This is very clever - I love the pay-off!
Excellent use of a celebrity in advertising!
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Jeep Wrangler - Call of Duty Special Edition
Jeep have partnered with the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 game. They're producing a special edition Wrangler Jeep with the game's branding on it, and as far as I can make out the Jeep also appears in the game.
That stats behind Call of Duty are huge - millions of players each day, millions of minutes spent playing - and probably a very good fit with Jeep's target audience.
That's what articles like this imply - can anyone confirm?
Update - PC Mag says that the Jeep features prominently in the game
That stats behind Call of Duty are huge - millions of players each day, millions of minutes spent playing - and probably a very good fit with Jeep's target audience.
That's what articles like this imply - can anyone confirm?
Update - PC Mag says that the Jeep features prominently in the game
How news spreads across networks
This is a screen grab of the Bitly stats for the Sun's story about Frankie Cocozza being ejected from X Factor.
(Background - Frankie Cocozza is a young, not very good singer on the British X Factor. He'd managed tp stay in because he is popular with some people - he has over 300,000 followers on Twitter, acquired since the start of the competition - but he was always going out drinking and finally - reportedly - boasted about taking drugs in front of production staff)
It's an interesting story to look at because it was initially only in one source - The Sun - before being reported elsewhere.
The pattern of clicks shows that clicks started between 1pm and 2pm (15,000 clicks) rising to 25,000 clicks the next hour as the story spread. Then it started to fall as more sources started to report it, and the story moved on from the original news. However it still got over 1,000 clicks between 10pm and 11pm. (I've no idea whether Bitly track all the clicks accurately, but I'm assuming that they get the pattern about right)
Next look at the sources of the clicks. Twitter and Twitter's URL shortener account for over 60% of the clicks, then email, IM, apps and direct clicks, with 18%, then Facebook desktop (12%) and mobile (6%).
Not surprisingly, nearly 90% of the clicks came from the UK - it's a very British story.
I think it's interesting to see how news spreads - and the importance of Twitter in passing around this sort of news. Don't forget that this was a school day, and that many of Frankie's fans would have been at school when the story initially came out.
Click to enlarge
(Background - Frankie Cocozza is a young, not very good singer on the British X Factor. He'd managed tp stay in because he is popular with some people - he has over 300,000 followers on Twitter, acquired since the start of the competition - but he was always going out drinking and finally - reportedly - boasted about taking drugs in front of production staff)
It's an interesting story to look at because it was initially only in one source - The Sun - before being reported elsewhere.
The pattern of clicks shows that clicks started between 1pm and 2pm (15,000 clicks) rising to 25,000 clicks the next hour as the story spread. Then it started to fall as more sources started to report it, and the story moved on from the original news. However it still got over 1,000 clicks between 10pm and 11pm. (I've no idea whether Bitly track all the clicks accurately, but I'm assuming that they get the pattern about right)
Next look at the sources of the clicks. Twitter and Twitter's URL shortener account for over 60% of the clicks, then email, IM, apps and direct clicks, with 18%, then Facebook desktop (12%) and mobile (6%).
Not surprisingly, nearly 90% of the clicks came from the UK - it's a very British story.
I think it's interesting to see how news spreads - and the importance of Twitter in passing around this sort of news. Don't forget that this was a school day, and that many of Frankie's fans would have been at school when the story initially came out.
Monday, November 07, 2011
Company pages in Google+
Launched today
The announcement
Some examples -
The Muppets
Angry Birds
Pepsi
FC Barcelona
Save The Children
Burberry
Toyota USA
Zen Bikes
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Live Action Trailer
With Sam Worthington, Jonah Hill and Dwight Howard. Very clever!
They're stoking up the excitement on the official site - upload your 'anticipation' picture.
The game is released at midnight; expect records to be broken!
They're stoking up the excitement on the official site - upload your 'anticipation' picture.
The game is released at midnight; expect records to be broken!
Friday, November 04, 2011
Things I Love - Friday 4th November
Inspired by this regular post from Timothy Everest's blog, I'm going to start making regular Friday posts on random things I've found around the net.
