Lucozade Energy, which recently launched The YES List – featuring seven limited edition bottles designed by some of the UK’s hottest music artists – is keeping the campaign fresh and front of mind with a new Augmented Reality venture through leading integrated agency Billington Cartmell.

Despite its near ubiquity for many European and US consumers, Facebook remains something of a puzzle for some marketers.  With 600m+ users it is very obviously a place where we must be but it’s also an environment with a very specific and non commercial purpose from a user’s point of view.  Never the twain?

The VC’s and commentators take it for granted that the brains behind Facebook will find a way of ‘monetising’ the audience in any event (their valuation being based on this very presumption as was that of MySpace and Friends Reunited but let’s move on.)   New developments   in this direction are appearing with increasing regularity. Read More »

Is there anything that Qantas can do right? Not it seems at the moment. Just weeks after having been slammed for its bad social media service as its aircraft were grounded the Australian airline thought it had a nice little idea to restore its reputation.

A simple Twitter competition run by the Qantas PR via the @QantasAirways Twitter account. It asked for passengers to send in their luxury flying experiences under the #QantasLuxury hashtag. Simple enough. What could possible go wrong? Let’s start with everything. Read More »

Facebook is reported to have been working on a secret Facebook phone project, that it has codenamed Buffy.

AllThingsD is reporting that Facebook has teamed up with HTC to be build a modified Android to create a fully integrated Facebook experience and obviously slay rivals in the process. Read More »

Often we are employ the shiniest, trendiest execution of a digital concept, pairing bold messaging with the latest in bells and whistles for experiences of unparalleled brilliance and immersion. And then we have to deal with the fact that only 5% of the population could possibly enjoy (nay, even experience) the full ideas therein.

In technology the savvy are the early adopters, the beta users, the ones with the latest gadgets. But the savvy might also be your loudest loyalists and advocates without compare for your brands. They rarely represent the entire spectrum of your audience and can lead you to go down a rabbit hole of delightful but ultimately rarely enjoyed concepts. Read More »

The Guardian has put its PaidContent website up for sale three years after it bought the New York-based digital news site with a price tag of $20m although this is not a figure the Guardian has confirmed.

The Guardian says that while it is early days it already has several expressions of interest from potential buyers. Read More »

A few weeks back the X Factor USA teamed up with Twitter to allow fans of the show to vote for their favourite acts with a Twitter direct message. A great idea, one that is sure to be replicated here soon enough, and it didn’t take much foresight to work out how well it might do.

The results, however, are impressive. Viewer interaction has shot up and sent the X Factor surging in terms of social TV engagement. It is now the No. 2 social-TV show in the US beaten only by Glee and it is the number one reality show overall. Read More »

Nearly four months after Twitter’s ‘Promoted Tweets’ started appearing in users’ feeds, the response has been remarkably, well, moot. In fact, the introduction of ads into the social network has been, daresay it, even positive, in pale contrast to previous attempts at monetisation.

Despite the few expected grumblings (see the tweets at the bottom of the page), Twitter’s approach to its promoted tweets—unobtrusive, timely, and even relevant—seems to be sitting well with it’s user base. Read More »

First there was Gmail…then Google Talk… and Wave… and Buzz… and now Android and G+. In fact, Google has been a part of the way that we communicate with our connections, both personal and professional, since the beta release of Gmail for which we all desperately wanted invites.  (Although, not being on Gmail until Spring 2004, I was a bit late clambering onto that particular band wagon.)

Google is one of the most phenomenal triumphs that the communications world has ever seen.  It has been so successful in PR terms that it has become a generic verb like Hoover, Xerox and Kleenex before it.  There’s no question that Android looks to be a major contender in the mobile OS war with 200 million world wide activations. Read More »

In recent months we’ve seen retailer Ocado offer passers by the chance to scan bar codes of their most popular products via a ‘virtual wall’; FMCG brand Absolut Vodka invite consumers to create unique art via an app and now bar chain Varsity ditch its website and divert marketing spend to facebook to engage with students.

It’s clear brands are reveling in the new technologies evolving at their fingertips and it’s great to see them really start to have fun with online engagement…but there’s a real danger here of ‘kid in a sweetshop’ syndrome. Read More »