message would come through. The whole thing spun my head out, how could they send text via mobile phones!?!?!

I wonder if any technology will ever leave me as dumb founded as SMS.

Do kids still write 'WB' at the end of messages?

The top 5 Australian Branded Facebook Pages and why

2010-03-23T11:11:00.009+11:00

CHAT ROULETTE : New Social Media Marketing Landscape for Brands?

2010-03-18T15:07:00.000+11:00

This is a guest post by Grace Gordon the Marketing Manager/Digital Ninja at Socialista Media.

Grace meeting her long lost twin on Roulette
It was only a matter of time before more daring brands turned to the 90’s-esque Online chat phenomenon, Chatroulette as an unchartered terrain of marketing activity. In recent weeks we are starting to see the first glimpses of these amongst brands in the edgy youth / fashion segment.

Last week I received a Press email from irreverent fashion eyewear brand SABRE that stood out: it involved a call to get involved in a Chatroulette “Creep Roulette” competition. The premise is simple: Send through your creepiest SABRE-related Chatroulette screenshot, win some free sunglasses. You can check out the details on that here.

Only days later I discovered that French fashion label FCUK have also launched a Chatroulette challenge, offering up $250 worth of free FCUK goodies for those savvy social media dudes who manage to “charm a woman on Chatroulette”. You can read more about the challenge here, and check out the attempts thusfar.

There has been a fair amount of debate already even in these early days, about the suitability of Chatroulette for marketing activity. I do believe both of these competitions are cleverly-executed forays into Chatroulette as a space for brands. I have read many bloggers and bonafide Marketing practitioners alike argue that Chatroulette is not worth the time invested, due to the fact it is a one-on-one interaction and therefore cannot reach a mass audience. However, these competitions tap into the reach of Chatroulette beyond the one-one-one connection of users, by prompting users to screenshot their activity and share it with the brand (and, no doubt, as a flow on effect, their friends also, via multiple other social media channels). The end result is in effect, branded meme-like content. The activity at this Early Adopter stage has also helped to position the brands as edgy purveyors of cultural phenomenons (such as Chatroulette), which is not something that is easy to pull off, and an invaluable quality for a young lifestyle or fashion brand.

My kudos go out to these brands for using Chatroulette in a cheeky and daring way. What are your thoughts?

Dreamteam increasing Social Glue

2010-03-16T11:32:00.000+11:00

Sport and music have to be the best social glue going around.

Professional Sport can help to make complete strangers friends. At the end of day friendships are formed on how many interactions you have with a person and how positive these experiences are. Sport gives us a reason to have more interactions with someone. For instance following the Parramatta Eels, I have become a lot closer with people who follow the Eels or take an interest in NRL.

This year I have jumped on the Dreamteam/Fantasy Football bandwagon. It has taken watching and discussing the sport to a whole new level.

What if brands could play this role? Brands could increase the social glue between two friends. I think Red Bull did this well for awhile with the game Rooshambull on Facebook.

It is interesting to note that Dreamteam/Fantasy Football is already becoming a subject in itself with break off sites discussing the strategy of picking a Dreamteam. In particular, for AFL DT Talk have created a site which is being sponsored by Boags Draught at the moment.

They have also recruited one of the most talented Australian Youtubers, Alex Williamson.

Facebook Newsfeed Optimisation (FNO)

2010-03-11T11:13:00.003+11:00

Bad Ads via lamebook.com
The homepage/newsfeed is the holy grail of Facebook for Branded Pages. However for a lot of Branded Pages their information doesn't get to fans feeds because of the Facebook Newsfeed Algorithm. Because there is so much information Facebook tries to make the feed as relevant to you as possible. They work out relevancy using three criteria.

1. How many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content - This is how many people out of your networks have become friends with the Page, the more people the better. I have also observed that the story can come up in your news feed multiple times as more people join.

2. Who posted the content (how many interactions have you had with them in the past) - The more times someone visits your Page the more chance you have of getting

3. What type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update). As far as I can tell they preference joining Pages and Pictures rank pretty high whereas joining Groups and commenting on Pages or Status updates from Pages is not as highly valued.

If anyone has anymore information on FNO, please feel free to share.

Finding my Ted – Introducing Arturo Escartin

2010-03-09T11:00:00.001+11:00

I am super excited to say that my quest to find my partner in crime/ digital producer has ended, connecting me to one of the people I have admired for awhile online, Arturo Escartin (@kripy and one of the Brown Cardigan head honchos).

TCO and I are very lucky to have such a creative and knowledgeable person joining the team. Arturo comes from Modular Records where he was the Digital Manager and helped create their new website and also worked on a number of other projects including building and content managing the VRaw project. Watch this space for some kick arse work that we will be creating in the upcoming months.

We will be looking in the not to distant future for a Junior Digital Strategist/Community Manager to be joining our emerging digital team, so if you know anyone who would be suitable let me know.

What TCO have been up to!

