During the recent World Cup, the game got some very good publicity from John Terry having a go during one of England’s matches. Playing the game can be very addictive and I regularly see the same person playing the game in the area where I live.

Due to curiosity, I tried the game myself, and I can easily say that it was the most fun I have had in a long time. So my advice would be to try it yourself and to get your friends playing as well.

Harry Henderson joined Jam for a few days work experience – and penned this post.

Well that hasn’t changed, and as progress would have it, I’m jibing at its electronic namesake now…

Thanks to a filter built like Cerberus, I don’t get too much of it on email or Twitter, but I get slammed with it at home on the landline.

Most of this telespam is pre-recorded messages for kitchens/broadband/gas.. or even worse – 20 seconds of silence stacking up on the answer machine. (I’m beginning to feel a little sorry for the answer machine and have taken to putting my own messages on it, just so it hears a real voice once in a while.)

Anyway, spam on the phone is just really annoying. And I think it could get a lot more intense for everyone with the growth of geo-location services.

Right now, innovative opt-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla are relatively small, but they’re growing rapidly (Foursquare has grown to 2m users globally in under two years). With Facebook set to launch geo–location services imminently, a lot more consumers are going to be providing and receiving updates about where they, and their fellow humans are.

Brands of course are getting in on the action, with some big names likes Dominos, Debenhams and Starbucks running campaigns on Foursquare to good effect by rewarding loyal early-adopting consumers. McDonalds are also rumored to be one the first brands to trial Facebook’s service.

This emerging area offers big opportunities for brands to stand out on the high street and connect with consumers in what’s been dubbed the ‘last six feet’. It will also provide brand owners with invaluable data about who visits, when and where.

With location based  ad spend predicted to grow to  $4.1bn annually within five years, there’s a real danger consumers are going to be spammed by unscrupulous or naive companies who’ll fail to respect consumers privacy in an effort to get their attention.

So here’s the brief; get yourself a smart, sharp and thoroughly streetwise approach and you’ll find yourself making hay, not spam, in a hot new marketing channel.

Source: flickr



They haven’t stopped there, the latest project is called ‘Life in A Day‘ and naturally, it’s quite ambitious.

“Life In A Day is a historic global experiment to create the world’s largest user-generated feature film: a documentary, shot in a single day, by you. On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a glimpse of your life on camera. The most compelling and distinctive footage will be edited into an experimental documentary film, executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald.”

Pretty cool huh. Will be very interesting to see what the final product is like, and what proportion of submissions feature kittens or nudity. I feel sorry for whoever has to sort through the rushes…

Life in a day

Having already gained exposure in the Metro, no doubt sandwiched between lurid celebrity gossip and dubious reportage, this cartographic marvel is comprised of tweets from a 30km radius of London. It was created using Tweet-O-Meter, an app which showcases the amount of ‘tweets per minute’ from twelve major cities.

Undoubtedly my favourite element of the map is the kitsch names given to the peaks and deserts. The summit of the map occurs at ‘Soho Mountain’ whereas my hometown of ‘Sunbury-on-Thames Dunes’ is lagging far behind. Looks very much like I need to purchase a firm pair of hiking boots and get tweeting.

I think Nigel was being purposely provocative in order to stir up a few so-called social media experts, which he seems to have done very effectively. I also agree with Nigel that the Facebook hysteria going around is getting a little tiresome (how many meetings have you been in lately that start with “so, what can we do on Facebook/Foursquare/Twitter…”?) Never one to shirk from a debate, I still thought his article was worth responding to, so here goes…

Nigel, it sounds like you’re missing the point a bit here. It’s not that brands must simply learn how to advertise or ‘engage’ with their customers through social media but that businesses need to fundamentally change the way they operate in order to remain relevant. I’m afraid to say that this social media thing isn’t just going to come and go (like some of the sites that you mentioned) so that we can all go back to the good old days. Social media represents a gigantic shift in the balance of power between customers and brands.

If a few years ago a couple students had phoned up HSBC to complain about their student overdraft interest rates, rather than starting a group on Facebook, do you think HSBC would have lowered their rate?

Social media is not an ad platform for media agencies to work out how best to advertise on. People gather on blogs, forums and social networks and will talk about brands whether a business likes it or not. These reviews can have a serious impact on huge organisations and can make or break small businesses.

