Thoughtpick Blog

What Is It Like to Work With Facebook & Zuck?

M. Bamieh — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:58:13 +0000

We have all heard about how it feels like to work at Google and how Google is the trend setter of creating the perfect environment for creativity and employee retention. But Facebook is different. Rarely have we ever heard about how it feels like to work with Mike Zuckerberg, a company that employs more than a 1,000 able people must have a story or two to share.

The fact that rarely anything about working at Facebook, or with Zuckerberg, is featured in the media made me curious to learn more about.

The Beginning

Zuck Man

Mark Zuckerberg was somewhat of a local celebrity at Harvard in the fall of 2003. His first site Facemash was a hit at campus; a hot-or-not site for Harvard. Due to that popularity, he was recommended to code another project.

During that time Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra were on the lookout for a programmer to code their idea for them. They wanted to create a social media network for students at Harvard and then potentially expand it to other universities. Based on the recommendation they received, they contacted Mark, and both parties agreed to start working on the project. While at first Mark was enthusiastic about the project, shortly his tone and enthusiasm waded. He went from saying “I read over all the stuff you sent and it seems like it shouldn’t take too long to implement, so we can talk about that after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night” to “The week has been pretty busy thus far, so I haven’t gotten a chance to do much work on the site or even think about it really“.

What might have been understood at the time as a very busy school schedule turned out to be an act to sabotage and delay Harvard Connect long enough for his own creation to be released first. That creation was the “Facebook thing”. A week after meeting with the Harvard connect in a communication with a classmate, Mark said the following:

“Check this site out: www.harvardconnection.com and then go to harvardconnection.com/datehome.php. Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I’m like delaying it so it won’t be ready until after the Facebook thing comes out.”

Basically, to make a long story short, Mark Zuckerberg screwed the Harvard Connection guys and went on to work on Facebook.com, which became hugely successful. The Harvard Connection people went on to release their idea: connectU, sued Mike for stealing their idea and they settled for $65 million dollars.

I’m not saying he’s a douche but if you go and double cross your bosses then you must place little stock in loyalty and honesty. And, no offence, that makes you a kind of a douche, just sayin’.

How it is like now?

Well, after six years and hundreds of millions of people on his site, you would expect that Mark has matured and grown up to be a better CEO and places more value on a team effort. I wanted to prove to myself that people change, and the best way to learn how a manager is like at work is to get one of the people that work for him, single them out and take them to a bar. At the bar you barrage them with a combination of booze and questions, until they spill it all out. Now that would be the ideal way but I can’t quite do that so I’ll have to settle for either checking a blog of someone working for Facebook, or just rely on traditional media.

After checking some of the stuff written by employees and executives working for the company, a few things become apparently clear. Quite a few people have gripes about young Mark’s management style and how he runs his little empire as a dictatorship rather than a wimpy democracy.

One of the more colorful things that employees mention is that in the early days of Facebook, Mark would end every meeting by instructing his employees to pump their fists in the air and scream “domination”. Now, if that doesn’t scream dictator than I don’t know what he is supposed to do short of dawning a Darth Vader mask. He’s also known to quote parts of the Iliad and the movie “Troy” to pump up his troops. But the one thing that you need to know if you are working with Zuck is that he is stingy with praise, and he is a micro manager that always expects success and you will receive no acknowledgment for it, they even wrote an internal memo about it and called it “Working with Zuck“.

Things Change & Yet Stay The Same

So, it seems little has changed from the days of double crossings at Harvard to days of expecting everyone that works for you to be your own little trooper. Moreover, the environment that Mark created at Facebook gave it the reputation of being a hard sell for top talent, despite its gigantic growth of user base. In addition to that, while other tech tycoons tend to lean a bit to the arrogant side, one Steve Jobs comes to mind, they actually have the experience to back them up… which at the end of the day the richest 25 year in the world (possibly) does not.

What do you think of working at Facebook or what you learned about Zuck here? Let us hear your thoughts.

10 Ways to Manage Your Social Media Staff

Beirut — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:45:20 +0000

Managing new ventures usually takes on a different style from the “norm” and is often neglected. Often, certain aspects of employee motivation and control are not well planned thus leading to unsatisfied employees and an overall tensed working environment.

