… it might stick.
Some things to look at:
Enterprise Ireland on their LinkedIn use.
Interesting idea. Clever in my view. Communicorp do an app for McDonald’s integrating their radio stations while helping to sell burgers. Integration, clever.
Boom. People spend more time on mobile apps than the web.
European Advertising Certificate. Interesting idea. Written exam though…
Doing SEO for Google Plus.
There is no Insight button.
Katie Price on Twitter started tweeting about politics and economics and got a reaction (naturally) from her 1.5M followers and then a few tweets later she tweeted that when you’re hungry you’re not yourself with a picture of a Snickers bar.
What a clever idea but I’m sure some will react badly to it. This is already happening without it being as obvious and blatant. Irish sports stars are encouraged/pushed to join Twitter so they can tweet about their sponsors/promotions. One wonders what guidelines are needed for this though.
Re-reading Ogilvy on Advertising at the moment. While new at the time, Avis’s use of positioning helped them make millions. And they took a mix of honesty and good copywriting.
Their agency was Doyle, Dane and Bernbach and their line was:
Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars. So why go with us? We try harder.
The first bit is obviously true. The second bit, perhaps over time it became so. What it does though is make people assume that someone that’s not first won’t be resting on their laurels but maybe the top brand would. We like to support the underdog.
Apple in the early 80s saw the giant threat that IBM was/others say it was conformity was the threat and created the iconic 1984 ad when they launched the Macintosh with the line:
On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”
Apple were saying they are your tool to smash conformity. A good position. Ironic given their dislike of consumers customising their Apple gear.
I’ve been trying to find a link to it and failed but there was a t-shirt company who when they launched also started creating knock-off versions of their own gear and selling them at markets. The idea was that the fake versions tell people the brand must be big enough/famous enough that they’re now having their stuff faked. Their brand is now positioned with Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike etc. and that feeds in to the “real” brand obviously being on the same ladder as all these other brands. Clever yes, sneaky yes.
Unfortunately in Ireland there’s not a lot of clever positioning. It seems to be about copying someone else and laying in the same arse dent on the sofa as everyone rather than doing your own thing. Still, this means massive opportunities for anyone that wants to take on the status quo.
I did a mini-survey on Twitter earlier today. 350 people answered two questions. It asked what phone type they had and if they had a QR scanner on their phone. The results:
Do you have a QR code reader on your phone?
Yes 229 - 65%
No 93 - 27%
A what now? (Don’t know) 28 - 8%
What type of phone did they have?
iPhone (any type) 188 - 54%
Android based smartphone 114 - 33%
Nokia 26 - 7%
Windows Phone 6 - 2%
Blackberry 7 - 2%
Other 9 - 3%
Which platform likes QR codes more?
74.5% of Android owners had QR readers, 69.6% of iPhone owners had QR readers.
The results to me were surprising, the small marketing and tech industry drenched network would not represent the general masses but I still would not have thought the amount of people with QR code readers on their smartphones were so high.
Good blog post from the PSNI, not backing away from social media despite people trying to target the police on Facebook and elsewhere.
Journalists and engaging in social media.
In the same breath, 11 ways to measure the value of social media.
Email marketing tips. Useful enough.
I’ve noticed a lot of people asking me on Twitter to retweet Tweets where they are looking for intern positions with marketing or PR companies or looking for digital work in other companies.
Companies have different criteria depending on the work they do. I’d be grateful for some feedback from PR and Marketing companies in particular as to what they want interns schooled in before they start the job.
Are things like the below important?
What other digital skills are needed?
Or getting into the Irish Times for 500 euros.
Or doing your own R&D on the cheap.
Ages back on Twitter I remember seeing a teenager talk about the rarity that email was to him. Most of his communications online were around Facebook IM/Messaging. Mix that with various marketing research groups telling us what teens are interested in, without asking them and I thought it might be good to put a survey together. That’s where the Irish Teen Survey of Digital Trends came from.
Firstly, I compiled some ideas/questions I wanted answers for. Then I asked Eleanor, Aidan, Adam and Ian for some feedback on these. They suggested questions to ask, they laughed at some of the notions I had about teenagers and they listed options for some of the multi-choice questions. With that information I then collated the questions and employed someone to put them into some surveying software. I used Surveys.ie by SensorPro for this as I had also worked with them previous to this on surveys.
Next was propagating the survey. Once again I asked teens to send the survey to their friends. To get the survey completed, all those that did the survey were entered into a draw for an iTunes voucher and all those that got a friend to do the survey and their friend mentioned them, were also entered into another iTunes draw.