Big businesses such as ASDA, Next and Renault get this. They understand what social media represents rather than thinking it’s just another big website. They’re putting their customers, who communicate through social media, right at the centre of their operations and respond and adapt as they go. As a result they’re standing out amongst the crowd rather than being left in the past like Second Life.

This post was initially featured on the engine blog

Alex Miller is the MD of Jam

Paul Wilkins discussed the merging of systems, connecting your mobile to your PC to your TV, and that Samsung are not just creating brand new exciting electronic products, but are also spearheading this innovation. Anything with a plug has potential basically! So exciting releases expected.

The bada development environment supports c++, the examples made use of the open source eclipse IDE that is a good sign for developers across all platforms and not just PC. However, saying that, it appears the excellent UI builder is currently only supported for PC. Will this become available on Mac?

The namespace bada has created such as content or sound is accessed based on privilege levels. Developers have varying degrees of privileges depending on their status as a developer, if they are a developer partner, then they have full privileges’.

The use of c++ does mean that as developers there is already that wealth of historical knowledge surrounding this tried and tested language, unlike something more bespoke such as objective-c, which is relatively new. There has been a tweak to the original language, in particular the use of exceptions, bada has developed its own process for this, and because of such, they have also created there own construct method, with manual memory assignment.

The UI allows for the standard handset objects such as lists, buttons etc, but it also allows developers to embed flash objects and actual browsers into their applications.

A great feature is the ability to embed browsers into your applications, Eric Chang showed us a great use of this, using Google maps, and the standard Google map JavaScript API, what’s more, developers don’t require a Google api key to embed the maps!

Looking forward to the afternoon session.

The Government made an announcement on 24^th May indicating their intention to place restrictions on advertising and marketing, to deliver savings of around £160million in 2010/11. That’s a lot of telly, press, radio and digital ads. The freeze on advertising has already started, with only campaigns deemed as “essential” running (e.g. armed forces recruitment and the tax man).

Obviously this is going to have a huge impact on the market. But it’s also the stuff econometrician’s dreams are made of; the perfect control group. For the last 10 years we’ve all got used to being told to stop smoking, drink less, eat healthily or wear a condom. Will the freeze on advertising these messages have any impact on social behaviour over the next few years?

So, if you work in advertising and in a year’s time notice something’s not quite right on the streets of Britain; people are a bit fatter, drunk and generally less healthy than normal then it’s all ok, your job is safe, and advertising works.

Some very interesting findings, notably that the higher the reward the lower the quality of output cognative skills are required. I guess with higher reward comes higher pressure to perform, leading to stress and thus lower output.

Anyway, have a watch of the video below, and check out thersa.org to give your brain a work out.

via monster munch

I’m happy to split the difference. It’s been a very enjoyable half hour.

eBoy has made a name for himself through creating witty pixelated landscapes which symbolise the modern digital age. Delighfully retro, they tap into the nostalgia of simpler, lower-rez PC graphics. Images that many of us grew up whiling away the hours in front of – a time when 8-bits was all we needed.

FixPix works like all the best iPhone apps do, by being something that couldn’t possibly exist on another platform, iPad aside. Using the accelerometer you arrange layers to fix the three dimensional image, restoring perspective and in the process revealing some bizarre graphical mishaps.

Simple, visual, funny and new. Well worth staying a little late after work for.

… things can get a little strange when you get it wrong…

Once standing on one of the hotspots the app displays photos and paintings from that location, giving you an idea of what it used to look like:

You can also bring up information about that particular area:

Even though I don’t own an iPhone (waiting for the new 4G, HD or whatever it will be called…) I desperately want to try out this app! Not being a London native (it seems very few people in London are), I would probably learn a lot from it. Who knows, maybe it would also wake up a potential inner historian slumbering in me?

museumoflondon streetmuseum

Want in?

We currently have a few vacancies for social media planners available.

Fresh out of uni and want to get paid for thinking about  Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook? – get in touch.
Currently a Social Media planner at another agency and want a change of scene. – get in touch.
Got some time under your belt as a digital planner / media guy, and want to do some more social stuff? – get in touch.