2010-02-25T10:28:00.002+11:00

I still get a lot of people asking me about my new work place, TCO (The Conscience Organisation). People have either heard of them but don’t know what they do or have never heard of them at all. Here is a great wrap video that they have done to show off their work from 2009! Check it!

50,000 in 2 weeks on Secret Melbourne

2010-02-23T09:58:00.002+11:00

So two weeks ago I set up Secret Melbourne and Sydney Facebook Pages, I did this after seeing the success of the Secret London. I set the Pages up and then invited my friends from the cities to join the Pages. I invited 400 people from Melbourne and 100 to the Sydney Page.

I had the most success with the Melbourne Page it took off and within a day I had 500 fans. The viral growth was amazing to see, it just shows the power of the news feed in helping Pages spread.

I think the Sydney Page didn’t grow for a number of reasons. Firstly, there was already a Secret Sydney Group which had been running for 5 days and had got a number of the key target market joining the Group, also Melbourne has a culture of small restaurants and bars which Sydney is still working on.

Work is hectic at the moment however I promise I will do a more in depth post on learnings from running the Page soon.

But for the time being here are some stats off the backend of the Secret Melbourne Page

For Sheps

AIMIA Future of Viral and Word of Mouth

2010-02-19T11:00:00.000+11:00

I am Moderating the AIMIA Future of Viral and Word of Mouth Marketing event next Friday, February 26th (tickets still available here). It has got a number of really smart people from the industry speaking including Sharyn Smith, CEO of Soup

Soup continue to do really good work in the converging area of social media and WOM. I saw Sharyn speak at last years Ad:Tech around a case study they had for Toohey Extra Dry. It was amazing how much they were integrating Facebook into their campaigns back then and I am sure they have come leaps and bounds since then.

Other speakers include - Rebekah Campbell, Owner/founder of posse.com, Vicki Foster, Director of The Word of Mouth Company, Mick Liubinskas, co-founder of Pollenizer

My proudest day on the internet, being the Guest Editor for Youtube

2010-02-12T08:36:00.005+11:00

My Youtube Gold dreams have come true. A representative from Youtube got in touch with me yesterday and asked if I would like to be a Guest Editor for Youtube. I am pretty much in internet nirvana right now. I am thinking that I am going to showcase the best Australian branded content pieces.

Some classics like Drambuie Market Research

Would be great if you could share any classic Australian virals/branded entertainment videos that I may of missed out on (especially if they are funny). If I do not get enough I might have to look to Kiwiland for other classics (e.g 42Below, Floating Ford and History of Stubbies)

List at the moment
Vanilla Ice Say Sorry
Uzbekistan extreme training
Schweppes Signs
Sony vs. Bravia
Carlton Draught Big Ad

Twitter will not go mainstream

2010-02-09T11:28:00.000+11:00

I use Twitter but I am in the minority. Twitter will not be the next Facebook. It is all hype.

Only 17% of Twitter users are active according to RJ Metrics. That would make the Australian active audience for Twitter around 136,000. 80% of Twitter users have made less than 10 updates.

Even the tech hungry teens don't like it. According to Pew Research 8% of internet users aged 12-17 use Twitter. This makes Twitter as common among teens as visiting a virtual world, and far less common than sending or receiving text messages as 66% of teens do, or going online for news and political information, done by 62% of online teens.

Twitter is not the next Facebook. According to Neilsen In October, Australian users spent 27.2 hours browsing online and 7.55 hours of the total was sucked up by Facebook whereas Twitter accounted for 17 minutes. Twitter's active Australian user base is the equivalent of less than 2% of Facebook's Australia audience.

When you hit a creative brick wall, use Facebook Search

2010-02-04T11:06:00.006+11:00

Feeling dry on insights and territories for a creative brief? This is a good one to try, type related words into Facebook.

E.g Got a Phone provider as a client, type 'phone' into Search and look through the Pages. All these Pages have more than 500,000 fans.

The answers;

I Feel My Phone Vibrate When It Doesn't

I Use My Cell Phone To See In The Dark

When DRUNK, My phone should say, "Are you sure you want to send this text?"

I do random things when i talk on the phone like pace, spin in circles, etc

Trying to feel for your phone, and panicking when you can't feel it.

I have texted while lying down and dropped the phone on my face.

Specific one for Optus

Wait Bro are you on Optus

5 rising stars of the Australian Youtube scene

2010-02-02T11:00:00.000+11:00

Here are five vloggers who have broken into the Top 20 most subscribed Australian Youtubers that you may not be familiar with.

1. Fagottron - Probably one of the most exciting Australian Youtubers, Fagottron has a unique way of mashing up films into songs. Amazeballs!

2. Mychoony - The male version of Community Channel.

3. The Black Year – This young band are going for the position of the next Short Stack

4. Emmalina - Vlogging every second day this 20s mum is talking about the first thing that pops into her mind.

5. DJ Ravine – Is arguably the most subscribed hardcore DJ on Youtube. A young dude who is killing it and found a nice little niche for himself.

Guest Post by Grace Gordon - Sportsgirl Fashion Blogger Outreach

2010-01-29T10:37:00.003+11:00

Grace Gordon is the Marketing and Community Coordinator for Socialista Media Group which looks after the fashion social networking site 2Threads.

