The Old Spice social media campaign rocked the advertising world and, as a concept, was a hit with audiences world-wide. But the question people keep asking is, “How has it affected sales? Are more people cracking out the Old Spice?”. According to Nielsen, sales have climbed steadily since July, peaking with the interactive Twitter/YouTube element at 107% increase. But the effort does not end there for Old Spice. Having established a memorable and recognisable tone of voice, via Mustafa, the Old Spice print advertising that can currently be seen about the place is totally on-brand and hilarious. What the Old Spice social media campaign achieved was not just millions of YouTube hits. Furthermore, and much more importantly, they successfully re-positioned their brand without changing a thing. That’s very little money very well spent.
One of our new San Francisco studio clients has launched a genius new app — Flipboard. The app, which shapes up all your ragged social media feeds into one beautiful magazine experience, is being hyped big time. Ashton Kutcher tweeted “If you have an iPad the flipboard app is a must” to his 5 million followers, and Wired gave the new app a shout out and early hands-on review. It is currently the tenth most talked about topic on Twitter, and has had over 100,000 hits on youtube since yesterday.
This movie will give you an idea of how it works – you can see the moving identity we produced at the end of the clip.
Britain is today waking up to a hung parliament following the 2010 General Election. No one party has been able to secure an outright majority in the House of Commons, meaning there will now be a frantic period of negotiation to decide the shape of the next government. The journey to the election has been a bit of a roller coaster, with political favour seeming to change day to day amongst the electorate. At the start of the year, when rumours of a May election began to surface, everyone assumed the party leaders would be taking a leaf out of Obama’s book and fighting a modern fight via digital media platforms and social networks. I attended – and blogged here about – a talk at the Frontline club about the role social media might play in the run up to the election. The consensus was that in engaging the public on digital platforms, the opportunity for conversation, discussion and opinion gathering would be all the greater and more valuable.
As it happened, it was the X-factor style televised debates that had the most effect. The British public are, it transpired, more hardwired these days to make decisions based good old fashioned dance offs. They are hungry for personality, style and flair. They want drama, intrigue, controversy and an underdog. And what with the wives, the ties, Bigot-gate, and Cleggmania, the party leaders delivered on all fronts. The huge voter turn out last night, accompanied by the typically English brawling as the 10 o’clock deadline loomed, proved that the public wanted their vote to count. And, with a tough few days ahead for those in Parliament commence, the voting public wait eagerly to see whose mandate really has the X-factor!
Just came across this awesome visualization of data SimpleGeo collected from the eight geolocated data providers (FourSquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Flickr, Bump, Brightkite, BlockChalk, and Fwix) during the South by SouthWest Interactive Festival earlier this year. I also like one of the YouTube comments which brings large-scale visualisations like this back to its roots – the individuals connecting at the festival. “I was at SXSWi March 11- the 17th so some of those dots are actually mine as I moved around SXSWi on Twitter, Foursquare and Flickr. LOVE IT!”.
Just when you were asking yourself “Could Moving Brands really be any more cross-platform?” We say “Mutha futon, No!” and launch the *official* Moving Brands company page on Facebook. We have some pretty exciting plans for our Facebook presence rolling out over the next few months so click here and get “liking” (it’s the new friending apparently).
It is not surprising or wrong that Twitter has discovered a revenue stream for their platform which boasts 45 million regular users. It was inevitable and their approach seems measured and considered. What’s sad is that brands were finally waking up to the idea that they had to connect with their audience, not just relentlessly throw advertising at them until their belief in individual choice would crumble to the point that they start shopping. Many benchmark brands had discovered that by engaging their customers in a conversation, by responding to them in real time and listening to what they were saying, they could offer them a better level of service and a better product. Twitter brands of note include Innocent Smoothies (@innocentdrinks) who fielded questions about their minority buyout from Coca Cola via Twitter. And in March online clothing retailer, ASOS (@asos), saw the opportunity to build a community and launched Twitter app Asos Follows Fashion “to connect fashion-loving people with real time news and views from the best of the fashion world”.
Brands like these, however, a far and few between and “promoted tweets” will no doubt seem like an easy option for less digitally savvy brands to get on the bandwagon. On his blog, Twitter founder Biz Stone assured users that “promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users. That means if users don’t interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the Promoted Tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Retweeting it, the Promoted Tweet will disappear”. Thankfully, the very nature of Twitter and its fast paced, instantly reactive, vocal community will quickly reveal the power of Promoted Tweets and their role in helping brands engage customers.
An interesting new platform has been showcased at last week’s BVE trade exhibition which represents the closing gap between entertainment and social networking. Project Canvas, is “a proposed partnership between the BBC, ITV, C4, Five, BT and Talk Talk to build an open internet-connected TV platform”. As well as creating a technical standard for internet connected TV devices, the proposal also includes a split-screen experience with networked conversations on sites such as Twitter appearing next to TV pictures.
With many people already known to watch TV whilst also browsing the internet, Project Canvas marks an inevitable shift for the media industry. Previous blog posts on here about the reach of shows such as Glee and the Superbowl have already highlighted the role online interaction is having in boosting viewing figures, increasing brand awareness and, ultimately, acting as a drive to consumption. Added to the expected lift on the ban for product placement on UK TV, and we are likely to see a dramatic shift in how people watch and consumer media in their homes.
(Apologies for low quality movie – currently only example of the demo available)
Check out this new film. Developed in partnership with The Economist as part of the upcoming “Media Convergence Forum” in New York this month. The film examines the changing media landscape and highlights Obama’s (US President and newly Nobel Peace Prize Winner - the man can do no wrong!) leveraging of social networking to raise $55 million for his presidential campaign. Here at MB we are lucky enough to have worked with Scott Thomas – the man behind Obama’s historic campaign. Scott recently spoke at the Adobe Max Conference about the campaign, which was also awarded the Titanium and Integrated Grand Prix at Cannes this year. Next up, Scott’s working on a book, ‘Designing Obama‘, which will no doubt be a fascinating insight into the pioneering work which really put social and digital media on the map.
This is an incredibly exciting period for new media. Everything happens at such a pace, there is barely the time to write the rule books, before something new comes along ready for anyone who’s willing and able to become the master of. The unrelenting speed, the democracy of information, the power of global networks… and this is only just the beginning. Watch this space.
The Incidental is a daily pamphlet and new media experiment which is designed to help navigating the Milan furniture fair.
The pamphlet/map is composed from aggregated online twitter/flickr feeds of thoughts, recommendations, sketches and pictures contributed by the public. It is then printed over night and distributed by bike at 8am. (the first one just went out this morning!)
What a great way to create international conversation and connecting the tangible with the digital.
Advertising has changed. It is no longer about inspiring people to simply buy a product. It is about inspiring people to emotionally engage with the brand. Now that digital advertising has begun to embrace social networking, it means that emotionally invested consumers can share and express their involvement, becoming more attached in the process.
The beauty of all the DIY Barclaycard waterslides and Cadbury’s eyebrows doing the rounds on YouTube is in people being moved by an idea to the point where they chose to propagate it, and in unforeseen ways.
A brand that can develop a life of its own is truly a moving, living brand. Today’s companies must learn that a brand, which performs brilliantly within their own parameters and environment, is good. But a brand, which performs brilliantly in the outside world and in other people’s hands, can be something really great.