You’d need to have a passion for where social media is going and most importantly what that means for our clients.

What’s a day in the life like over here? A bit of planning, lots of ideas, inane emails about cats, trips to pub and loads of tea rounds.

If that sounds interesting please send your CV through to richard@spreadingjam.com

In the US, the brands that dominate the buzz around Sex and the City 2 are primarily HP and Apple, as people discuss Carrie’s Macbook being replaced by an HP in a big product placement deal. Apple and HP are each mentioned in 4% of SATC2 posts.

Carrie Bradshaw made Manolo Blahniks, Macs and pink Cosmopolitans, all synonymous with householdmusts. So to see Skyy Vodka, Mercedes Benz, Moet Champagne, and Swarovski in the lineup of marketing partners fits, just like her Blahniks. But HP? brand-girl.com

Official brands Skyy vodka, Möet & Chandon champagne and Lipton teas, are all receiving relatively low levels of mentions in SATC2 buzz, only being mentioned in a combined 2% of posts. One blogger promotes the vodka in a SATC2 post:



Have a SKYY Vodka pre-movie cocktail with your SATC-crazed crew; Pat Field (the darling stylist behind the girls envelop pushing looks) created the starry nightscape design of the bottle. Cosmo anyone? thefashionistas.org

In the UK, Apple and HP are only appearing in 1.7% of SATC2 posts, while Debenhams, which has a retail partnership with the film, is mentioned in nearly 7% of SATC2 posts. One tweeter has noticed the adverts:

Müller, which has been noticed for its SATC2 adverts, is only mentioned 1.8% of the time, likely due to its perhaps irrelevance to the film, as mentioned in this tweet:

As you can see from these screenshots, he sometimes will just wander off – leaving you to wait, and muse on those homeless people that exist all the time, 24/7 – but you never pass in the street.

The app is clearly dividing audiences, and generating some interesting discussion in the reviews about the issues of homelessness, and what point exactly is being made (along with some bugs).

It’s a good showcase of how the low barrier to entry for mobile apps is generating some exciting new work, not just for the gaming and commerce sectors. Along with the usual ‘share’ functionality, you can also donate to Depaul UK straight from your iPhone, a nice touch to make a tangible difference.

Admitedly, there’s not a huge depth to it; you can only give the guy a sleeping bag, money or food depending on his current state. iHobo does make a salient point though – if you neglect the homeless, he gets into serious problems.

As a person living in London in 2010, I use Facebook every evening to easily keep in touch with a core group of my friends, and passively keep up to speed with a few hundred other people-who-I-no-longer-physically-see. In return for these stalking rights I reciprocally allow this outer group access to my updates.

Being a social media practitioner and a web savvy individual, I know how to tweak the Facebook security settings to prevent Google and the 400m+ other Facebook users from seeing my holiday snaps and inane status updates.

I definitely know about the settings on Twitter. There is only one. ‘Protect my tweets’.

Well, I thought I knew all about the Facebook security settings – until I saw this infographic on the  New York Times. It shows how ludicrously complex Facebook settings actually are.

While 50 settings and over 170 options does give precise control over security, it does increase the chance for error – particularly when you consider that 4.6m of its users are 55+. I guess increased complexity comes hand in hand with managing such a large and open web platform.

Click to see the image at full size.

via NYT

At its core, the campaign is essentially an exercise in incentivised sharing. We’re used to seeing companies encouraging their fans and friends to share their message, usually with a competition mechanic attached; the most famous example being #moonfruit on twitter.  Heck, we’ve run a few of those competitions in our time too.

What makes this so good though (about from the raising-cash-for-charity part) is that it’s wrapped up in a very slick and interactive interface, aggregating all those involved in a picture mural.

Tapping into Facebook, email and twitter means that sharing content is about as easy as it gets and, the payoff is also pretty high: trading 1 of your tweets for 1 of talktalk’s pounds for autism. So, unlike a competition mechanic, your tweet is guaranteed to work (albeit not for you).

Head on over, share a factoid about autism and raise some cash.

talkathon.talkaboutautism.org.uk

Well, what an incredibly disorientating, sad yet ultimately extremely exciting week we’ve just had.

