British Airways promote Twitter account on boarding passes

'Owned media' can drive 'Earned media' / conversation and over recent months I have highlighted a number of cases where brands are using ads and other assets to promote their social presences and drive conversation.

Another example is British Airways promoting their Twitter account on their online boarding passes - though the Twitter message is not included on the final print out. Customers who check in online are given strong encouragement to follow BA on Twitter, as the image below shows:

British Airways Twitter - as seen on electronic boarding passes

Every asset has the potential to be used to drive fans / followers, providing opportunities for future dialogue. However, using an asset like a boarding card is different to using an asset like a broadcast ad. Instead of targeting the mass or anyone who has a passing interest, this is about targeting people who are already customers.

The action of printing off a boarding card shows that you are already a customer, thus the audience has already been qualified and only those who have a made a purchase see the message. Twitter in this context therefore becomes a loyalty tool, a way of furthering conversation with those who have already engaged with the brand. The fact that this message is not displayed on the printed pass adds an element of exclusivity to the invitation, though it also potentially reduces the effectiveness of the CTA - at that moment in time you are only thinking of printing off the boarding pass!

Interesting way of integrating Twitter into a core product though.

Follow British Airways on Twitter @british_airways (UK), @britishairways (US)

Follow me on Twitter @nickburcher

Nick Burcher Swedish Hero - part two

'Swedish Hero' was a viral campaign by Radiotjänst to encourage Swedish people to pay their TV licence fee. Latest statistics indicate that the Hero website has had close to 50 million visits, over 115 million page views and approximately 12 million films have been streamed.

The campaign was targeted to the 9.4 million people in Sweden, but the films have since been watched in every single country and region of the world except for West Sahara!

There is now a new 'tackfilm', click below to see Nick Burcher Swedish Hero part two:

Link http://en.tackfilm2.se/?id=1280393947343ID368



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BBC 1948 Olympics archive opened online

Just 2 years to go until the start of the London 2012 Olympics! There is a whole host of activity going on at the official London 2012 websites and the BBC have opened a 1948 Olympics archive online aggregating a large range of BBC archive content from the last London Olympics.

BBC 1948 Olympics archive home page

The BBC 1948 Olympics archive includes photos and TV coverage from the 1948 games. There is some great footage and I particularly enjoyed this video piece, with the BBC showing off the latest technology for outside broadcasting:

BBC don't allow video embedding, so CLICK HERE for the film - things have moved on a bit in the last 62 years!

The BBC 1948 Olympics archive also contains scans of editorial from the Radio Times magazine, which again give interesting insight - particularly the final paragraph with the Radio Times worrying that viewers who watch all three and a half of hours of daily broadcast will be 'easily recognised in the streets of London by their pallid appearance!':



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Newport State Of Mind - from Jay-Z to smoking to California to Welsh town, emergence of a meme

One of the most viral clips on the web right now is 'Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)', a Welsh parody of the Jay-Z / Alicia Keys hit. However, it's not the first film to substitute the word 'New York' with the word 'Newport'.

The original Jay-Z / Alicia Keys version '(New York) Empire State Of Mind' has over 50 million views on YouTube:

Then in December 2009 Seventeen 'Newport State Of Mind feat Justice' was uploaded to YouTube and celebrates 'Newport Beach' (occasional swearing) [17,252 views]:

The following week, Keithfromupdablock uploaded a version of Empire State Of Mind that featured Newport cigarettes alongside couplets like:

"Now you smoke
Newports
One sweet puff will make you feel brand new
It just may retire you
Addicted to
Newports, Newports,NEWPORTS"

(swearing in last 10 seconds) [37,521 views]

Then the current Welsh version from mjdelaneyfilms and set in the South Wales town of Newport - 'Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)' features classic rhymes such as:

'Newport
Twinned with Guangxi Province in China
.....there's no province finer'

[395,461 views in 3 days - and spreading fast]:

Interesting to see how the Jay-Z / Alicia Keys 'Empire State Of Mind' parodies have evolved, particularly the ones centred around the word 'Newport.'

In the Long Tail Chris Anderson writes 'a house record that does well often attracts remixes from other producers; it becomes a kind of platform. Because these remixes are usually hyperspecialised for different microgenres, they’re complements to the original track. As the number of complements increases, the value of the platform track snowballs.’

We can see this at work with the Newport videos. YouTube analytics shows the Jay-Z track has had views from across the world, whereas the Newport Beach and Newport cigarettes parodies have been viewed almost exclusively by a US audience. The latest version of Newport State Of Mind has (unsurprisingly) been predominantly viewed by a UK audience.

