Barack Obama is arriving at Stansted airport tonight for his first visit to the UK and budget airline Ryanair have taken the opportunity to include him in a tactical ad promoting their latest fare offers.
Barack Obama Ryanair ad (from tonight's London Lite free newspaper)
Under the slogan 'President Obama prefers Stansted and so do we' Ryanair have cleverly used all the G20 press coverage as a backdrop to their latest seat promotion.
Ryanair may have been generating negative headlines with recent advertising and marketing tactics, however this tongue in cheek ad raised a smile on the way home.
Through Twitter people are getting used to communicating in 140 characters or less, but can you tell a story in 100 characters or less - and how would this look as a mobile phone QR code?
Last year QRcode.es ran a QR tales story competition, where people created short stories in QR code format. (QR codes are essentially bar codes for mobile phones, you point your phone at the code and if it has the right technology it will interpret this code as text or a web address.)
In 2008 332 tales were submitted from more than 15 different countries. The entries were showcased in an online gallery and hard formats were displayed in an outdoor exhibition:
QR tales - 2008 outdoor gallery
The QR tales competition has now been brought back for a second installment and anyone can enter their 100 character story and get it changed into a QR code - website is here:
QR tales 2009 - second edition!
The site is in English, simple to use and another example of how versatile QR codes can be!
Here is my entry. You need to point a mobile at it to find out what I have written - and apologies for those of you who have no idea what this is about!
Under the slogan 'Justice Seen, Justice Done' the UK government is now giving the public the chance to vote on what 'Community Payback' / punishments should be handed out to the 55,000 recipients of community order sentences in England and Wales each year.
Justice Seen, Justice Done slogan
Through the website at direct.gov.uk/communitypayback internet users can vote on which local community projects (from a choice of 5) they want offenders to pursue. Voting runs until midnight on 24th April and the 'winners' will be announced shortly afterwards.
Community Payback - 'A positive change for the community. A punishment for criminals.' (click for larger image)
This is a great example of how 'social thinking' can be added to anything - though I'm yet to be convinced that the criminal justice system should be turned into some sort of X-Factor / Idol variant?
Birmingham City University is launching a Masters Degree course in social media. The MA Social Media course will launch this September.
The course aims to "explore the techniques of social media, consider the development and direction of social media as a creative industry, and will contribute new research and knowledge to the field."
MA in Social Media - "is it MA Facebook-ology?"
The MA in Social Media is featured on the Birmingham City University website here and is explained further in a Vimeo video here:
An interesting dilemma here though - the MA aims to enable people to become 'social media consultants' and equip them to be able to 'contribute to the development of the social media industry.' However, this is clearly defining social media as a channel and an industry, whereas a number of prominent voices, like Jaffe Juice's recent AdAge article, are starting to argue that social only really works as part of existing channels and processes.
If being social is more about the 'thinking' rather than the 'media', can you really become a 'social expert' if you haven't been exposed to the bigger media picture? Or will a social media qualification be more useful than a general marketing qualification?
ITV launched the new series of Primeval in the UK tonight and amplified the Primeval TV broadcast online. ITV ran a Primeval simulcast through the ITV website, promoted a #primeval Twitter hash tag and then incorporated the #primeval Twitter feed into the online viewing page.
Primeval Twitter event promoted on ITV.com
Social TV is developing and this Primeval activity is the most prominent example of a UK broadcaster incorporating social streams into their mainstream TV schedule. We have seen live blogs develop around TV shows (particularly shows that have a voting mechanism), CBS developing 'social viewing rooms', CNN using Twitter for live feedback, Facebook socialising CNN's live coverage of the inauguration speech and Sky News appointing Ruth Barnett as their 'Twitter correspondent.'
So did the Primeval socialisation work?
It's too early for Primeval TV viewer numbers, but it is possible to analyse the Twitter coverage. @itvprimeval promoted the Twitter event and kept in touch with people as things progressed:
@itvprimeval announcing that the live tv stream is up and running
The #primeval Twitter stream was shown on the main Twitter window and was also embedded on the Primeval homepage:
#primeval Twitter stream embedded on the Primeval homepage
All of this Primeval activity turned #primeval into a global trending topic on Twitter (with over 50 pages of Twitter Search results):
#primeval as a global trend on Twitter
and the #primeval hash tag even attracted spam:
Spam on the #primeval Twitter hashtag
An interesting experiment and anecdotally some good results - I will be looking out for further developments and think this sort of thing could be really effective around major sporting occasions.
Wikirank is a free tool that tracks traffic to Wikipedia pages. They say "it’s based on the actual usage data from the Wikipedia servers, which the Wikimedia foundation makes available as a public service. We take that data, process it, and give it back to you in a format that’s easy to use and share. Wikirank reveals emerging trends, and lets you embed relevant charts in blog posts and on social media sites."
