Unless you have been living in a dark room with no access to any type of media, social networks or office gossip you’ll probably be aware of the recent super injunction scandal concerning a certain footballer’s indiscretions.

In early April, a story about serial WAG, Imogen Thomas’ six-month affair with a footballer famous for his ‘family-man’ image was leaked via Twitter. Ordinarily a story about yet another footballer having yet another affair with a glamour model would barely raise an eyebrow, so why did this one cause such a stir?

Because the footballer in question had a taken out a super injunction – the highest level of legal gagging order – to ensure Ms Thomas kept her mouth shut and his identity was kept well and truly out of the public domain. This led to a bizarre situation where the national press were legally prohibited from printing the player’s name but social media networks buzzed with speculation. Within days a Twitter user had revealed all: the mystery man was none other than ‘squeaky-clean’ Manchester United star, Ryan Giggs.

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I have to admit, even though I’m professionally still unsure about Twitter, there are some quite interesting people whom you can follow and get some great updates from. Personal favourites include Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry and, one that I shouldn’t really admit to, Tori Black!

For guaranteed slices of comic gold, though, you can’t beat the updates by some of the many fake profiles that people have set up on Twitter. Now there are a few fake profiles on Twitter that are just not funny and some that started out funny but haven’t been updated in ages (like this one for George Bush), but the ones I have listed here are wonderfully written and beautifully play upon your perceptions of the person they are pretending to be to give you the odd wry smile and even a few belly laughs.

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Comic Relief is arguably the highlight of charitable TV marathons in the UK, and has been since its inception in 1985. Originally, fundraising for the event was focused around buying red noses and getting sponsored for sitting in a bath of beans.  But that was then and now things are done a little differently. Despite the financial pressures of a recovering economy affecting everyone, this year’s total broke all previous records. Were the British public particularly eager to part with their cash? Or could social media have played a part in helping them reach such a grand total?

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As marketers we don’t expect things to stand still. We’re always searching for new trends and ready to try new channels and methods to get our client’s brands out to the consumer market.

Facebook is one of those channels that doesn’t stay still for long. 2010 saw the launch of Facebook Places. Now not far into 2011 and we’ve already seen the launch of Facebook Deals, with the likes of Debenhams, Starbucks and Mazda all jumping straight on the bandwagon. But I think one thing every marketer should be keeping a close eye on over the coming months is the new Facebook Messages.

There has been much speculation since Mark Zuckerburg announced his plans in November 2010, both as to what this means for Facebook users and more importantly for us, how it is going to affect the way we market to them. Some think it won’t make much difference, yet others are heralding it as ‘the end of email’. Whatever your personal opinion or business agenda, it is now gradually being rolled out to all Facebook users, and a few of us at Red C have been testing it out.

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As fellow marketers it can’t have escaped your attention that the marketing landscape in which we work is changing at an amazing rate.  The way we communicate with our customers isn’t the same as it once was and it is certainly going to continue changing over the forthcoming years.

Traditionally, we have spoken to our customers via direct mail, email, tv, radio and the telephone.  However, due to the boom of social media this one-way communication flow is changing into a more dynamic two-way conversation.

In my view, the major change that has occurred is social media is giving our customers a voice; it’s giving our customer’s power.  So whereas the customer was only able to affect our business through their purchasing behaviour they can now have the power to influence our future by what they say about our brand, product and service offering.  However, although these are undoubtedly exciting times they are times that should be treated with caution as we have very little control as to what our customers say about us and we have even less control over who they speak to.

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Last year, like many brands and organisations, London Fashion Week flirted with Social Media by having event details, links to stories and comments posted on Twitter and Facebook… so far so very 2009!

This year, though, sees London Fashion Week take a great leap forward by embracing even more Social Media technologies and making London Fashion Week open to the masses rather than the privileged few… and they’ve done it in some predictable and also some surprising ways.

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