DISCLAIMER FROM THE "WRITER"

--this post was lifted directly from some pretty informal email banter between Julian and I, hence my ever-so-eloquent description and discussion of bloggers.

I’m not sure how it started/originated (it must have been a private call out to top Fash. Bloggers) but they have started a blogging game of ‘tag’/’it’ by tagging people who are ‘it’ to answer a few select questions. My 2 cents on why i think this is cool is................

A) They are giving the bloggers actual content that they can tweak and make unique which is awesome because as you know , bloggers run out of ideas and its good to have prompts like that.

B) They seem to have targeted a range of the very best, not just any old Australian fashion bloggers who have a high subscriber rate and/or attractive content which is likely to be reblogged and re-used and

C) If the exercise is purely to drive traffic back to the Sportsgirl site/get some sweet inbound links AND raise awareness of Sportsgirl site as not just a retailers website but an actual fashion/entertainment portal, then they have nailed it. I have looked at the site three times since this ‘tagging’ thing started. I am liking their site which in turn leaves me lusting after their product. (I just bought something off their online store)

Exhibit A- http://www.leflassh.com/2010/01/sportsgirl-tag.html - you’ll see she has tagged other bloggers, creating a viral effect if they respond.

Exhibit B- http://studdedhearts.blogspot.com/2010/01/sportsgirltag.html

Exhibit C - http://src783.blogspot.com/2010/01/sportsgirl-heart.html

3 important changes to Facebook

2010-01-27T10:15:00.003+11:00

There have been some new amendments to Facebook that you may or may not be aware of.

Geolocate your status updates

Facebook now allows you to geolocate your status updates. This is a god sent for bands who want to target specific fans in the city they are touring in.

Impression Number

They are also telling you the level of interaction that are based on a loose number of impressions of the news item (Page Views, News Feeds or through a Fan Box Widget impression). I have crunched some numbers on the pages that I am Admin of and they range from a good interaction number of 1% to as low as 0.01%. What is everyone else getting?

Targetting Ad Units in real time
There is also a whisper that you will be able to start targeting people on words that they have in their status updates.

Campfire as an analogy for Social Media

2010-01-22T11:27:00.002+11:00

Campfire bros

So I recently have been trying to come up with an analogy for social media. This idea of social media being like a campfire has really stuck for me. There are three things you need for a campfire, a campground, people and a fire.

These three things are similar to what makes up social media. For starters you need a platform for people to speak on e.g Facebook/Twitter (campground), you need members to populate this platform (people) and then something to talk about, a reason for being there (fire).

This also defines the three areas that brands can get involved, they can create the platform (Branded Community) – it can be as big as a whole website Pepsi refresh or jump on the back of another platform such as The Contender Page on Facebook.

They can be the members of the community (Customer Service) company can just listen to the conversations going down and then respond. e.g Big Pond Twitter account or Dell Hell

Lastly they can be the social glue (social idea) between two people, the reason they talk e.g iSpyLevis or Dove Inner Beauty.

Thoughts?

Do you know the name of this Facebook viral marketing method?

2010-01-20T12:16:00.003+11:00

Status Updates and Wall Comments would be two ways that Word of Mouth are occurring on Facebook. What do you call all other types of message spreading that is occurring on the site.

Andrew Ranger and the Taboo Group have just recently launched a campaign for Where Is called Whereis the party, they got the word out there by tagging influential Melbournites in the promotional advertisement for the event.

Ikea used this same type of viral spreading but instead of them tagging they asked the punters to tag themselves in photos in the Ikea Furniture competition.

Looking for my Keanu Reeves/Digital Producer

2010-01-14T10:01:00.003+11:00

You cannot have Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure without Bill. Similarly, You cannot produce truly kick arse work without an amazing Digital Producer.

I am a big believer in the Producer/Strategist combination and at the moment I am missing my other half. Hence, we have officially put the call out to find a Digital Producer who I can collaborate with along with the rest of the team to make some killer work.

I am super excited about finding a Producer to join TCO as I believe we are on the brink of making some really great work.

The perfect storm is brewing at TCO, we have got an amazing client roster (Fosters, Coca-Cola, Westfield, Network Ten, Sony) who all seem keen on exploring social/digital ideas. The most exciting proposition though is coming up with the Global Digital/Social Strategy for Global Poverty Project.

The thing that hooked me though, was the core business offering – TCO make branded entertainment. Their first piece of business was creating the television show Coke Live n Local. Since then they have nailed creating video content. They have added a real strength in experiential, cracking some massive wins over the last year.

Having this muscle in your back pocket when you are coming up with ideas is something of a rarity in the Australian market. Where before the thought of creating an online series like Fansformation or creating a viral piece like Sony vs. PS3 would have been a dream, This is what TCO do.

The Producer, we are looking for is someone who will have a creative mind and who will have a nice big fat contact book full of all the best digital freelancers/shops in Sydney to help make things happen.

