Facebook, Twitter and YouTube… not what first springs to mind when you think about politics. But over the last few years, more and more politicians have started using the internet as a tool to drum up political support.
When the Presidential elections in the US got under way in 2008, Democratic candidate Barack Obama used the internet to great effect to raise funds and gain supporters in his race to be President. His success has seen UK politicians follow suit and with the current general election, UK political parties have been pushing their online activities more than ever. Below are some examples of what they’ve been up to:
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.
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.
We’re extremely proud of our work on the Swinton Mystery Tipper, especially as it has garnered the agency an armful of awards from two DMA Awards to two ISP Awards and two IPA Effectiveness Awards. We’ve had quite a few people ask to see our winning entry form… so here it is!
CONTEXT AND MARKET BACKGROUND
The insurance sector is a complex and increasingly challenging marketplace. For most of us, insurance has always been a distress purchase – something we grudgingly concede we need to have, and resent the increasing premiums. Three key innovations in the last decade have had a significant impact on the broader market. The launch of Direct Line’s online insurance offer, in 1999, following the formula of its breakthrough approach to offering insurance by telephone a decade earlier, forced every insurer and broker to reassess their approach – here was a company that made buying insurance simple and fuss-free, cutting out the middle man and talking everyday language. This sparked an extended period of discounting in the sector that still has ramifications today.
During the 1980s and 1990s, two giants of the soft drinks world went to war. In the red corner we had the Coca-Cola Company. In the blue corner was PepsiCo. While Coca-Cola would entice us with the ‘New Coke’ before seducing us back again with ‘Classic Coke’; Pepsi used a whole host of pop and movie stars to show us they were the ‘Taste for a New Generation’ and even went as far as demonstrating to us that the average person on the street preferred Pepsi thanks to their ‘Pepsi Challenge’.
Just when we thought the marketing landscape was getting a little dull, we now have a new battle on the horizon. Instead of battling to quench your thirst… this time we have a battle to satisfy your online search needs. Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls… let’s get ready to rumble as Facebook, Google and Microsoft go to war in the battle to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the search engines.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, how do I look in the Aqua Circle-Print Tube Dress? Oh it’s nice…but it’s not quite right…have you got it in red…and maybe one size up? Oh yes…that’s perfect. Now let me send this to my friends…girls look at me…what do you think? OMG they love it – I’ll take it…”
Coming soon to a high-street fitting room near you…welcome to the exciting world of Interactive Mirrors.
Interactive whatnow?
An Interactive Mirror is – as its name suggests – a mirror you can interact with. Basically, simply looking at your reflection is like so last year. Now you can actually manipulate it, using the mirror’s touch-screen surface to do everything from trying out new clothes and hairstyles, to giving yourself a tan.
On 28th May 2009, Google announced its grand vision for the future of internet communication. By harnessing the power of HTML 5 – the next major revision to the core language of the World Wide Web – Google is putting the final touches to a brand new “personal communication and collaboration tool” for a brand new era. It’s called Google Wave.
As a real-time communication platform, Google Wave combines email, instant messaging, web chat, wikis, social networking and project management (among other things) in one elegant, in-browser communication client. With a release scheduled in late 2009, it is already being hailed by some as the ‘next generation’ of email. Read more…
Here’s a question: how do you feel about Paris Hilton? Personally I have nothing against the pointless, insipid, spoilt, undernourished, narcissistic, empty-headed, fame-hungry little brat… but I know others feel differently.
When Ms. Hilton was found guilty of drink driving in 2006, her PR team decided to harness the power of public outcry in a campaign to request her pardon. The Free Paris Hilton petition – which includes the incredible declaration “Paris provides beauty and excitement to our otherwise mundane lives” – received an impressive 33,000 signatures. Unfortunately, a counter petition requesting that the socialite serve her full sentence was signed by over 91,000 people and featured on several major news channels in the US. Proof, if it were needed, that not everybody shares my innate capacity for forgiveness.
If you have ever commented on a blog post, web news article or Facebook group, you will probably have come into contact with trolls. They are the thoroughly irksome, pedantic and occasionally downright unsavoury individuals who post irrelevant, inflammatory and/or abusive remarks in message boards, often with the sole intent of disrupting on-topic conversation or undermining other forum users.
For the most part, trolls are accepted as just one of those irritations that happen online – like receiving those persistent emails about enlarging your penis, or unwittingly helping to prolong Rick Astley’s career – but for us marketing types trolls are more than just an annoyance. The truth is that these cyber-tosspots cost advertising agencies in the UK alone millions of pounds every year. Read more…
I have to confess, I don’t get Twitter. I’ve signed up for it. Attached it to this Blog. I’ve even got it on my iPhone. Yet I still find myself completely at a loss at what I should do with it. Maybe if I led the life of Stephen Fry (whose Tweets make me smile on a regular basis), then maybe I’d get it… but I don’t.
Still, it doesn’t stop me from looking at this latest web-fad and seeing how it can be used to make brands money. So, if like me, you’re at a loss as to what this Twitter business is all about, and why lots of people are becoming Twits… read on!
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube… not what first springs to mind when you think about politics. But over the last few years, more and more politicians have started using the internet as a tool to drum up political support.
We’re extremely proud of our work on the Swinton Mystery Tipper, especially as it has garnered the agency an armful of awards from two DMA Awards to two ISP Awards and two IPA Effectiveness Awards. We’ve had quite a few people ask to see our winning entry form… so here it is!
During the 1980s and 1990s, two giants of the soft drinks world went to war. In the red corner we had the Coca-Cola Company. In the blue corner was PepsiCo. While Coca-Cola would entice us with the ‘New Coke’ before seducing us back again with ‘Classic Coke’; Pepsi used a whole host of pop and movie stars to show us they were the ‘Taste for a New Generation’ and even went as far as demonstrating to us that the average person on the street preferred Pepsi thanks to their ‘Pepsi Challenge’.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, how do I look in the Aqua Circle-Print Tube Dress? Oh it’s nice…but it’s not quite right…have you got it in red…and maybe one size up? Oh yes…that’s perfect. Now let me send this to my friends…girls look at me…what do you think? OMG they love it – I’ll take it…”
If you have ever commented on a blog post, web news article or Facebook group, you will probably have come into contact with trolls. They are the thoroughly irksome, pedantic and occasionally downright unsavoury individuals who post irrelevant, inflammatory and/or abusive remarks in message boards, often with the sole intent of disrupting on-topic conversation or undermining other forum users.
I have to confess, I don’t get Twitter. I’ve signed up for it. Attached it to this Blog. I’ve even got it on my iPhone. Yet I still find myself completely at a loss at what I should do with it. Maybe if I led the life of Stephen Fry (whose Tweets make me smile on a regular basis), then maybe I’d get it… but I don’t.