If you’ve been following the trade press you might have caught wind of our old parent company i-level swiftly being placed into administration and then liquidation; all between Tuesday evening and Friday morning.

As fate might have it, Jam have been welcomed into the offices of Engine, just around the corner on Great Portland St .

We’re all still here. All 20-or-so of us. We’ve kept the team together, a 100% retention rate showing that we actually get along pretty well and enjoy doing what we’ve been doing.

A recent article in campaign sums up the core points of what’s gone on quite neatly:

LONDON – Engine has acquired Jam, the social media unit of i-level, the digital agency that was placed into administration yesterday.

Jam, which was the fastest growing part of I-Level, creates social media campaigns for clients including Renault, Comet, Orange and Next.

Alex Miller, the agency’s managing director will join Engine as part of the deal, along with head of strategy Jamie Kenny, director Richard Costa-d’sa and the 20-strong Jam team.

The Engine group spans a range of disciplines and includes ad agency WCRS, direct agency Partners Andrews Aldridge and digital agency Altogether Digital.

Miller said: “Engine is a business that puts social media at the heart of its integrated thinking. The swift transfer ensures that there is absolutely no gap in Jam’s delivery to our clients and, in fact, we are now able to offer them a stronger and broader service than ever before.”

Peter Scott, the chairman and joint chief executive of Engine, said: “Jam has created some of the best social media campaigns of recent years.  Its client service will continue seamlessly now that the team are part of Engine.”

We’re all really excited about this new opportunity and the scope to continue to do great work for our existing clients and work with some new ones from across the wider Engine group.

In the meantime, bear with us as we set about revising spreadingjam.com and setting into our new office space next to WCRS – otherwise, it’s business; but bigger and better than usual.

It’s become a staple part of our existence and I’m sure it has caused a drop in clipboard sales; as no longer must we be surveyed whilst trying to buy our groceries. We can now order our shopping online as we tweet our opinions on the leader’s debate.

Dependence on social media has been born from a massive communication shift and is subsequently playing a major role in the soon-to-be-concluded general election. The parties can freely dip into a pool of public opinion to inform their campaign decisions – but are they? Social Media has oft been cited as a pivotal part of Barack Obama’s successful election campaign strategy. We think it’s a powerful tool that all UK parties should be using.

The following 5 graphs represent just how much online public opinion is being shared on the key issues.

23/04/2010 Buzz following the second leader’s debate (src: Brandwatch / Jam)

The first graph represents buzz from the day after the second leader’s debate. Focus on tax and the economy comes as no surprise, with conversation on defense & foreign affairs flared by debate over the war and Trident developments. A broad level of buzz on each subject is expected, as the candidates promote and defend their policies.

It is enlightening to see that parliamentary reform receives little conversation, surprising, as it features quite prominently in the Labour manifesto and has been a topic at the heart of tax and finance for many months now with the MP expenses scandals.

26/04/2010 Cameron is challenged on Education policy (src: Brandwatch / Jam)

The second graph represents the Monday after the debate, showing a very different picture. A student in Southampton challenged Cameron’s education policy, causing a peak in buzz around the subject, and the environment came into focus as the leaders clashed over green credentials. It is interesting to note that buzz surrounding education is sustained going into the next graph, whereas environmental conversation once again subsides. The level of buzz surrounding the environment may be low due to loss of public interest in the subject after the various IPCC blunders, however, this dip in buzz could be the perfect opportunity for one party to create a peak and stand out in the subject.

28/04/2010 ‘Bigotgate’ causes peak in buzz on immigration (src: Brandwatch / Jam)

The third graph, taken from the 28^th of April shows the development of online conversation in the lead up to the final leader’s debate. It also reflects significant response to ‘bigotgate’, a catalyst for increased conversation on Labour and immigration. The peak in Conservative buzz on education also seems to cause general conversation surrounding the subject to increase for all parties. Considering the amount of online response to ‘bigotgate’, would it be worth creating a similar situation to create buzz around a subject, as evident in the graph below – taken from the day after the final leader’s debate – ‘bigotgate’ has caused a sustained rise in buzz on immigration. It has already been conjectured that the Conservatives are arranging ‘flash mobs’ to distract Labour voters, and a last minute distraction or revelation may be enough to sway voters, as I’m sure bigotgate already has.