The full JD is on the site

For everyone who reads this blog, if you could please pass this onto any Producers that would be right for this position that would be much appreciated.

Summer of Awesome

2010-01-12T13:58:00.000+11:00

I was lucky enough to get 5 weeks holidays between jobs this summer. I got down to Meredith Music Festival in Melbourne for three days.

Then went off to India (Kerala and Goa) for 11 days

Followed by Pyramid Rock Festival

I read the following books

Marching Powder - Jaw dropping account about Bolivian Jails, quite an easy read.

The Google Story - It is amazing how much a University culture has affected, the culture that was created at Google.

I have just started Rich Dad, Poor Dad – it looks really interesting.

Anyways in terms of interwebs and marketing, I read a good summation of 2010 trends by my ol mate Ash Ringrose and the guys at SOAP.

Soap's 2010 Predictions

View more presentations from Soap Creative.

I wrote my thoughts about the future of digital/social media in Australia in 2010, I wrote a piece for Ben Shpeherd’s blog. Congrats to Ben who also deservedly won the Mumbrella Industry Blog of the year. I was stoked to be shortlisted for it.

I will also be writing some guest posts for Mark Pollard and a book review for Daniel Oyston in the upcoming month, look out for them.

Close of Business for Adspace-Pioneers

2009-12-14T14:17:00.003+11:00

Well I am off to India tomorrow, so I thought I would do a end of year post.

I do not think this blog would have been as strong as it has been without the knowledge I have gained from working at The Population. It was a massive year launching over 15 social media lead campaigns. I was doing the numbers the other night and that amounted to 80,000 people becoming fans of branded Facebook Pages and over 600,000 views of branded content on Youtube.

The highlight was The Contender Australia Facebook Page, which now I would officially deem as an ‘online community’. There are currently over 25,000 fans on the Page who speak about everything that is boxing with around 1,000 interactions on the Page a week.

Thanks to Tony and The Population for giving me the chance to work on these killer projects.

For anyone interested, here are my stats;

Tips and benchmarks for Admins of Branded Facebook Pages

2009-12-03T16:38:00.005+11:00

<
I try to stick to these guides when I am going out with status updates;

1. Keep in a conversational tone
2. Ask a question
3. Keep it to two sentences max

Benchmarks of success

Comments on a status updates
For branded pages a percentage of 0.5% of your fans commenting back is the average anything that gets 1% or higher of your fans commenting back is an amazing result.

Unsubscribe rate
You are going to lose fans after every status update managing the level of unsubscribes is important. An unsubscribe rate of less than 7.5% is good.

Examples of good Australian Branded Pages
Supre/Mudo Media
The Contender Australia/The Population

Gif via Brown Cardigan

Is Facebook making experiences more valuable?

2009-12-01T11:51:00.003+11:00

The value of intangible experiences is being increased by the power of online social networking. Facebook allows you to now communicate and thus amplify your social experiences through the uploading of photos of the experience and status updates about those experiences.

Look at the impact it is having on the experience of attending a Music Festival. It is now heightened by talking about it with friends before hand and alerting your network through updates, it is then valued again when you post photos up of the event afterwards.

Personally, I know that I am a sucker to the experience economy. I am not to interested in possessions (I have lived in Sydney for 15 months and my only piece of furniture is a bed side table which is a milk crate). I do not know if this is a time in my life and my priorities will shift to surrounding myself with nice items in the future or if it is a symptom of my generation where we no longer want expensive items but crave new experiences?

What I do know, is that there is a huge opportunity for experience based brands to increase the value of their offering through helping their customers communicate that experience to their friends. At the end of the day it is how we are viewed and valued by our friends and our desired friends that matters to us most.

20/80 split because paid and earned media are best friends!

2009-11-26T10:34:00.003+11:00

There are some great social media campaigns flying under the radar at the moment. There one common theme I can see amongst them is that they are not getting any support from paid media.

Paid media is earned media's best friend, They work really well together. I think if you are looking to carve up a digital budget you should put at least 20% aside for paid media to help support the idea/content, this will then drive earned media results.

Where the idea lives = Advertising Model
Facebook Page = Facebook Advertising
Youtube Video = StumpleUpon, Facebook Advertising or Youtube ‘Supported Ad Model’ (I haven’t used this yet, has anyone had any results with this?)
Twitter = No efficient advertising model

Image via Brown Cardigan bros

Top 50 Youtube LOLs of 2009

2009-11-24T15:25:00.001+11:00

Looking at the number of RTs and how much I like the clip, this is the Top 50 Youtube Gold clips of 2009. Congratulations to Ask Propecia, which even my mum and dad are fans of.

