Meme: ‘A self-propagating unit of social imitation; something that people repeat and pass along’. Or, ‘Memes replicate data. And just as genes replicate genetic data, memes replicate cultural ideas’. Or, ‘lolcats’.

However you describe them, everyone loves a good meme. And, since the term was popularised by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book ‘The selfish gene’, advertising has been responsible for generating many well-known examples. (Here’s one, oops sorry…no, two examples (in one): ‘Will it blend?’ for Blendtec.) And with the connectedness and social media channels offered by the web for brands to spread and share content, you would have thought that conditions were perfect for many more… Read More »

This month we have the second infographic produced by UK Digital Agency – Freestyle Interactive – for English Premier League clubs. With Social Media becoming increasingly influential amongst clubs and players, the Midlands based agency has promised to track the growth as well as highlight any creative examples of fan engagement. Some key ‘take aways’ include the combined leagues Facebook fans approaching 50 million, Manchester United are the only team without Twitter and Arsenal’s 360 Panorama Facebook app.

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It’s an interesting contradiction that the further technology advances, the simpler and more instinctive it becomes to use.

Take the addictive interface functionality of an iPad or iPhone, for example. Watching people using it with simple, intuitive finger movements and hand gestures, it makes me wonder just how instinctive digital interactivity can become. (I mean, even cats are using it for Chrissakes. Such as these two cool customers, chillaxing with fish on an iPad, licking each other’s ears lazily and listening to rude music.) Read More »

In the world of B2B, there is no doubt that LinkedIn is king. It’s a fantastic place to cultivate contacts, develop new ones, show off your business knowledge in a brash self-indulgent way and potentially win new business leads. It’s also been a pretty clever way of searching for jobs and it’s a  great way for a multitude of recruitment consultants to access your details and contact you for a ‘chat’.

Things were fine with LinkedIn and business. Employees went on there and pushed their personal brand by imparting their wisdom, this in turn benefited companies because those employees were acting as brand ambassadors which could help generate leads. Everyone was a winner. Read More »

It’s been a year of highs and lows for football clubs on Social Media, we’ve seen everything from player’s Twitter accounts being hacked, managers banning Social Media and Tweets getting players into serious trouble. Yet, we’ve also seen Manchester United break the 20 million Facebook fans mark, Manchester City continue to come up with creative fan engagement strategies and even the advent of the “Social Media Stadium“. Read More »

Are you partial to a bit of peer pressure? Social media experts around the globe think so. Companies like Facebook are staking their future on the idea that a recommendation from a friend is far more trustworthy than one from a flashy marketing message. Social media is now playing a huge role in peoples buying decisions, even affecting choices people make in their day to day lives.  This got me thinking, what would Twitter have me do this Christmas if social consensus guided my decisions?

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For many businesses Secret Santa provides a fun and easy way to make sure everyone in the office shares in the Christmas spirit. For the luckiest participants it means a hilarious opportunity to buy a wholly inappropriate present for a colleague. For an unlucky few, it means spending hours on one of those precious remaining weekends before Christmas stressing about what to buy for the new Accounts Manager who no-one really knows.

But how many of you out there still have last year’s mug, or plant? How many of you still play mini executive air-hockey? I’m betting not many. That’s why this year one agency decided to do something a bit different. Read More »

Yesterdays flurry of X-Factor info-graphics and studies report a positive correlation between social media, the viewing figures and the end result largely based on cumulative data such as likes, followers and views. Interesting as this is, with a wealth of data publicly available on Social Media platforms such as Twitter, does an over reliance upon automated quantitative stats mean we are missing out on more robust and reliable analysis? Read More »

Facebook has always been about driving engagement, the problem they’ve had over the past few years is that their mechanism for engagement hasn’t gone much further than the inflexible ‘Like’ button, a share, or, if you’re lucky, a comment or two. This was great while it lasted, but it did open brands pages up for social media black hat techniques.

We’ve seen a well-known socially irrelevant brand up their likes by 5,000 in the space of a week and take unprecedented engagement from people, that if you investigate, either work for their PR agency, or are praising the price of a product they’re ineligible to purchase.
All very naughty and not in the spirit of organic brand growth. Read More »

You can’t go anywhere or do anything at the moment without a brand compelling you to go to their Facebook page and click Like. But do brands really need to acquire vast numbers of Facebook fans? What’s the point? And perhaps more pertinently in today’s ROI-obsessed world, can we attribute a meaningful value of enticing someone to click the magical ‘thumbs-up’?

Group buying platform, ChompOn, did some research earlier in the year which placed the value of a Facebook Like at $8 based on ‘immediate next sales’. A Facebook Share was similarly valued at $14. However, it admitted that the true value would be higher because of long-term loyalty, and that there was no way to be certain that the sale was a direct result of the Facebook Like unless there was an ecommerce channel within Facebook. Read More »