As the fighting in Gaza continues today, with both sides continuing to trade blow, Israel has shown a new side to how it conducts its fight with Hamas as it turns to social media to offer a level of apparent transparency that has not been seen before in the conflict in the Middle East.

We have already seen how important it is to use social media to get your message out in Syria. There both President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the Free Syrian Army have turned to social media.

The Israeli Defense Force is both liveblogging its operations in Gaza and is very active on Twitter through its @idfspokesperson account, which have been tweeting news, images and videos of missiles being fired into Israel. Read More »

The Condescending Corporate Brand Page on Facebook has given us all the chance to chuckle at ourselves self-depreciatively in recent weeks. And while not every post appearing on there is necessarily ‘condescending’, the page has undoubtedly shone a light on an issue that’s seriously troubling the industry – why on earth do so many brands continue to talk to their Facebook fans and Twitter followers as if they’re a bunch of illiterate eight year olds?

OK, that’s a big overreaction – but this is a big problem, and it needs to be addressed before it spirals out of control. Read More »

Social media shaming. We’ve all seen it. The crowd piles into an unsuspecting celebrity, or sometimes a mere mortal, telling them what they have done is wrong, why it’s wrong, and just how awful a person they are for saying it. There are, frankly, too many examples of such things to start naming them here, and many interesting people have given up online services as they simply can’t be bothered dealing with it anymore.

Interestingly, in an era in which technology is supposed to be breaking down norms, we see the crowds on social media becoming ever more (small c) conservative. Look at how Twitter users reacted to those who, mistakenly or otherwise, tweeted at 11 o’clock on Remembrance Sunday. The guardians of the Twitterati had declared that there was to be a two minute Twitter silence, and anyone who broke this nice but entirely unenforceable ideal was hounded appropriately at 11.02 and three seconds. Read More »

I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that there is one thing you can predict with absolute certainty, and it is that change happens. If you’re of the mindset that change is un-welcome, the bad news is that today is the slowest pace of change we’ll ever experience. After all, change is the enemy of the competent and the crack cocaine of the innovative. Within this environment of constant change, it’s hard to single out one particular trend that is having the highest impact on business and marketing today.

The consumerisation of IT is certainly adjusting things and looking forward, the development of 3D printing and the maker movement will likely re-design value chains. Meanwhile the democratisation of brands has shifted control from organisations into the community, resulting in a mandatory need to harness and nurture fans. Read More »

P&G don’t do things by half. They are loading all their print ads with QR codes to both create awareness, educate and drive M Commerce in the US. The “Have you tried this yet?” campaign centred around brands like Secret, Pantene and Gillette is a new and aggressive move into the mobile space for P&G.

All print ads from magazines to newspapers are featuring the codes which will provide some great measurement tools on both downloads and purchases unlike a normal branding campaign with no call to action or one that leads to any retailer which is difficult to directly measure.

Read More »