1. Ask Propecia the crack ho

2. Bangs will take you to da movies via his green screen

3. Boy gets bacon taken away so he moves out of home

4. Best Keyboard Cat in a long time

5. Every single Kramer entrance, in chronological order

6. Pinata accidents montage
7. Urinate in your golf club
8. The 100 greatest quotes from The Wire
9. Dating video goes really wrong
10. The best commercial ever! Jones' Big Ass Truck Rental
11. Amazing wheelbarrow race
12. It's a cat. With a box.
13. Bill Dance Fishin Blooper No.3
14. Pole dance ruins wedding
15. No need to wipe your bum anymore!
16. Morbidly obese woman + mechanical bull = WIN
17. Drugs to do on a first date
18. The @bag_raiders do the best cover ever of Bangs 'Take U to Da Movies'
19. Top 60 ghetto names
20. The worlds best dancer evah!
21. Old man breaks it down
22. Internet for kidz!
23. A really weird trip to the doctor
24. Best 80s fight scene
25. Massive gymnastic fail, includes good groin shot
26. Giant Seagull attack on Nine News
27. Barrier jump FAIL
28. Top Ten Seinfeld moments
29. We are douchebags
30. Unnecessary censoring of Sesame Street!
31. Hands up who has been shagged by a rare parrot?
32. Arthur the weather man memefied with Spiderman!
33. 100 greatest hits of Youtube in 4mins!
34. Courtship vs Dating- Christian Bad Acting
35. We need weather men like this in Australia
36. Horse kicks moron in the face
37. The perfect valentines gift for that special girl in your life
38. Worst acting of all time! There going to eat me! via Troll 2
39. An introduction: To Making Out
40. Top 10 Best Talk Show fights
41. Old man taking down the robber
42. Little dancing Ranga vs. MJ
43. Emplastro, Master Videobomber!
44. Auto-tune cats song awesomeness
45. The Pug head tilt
46. Best Death Scene Ever
47. The 1991 AFL Grand Final Halftime Show
48. 1987 Dating videos found
49. 80s Swazye on the philosophy of dancin

And my very first piece of Youtube Gold!
50. 'The best fight scene EVER!'

Background
The Youtube Golden Hour
Every Friday at 4pm on Twitter I post all the best clips of that week in a segment I like to call Youtube Gold. It has now clocked over the 3 month mark so I thought it would be a good idea to create the best of YTGold in the form of the ‘Top 50 Video Lols of 2009’. If you ever find any funny videos please pass em on!

McCann's Birthday
At the moment my good mates Mark Pollard and Age Conte are cooking up a great present for Advertising Agency McCann’s 50tth. They are hosting an internet party where every hour, staff are putting out new content that is related to the number 50th.They are giving punters the chance to get involved by giving people $50 if they create something constructive in the honour of 50.

Facebook Tattoo Calendar

Just in case you forgot you can still purchase from me the amazing Christmas present of the 2010 Facebook Tattoo Calendar, only $20! All proceeds will be going to Bowel Cancer Research. Which is also where the $50 from McCann’s will be going.

Social Media is not all about long term relationships

2009-11-19T11:35:00.003+11:00

I used to think that Social Media Marketing was all about the long term relationships, the campaign model was the devil's work!

How I was wrong.

Luke Slattery founder of Movember flipped this whole idea of long term relationship on its head. Movember only speak to people 3 months a year (October to December). They realised that people have got a lot of other charities to support and that they do not want to be taking everyone’s time up.

I tend to agree, especially if you are a part of another active social platform. If you have a presence on Facebook or Twitter then people are not going to be shocked when you stop talking, they understand why you have stopped. It is not going to affect them either because they have a number of other people who are part of their newsfeed. However if you had created a branded destination community and you abandon it, then that is another story.

We are currently looking after The Contender Australia Facebook Page, it is going great guns and has clocked over 22,000 fans in less than 8 weeks (case study in the works). We plan on stopping communication a few weeks after the conclusion of the show. We will then pick up the conversation again in 12 months time when the second season comes online.

Picture thanks to the best site on the Internet Brown Cardigan

Case Study: Seek Volunteering Unplugged

2009-11-17T11:00:00.003+11:00

Problem: Seek had aligned with Volunteer Australia to provide the back engine to help volunteers connect with NFP jobs required Seek Volunteer. There has long been a myth that volunteering is what old grannies did in Op Shops. Seek wanted to help dispel this myth.

We (Naked Communications + The Population) were set the task of getting more people to use the Seek site to look for Volunteering roles.

Strategy: Create a site that shared the stories of people who had volunteered, focusing on the stories of influential Australian bloggers.

Insight: People who read blogs were probably some of the most advanced online users. They would most likely perform a number of tasks online (banking, looking for jobs, buying products). These would be the type of users who would use Seek Volunteer to find a volunteer job.

Execution: We looked to get ten of the most influential Australian bloggers to go and volunteer at an organization of their choice. Seek Volunteer would then donate $500 to that organisation on behalf of the blogger.

We isolated a list of 20 bloggers who we believed were influential and were relevant to talk about volunteering. We used the Top 100 Australian Bloggers as a starting point. We then went out with an email to these ten.

We created a site which would allowed people to read all the stories in one place as well as share their own story.

The site was supported with Banners on SEEK homepage, SEEK Volunteer homepage, Ninemsn and the Nuffnang blogging network.