New York is a global city with global appeal, the subsequent remixes have been localised and view counts tend to reflect this (the 'hyper-specialised remix'). However, the success of the Welsh film appears to be driving view counts to both the original Jay-Z video and the other remixes too - in line with Anderson's idea, the value of the platform track snowballing with each additional remix.

Will be interesting to have another look in a weeks time to see how many views 'Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)' has received and what the knock-on effect for the originals has been.

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Interactive Facebook usage map from Guardian Technology

The Guardian have created an interactive map that shows Facebook usage across the world. They have used the data that I published here and the application shows percentage of population using Facebook in each country:

Guardian article (including further Facebook data here), much nicer than the html table that I produce!

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UK Government acquiring consumer data for ad targeting through 'covert bin-rifling' - according to the Daily Mail......

Today's front page of the Daily Mail has their latest Big Brother government scare story:

Daily Mail: 'Council Race Spies Rummage Through Your Bin' [link]

"Local authorities are using social profiling techniques to match different types of rubbish to different ethnic groups or wealthy and poor households, as part of a recycling drive initiated by the last Government. Householders can then be placed into social categories, which in some areas range from 'wealthy achievers' to the 'hard-pressed' - and subsequently targeted for future leafleting campaigns."

The Daily Mail highlight 'covert bin-rifling operations' and obviously refrain from describing the people carrying out the alleged work as 'analysts', instead preferring the more sensational headline of 'council race spies'.......

Whilst this sort of reporting is not unusual for the Mail, it does illustrate the fact that every move an individual makes can provide a data trail that has potential use for advertising targeting and the more effective delivery of marketing campaigns. Credit companies, supermarkets and so on have long maintained databases on customer preferences - and as far back as 2005 the Daily Mail themselves have been offering advertisers the chance to 'target audiences based on their interests or previous behaviour' with 'rules-based targeting specifying audience sections based on criteria like frequency of visits to a site, registration data, or geographic location.'

As the world gets more connected and data pools grow ever larger (Neil Perkin highlighted the 'that the 'digital universe' grew by 62% last year to 800,000 petabytes' - enough to fill 75billion iPads) then the discipline of harnessing of data for targeting, profiling and social segmentation will inevitably become ever more important and ever more commonplace.

......however, in the current climate of austerity, if UK local governments really want consumer information for 'leaflet targeting' there are far more cost efficient ways of acquiring data then sending people to analyse the contents of rubbish bins!

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Old Spice Remix!

After last week's amazing Old Spice activity that responded to online comments with personalised video messages, it was inevitable that mash up / remix culture would go into overdrive.

Parodies and remakes are all over YouTube and a number of the remixes are quite entertaining. This one seems to be turning up a lot - enjoy!

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Mad Men Job Interview - AMC pre-season promotion

To promote the new series of Mad Men, AMC have created the Mad Men job interview!

Mad Men Job Interview

Answer a series of 7 questions posed by different characters from the series and find out what job you would be offered at the Mad Men agency - I was offered the role of CopyWriter:

Mad Men job interview offer

Then share your results through Facebook or Twitter.

Maybe not as viral as last year's pre-season 'Mad Men Yourself' activity, but still a nice way of building buzz amongst a loyal fan base.

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Mad Men Yourself - create your own Mad Men avatar

Sesame Street does Mad Men

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'The Social Network' (Facebook movie) full length trailer creating buzz - but will this translate into box office success?

The full length version of the trailer for the Facebook movie 'The Social Network' is now online at Yahoo! Movies:

The film is due for release on 15th October in the UK and is already creating significant buzz online. Sponsored tweets rather than Facebook ads have been used to highlight the trailers and encourage discussion (partly because Facebook won't allow the word 'Facebook' to be used in ad copy.)

Debate has already started about whether the Social Network Facebook movie will be a success, but so far the reaction appears overwhelmingly positive (I like the look of the film too.) Furthermore, earlier this year two HP researchers, Sitaram Asur and Bernardo A. Huberman, published a paper that demonstrated how social media content can be used to predict real-world outcomes (here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.5699.)

The paper entitled 'Predicting The Future With Social Media' highlighted that 'a simple model built from the rate at which tweets are created about particular topics can outperform market-based predictors.' Movies like Inglorious Basterds and District 9 appear to have benefitted from the 'Twitter Effect', whilst others, notably Bruno, appear to have suffered as a result of Twitter comments.

On this basis I wouldn't bet against 'The Social Network' being a major box office hit!