The Wikirank front page charts the most viewed Wikipedia articles over the last 30 days:
Wikirank trending topics from the last 30 days (click for larger image)
The Wikirank homepage also shows trending topics and featured in the current list is Daniel Hannan - his Wikipedia profile showing a viewing increase of +6,472% resulting from his 'devalued Prime Minister speech'. Yesterday I wrote about how the 'devalued Prime Minister' speech has gone viral on YouTube, interesting to now look at it's effect on Wikipedia:
Wikirank trending topics - showing Daniel Hannan at number 6 (click for larger image)
If you click into this then you get a summary of Daniel Hannan's Wikipedia page + an overview of page traffic for the last 30 / 60 / 90 days:
Wikirank analysis of Daniel Hannan's Wikipedia profile - showing uplift after 'devalued Prime Minister' speech (click for larger image)
It gets even more interesting if you look at the comparison feature that allows you to overlay traffic to other profiles. In this case I looked at Daniel Hannan, Gordon Brown and David Cameron:
Daniel Hannan, Gordon Brown, David Cameron - comparing Wikipedia views over the last 30 days (click for larger image)
The impact of Daniel Hannan's 'devalued Prime Minister' speech is therefore seen on Wikipedia traffic - he comes from nowhere to overtake both Gordon Brown and David Cameron.
This is yet another aspect of social media monitoring and is an example of how the impact of offline events can be measured online. In this case a political speech has been amplified through YouTube with knock on effects seen on Wikipedia traffic, Twitter mentions etc. Wikirank is a nice way of being able to show how Wikipedia consumption is affected and could be used to look at a range of things - from future political speeches to product launches to crises.
Great piece of work by Visit Denmark - make your own Lego film!
Color Line, Legoland and Visit Denmark have clubbed together to create a video based tourism site. The site shows a film based around Lego characters, but also allows users to create their own. These user created Lego films can then be uploaded to a gallery or easily shared through Facebook, blogs etc.
Users can name their film, their characters and choose from a wide range of clips, assembling them in any order that they like. The dialogue in these clips can be edited to whatever the user chooses with previews / playback available throughout the creation process.
Experimenting with the Denmark tourism create your own Lego film
This is fun, engaging, and most importantly, instinctive and easy to use. Even though everything is in Danish (which I don't speak), I have managed to use the tools to create a quick film of my own - no greater testament to usability than the ability to use site functionality in a language you don't speak!
We have seen the 'Best Job In The World' from Australia tourism, we now have 'create your own Lego film' from Denmark - I wonder where the next great example will come from?
In a little over 24 hours Daniel Hannan has been transformed from an unknown Conservative MEP to a viral internet celebrity - with nearly 1 million views for a speech he uploaded less than 48 hours ago.
Daniel Hannan made a speech at the European Parliament on Tuesday in the presence of Gordon Brown. Daniel Hannan referred to Gordon Brown as, amongst other things, 'the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government':
Whilst the speech gave Gordon Brown a public mauling, it was hardly reported in the UK press. However, video of the speech spread rapidly on YouTube, becoming the most watched video globally yesterday (and there are now 390 comments on his personal blog about this speech.) The virality was also aided by coverage in the US media from outlets like the Drudge Report and Fox News.
The Hannan speech has been searched for extensively and the speech has also been widely picked up on blogs, forums and social sites like Twitter:
Google Trends shows increase in searches for Daniel Hannan (click for larger image)
Twitter Streamgraph shows volume of discussion of Daniel Hannan since the 'devalued Prime Minister' speech (click for larger image)
So is this a one-off or does this mark the arrival of YouTube as a real force in British politics? I'm not sure. On his (Telegraph) blog Daniel Hannan claims to be 'slightly perplexed' as to why this has happened, but I think there are a number of reasons:
- Timing. Daniel Hannan's speech has clearly struck a chord with significant numbers of the public, on both sides of the Atlantic. In one moment his speech has become a rallying call and a focus for anyone who is disenchanted with the current state of the economy either in the UK or in the US and with Gordon's US trip + the G20 summit the timing couldn't have been better.
- Production. The length of the speech, the easy soundbites and the way it was delivered suit the medium of YouTube perfectly. If you read this script in print it would have hardly been noticed. It's only when it can be seen and set against Gordon Brown's reaction that it becomes interesting for people (the easy embedding and linking from YouTube also helps it to spread quickly.)
- The lack of mainstream media coverage and the element of unknown challenger giving well known heavyweight a kicking (if David Cameron had delivered that speech would it have gained the same amount of coverage?)