Volunteering Unplugged was launched on May 11th 2009 at the start of National Volunteer Week. With the launch we did another outreach to the broader community and got the number 1 subscribed Australian Youtuber Natalie Tran (Community Channel) to talk about the site and industry support from NFP websites Third Sector and Go Volunteer and marketing site Mumbrella.

Result
We ended up with a site which had 57 volunteering stories, of the people that visited the site 25% of them checked out the Seek Volunteering website afterwards. Seek Volunteer were really happy with the project and are looking to extend on it in 2010.

Learnings
Blogger Outreach is really really tough
We ended up getting ten bloggers but we had to look beyond the original list of 20 and it was really tough. I think we underestimated how busy most bloggers were and giving up a whole day to volunteer at an organization was a massive commitment. In my experience there is probably only a handful of Australian bloggers (20 people?) who make enough money not to have to work full time.

This required us to change tact, what we found out was that most bloggers had volunteered in the past so instead of getting them to volunteer again we got them to share their previous stories.

Man Week
Olivia Whitty who worked on the Seek volunteer project went onto run a similar project, Man Week for Outreach. Man Week worked on the same principle of getting male bloggers to share stories about what it means to be a man. They were lucky enough to get the support of two influential bloggers in Mark Pollard and Gavin Heaton who went over and above and shared amazing stories that lead to a number of other people sharing stories.

Blogging in general
Blogging in Australia is still small. When you look at the Top 100 Australian Bloggers the content quality and readership drop dramatically once you go below the Top 45. In America you could run a whole campaign on Blogger Outreach, in Australia that is just not possible.

Blogger Outreach will only work here if you are targeting a global audience (Dosh Wallets) or you are also targeting writers at major online content and news portals.

The science of a great Youtube video - The Station and OralB

2009-11-12T15:24:00.001+11:00

Making content for Youtube is a science and when you understand the formula it becomes quite easy to replicate.

Recently a number of the top Youtubers created a new channel together, The Station. They used all the tricks that had gotten them so far (boobs in the thumbnails, fast editing, weblebrity appearances, and annotations asking for favouriting and rating).

In my opinion, The script and filming is average but that just helps to confirm that with the right formula you can turn any dog into a hero. The channel is now the 15th most subscribed of all time! The show is also acting as a great tactic to get great exposure to the actor’s personal Youtube channels.

OralB have done a great job at creating what I see as the first ad that has been specifically made for Youtube. It uses a lot of the editing tricks that many of the top Youtubers employ.

Edit: Andy brought to my attention that the brand is not OralB but OraBrush

List of Music Festivals using Social Media well

2009-11-10T12:21:00.009+11:00

We are well and truly into the Music Festival season. Promoters have always been great at using social media so I thought I would take a look at some of the better examples of music festivals using social media.

1. Stereosonic
Their twitter account is run by the general manager of the festival which gives the inside scoop on the happenings of the festival. This is also used to gauge feedback of certain ideas.

They have created a competition on Facebook, where punters have to take photos of the Stereosonic advertising, they then go in the draw to win tickets. Here is an example of a fan going over and above to get the ticket (action kicks off at 30secs)

2. Defqon.1 Maximum Exposure
One of the best competitions this year was run through dance site Inthemix
Defqon the competition asked people to get the Defqon logo out to the most people. The prize was to win a trip to Holland for music festival Defqon.1

Check out some of the other great efforts

3. Outside Lands (USA)
Looking abroad, this is a great example of what could is possible. Attedees at Outside Lands could use kiosks so you could upload your own photos and videos of the shows Then share them online with friends on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. They also streamed all the festival live on Youtube. Read the full case study on InsideFacebook.

4. Lollapoolza (USA)
An amazing case study on measuring the effectiveness of Social Media for ticket sales to Lollapoolza. Clever use of tracking tags and google analytics, read here.

5. Seeding a Green Festival (UK)
A case study from the London Green Festival, which gave the chance for a band to open the festival. Really nice simple case study to read.

6. One Movement Festival
If you didn't live in Perth there was a good chance you may have missed out on what was happening at the One Movement festival/conference. However Andrew McMillen was able to inform everyone with what they missed out with live blogging/twittering/facebook coverage of the festival.

7. BDO and Splendour Forums
FasterLouder are now looking after the forums for Splendour in the Grass, Laneway Festival, and Big Day Out. If you are interested in music and digital media Neil Ackland's (founder of Sound Alliance) blog is a must read

BONUS
Although not a music festival, I thought I would add this one. The Facebook Admins have been taking photos of bikes around Syndey and if your bike was featured you would win tickets to the festival, nice idea. The festival kicking off on Wednesday night, go here for more info and tickets!

I am looking to build this list out. Let me know what festival has done something different in the social space and I will add them to the list.

How to get an internship! Got any tips?

2009-11-05T12:14:00.004+11:00

With all this chatter about graduates getting jobs at the moment. I thought I would throw my two cents in about how to land an internship.

1. Know where you want to go
I think the first thing to do is suss out the situation and find out who is doing kick arse work in the area you are interested in. Make a list and go for the top of the pile.