[NB. According to Mashable the music for the trailer (a cover of the Radiohead song 'Creep') is performed by Belgian girls choir Scala.]

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Facebook USA usage statistics by state - July 2010 vs July 2009 vs July 2008

Earlier this week I looked at Facebook usage statistics by country and found that the USA is still the biggest country by Facebook usage - increasing by over 56 million active users in the last 12 months.

Using figures from the Facebook platform (which provides 'Estimated Reach' by country / state) I have evaluated growth in Facebook usage by state over the last 2 years.

- the largest US state for Facebook use is California with Facebook reporting 15.3 million users
- the fastest growing US state for Facebook usage in the last 12 months is District Of Colombia
- the fastest growing US state for Facebook use in the last 24 months is Nevada

Facebook usage statistics by US state:

US State	Number of Facebook users July 2008	Number of Facebook Users July 2009	Number of Facebook Users July 2010	12 month increase %	24 month increase %
Alabama	290,060	694,020	1,452,300	109.3%	400.7%
Alaska	46,400	160,760	300,840	87.1%	548.4%
Arizona	320,320	1,017,020	2,234,400	119.7%	597.6%
Arkansas	295,280	535,040	896,900	67.6%	203.8%
California	2,524,680	7,911,380	15,267,160	93%	504.7%
Colorado	412,240	1,274,240	2,352,640	84.6%	470.7%
Connecticut	441,260	864,860	1,347,720	55.8%	205.4%
Delaware	48,840	128,220	212,880	66.0%	335.9%
District of Columbia	334,100	753,860	1,893,840	151.2%	466.9%
Florida	1,488,580	3,698,100	7,252,680	96.1%	387.2%
Georgia	912,880	2,417,120	4,864,080	101.2%	432.8%
Hawaii	91,720	275,160	519,000	88.6%	465.9%
Idaho	69,920	253,300	510,520	101.6%	630.2%
Illinois	1,470,320	2,946,440	7,035,420	138.8%	378.5%
Indiana	445,600	1,208,720	2,070,880	71.3%	364.7%
Iowa	265,640	475,800	871,900	83.3%	228.3%
Kansas	331,280	711,360	1,179,000	65.7%	255.9%
Kentucky	294,680	745,080	1,494,620	100.6%	407.2%
Louisiana	264,600	664,180	1,470,200	121.4%	455.6%
Maine	136,700	307,640	519,100	68.7%	279.7%
Maryland	548,040	1,283,380	2,083,700	62.4%	280.2%
Massachusetts	950,880	1,901,080	2,978,180	56.7%	213.2%
Michigan	938,200	2,175,100	3,746,440	72.2%	299.3%
Minnesota	637,340	1,320,300	2,156,900	63.4%	238.4%
Mississippi	175,360	374,680	824,540	120.1%	370.2%
Missouri	732,160	1,469,360	2,656,440	80.8%	262.8%
Montana	53,000	158,440	339,860	114.5%	541.3%
Nebraska	197,380	434,940	748,660	72.1%	279.3%
Nevada	100,900	435,600	898,680	106.3%	790.7%
New Hampshire	150,620	332,240	525,640	58.2%	249%
New Jersey	1,034,520	2,149,520	4,020,300	87%	288.6%
New Mexico	57,500	206,500	460,600	123.1%	701%
New York	2,204,280	5,067,240	8,237,980	62.6%	273.7%
North Carolina	767,300	1,756,980	3,677,160	109.3%	379.2%
North Dakota	64,250	127,720	287,740	125.3%	347.8%
Ohio	953,020	2,074,640	4,440,300	114.0%	365.9%
Oklahoma	222,520	569,640	1,157,520	103.2%	420.2%
Oregon	242,500	815,660	1,648,820	102.2%	579.9%
Pennsylvania	1,189,260	2,559,460	4,993,400	95.1%	319.9%
Rhode Island	133,820	208,320	479,860	130.4%	258.6%
South Carolina	311,900	792,740	1,508,360	90.3%	383.6%
South Dakota	124,680	252,280	306,560	21.5%	145.9%
Tennessee	469,280	1,199,300	2,349,340	95.9%	400.6%
Texas	1,586,920	4,252,420	9,872,740	132.2%	522.1%
Utah	217,240	628,120	1,188,260	89.2%	447%
Vermont	71,360	141,880	243,660	71.7%	241.5%
Virginia	855,700	2,292,680	3,029,720	32.2%	254.1%
Washington	523,260	1,560,660	3,883,440	148.8%	642.2%
West Virginia	82,940	224,040	496,240	121.5%	498.3%
Wisconsin	628,840	1,286,500	2,162,040	68.1%	243.8%
Wyoming	31,420	110,740	217,940	96.8%	593.6%

*statistics taken from Facebook platform

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Facebook usage statistics by country - July 2010 vs July 2009 vs July 2008

Top Facebook Fan Pages by number of fans - January 2010

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North Korea, Justin Bieber and the perils / pitfalls of UGC

A recent web poll on Faxo asked Justin Bieber fans where he should perform. The poll appeared to be a Bieber endorsed social initiative and posed the question 'Who Wants Justin The Most? Decide now.'

