Pitching via a social media treasure hunt

My colleagues in Turkey recently took part in a very nifty pitch for Turkish Airlines that involved following clues in social media channels. The airline used the tag THYbrief and left clues in a variety of social media channels from Friendfeed and Flickr to blogger and tumblr. The McCann Turkey digital dudes followed the digi-trail and found the password embedded in the source code of a blog.

I must admit, this seems a much better way of sussing out whether a pitching agency knows their onions, compared to a lengthy RFP. Plus much more fun for the pitching agencies.

Social media on the Beach: 02

I think the 02 Scrum on the Beach nicely sums up what social media is all about: authenticity, fun, getting everyone involved. The England rugby team are 'playing' [if that's the right word] on beaches around the UK this summer, getting people involved in rugby and judging by the video, generally having a laugh. Details here

Consumer vs advertiser

An old but even more relevant video illustrating how some advertisers treat consumers.

Free: new book by Chris Anderson

Looking forward to Chris Anderson's new book, Free, which explains how Free is a valid business model, created by the internet and social media in particular. I believe the general idea is that if you give something away for free and have a superior product that people can buy, then the Free bit encourages them to buy the superior product. I don't think I'm explaining it very well as it sounds awfully like Product Sampling. Mr Anderson explains it much better in the video below:




Or in the Wired article here.

In the spirit of the theory of Free, Mr Anderson and his publishers are giving away an abridged version for free. This cut down version is three hours long in an audio book, while the full monty is six hours.

I can see the logic of the theory of Free, once I've got my head around how it is different to sampling. I think the example he uses in the article of a brand sponsoring a Tube Line and letting people ride on it for free illustrates the theory best. Although I pity the brand who sponsors the Northern line.

Boy with girl parts social media campaign

A very bold move by P&G to create a story around Zack, the boy who wakes up one morning with girl parts.
It seems to be really well done [I watched 3 mins but then got bored] and the dialogue is not particularly cheesey. Its got a MySpace feel to it. Have a gander here.



It's early days for the campaign so I guess I'll wait and see how effective it is. At the mo, I've definitely got it in the 'strange and odd' social media campaigns box.

Social media for internal comms

Deloitte Consulting won a Gold Quill at IABC this year for a cool internal comms initiative that uses social media. The aim was to retain and recruit more Generation Y employees by getting them engaged with the company and sharing what it's like to work for Deloitte via social media.They ran a Film Festival asking employees to make 3 min film answering the question "What's Your Deloitte?".

Employees posted videos on a Youtube channel, and I imagine, on their intranet. The video below was the one that had the most view on YouTube.



More details of the campaign can be found at IABC here. In summary:
- 372 films were submitted, by 2000 film makers, which equates to 5% of Deloitte's staff.
- the gallery where the films were show was viewed over 400,000 times.
- the winners got a experiential trip e.g. Sundance Film Festival or a cash prize.

I don't know how the campaign has impacted on their Gen Y retention and recruitment [if anyone from Deloitte reads this, then any results you could share would be fab].

The reason I like this is because it's not using social media to sell more widgets, or attract more voters, like many of the text book campaigns, but to get people to share their feelings and opinions on what it's like to work somewhere. Plus, [and no offence to Deloitte] Big Five management consultancies aren't well known for experimenting with new things or giving up control.

So, big hand to Deloitte for this and congrats on your award.

Highlight of Btween 09

On Thursday and Friday I was lucky enough to attend the Btween 09 - an interactive digital forum [their words]. Overall, it was pretty good [ignoring a couple of lame sessions, including one where delegates were asked if we'd heard of FriendFeed]. The best session was the 20 minute talk by Charles Leadbeater - author, innovator and futurologist.

The video is about 20 mins long and 300 meg so I can't upload it till I've compressed it. So I've tried to summarise his main points:

- Young people [Gen Y] tend to do three main things in real life and online:
1. Enjoy stuff e.g. watching YouTube videos with friends, going to a gig
2. Talk about stuff they enjoy e.g. text, IM, email
3. Do things i.e. take part, make things, create stuff.

- Mutual Media [new forms of media, social media] allows people to Enjoy, Talk and Do things.

- Mutual media is almost the same size as traditional media and will over take in a few years

- Mutual media can be divided into three areas based on purpose:
1. Social: people gather around an area of interest and contribute/get involved for social reasons.
2. Public: mutual media is used for the common good of the public e.g. British Library, Glow.
3. Commercial: companies create mutual media initiatives to make money e.g. Facebook, World of Warcraft.

- Whatever the Mutual Media business model, we need to think about the issues of investment scale; ownership and shared rights; revenue models; relationships with traditional media.

- He summarised by saying that the people who are leading this shift are seen as renegades and pirates and will be dismissed as mad.

Charles was a very intelligent speaker and gave me loads to think about - particularly outside just the geeky stuff and more about how mutual media will change society.

A very disturbing video about teenage pregnancy

It's logical that social media can be used to help solve social issues. Many of the campaigns ran by govt bodies to change social behaviours are focused on the younger generation e.g. binge drinking and teenage pregnancy. Young people tend to be quite involved in social media, so it makes sense to talk with young people via social media.

This is why I have mixed feelings about the campaign ran by NHS Leicester. It focuses on a video teenage girl giving birth in the school field, shot from a camera phone. when I say mixed feelings, I don't mean I think it's a bad campaign, I think it's great that the NHS is doing stuff like this to engage with young people. The disturbing bit is that I can really imagine this happening in real life and gets me thinking that human nature sometimes isn't that great.

See what you think,

Creating social change is damn hard

I saw this post on Amelia's blog about a piece of creative work designed to persuade teens to stop binge drinking.



I agree with everything Amelia says about it being so hard to get it right when it comes to talking to teens about issues like drinking. I think this video does it brilliantly though due to its simplicity.

Advertising in Powerpoint

I thought this initiative by a Dutch coffee company was very nifty. They give away free coffee to students in return for putting a branded slide into their Powerpoint.