2. Volunteering is not enough
Having an intern is a lot hassle for employees these days. You have to always find them small tasks to do. So instead of just asking for an internship find something that you can do for the company that can add value. Social Media offers a great opportunity for Gen Y looking to get an internship. A number of marketers don’t get it and want someone young to explain it for them. If I was looking for an internship at the moment in a marketing organisation, I would tell them that I would like to compile a report for them, on what people are saying about their brand online and what are competitor brands doing in social media?

3. Something different

Have a talking point. My next door neighbour, Josh Clement sent me this great video he created to help him find an internship. Awesome.

4. Contacts
When I was at University, my mum knew a lot of people in advertising so she kept on trying to introduce me to people working in Advertising. It shitted me to tears, I wanted to make it on my own. That was until she helped me get my first break with Sputnik. Do not be stubborn like I was, take all the help you can get. Most people in this world will try to help you out and will enjoy seeing someone succeed.

What other tips do you have for graduates looking for jobs/internships?

The Perfect Gift for a Man

2009-10-29T18:19:00.002+11:00

So if you are like me and struggle with buying Christmas and birthday presents, do not stress I have your brother and dad sorted this Christmas!

Back in June, a number of bloggers (including myself) shared some really personal stories about what it means to be a man for the Inspire Foundation's Man Week. There were a number of amazing heart felt stories, at the time it felt like something really big.

The super smart Gavin Heaton and Mark Pollard took the idea to the next level, they helped to get the story beyond the blogosphere bubble by creating a book ‘The Perfect Gift for a Man’ which was a collection of stories about being a man. Below is Gavin helping to get the story out on KAK.

If you would like to purchase a hard copy of the book you can buy it from Blurb.com or you can buy the e-Book from The Perfect Gift for a Man website. The profits will all go to The Inspire Foundation, so dig deep!

Case Study: Yves Klein Blue Twitter Application

2009-10-27T11:25:00.005+11:00

Problem
Yves Klein Blue are an indie/rock band who in June were about to release a new album Ragged and Ecstatic. With the release of the new album it was hoped that it would become a Top 40 selling album.

Strategy
To captalise on the growing success YKB were having with Twitter we decided to leverage one of the recent innovations through Twitter which was a Twitter application which allowed someone to download an mp3 when they tweeted a unique code for, this had been used by TRVS-DJAM weeks earlier.

We proposed that Yves Klein Blue would allow people to download one of their songs and go in the running for VIP tickets to Splendour in the Grass if they tweeted a specific code.

Implementation
We used Culture Jam who built the original TRVS-DJAM application to build the site/app for us. For launch, we went out to Yves Klein Blue existing social network and communicated the offer.

TRV$DJAM Twitter Promotion Screencast from Culture Jam on Vimeo.

We then went out to a number of influential music tweeters/bloggers and made them aware of the offer.

Results
We were hoping for 1,200 downloads of the song (estimated that of their current social network that 15% would tweet the offer and they would influence one person in their twitter following to do the same).

We ended up falling significantly short of this target with only 432 downloads of the track.

The silver lining was that we were able to double the size of YKB Twitter following in two weeks, they went from followers 487 to 1,017 in three weeks. It took 5 months to get their first 487 followers.

Learnings
I really think that you learn more from the campaigns that do not match your expectations than the ones that do.

Size of Twitter in Australia
Twitter is really really small in Australia. Twitter has 250,000 active Australian users. That is nothing! That is 3.5% of the size of Facebook. When you are trying to find a niche of fans, it probably would have been better to not make it even harder for ourselves by launching on a niche platform.

Locking in influentials
Locking in relevant influential Tweeters (music+following) prior to
launch is essential

Easier site navigation
We got 1,700 visitors to the site and only 432 followers. The drop between visitors and downloaders indicates that the bulk of users did not have twitter accounts or couldn’t be bothered to follow the steps

Mix of earned and paid media
We can’t rely on publicity to drive traffic to an application, since doing this venture with YKB we realized that it requires a mix of earned and paid media for an idea to kick off in the social media environment.

Comparing the Australian and US audiences
Be cautious when making comparisons between the US and Australia. Travis Barker and DJ-AM at the time had a substantial following, YKB did not.  

A digital music mystery: Australian Idol Fan to Follower anomaly, Do you know the answer?

2009-10-23T10:39:00.000+11:00

What is the difference between a Facebook Fan and a Twitter follower?

I have been doing a bit of research into Australian music artists and their number of fans online. My hypothesis was the more album you sold, the more fans you would have on Myspace, Twitter and Facebook.

My white paper that I will release soon, finds benchmarks for ARIA charting artist. I have found the average number of Facebook fans, Myspace friends and Twitter followers of an artist should increase depending on what level of sales they got to on the ARIA chart (Gold, Platinium or 2x Platinium).

