“Most people ignore innovation because innovation ignores most people.”

Mark Ritson, Marketing Week’s resident columnist, wrote an interesting article recently called ‘You can’t trust integrity and innovation’. In it, he pulls no punches in his view of innovation – “…not a single consumer out there gives a **** about innovation. When did you last hear a consumer tell you that they bought a toaster because it was innovative?.”

Naturally, as the Head of Innovation at Billington Cartmell, you’d expect me to take issue with Mark’s stance right!? Well, yes and no.

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This post is provided by our partner the Future Foundation, the leading consumer futures business.

When we look at examples of successful social media engagement, we can identify several distinct stages through which a campaign tends to move – a trajectory which will be of obvious relevance for any marketers hoping to optimise their strategies in this area.

Step 1: Socialising promotional activity

Word of mouth is a tremendously potent force when it comes to spreading information about promotional activity; as our chart demonstrates, the majority of consumers in the UK freely admit that they enjoy talking to friends and family members about particularly good deals or discounts they’ve managed to obtain (nVision Research). Read More »

More insight from Advertising Week in New York. This time from MaryLee Sachs, author of The Changing MO of the CMO (How the Convergence of Brand and Reputation is Affecting Marketers ).

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A great inforgraphic here that details the top brands and people on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

It also has comparisons of different Facebook industries engagement rates with airlines and telecom firms coming top as well as stats on the top countries.

Interesting to see that while Lady Gaga rules on Twitter, with her ten million plus followers, it is Eminem who leads on Facebook with a whopping 47 million fans. Read More »

The importance of social media to an overall marketing strategy is no longer in doubt. However, it’s easy for brands to launch campaigns without ever really analysing the results and the behaviour of the target audience. In order to understand the behaviour of customers and users, it’s essential that brands understand the true reach and impact of their communication on social networks.

Facebook, understanding this, yesterday announced new metrics as part of its Insights capability, which will allow companies to measure user engagement, in terms of ‘Engaged Users’, ‘People Talking About This’ and ‘Friends of Fans’. We at Wildfire were selected by Facebook to advise on the new metrics for Insights and we think they’re going to be a powerful tool for marketers everywhere. Read More »

With a large part of Twitter’s focus this year on generating revenues, Twitter has added a new official account to the list with the launch of the official @TwitterAds account as its advertising team begins to tweet.

The Twitter ad team’s account will be sharing news, updates, insights and best practices as well as blogging on a new Twitter Advertising Blog. The blog launched to conincide with Advertising Week in New York and where its head of global revenue, Adam Bain, was speaking and sharing some case studies about how Twitter has helped generated sales. Read More »

Ricky Gervais who famously quit Twitter in January last year, as celebrities tend to do every now and again (Fry is quitting Twitter again), but has these last few days returned with a gusto.

He stopped in Janaury 2010 after saying that “I don’t see the point. Please follow my blog at rickygervais.com” and that’s where the tweets stopped, but how he is back. Read More »