This week:
Nelson, a graphic novel by 54 British artists, in aid of Shelter
Kitten Covers - classic album covers, with kittens
The very minimalist site for the restaurant Duck Soup
Honest Burgers in Brixton - now getting longer queues than Franco Manca
QR Code postage stamps that track their status
Jimmy Carr's Halloween outfit
How to be a Retronaut - a great repository of retro pictures and articles
Google's Easter Eggs - search for Do A Barrel Roll; also try tilt, askew, anagram and recursion
& Jon Ronson's investigation into Ark, makers of Rebecca Black's Friday
This week:
Nelson, a graphic novel by 54 British artists, in aid of Shelter
Kitten Covers - classic album covers, with kittens
The very minimalist site for the restaurant Duck Soup
Honest Burgers in Brixton - now getting longer queues than Franco Manca
Jimmy Carr's Halloween outfit
How to be a Retronaut - a great repository of retro pictures and articles
Google's Easter Eggs - search for Do A Barrel Roll; also try tilt, askew, anagram and recursion
& Jon Ronson's investigation into Ark, makers of Rebecca Black's Friday
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Converse's 'Take it Outside' Treasure Hunt
A great competition from Converse. To promote their new boots, they're leaving some pairs around the UK.
Pictures are posted on Facebook, with a date and time that the boots will be left in the vicinity. Other details are added on Twitter.
For example here:
& here:
Users then have to find them. There's only one pair, so it they're the wrong size they can give them to a friend. A great low-tech competition. I particularly like the low-tech converse logos!
(I think if this happened a year ago you'd have had to check in on Foursquare as part of the mechanic. Foursquare seems to be getting less buzz these days)
& even if you don't find the boots you can win a trip to the 100 Club (sponsored by Converse) by emailing 100club@converse.com
GTA Five - Vinewood
The new trailer
It plays on a classic film theme - the old gangster wanting to retire. Visually it looks very impressive!
Find out more about 'Vinewood' in the wiki here
It plays on a classic film theme - the old gangster wanting to retire. Visually it looks very impressive!
Find out more about 'Vinewood' in the wiki here
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Twitter Stories
This is great - Twitter's repository for interesting, unusual and inspiring uses of the service
I love this one:
"Aaron Durand’s mother was in trouble. She had run an independent bookstore for nearly two decades when an economic downturn hit that threatened to close the shop. Aaron wanted to help his mom, but wasn’t sure what he could do. He wrote about his mom’s plight on his blog then tweeted it out, adding at the last second an offer to buy a burrito for anyone who bought $50 worth of books during the holidays at his mom’s shop.
The story took hold. The Tweet was passed along from person to person across Portland’s art and design community. It was retweeted and retweeted until hundreds of people had read the story.
Overnight, new customers started to arrive and business began to pick up. The story continued to snowball on Twitter. The bookstore went on to have its best holiday season ever, and has continued to thrive each season since."
I love this one:
"Aaron Durand’s mother was in trouble. She had run an independent bookstore for nearly two decades when an economic downturn hit that threatened to close the shop. Aaron wanted to help his mom, but wasn’t sure what he could do. He wrote about his mom’s plight on his blog then tweeted it out, adding at the last second an offer to buy a burrito for anyone who bought $50 worth of books during the holidays at his mom’s shop.
The story took hold. The Tweet was passed along from person to person across Portland’s art and design community. It was retweeted and retweeted until hundreds of people had read the story.
Overnight, new customers started to arrive and business began to pick up. The story continued to snowball on Twitter. The bookstore went on to have its best holiday season ever, and has continued to thrive each season since."
JESSIE J IS TOTES AMAZEBALLS - or How Hits Happen on Twitter
Trending Topics (TTs) are one of the most mysterious aspects of Twitter. How do they start, how do they grow, what takes off... These are all questions that have puzzled marketers at some time.
Twitter promote TTs as one of the most useful aspects of the service - allowing people to see what people are talking about to get early warning of breaking stories. Recently I've noticed TTs becoming more and more driven by pop culture, and not about news at all - the band One Direction seem to inspire at least one a day - and when one particularly strange one JESSIE J IS TOTES AMAZEBALLS trended in the UK last week I decided to investigate how it had started and become popular.
