What is Social Media

I posted at the beginning of the month about a great presentation that Paul Isakson, Head of Strategy with Space 150, gave at the Marketing 2.0:unfiltered event put on by Espresso. Following on from that there is a must-see presentation by Marta Kagan, Managing Director at Espresso: 'What The F**K is Social Media?'

Here Marta takes a look at exactly where Social Media is within the modern (digital) marketing mix, how brands / businesses should be utilising Social Media, and what the important points are to consider (remember) when making the move into Soicial Media. Although this is written from an American perspective, almost all stats are international and all learnings are universal.



Marta's presentation is a follow on from her first 'What The F**K is Social Media?'

Follow Marta at...
Bonafide Marketing Genius
LinkedIn
Marta's Blog
Twitter
Facebook

Lemonade: The Movie

In the US more than 70,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs so far in the "current economic climate". Lemonade tells the story of what those people, who were once creative in advertising, get creative with their own lives. Lemonade has been put together by Please Feed The Animals, an online community for advertising professionals who have been made unemployed.



Writer: Erik Proulx
Director: Marc Colucci
Directors of Photography: Peter Nelson, Will van Hazel, Todd Heater, Neal Morrell, Mark Harmel
Production Company: Picture Park
Executive Producers: Jennifer McKenzie, Erik Proulx
Producers: Carrie Jacobson, Scott Burtnett
Post Production: Finish/Boston
Editor: Pete Warren
Sound Post Production: Soundtrack/Boston
Mixer: Brian Heidebrecht
Music: Caspian

Ruby Card on Pix.ie

I was out taking photos this morning in Sandymount and I remembered that Pix.ie were running a great competition with Ruby Card. There's €2,500 up for grabs and entering is incredibly simply. Basically all you need to do is either upload your photos directly to the Ruby Card group, or just join the Ruby Card group and tag your photos with "rubycard" and the county that you took the photo in (these will then appear in the group).

The aim of the competition is "to capture the beauty of Ireland for the next Ruby Card". The competition is based across the 26 counties of the Republic or Ireland and is calling on the public to showcase their county. One lucky winner will then get their photo used on the front of the new Ruby Card prepaid credit card, and €2,500.

RightMove.co.uk iPhone App

As readers of my blog will probably already know, there are two technology areas that particularly interest me at the moment: Augmented Reality and Mobile Applications. More importantly, I'm really interested to see how businesses and agencies push these technologies through meaningful and useful application. Obviously it's difficult to refute the popularity of the iPhone Lightsaber application simple through total download, however it's easy to agree that this application doesn't actually serve a useful purpose. One of the most useful iPhone apps I've seen in a long time is the RightMove app.

RightMove, the UK property search and listings website, has just teamed up with Mobile Marketing firm 2ergo, and developed an iPhone app that allows you to use your iPhone's GPS functionality to find properties near your current location that are available to buy or rent. The app is free to download and gives the same full functionality as the website in an easy to use mobile aplication. You can search by address, price, number of rooms etc. and you can view all the uploaded picture as usual. Two additional pieces of functionality that have been added are the the ability to forward the details of properties to other people simply by pressing a button, and a straight forward "Call Me" function that puts you straight through to the letting agent or property owner.

Rightmove already has over 40,000 users accessing its website through the iPhone's, which represents 95% of its mobile traffic.

Miles Shipside of Rightmove, said: "Offering an app was a natural progression and we're delighted to be the first major property company to provide a service of this nature. 2ergo was the natural choice for us due to their mobile marketing and app development expertise."

Non-Branded Branding Activity

I wrote a post last Friday about the new Coca-Cola 'Open Happiness' "adver-tainment" piece that was directed by Alan Ferguson. One of the most unique things about it is that during the entire ad there is no branding what-so-ever except during the final 2 seconds. Considering the ad is 4 minutes and 25 seconds long, that's a bit of a big deal. And although the ad doesn't contain anything in it that says Coca-Cola or utilises the logo or brand iconography, the ad screams Coa-Cola in every way. As a piece of branding work it is definitely an indication of Coca-Cola's security with their own position and brand strength.

Following on from this, I've been keeping an eye out for anyone else doing similar 'non-branded' brand work. Nick Burcher wrote an excellent post on the recent Scandinavian Airlines TV ads. Nick describes how in the latest of the ads, there is no mention of Scandinavian Airlines or display of their logo until the final 4 seconds of a 60 second ad. Created by Wibroe Duckert & Partners, the ad is entirely in French (with English subtitles) and uses "Les deux pigeons" by Charles Aznavour as its soundtrack.

Is this the direction that brands will start to go in general? Is there any correlation between this and the continued growth of Social Media? I have had quite a few people suggest to me that the mind shift that corporate entities have had to undertake to fully realise the intimate and personal nature of Social Media will possibly drive a greater change in how all facets of marketing are approached. I think this is an interesting thought but by no means something that we can yet judge. Though I for one would not be disappointed to see a general move in all corporate communication channels towards a more socially orientated approach.


[click video to play]

Producer: Gitte Saloman
Creative: Peter Boye; Henrik Tvilling
Director: Martin Werner
Production: Bacon
Producer: Malene Dyhring
Director of Photography: Lasse Frank
Post Production: Duckling
Editor: Peter Brandt
Music: Charles Aznavour

A big cheers to Nick for posting this video :)