In today’s highly connected society, successful brands need to stand out from the crowd. More and more, brands are looking for opportunities to create meaningful consumer connections and are using branded content to increase engagement, reach new audiences and convert immersive brand experiences into ROI.

Combining advertising and entertainment, interactive ads and branded content have been developed and implemented by a range of leading brands – take Saturday’s Shazam-enabled Argos advert during X Factor, or Mercedes’ interactive twitter ad that allowed consumers to direct content they saw on the screen. Everyone from M&S to Chipotle is looking to leverage this new method of addressing consumers in some form – incidentally, the latter recently won the first ever branded content Grand Prix Award at the Cannes Lions Festival.  Read More »

The Washington Post reports on the curious case of The New York Times reporter, Jodi Rudoren, who has been given her own social media minder who will be looking at every Tweet and Facebook status update that she writes to check and edit them before sending.

We all know that social media can be tricky and that its instantaneous nature can cause huge issues for us all, which is a problem considering how essential Twitter has become to most working journalists today. There have been cases of journalists Tweeting in haste and suffering Twitter storms at length. It has in the worst cases proved the undoing of some journalists. Read More »

Business Insider reports on the shaky world of daily deals websites as LivingSocial announces it is cutting  400 staff. That represents almost 9% of its total workforce. The cuts at LivingSocial follow Groupon eliminating around 650 positions this year.

That’s more than 1,000 jobs gone in a sector that once boomed, but has since struggled with Groupon’s shared price plummeting in the summer leading to some asking the question if the shine has worn off daily deals websites?

Since August when Groupon’s shares hit a life-time low of $6.05 they have continued to fall and are now valued at $4.54.  That is an 80% fall from their 52 week high of $25.84. Read More »

Companies want to use social approaches to create meaningful business value, yet nearly three-quarters of survey respondents said they were underprepared for the required cultural changes, according to IBM’s latest study.

Despite the long journey ahead, corporations are keen as they recognise that top-line growth for successful social business users can improve between 3 and 11%, while productivity can be increased by between 2 and 12%, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute.

As a result, many have taken steps toward implementing social practices, with 46 % of companies surveyed having made investments in social business in 2012, while 62 % indicated they were going to increase their expenditures in the next three years. This potential for growth has agencies, consultancies and large tech firms like IBM and Salesforce jockeying for a piece of the business. Read More »