(I should say that I've seen Jessie J and I agree that she's pretty amazeballs, but totes? That's probably over-doing it a bit. Maybe after a couple more years)
To do this I used the analysis tool Radian6, which has access to the entire Twitter firehose - that is all tweets sent.
In all cases I've hidden the identities of the Twitter users, but I'll show the Tweets.
The phrase got a sudden flurry of Tweets on 27th October, to hit a peak of about 18,000 for the day:
According to my analysis, this was the first tweet, in minute 1 a user - with 1144 followers - tweeted:
It was then picked up by friends, first slowly, and then it started to gather steam, rising from 1 tweet a minute (TPM) to hit 14 tweets a minute by the 7th minute. In this time the first Tweeter Tweeted other versions 6 times.
I show the number of TPS for the first 90 minutes here
It continued to be re-tweeted, but it did not rise above 21 TPM until the 40th minute, when it suddenly started to hit 45 TPM on the 43rd minute.
What happened was that on the 40th minute it was tweeted by someone with 13,978 followers
and then in the 42nd minute by someone with 94,090 follwers.
(This last user is pretty amazing - a 23 year old from Ireland who 'loves Rihanna more than my mother'...)
This last one was re-tweeted more than 100 times, and the TPS started rising to hit 45, and then a few minutes later 51.
It then declined again, until it hit an absolute peak of 68 TPS in the 67th minute. I think thiw was caused by two tweets by users with nearly 12,000 followers each, in the 63rd minute. I also think that by that time it had hit the TTs, so other Jessie J fans had seen it and spontaneously joined in the fun.
So what does this all mean?
1 - Twitter works organically, but can be swayed by very popular users if they are in the mood. If you're a brand it helps to have some of these people; if you're a digital PR person it's essential to have either lots of followers yourself, or be on very good terms with people who do. But also the messages must be relevant to your followers.
2 - This can de-value Twitter's reputation. How so? Because they trade on the TTs as a serious, useful service. It's mentioned a lot in their presentations to agencies, and other companies, for example Nielsen, put a lot of store in the top trending topics. People are now actively starting to manipulate them - although there's not evidence that Jessie J's people were involved in this - and it's potentally going to be akin to SEO spam.
Twitter already block words in TTs - all the main swear words (I think) and other words like 'Assange' (once 'Sweden' was trending because it was ruled that Assange could be extradited there, but 'Assange', a word that featured in all the 'Sweden' Tweets, didn't appear). If Twitter can block these, why not address some of the other abuses? Block TTs in block capitals?
Or even do 'Trends among Friends' - i.e. just trends within who you follow. That would be a better solution!
(I should say that I've seen Jessie J and I agree that she's pretty amazeballs, but totes? That's probably over-doing it a bit. Maybe after a couple more years)
To do this I used the analysis tool Radian6, which has access to the entire Twitter firehose - that is all tweets sent.
In all cases I've hidden the identities of the Twitter users, but I'll show the Tweets.
The phrase got a sudden flurry of Tweets on 27th October, to hit a peak of about 18,000 for the day:
According to my analysis, this was the first tweet, in minute 1 a user - with 1144 followers - tweeted:
It was then picked up by friends, first slowly, and then it started to gather steam, rising from 1 tweet a minute (TPM) to hit 14 tweets a minute by the 7th minute. In this time the first Tweeter Tweeted other versions 6 times.
I show the number of TPS for the first 90 minutes here
It continued to be re-tweeted, but it did not rise above 21 TPM until the 40th minute, when it suddenly started to hit 45 TPM on the 43rd minute.
What happened was that on the 40th minute it was tweeted by someone with 13,978 followers
and then in the 42nd minute by someone with 94,090 follwers.
(This last user is pretty amazing - a 23 year old from Ireland who 'loves Rihanna more than my mother'...)
This last one was re-tweeted more than 100 times, and the TPS started rising to hit 45, and then a few minutes later 51.
