Every year, hundreds of millions of people get very excited about the Super Bowl. And every year, a smaller, but still significant number of people get even more excited about the breaks in between play. Super Bowl advertising frenzy is upon us again. But, as CNBC report, advertisers are taking advantage of the second screen phenomenon by directing viewers to hashtags rather than websites of Facebook pages, in the hope of driving conversations. Thousands of them. Read More »

Facebook’s Graph Search was announced about two weeks ago and so far reactions from the marketing community have been fairly mixed. The new and improved search tool, currently in open beta in the US, lets Facebook users conduct more detailed searches of their connections based on places, photos, likes, locations,  interests and updates.

With demographic and interest data from over one billion people, Facebook’s Graph Search should be a marketer’s dream. It has the potential to be a powerful tool for marketers to learn about their target audience and fans, and is great for finding new customers. There is, however, one major problem with Facebook’s Graph Search – “dirty data”.  Read More »

Native Advertising on social websites has caused rapid change in the PR and advertising industry. The emphasis now lies on content and agencies of all descriptions are being forced to become involved in content creation. As a result, traditional dividing lines are dissolving and agencies need to adapt to this in order to prevent being left behind.  Read More »

As we come to the end of January, the New Year’s resolutions are all but a distant memory and the reality of festive spending hits home as credit card bills drop on the doormat. I am aware that, having outsourced my Xmas spending (to my wife), while I have three happy kids with more new stuff crammed into their bedrooms than they know what to do with, there is considerably less beer money available than there was in December.

I’m clearly not alone in thinking about my finances as news stories abound about the 50% of households that are burdened with debt and, sadly, the 17% of people who are still paying off Christmas 2011! Hence why the Money Advisory Service is rerunning its TV ad with a young girl giving her parents financial advice before demanding spaghetti for tea – am I the only one who sees shades of ‘The Omen’ in this?! Read More »

Out of the world’s 100 top brands, 35% have online newsrooms on their websites that contain out-of-date information. That’s according to some research from Mynewsdesk that we’ve been working on. The full report is available here and contains some fascinating insights in terms of how brands publish and share owned content.

Pulling these insights together, here are my five top tips for ensuring your online newsroom delivers and engages: Read More »

Twitter held an event yesterday that highlighted once again the importance of finding your voice on Twitter. I’ve written about this a number of times. At Powered by Tweets, the issue was brought to life by professional Tweeter David Levin who, among other things, is the voice of the Dolphin pub in London’s Hackney. He also works for brands such as Adidas among others, but really came to prominence recently for what has become known as, “possibly the greatest conversation on Twitter ever”. Read More »

Troubled music retailer HMV caused a stir on Twitter yesterday as employees used the brand’s official Twitter feed to live-blog mass redundancies taking place at the high street chain. Using the hashtag #hmvXFactorFiring, @HMVtweets claimed that staff were being fired by the HR department. The news was then confirmed by the administrator. Deloitte said that 190 people have been made redundant at the brand’s head office and distribution centres.

The Tweets were quickly deleted, but not before they were widely shared. The feed also claimed that the “marketing director” was asking “How do I shut down Twitter?”. Read More »