This phenomenon could be highly visible in your average office and even more noticeable in social media based companies, especially those with nothing but a virtual existence, where face-to-face communication with staff is rare and short-lived.

Managing Employees by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

Therefore, from previous personal negative experiences in this regard, I would like to invite managers and employees working in social media to review my ideas of the top 10 ways to managing social media staff effectively.

1. Always keep a room for face-to-face communication:

It is always essential, even more so crucial, to keep room for face-to-face communication when working with social media whenever possible. By that, I don’t just mean regular meetings, I also mean Skype video conversations for those who are incapable of conducting offline meetings due to geographical locations or otherwise.

2. Remember not to neglect personal and cultural differences:

Your staff will, more than often, be diversified; having different backgrounds, aspirations, perceptions and so on. Keep that in mind when you contact them for a certain task or requirement you need them to fulfill, considering that e-mails are highly mistaken for having an aggressive tone and other factors as such.

Cultural Differences

3. Doubt your staff yet trust them!

I know this probably sounds weird to you so allow me to explain… To trust anyone is usually hard as is and to trust an employee must be even harder to achieve. However, if you expect your employees to be productive, you need to place and demonstrate a certain level of trust in their work and abilities.

4. Control your staff but don’t choke them!

Controlling what your employees say and do online is a tedious task. I totally agree. Nonetheless, in order to allow creativity to flow through the work your employees hand in, you need to give them space; “loosen the leash” a bit!

5. Converse with staff about new tasks:

If you’re aiming to keep your staff motivated, whenever possible, converse with them about any new task you are planning to set them on. Almost everyone is resistant to change in one way or another. You should keep that in mind when constructing different tasks for them to carry out.

6. Listen to your staff’s complaints and worries:

Just like the case is in any office or working environment, your social media staff also have complaints, worries and concerns, which may be obstacles to them performing at full potential. Make time to listen and try to help, if at all possible.

Employee Retention

7. Encourage your staff to share their own ideas and suggestions:

You hired your staff because you know they have an added value to offer to your business venture. Therefore, and within effective brainstorming sessions, encourage them to share this added-value with you and help them feel more responsible by having them “own” the work they are doing. Give them credit.

8. Promote marriage between the old and new:

Whenever you are opting to have your staff adapt to a new idea or system of yours, try to always merge the old way with the new one. You need your staff to be comfortable with the changes in order to embrace them. They need to hear you rationalization behind a switch from Twitter to Hootsuite for example!

9. Acknowledge extra effort and hours spent on social media sites:

If not borderline addiction, any extra hours spent, by your staff promoting your company, should be acknowledged. Monetary rewards are rarely what your staff would be looking for. It’s the intangible appraisals they will be looking forward to – an online course for example.

10. Believe it: Sometimes, your staff does know better!

Complacency is a world wide disease, especially when it comes to management. More than often, managers will think they “know it all”. And here’s is where they go wrong! Your staff sometimes knows better as a result of previous working experience, interests or maybe even amount of research spent. Embrace and grow their knowledge.

And remember:

When it comes to a company’s reputation, what’s said on social media sites can be much more damaging. Take the Domino’s debacle last April.

Finally, do you have any more advice you think you have for managers and employees roaming the social media arena? And do you agree with the points I have stressed throughout the post?

Looking forward to reading your feedback down below :)

@Anywhere with Twitter

Roba — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:33:37 +0000

This week, Twitter announced its ‘@anywhere’ platform for websites, which allows site visitors to Tweet and follow from sites including Digg, Amazon and eBay.

Basically, Web-masters (oh don’t you love that word?) will be able to add @Anywhere to their sites with a few lines of Javascript. This would integrate Twitter into their websites so that their users could follow and tweet without having to go to Twitter itself as well as use Twitter to sign into the site.

It could become as Internet-omnipresent as “Contact Us”

This is big. Twitter, unlike many other services, has the potential to become more like email (a tool) rather than like a service. After all, it’s a communication platform, first and foremost. The idea of Twitter revolves around short bursts of text, which people who know each other and do not know each other can use for targeted communication.