But I noticed one really interesting pattern, ex-Australian Idol contestants index really low on Facebook Fans but then really high on Twitter Followers?
For instance, a Gold (35,000+ album/single sales) selling artist the average number of Facebook Fans is 14,000 (e.g Karnivool, Bliss N Eso and Pnau all have between 10-15k for fans). However Australian Idol contestants Wes Carr and Ricki-Lee have a very low number of fans (2000 and 1,700 fans respectively). However when you look at Twitter followers the average is 1,300 followers but Wes and Ricki-Lee have triple that number with 3900 and 3800 respectively?!?!

So why is it that Australian Idol contestants index so low on Facebook fans yet so high on Twitter followers?

I have got no idea, I would be really keen to hear your theory on why this phenomena is occurring. Free Guy Sebastian album for the person who comes up with the right answer!

Case Study: My Year Without Sex Social Media Campaign

2009-10-21T10:27:00.001+11:00

Problemo: My Year Without Sex was a new Australian film, which was hard to market as it didn’t fit into one specific category. The trailer was not going to be enough to get people to watch it. Working on a small budget we needed to get people to talk about the film.

Strategy: Use word of mouth to help fuel discussion around the movie

Implementation:

Identifying Key Environments
We identified the target market as mothers. Using Google Ad Planner and a number of other tools we looked for the environments where mothers were most vocal online and three environments stood out; Facebook, Mothers Forums and Mother Blogs.

Part 1: Mothers Forums
We went out to a number of the major mothers forums and offered the Moderators of the sites free double passes to see the film. Forums host some of the liveliest discussions online.

Part 2: Blogs
We identified a number of influential female blogs that we thought would enjoy the film. These bloggers were found using the Top 100 Australian Women Bloggers list. From this list we got a number of high profile bloggers to go and see the movie. We also used the NuffNang to outreach to a further 20 bloggers.

Part 3: Facebook
There was an opportunity to get a number of people along to a pre screening for the film in each major cities. We used Facebook Advertising and a Facebook Event to set up an exclusive Facebook Pre Screening for 500 people. We also ran a Facebook Page which had further information about the movie.

Part 4: Youtube - Creating a piece of passable content
We decided to create a piece of content around the film which we believed could have mass appeal online. We created the ‘5 Things that get in the way of Sex’ video. We were able to get this video to the front page of Digg and then Youtube Honour Board with 25,000 views in one week. This ended up being the feature of a blog post in Sydney Morning Herald Ask Sam Blog.

Result:
In its opening week MYWS took $177,522 and has currently grossed $1,127,838 in box office sales.

Learnings:
Facebook Page
It is really hard for someone to become a fan of a product that they have no knowledge about. We did not see growth in the Page until after the release date which usually does not work with the timings/budgeting of films.

Facebook Advertising
This campaign ran from early April to May this year, this was before the upgrade to the Facebook advertising model. We were only able to manage to get 900 people into the Page for the movie, when we promoted Cedar Boys another Australian film we were able to get 2,000 easily into the Page. So this new upgrade has definitely made a difference.

The 'R' in Social Media Revolution stands for 'Rubbish'

2009-10-15T14:22:00.000+11:00

Next week this blog will turn 3 years old, there has been a change in direction over the past 12 months. Last year I used to speak about social media as a revolution that would change the way businesses would approach marketing! WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH!

After working in an agency for a year, I realised that social media will actually be an evolution of the current digital/advertising model. I find there is still to many of these revolutionary spruikers in the blogosphere who are referencing one off social media examples as proof of the revolution! I think what is needed is more people sharing stories about first hand experience on how they overcame barriers (money/legal/administration) and how they integrated social media into their current digital/advertising model.

Revolutionary Social Media spruikers are good for one thing, they help to get people who know nothing about social media excited about the possibility of the technology. However, once this excitement dies down, there needs to be information on what people can actually do.

I guess what I am trying to say is, I am thinking of scraping the name Adspace-Pioneers.blogspot.com and going with the name examples_of_social_media_being_used_in_digital_campaigns_and_other_shit.blogspot.com

Facebook Page Growth: 30-40% attributed to earned media

2009-10-13T12:20:00.002+11:00

Facebook is really helping to close the gap between advertising and social media. It now gives brands the opportunity to incorporate and track both paid and earned media in the one place.

Doing some analysis over three Pages (The Contender Australia, Grinspoon, Vanessa Amorosi) I am currently working on I worked out that for every three people that join a Page through paid media, they will indirectly influence two friends within their network to join the Page via the suggestion box/highlight or news feeds of their friends pages.

Lode cash in on the indirect earned media 'Suggestions' spot

In my opinion Facebook is the only social platform that has an advertising model that is worth investing in. We are seeing some of the smart agencies in Australia pick up on this and really launch some big exciting campaigns through the platform Telstra Digital Mums (DDB), The Skinny Cow (Publicis Digital), 5 Seeds (Holler), and Lynx (SOAP).

Methodology: Since the upgrade to Facebook Ads in June 2009, they now give you action rates which is how many people become a fan directly from the ad. So subtracting this action rate number from your Page growth gives you the viral growth rate, I then made that number into a percentage (Grinspoon - 34%, Vanessa Amorosi - 39% and The Contender - 40%). I would love it if anyone else would like to share their stats