It then declined again, until it hit an absolute peak of 68 TPS in the 67th minute. I think thiw was caused by two tweets by users with nearly 12,000 followers each, in the 63rd minute. I also think that by that time it had hit the TTs, so other Jessie J fans had seen it and spontaneously joined in the fun.
So what does this all mean?
1 - Twitter works organically, but can be swayed by very popular users if they are in the mood. If you're a brand it helps to have some of these people; if you're a digital PR person it's essential to have either lots of followers yourself, or be on very good terms with people who do. But also the messages must be relevant to your followers.
2 - This can de-value Twitter's reputation. How so? Because they trade on the TTs as a serious, useful service. It's mentioned a lot in their presentations to agencies, and other companies, for example Nielsen, put a lot of store in the top trending topics. People are now actively starting to manipulate them - although there's not evidence that Jessie J's people were involved in this - and it's potentally going to be akin to SEO spam.
Twitter already block words in TTs - all the main swear words (I think) and other words like 'Assange' (once 'Sweden' was trending because it was ruled that Assange could be extradited there, but 'Assange', a word that featured in all the 'Sweden' Tweets, didn't appear). If Twitter can block these, why not address some of the other abuses? Block TTs in block capitals?
Or even do 'Trends among Friends' - i.e. just trends within who you follow. That would be a better solution!
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Zero Moment of Truth
Zero Moment of Truth is a new buzz phrase created by Google to describe the consumer's decision-making process:
The First Moment of Truth was a concept from classical advertising, the moment at the shelf when the consumer makes a decision. The Zero Moment of Truth is the step before that, when someone is researching online. According to the document, the Zero Moment of Truth is:
"A BUSY MOM IN A MINIVAN, looking up decongestants on her mobile phone as she waits to pick up her son at school.
AN OFFICE MANAGER AT HER DESK, comparing laser printer prices and ink cartridge costs before heading to the office supply store.
A STUDENT IN A CAFE, scanning user ratings and reviews while looking for a cheap hotel in Barcelona.
A WINTER SPORTS FAN IN A SKI STORE, pulling out a mobile phone to look at video reviews of the latest snowboards.
A YOUNG WOMAN IN HER CONDO, searching the web for juicy details about a new guy before a blind date.
ZMOT is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired device and start learning about a product or service (or potential boyfriend) you’re thinking about trying or buying."
Have a look at the video, and then download the book here.
The First Moment of Truth was a concept from classical advertising, the moment at the shelf when the consumer makes a decision. The Zero Moment of Truth is the step before that, when someone is researching online. According to the document, the Zero Moment of Truth is:
"A BUSY MOM IN A MINIVAN, looking up decongestants on her mobile phone as she waits to pick up her son at school.
AN OFFICE MANAGER AT HER DESK, comparing laser printer prices and ink cartridge costs before heading to the office supply store.
A STUDENT IN A CAFE, scanning user ratings and reviews while looking for a cheap hotel in Barcelona.
A WINTER SPORTS FAN IN A SKI STORE, pulling out a mobile phone to look at video reviews of the latest snowboards.
A YOUNG WOMAN IN HER CONDO, searching the web for juicy details about a new guy before a blind date.
ZMOT is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired device and start learning about a product or service (or potential boyfriend) you’re thinking about trying or buying."
Have a look at the video, and then download the book here.
The Hope Tank - Mending Broken Hearts
The Hope Tank is a new project for the British Hart Foundation by my colleagues at glue Isobar, in aid of their 50th anniversary Mending Broken Hearts Appeal.
The Hope Tank virtual aquarium site is home to an increasing number of zebrafish - each one a representation of hope for the campaign. The zebrafish is a real fish that has the ability to repair its own heart, so scientists funded by the BHF are trying to unlock its secrets to learn how we can mend human hearts too. Show your support by creating your own personalised zebrafish here.
Hear about the amazing science behind it here:
The Hope Tank virtual aquarium site is home to an increasing number of zebrafish - each one a representation of hope for the campaign. The zebrafish is a real fish that has the ability to repair its own heart, so scientists funded by the BHF are trying to unlock its secrets to learn how we can mend human hearts too. Show your support by creating your own personalised zebrafish here.
Hear about the amazing science behind it here:
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