Tweetmeme report that this contest was tweeted about in excess of 12,000 times and (at the time of writing) there are 99,142 Likes on Facebook. As a result a huge amount of votes were cast in the Justin Bieber poll, and on closing yesterday the final results for the top 10 countries were:

10. Netherlands - 63,933 votes
9. Chile - 68,895 votes
8. Sweden - 69,821 votes
7. Spain - 75,948 votes
6. Venezuela - 77,793 votes
5. Colombia - 90,094 votes
4. Turkey - 107,388 votes
3. Poland - 513,867 votes
2. Israel - 624,803 votes
1. North Korea - 659,141 votes

So a landmark win for the North Koreans and a groundbreaking concert performance coming up? Er, no. North Korea is one of the least connected countries in the world and it is doubtful that 659,141 North Koreans would have been permitted to go online to vote in a Justin Bieber concert poll.

The North Korea win was a result of the poll being hijacked by messageboard 4Chan who (are reported to have) encouraged members and friends / followers to vote for North Korea, 'corrupting' the results of web democracy in the same way that they manipulated the voting in the Time Top 100 most influential people poll in 2009.

Since the Justin Bieber contest closed, record label Universal have called the whole Justin Bieber concert vote poll as a hoax and Bieber will not be touring in North Korea (Universal and Justin Bieber can opt out by stressing that it is a hoax contest - though fans worldwide continue to vote and leave comments on the voting site seemingly believing it is real.)

Others have nearly been caught out with this sort of thing in the past, only being saved by introducing a final shortlist with the winner chosen by judges, for example the new Wembley Stadium Bridge was close to being called the Dietmar Hamann Bridge after the naming contest was hijacked by an anti-English alliance.

Whereas a Dr. Martens DM boots UGC contest resulted in the actual production and sale of the infamous Penguin Snowboot after a UGC design competition went (horribly) wrong. (A short list / judging panel has been included on following campaigns):

The Justin Bieber world tour vote shows how viral attention can drive unpredictable results. The advance planning for any kind of UGC contest should therefore include a discussion about how much control to maintain. Too little and you end up having to tour North Korea or producing a Penguin Snow Boot, too much and there is no 'fun' to be had for internet users and the potential for viral spread is limited.

There is wisdom in crowds, but there can also be a cheeky subversiveness too - and both eventualities need to be prepared for!

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Jesus in Google Earth - today's news was also the news in April, in the same paper!

Today sees the Sun (and subsequently a number of other news sites and publications) reporting that 'internet fan Zach Evans told yesterday how he found Jesus - On Google Earth.' The 26-year old (apparently) 'recognised Christ's image as he trawled the map site looking for holiday destinations.'

The Sun reports that Jesus has been found in Google Earth - July 2010

However, back in April the Sun ran effectively the same Jesus Google Earth story after blogs had started reporting that Jesus had been found (in the same field) on Google Earth in Hungary.

The Sun reports that Jesus has been found in Google Earth - April 2010

The Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph websites are amongst a number of publications who have (re-)published the Jesus / Google Earth story since it appeared in the Sun today.

Very strange that the Jesus in Google Earth story from April effectively becomes news again today (in the same paper)! Is this just a bizarre coincidence or is Zach Evans better at Searching the internet than the UK's national newspaper writers?

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Google Earth shows location of Lost City Of Atlantis

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Facebook usage statistics by country - July 2010 compared to July 2009 and July 2008

Latest Facebook usage statistics by country - 31st Dec 2011 here

I have been publishing Facebook usage statistics by quarter for a while and now have enough data to be able to look at 12 month growth in Facebook users by country and 24 month growth in Facebook users by country. Total number of Facebook users has now passed 400m and Facebook is growing everywhere - maybe why Google is (allegedly) still looking closely at social networking and regarding Facebook with envious eyes?