30/04/2010 Buzz following the final leader’s debate (src: Brandwatch / Jam)

These figures aren’t a representation of popularity or effectiveness of communication; they merely give an indication of the volume of public opinion surrounding the parties and policies in the social media space. They also indicate how effective social media monitoring can be in following political progress and how it could be used to give parties an idea of where their conversation is focused.

However, focusing on a particular media platform can produce a very different graph. Comparing Twitter and forum buzz in isolation in the same period 23^rd of April produced very different results:

23/04/2010 Buzz following second leader’s debate (src: Twitter / Jam)

23/04/2010 Forum only buzz following second leader’s debate (src: Brandwatch / Jam)

On Twitter, Labour can be seen to dominate buzz on the economy with Conservatives leading on education whereas on forums there is less focus on the environment and heavier Conservative focus on the economy and taxes. It may be interesting to note that the conditions of Twitter, allowing only posts of 140 characters or less, deter the elaborate discussion that forums provide. Forum posts are more likely to discuss all parties, where Twitter promotes a more focused response. With the formatting, Twitter is perfect for exploring direct and quick opinions; people are more likely to rant on Twitter, in juxtaposition to forums, where people are more inclined to rehearse their post.

Though online buzz alone cannot predict who the new PM will be, it can give a good idea of what people are talking about and where parties should focus their efforts.

If you did, like me, you were probably blown away by the 3D technology and the immersive effect of the visuals – perhaps followed by a bout of post Avatar ‘blues’.

On Wednesday, Samsung officially launched their 3D TV offering in the UK. By the afternoon, all the stock in John Lewis had been cleared out by uber-keen early adopters. Being the first manufacturer to market is a fairly big deal.

i-level have been working on the UK digital strategy for this launch, with the mega TV ad officially aired during the half time break of the Champions league semi-final last night.

With such a generation-defining launch, Samsung were able to capitalise on increased buzz through releasing the ad early on the internet through a YouTube takeover.

Samsung are also exclusively showing it on the Xbox live platform

For the last two weeks i-level and Samsung have been building the excitement through a teaser campaign across the AOL network and YouTube pre-rolls that pointed users towards landing pages displaying a countdown timer. This has been supported by 10” TV adverts and a large search presence.

We’re really excited to have worked with Samsung in launch on YouTube and Xbox. Furthermore, including copy directing users to YouTube in all of their Press ads is a significant shift for the brand who traditionally launch their adverts on TV in the first instance.

Seeing it there, the glass plate, blackened and reflecting my smiling face, brings a huge sense of pride in ownership. Taking it out of the box it feels heavier than you expect and also smaller. The face is about the size of a standard hardback book.

When it turns on you have to go through the standard first sync with iTunes, choose which apps from your iPhone you want to port over. Much to my dismay though the App store was locked out for me by virtue of it realising I was a UK customer and not a registered US resident. So I am currently only able to experience a cut down version of its offering. But even so it is still something to behold and will easily become the default access point to the Internet at home.

Browsing the web is a joy. Until you see it and use it you just don’t really believe it can be that much different but it just feels so much more natural. Even my non tech friend fell in love with it and was able to access the internet and book flights with no instructions from me (a non iPhone user to boot so was really a first time for him in the OS). His words after were that he wanted one.

As for the issues of typing on it, well I think that will come as the biggest surprise to all- There aren’t any really. You just need to let yourself go and do it. It is surprisingly fast and easy. your brain wants to complicate it but actually it just works. Yes there are the occasional, mistypes but that comes from the keypad being too sensitive if anything. I have written this on the iPad and can really see myself using it for work, not as the default machine but certainly as something that works and is a lot easier to carry around than a laptop.

Sent from my iPad

Oliver Newton is i-level’s Head of Emerging Platforms

I was recently made aware of a wonderful little tool that puts all these fears to rest. Trackmycv.com offer a free service, enabling you to track the movement of your CV down to opening time and IP location.

After a super-quick registration, you ‘add’ your CV – after which you are provided with a invisible, 1×1 pixel tracker that you insert anywhere in your document. All you have to worry about then is making sure the content is amazing, save, send and watch that critter fly!