I think YouTube is becoming more influential in UK politics, but I'm not convinced that this is a watershed moment. Yes, the way that this video has spread has been fascinating, but I think it is the result of a number of things coming together at the same time - however this time it maybe more luck than judgement?
Twitter are notoriously guarded about user information and Twitter usage statistics. In August 2008 I wrote about the Twitter usage figures and Twitter demographics that were available - data from Hitwise and Compete.
As Twitter has grown there is more information available - yet still nothing from Twitter officially and statistics generally do not take account of usage of Twitter tools like Tweetdeck and Twhirl.
I have collated various data sources showing Twitter usage and Twitter demographics below. Twitter data from Compete, Quantcast, Hitwise, Nielsen and Twitterholic:
1) Quantcast Twitter usage and Twitter demographic figures
Top 25 Twitter users according to Twitterholic (click for larger image)
So all the surveys show Twitter traffic increasing substantially. The interesting piece is how the different data sources disagree around demographics. In Aug 08 Hitwise claimed the Twitter audience was mainly middle aged men, whereas Compete data showed it was predominantly a young audience. The same disparity can be seen above with Nielsen showing that middle aged (unique) users 35+ are the dominant user segment, whereas Quantcast are indicating that younger users are dominant.
People access Twitter in different ways (mobile, web, apps) and until Twitter publish official data then the above is the main information we have to work with.
@cnnbrk (CNN breaking news) has become the most followed Twitter account with 614,003 followers - gaining 341,544 followers in just a month.
Clearly Twitter is growing quickly - but if anyone knows the specific reasons behind this account growing so much please leave answers in the comments below!
@CNNbrk Twitter growth stats from twitterholic.com (click for larger image)
The Lewis Hamilton Blackberry Storm film is about to reach 1,000,000 views on YouTube and as well as being a great execution, it is a great story too.
'Fast Lane Steve' and some of his friends created an office grand prix by adapting a remote control car and creating an Blackberry Storm app - enabling the car to be controlled by Bluetooth rather than traditional controller.
The remote car used is a mini replica of Lewis Hamilton and his McClaren Grand Prix car. After uploading this to YouTube, McClaren apparently saw it, left a comment and invited them to visit.......
iPhone Grand Prix driving
Clever way of showing the versatility of the Blackberry Storm - though interesting to see that many people (including me originally) are describing this as 'Lewis Hamilton iPhone driving' and miss the fact that this is actually tagged with a Vodafone logo!
Google Streetview has launched in the UK today. According to Brand Republic the launch has been partnered by Visit Britain, Fancyapint.com, the Mayor of London and the Tate. Findaproperty.com are already embedding Streetview into their site so that house buyers can get more of a feel for an area, whilst Google are serving local ads alongside results.
Streetview could have a range of other practical uses for businesses, but for now I thought I would explore and see what I could find. Already bloggers are screengrabbing images (Digital Examples with a bookshop, Rick offering Carrow Road and Alex showing the Gherkin) - I have checked our house and office, but thought the following would be more interesting.
Using Google Streetview to re-create album covers:
Oasis 'What's the Story Morning Glory' - Berwick Street, London
Oasis original album cover
Oasis album cover re-created with Google Streetview
Beatles - Abbey Road
Beatles - 'Abbey Road' original album cover
Abbey Road cover re-created with Google Streetview
It's also possible to use Google Streetview for Banksy spotting:
Banksy on Newman Street
Banksy on Newman Street (painted over by the Post Office rather than the Gray Ghost)
Banksy on Newman Street immortalised by Google Streetview
Banksy's 'Maid in Camden':
Banksy's Maid in Camden in Google Streetview
Banksy's Maid in Camden with photographer caught by Google Streetview (!)
Google Streetview seems to cover all the main roads in London (and only misses out small / residential roads), people are blurred enough so as to be unrecognisable and I can't find any evidence of readable car number plates.
I think this is an amazing way of bringing maps to life and will have many uses for both businesses and consumers. I guess the only question now is how Google monetise their investment.......
Wispa have just (indirectly) answered a Twitter question I posed on the 8th December 2008.
Alexandra Palace fireworks twittering
It would appear that the fireworks in question were to mark the end of the filming of the fortheloveofwispa ad - pre-activity discussed by Rick Lamb here and this is the final fortheloveofwispa film:
Fortheloveofwispa is hosted at fortheloveofwispa.com and is also being promoted with a Wispa press ad that says 'Thank You':
Wispa 'Thank You' press ad
The Wispa 'Thank You' ad says 'thank you for storming Glastonbury and thank you for the Facebook campaign. Thank you for buying it and thank you for loving it' and marks the end of an amazing 12 months for the chocolate bar.
In the 1980's Wispa was the second largest brand in the Cadbury portfolio, but as sales faded Wispa was delisted in 2003. As Facebook and YouTube really came to prominence in 2007, consumers started spontaneously using these platforms to demand the 'return of Wispa.'
