Social media is inextricably linked to corporate social responsibility and is creating a bigger transformation for businesses than the arrival of television, according Havas’ global chief executive David Jones.

In a candid interview on the back of the Starbucks tax furore, one of the world’s most influential ad men, and author of Who Cares Wins, was keen to stress how the likes of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were fundamentally changing the rules of engagement for businesses today. Read More »

While Starbucks wilts under the pressure of protest and public boycotts Google is  showing no such qualms as its chairman, Eric Schmidt, says that he is “very proud” of the company’s tax structure and that efforts to lower its payments to governments like Britain are just “capitalism”.

It is an interesting communications approach to take. Brazen almost. It gives the impression that Google does not care what anyone thinks of it. As the Telegraph reports Schmidt’s certainly comments risk inflaming the row over the amount of tax multinationals pay, after it emerged that Google funnelled $9.8bn (£6.07bn) of revenues from international subsidiaries into Bermuda last year in order to halve its tax bill. Read More »

Weird things are happening on Facebook of late. There are mysterious likes appearing that people don’t remember making. Worse still, and somewhat inexplicably, people who have died are still “liking” things on the social network, which as you can imagine could be upsetting for friends and family. If it is not dead liking products from the afterlife then it is individuals making surprising life choices through their social media activity such as anarchists liking corporations or Democrats suddenly coming out to their friends as Mitt Romney supporters.

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Take That, The Spice Girls, The Rolling Stones – yep, there’s no place quite like the Music industry for a good old fashioned comeback.  Did you know the phrase “Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back” was created for a Frank Sinatra comeback in the early 70s, even though he’d never been known as ‘Blue Eyes’ in his entire career?  Well done that PR man.  And if The Stone Roses was THE music comeback of 2012, what am I bid for Myspace repeating the trick in 2013? Read More »

When advertising meets the future in TV or film, one of the most common ideas is that marketing has evolved to target you personally. In reality, the closest we have come so far is in the social media campaign conducted by Old Spice where the team created 187 real time personal video messages responding to questions posed by the general public and celebrities. It went viral creating a huge impact and if you’re in advertising, you’re probably thinking ‘I wish I’d created that’.  Read More »

Mobile and music are great brand partners. Everyone can listen to music on their smartphone and music brands have more access and more options available to communicate to people who are listening to them.

Every major band has an app and there are apps for all music publications from The Rolling Stone to NME. The ability to engage on a continuing basis is there through various interactive devices from push messaging to location based exclusive promotions.

Music brands though are merely scratching the surface  of what they could do on mobile.

Two examples of two mobile brands that have tried to realise this potential are Indosat in Indonesia and Huawei in Australia.

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