The table below shows the top 30 countries by number of active Facebook users with July 2010 Facebook user information compared to 2009 and 2008 Facebook usage statistics (leave a comment if you want to know statistics for other countries.)

Here are the Top 30 countries with highest number of Facebook users (1st July 2010 - data from Facebook):

Rank	Country	Number of Facebook users 1st July 2008	Number of Facebook users 1st July 2009	Number of Facebook users 1st July 2010	12 month growth %	24 month growth %
1	USA	27,811,560	69,378,980	125,881,220	81.4%	352.6%
2	UK	11,171,540	18,711,160	26,543,600	41.9%	137.6%
3	Indonesia	209,760	6,496,960	25,912,960	298.9%	12253.6%
4	Turkey	3,464,640	12,382,320	22,552,540	82.1%	550.9%
5	France	2,461,140	10,781,480	18,942,220	75.7%	669.7%
6	Italy	491,100	10,218,400	16,647,260	62.9%	3289.8%
7	Canada	9,621,820	11,961,020	15,497,900	29.6%	61.1%
8	Philippines	162,640	2,719,560	14,600,300	436.8%	8877.1%
9	Mexico	1,042,820	3,644,400	12,978,440	256.1%	1144.6%
10	Spain	695,900	5,773,200	10,610,080	83.8%	1424.7%
11	India	711,520	3,236,140	10,547,240	225.9%	1382.4%
12	Argentina	417,980	4,906,220	10,542,040	114.9%	2422.1%
13	Colombia	2,412,000	5,760,300	10,226,820	77.5%	324%
14	Germany	618,080	3,136,680	9,949,760	217.2%	1509.8%
15	Australia	3,217,380	6,053,560	9,009,660	48.8%	180.0%
16	Malaysia	450,580	1,995,040	7,317,520	266.8%	1524.0%
17	Chile	2,105,820	4,830,680	6,944,540	43.8%	229.8%
18	Taiwan	71,340	685,460	6,745,160	884.0%	9355%
19	Venezuela	966,700	3,578,740	6,686,300	86.8%	591.7%
20	Brazil	119,080	1,015,400	4,757,200	368.5%	3895%
21	Thailand	114,180	697,340	4,216,760	504.7%	3593.1%
22	Sweden	1,141,700	2,287,240	3,798,020	66.1%	232.7%
23	Egypt	783,440	1,618,040	3,581,460	121.4%	357.2%
24	Belgium	531,740	2,372,460	3,505,920	47.8%	559.3%
25	Hong Kong	837,900	2,087,580	3,408,240	63.3%	306.7%
26	Israel	591,900	1,433,540	3,006,460	109.7%	407.9%
27	South Africa	878,120	1,720,820	2,884,080	67.6%	228.4%
28	Greece	505,000	1,638,980	2,838,700	73.2%	462.1%
29	Poland	83,180	619,180	2,772,540	347.8%	3233.2%
30	Czech Rep	51,680	1,088,020	2,686,040	146.9%	5097.5%

[*figures are taken from Facebook and then compared to Facebook usage statistics lists that I have previously compiled (allowing the 12 month and 24 month comparisons.)]

As always, if you want to know the latest Facebook usage statistics for another country (and data is now published for almost every country in the world), leave a comment in the post below and I will post the relevant Facebook user statistics data.

Related posts

Facebook USA - usage statistics by US state July 2010 vs July 2009

Top 30 Facebook Fan Pages - January 2010

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NBA Store and I Love Brands using their window displays to promote their Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare accounts

As social media becomes more integrated with real world physical locations, shops and businesses are starting to use their window displays to promote their social presences. Mobile phone retailers have been doing this for a while but other categories are starting to join in.

Earlier this year I saw the NBA Store on Fifth Avenue (New York) using their store window to promote their Twitter and Facebook accounts:

NBA Store Fifth Avenue Twitter / Facebook shop window (click for larger image - apologies about reflection!)

This idea appears to have spread to London now with 'I Love Brands' on London's Oxford Street using a huge shop window sticker to promote their Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare accounts:

I Love Brands - FourSquare, Twitter and Facebook shop window sticker
(click for larger image)

As we see start to see more and more ads including social addresses, surely it can't be long before everyone is visibly highlighting the details of their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc presences at their physical locations?

Google found success with distributing Google Maps stickers like this:

Google Maps UK shop window sticker (click for larger image)

and (according to Mashable) Facebook have recently started sending out decals to shops and businesses too, showing an example of a letter and decal that Facebook sent to the Museum of Making Music:

Stand by for the real world to be taken over by social media too!

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