Andy Hyland is currently interning with Jam (and doing a sterling job)

Bebo has a higher percentage of 15-24s using the site than Myspace has, yet unlike Myspace, Bebo is losing their female audience more quickly than their male audience.

One of Bebo’s particular talents is captivating the Scottish and Northern Irish, and perhaps they have a future as a niche northern destination.

Despite the massive decline, Bebo is still bigger than Twitter and Myspace, with 4.77 million monthly unique users in the UK.

It’s not over yet.

Michelle Yeadon is a trainee social media planner with team Jam

The first is Swype

Though not having used this myself, the videos look quite impressive. I imagine it would work quite well with the iPhone, if it makes it there.

Inputting text causes the biggest headaches through misspellings and the bizarre intelligent text on the iPhone as rather than selecting the suggested word, you have to delete the suggestion – I’m not a fan.

Getting touch screen interfaces to not only replicate data input but to make it faster than traditional handsets should be on all manufacturers road maps. Hopefully the ‘qwerty era’ is coming to an end.

The second is biometric, made by Hitachi

It’s fingerprint recognition that uses infrared to scan your veins and identify you. Check out the video, in which it’s used to buy a coke zero (ergh). The main benefits of authenticated data these days seems to be that we can tie our personal details to our unique selves.

Very ‘Minority Report’, but barring someone taking my eyes to pay for tube journeys, Vein ID authentication simply speeds things up. I’m looking forward to it replacing my Oyster card, and carrying some of that antiseptic soap stuff with me everywhere.

Bhavin is a Social Media planner working with Jam

find out more here

Consumers are fed up of seeing brands fan sites pop up all over the web, with little or no thought to the value they can offer that community. They’re tired of hanging out in their favourite virtual world only to be interrupted by companies who have nothing to say. Consumers are savvy and are not prepared to be marketed to in the traditional way any longer. Social Media has all the power of an adult but is behaving like a teenager.

Jam are returning to the Social Media World Forum to look at the increased value that Social Media can offer if only it would grow up.

You will find us at stand 16 so come down to have a chat! You should of course also follow our live tweets from the forum on twitter.com/spreadingjam.

You will also be able to listen to presentations from Alex, Head of Jam, and Oli, Head of Emerging Platforms at i-level, at the following times:

Monday 15th, 2.50: “Social Media is out of control”
Alex Miller & Oli Newton

Tuesday 16th, 10.30: “Benchmarking Advertising on Social Networks”
Alex Miller

See you there!

From what I can understand, they’re going to be taking advantage of Gowalla’s items (a little like virtual gifting) to leave virtual Lomography equipment around South by South West locations.  Simple enough.

But they’re also going to be leaving real Lomography kit around SXSW for people to find with the help of Gowalla.

This is a good idea and we’ve thought about doing similar things before.  The key thing here is that SXSW and Lomography link up pretty well in terms of the kind of people that are interested, and Gowalla is a network “developed deep in the heart of Texas”.  So it’s pretty much a good match all round.

If you’re wondering about the relevance, I took this on a Diana F+!

This is a nice Flickr group where you post up your typography every Friday.  Simple.

This week I went pretty simple with an easy pixel font, but presented in pink post-it notes against a light-up wall we’ve got at the end of one of our benches.

I could post-rationalise it with talk about the medium that’s written on being used to write, but I think that might be a bit self indulgent.  Anyways, here it is:

The fact there is 10.5k videos tagged Rube Goldberg and the latest OK Go clip has recieved 500k views in 3 days isn’t a coincidence.

Which brings me to the current spate of Old Spice ads which will undoubtedly spawn thousands of remakes earning millions of views.

The original:

A very funny homage:

Jam are returning to the Social Media World Forum to look at the value that Social Media can offer if only it would grow up.

Come and chat to us on stand 16, or see what Alex and Oli have to say at the conference.

Monday 15th, 2.50: “Social Media is out of control”
Alex Miller & Oli Newton

Tuesday 16th, 10.30: “Benchmarking Advertising on Social Networks”
Alex Miller

I want to see which one is considered to be the bigger failure? Or am I wrong? Are they both products that will revolutionise respective industry? Please answer the poll, and if you consider me to be wrong, please tell me why in the comments field!

(This post and poll represents my own opinions and thoughts, and not those of Jam)