After the survey was done, results were collated and a summary and press release made. There was converage in the Irish Times, Silicon Republic, I was talking about it on Phantom1052 as well. Lots of coverage on Twitter too.
What does this survey do for Mulley Communications?
Costs:
Between the vouchers and the work to collate the survey, it cost about 500 euros.
Some lessons learned:
While 101 surveys were completed, there was a very large rate of those who never completed the surveys. Too many questions. Next time I might split the survey in two with maximum 20 questions, if even that. Also, have a few publications in mind for each survey, perhaps offer sections of the survey to each publication. Sample size is low too. Shorter surveys would almost double the numbers. Widen out the survey to rely less on people that receive this from friends on Facebook or Twitter.
This survey follows on from our Facebook eyetracking survey, Google eyetracking survey and iPhone survey.
How long does it take to form a habit? If you’re into marketing and want people to make your product the default they get, this is good to know.
So one ad agency gets ditched. Is it really the end of agencies? I don’t think so as long as companies don’t have the resources. Some big orgs have half a dozen comms agencies alone.
Alcohol brand or product? See the updated Facebook terms and conditions.
Saatchi and Saatchi celebrate 40 years. Showcase of their best/most known work.
How to present with a PUNCH.
The next Measure It! is on Thursday November 4th 2010.
The event will take place from 10am to 12pm at eircom HQ in Heuston Quarter. You can get the Luas to Heuston and then cross the road as if walking to IMMA. Thanks to Gina for organising the venue. Leave a comment if you want to attend. You can get updates about Measure It! on Twitter too. How modern.
What Measure It! is:
This is an informal event where those working in and around social media/digital/online marketing gather every month or so and share case studies or insights about social media measurement in order to up the knowledge that people working in this area have. The event is free. We normally do 2-3 10 minute presentations and Q&As around them and then you are split into groups to do an assigned task around social media/measurement. The value of Measure It! is in the sharing of information and networking with new people so don’t huddle together with your colleagues!
There’s a very good post on Buzzfeed about the use of infographics (Diagrams displaying information in a useful and understandable way) to help rig Google results. It’s the new gray hat SEO manipulation technique.
Simple idea: Create an infographic. Make the content tabloid enough/interesting enough to get linked to and offer code for people to embed it on their site with of course a link back to the site with your golden key words.
Already we’re seeing website and blog owners being emailed and asked for links to these infographics and to use certain keywords with the links. Nefarious to say the least especially when there isn’t any thought on who might be interested in the content. “We thought you might like this health insurance graphic since you er blog about food and please link with the text: cheap health insurance Ireland”
It’s common for a client and an agency to want a quick win. Good traffic and lots of links. That’s the goal, right? Social media/online marketing is simple to set up, free to do and so people seem to think that there’ll be instant success as a result. The case studies we show and are shown make it seem that way too. Organic growth by creating content, interacting, getting feedback and moving on again is much more stable. But traditionally the marketing industry bought volume. Buy an ad on the Late Late, stick something in every paper and you’ll reach everyone with your very bland ad.
Quantity is still the catnip for many. That’s why you see so many company blogs mentioning celebrities and trying to shoehorn their offerings into some scandal. Good luck with aligning nipple slips into recruitment news lads. There was an old Irish Politics blog that started getting into mentioning all kinds of celebrity sex drivel. Traffic exploded but so did respect for the blog’s political analysis. This here blog for Mulley Comms gets 1/10th of the traffic as my personal blog and something blogged over there will do very well in Google but talking online marketing or online PR here means it won’t get first position on Google. That’s ok though as the blog here is new enough and still finding the way.
You see it too with Facebook campaigns that push for people to become fans. Win an iPad or iPhone for anyone that’s a fan of your Facebook Page. How many of your new Facebook fans genuinely care about what you do and how many clicked Like to enter the iPad draw?
Now counter that with what Sabrina Dent highlights for newsletter list building. She talks about Ciara Crossan going to Wedding Fairs. That’s where Ciara’s constituents are. Those who subscribe to her newsletter are the right demographic, not any old sod joining to get to the prize. Good leads at targeted events. There would be plenty of ways for Ciara to get 1000s of randomers on her mailing list but how many will take the content seriously then? A polluted database costs you more in the end.
So as clients, consultants and agencies should we keep pushing for the slow and more intelligent game instead of cheap tactics like link rigging and begging friends and strangers to Like client status updates? Should part of a company’s social media policy to ban staff from clicking on that Like button and leaving comments? The same way for competitions staff, their families and suppliers are banned from taking part? Should you train your own thoughts into thinking longterm?
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