Over 500 Facebook groups were created in support of the return of Wispa. Cadbury tuned into this buzz and brought Wispa back for a trial period in late 2007.
Just a few of the 500 'Bring Back Wispa' Facebook Groups (click for larger image)
The trial period was successful enough to persuade Cadbury to bring back Wispa permanently in 2008:
Wispa 'Back By Popular Demand' point of sale activity
In 2008 Wispa continued to sell well becoming Cadbury's 'star performer' and delivered a 'record £25m in sales':
Wispa is Cadbury's 'star performer' (click for larger image - from Metro)
This makes a great case study around how social media can influence product development and ultimately drive sales. There are a number of things that can be learnt from Wispa's success and adapted for other products / categories.
In my view the 3 key take-outs from Wispa are:
1) Tuning into what consumers are saying on social media platforms can give great insight for media and creative, but can also be invaluable in other areas of marketing such as product development
2) Once you have identified buzz and started to engage consumers it needs to be framed with a long term / strategic approach - Wispa have done a great job of keeping the buzz going and have shown the value of a consistent, continual consumer relationship
3) Wispa have delivered sales success without resorting to mass scale TV advertising - showing the power of word of mouth and community marketing if it can be activated around an appealing product in an authentic way
Interesting to see what Wispa do next and how much of their model is picked up by other brands.
- Facebook usage in Asia is increasing quickly with both Indonesia and Malaysia showing significant increases in Facebook use
- In South America Facebook usage is still climbing, with Colombia now leading the way, but also jumps in Facebook usage in Venezuela, Argentina and Chile
- In the battle of the Nordics, the number of Facebook users in Sweden has overtaken the number of Facebook users in Denmark - though Denmark has the world's highest Facebook penetration with around 2/3 of the Danish population classified as active Facebook users
There are now 27 countries with over 1 million people using Facebook. Here are the latest statistics for March 2009 (taken from the Facebook interface):
Nielsen released figures last week showing that the fastest growing Facebook demographic segments are in the older audiences with the 35-49 year old and 50-64 year old user base growing significantly faster than younger audiences (Dec 08 vs Dec 07.)
However, whilst this makes interesting headlines / is a good indication of how social networking is being universally adopted, in absolute terms the volume of younger Facebook users still far outweighs (even the combined) number of older users.
I have split down usage by age group for the top 10 countries with highest Facebook penetration:
Country
15-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-65
USA
23,927,320
14,953,960
8,912,960
3,757,280
2,051,540
UK
7,634,100
5,390,340
2,617,920
1,007,760
463,100
Canada
5,032,000
3,248,440
1,672,820
848,120
451,200
Turkey
5,241,760
2,761,980
712,780
179,180
78,340
France
4,928,980
2,315,280
592,340
218,260
109,440
Italy
3,353,740
2,898,420
1,327,340
462,120
159,480
Australia
2,198,420
1,756,680
663,400
270,320
144,760
Colombia
2,487,080
1,225,980
327,940
109,580
49,300
Chile
2,004,720
1,234,640
523,200
215,400
76,500
Spain
1,141,980
1,869,420
552,780
136,940
60,140
Facebook - usage by age group in top 10 Facebook countries(actual numbers of active users)
The figures above are taken from the Facebook advertising interface and show that 46.6% of the Facebook audience of the top 10 countries by usage is in the 15-24 year old age range, followed by a further 30.3% in the 25-34 year old age range.
The older Facebook demographics may be growing faster than the younger demographics, but 75% of Facebook users in the largest countries by Facebook usage are still under 35.
Today is Comic Relief day in the UK - where comedians gather together and try and inspire the UK population to give generously to a wide selection of charities. Since conception 21 years ago, Comic Relief's most prominent aspect has been 'Red Nose Day'. Originally this was about people wearing plastic red noses, however over the years this has evolved with red noses for cars and other things being introduced.
For 2009 there is also a Digital Red Nose, available for a £1 donation from www.digitalrednose.com.
As social media grows it is getting more difficult to visualise the numbers involved, but applications are starting to appear that makes this easier. Gavin Heaton on Servant of Chaos has been playing with Twitter Mosiac and this is a simple way of giving more understanding of the 'Followers' or 'Friends' number [no Twitter password needs to be disclosed.]
By collecting all the avatar images from your Twitter account, Twitter Mosaic brings things to life in a more personal way (and you can even get this Mosaic printed onto mugs / t-shirts etc) - though I'm not sure what would happen if Stephen Fry tried this!
Here is the Mosaic comprised of my Twitter following:
Barack Obama Ryanair ad (from tonight's London Lite free newspaper)