With @anywhere integration into anywhere online, brands, corporate websites, newspapers, bloggers, and every other kind of website can start communicating with its users and building communities using the leverage and power of Twitter. It’s interesting, isn’t it?

Twitter is certainly excited about the frameworks, saying in a blog post “Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo home page.”

Here’s the announcement at SXSW:

Twitter is certainly excited about the frameworks, saying in a blog post “Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo home page.”

What do you think? Does Twitter have the potential to become a tool?

Facebook Kicks Google’s Ass

Roba — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:31:56 +0000

Well, not literally, but “numberly“.

For the first time ever, Facebook, the place to go stalk friends, foes, and ex-boyfriends squeaked past Google, the place to find information and porn, to become the most popular online destination (that’s a whopping 7% of US Internet usage).

WOW!

Exponential growth of Facebook has left Google behind

Information Scavenging Versus Social Information Curation

It could be that the world has become so trite that images of drunk friends has become more time-worthy than googling for relevant information.

But I doubt it.

I think it’s the social Web revolution; people now want to surf the Web via recommendations than by aimless scavenging.

Let me explain:

I recently tied my Twitter account to my Facebook account, sending all the bit.ly link goodness automatically to my status updates.

Initially, I expected my less Internet savvy Facebook friends to be annoyed by the link bombarding. To my surprise, the reaction was exactly the opposite. My Facebook friends appear to enjoy my tweets (now in the form of status updates) more than my Twitter followers. They comment on them, they share them, and they “like” them.

It makes sense when you think of it in a passive versus active Internet user. Active Twitter users are of a much more geeky character. They probably enjoy the actual process of spending the first few hours of their day scouring the net for the most interesting information, and they enjoy sharing it more than consuming it. I know I do.

Facebook users, on the other hand, are a much wider spectrum of society. They include both information scavengers and information consumers. The consumers are probably depending on their friends to find interesting content online, including news, links, and videos.

That’s my own logic for figuring out why Facebook has surpassed Google though.

What do you think of Facebook surpassing Google in terms of visitors?

20 Top Social Media Jokes, Clips & Cartoons Feb2010

Beirut — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:02:03 +0000

Yes, we are consistent which is why we are still attempting to bring a smile to your face and brighten up your day! Therefore, the Thoughtpick team would like to invite you to enjoy our seventh fun collection of social media and networking related cartoons, jokes and clips! (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6)

Real World Chatting by geek & poke

At a meeting of HTC corp by Nitrozac & Snaggy

Government by Twitter - by Irish Typepad

The annoying behavior of the RIAA Scum Bird - by Nitrozac & Snaggy

Parenting in Post 2.0 by geek & poke

Shakespeare quotes, version 2.0 - by Nitrozac & Snaggy

Facebook friends by a-Lou Creations

Short replies by geek & poke

Facebook freak by Prof.Membrana

On Facebook Updates by zompus

Facebook! by spezspazx

WTF Facebook! by Robert Dumas

Follow the meat dept on Twitter by davidking

Twitter Sketch by jose_sabatini

Facebook Spoof Special for Valentine's Day by navarzo3

Text Jokes:

I love Facebook. it’s the only place where I can talk to a wall and not look like an idiot! By Aussie Mike

Whoever created that snowball app. needs a hit put out on them by the creator of ‘Mafia Wars’ and have the body buried on the property of the creator of ‘Farmville’. By JLH

Use the comments below to let us know your favorite!

We hope you enjoyed this compilation of jokes, and don’t forget to subscribe to our feeds for more fun posts and topics. You can use the comments below to let us know which is your favorite :)

And The Nobel Peace Prize Goes to…

Roba — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:33:32 +0000

“The Internet!” says the tuxedo-clad Nobel Peace Prize presenter.

Upon hearing her name, the Internet, dressed up in her best attire of a colorful table-based website, and with a flock of blue Twitter birds flying over head, seemed to be really surprised. She quickly got over the shock (thanks to multitude of fans updating the shock Wikipedia entries in her head), and strutted her way to the stage to accept her prize.

She really did look her best, didn't she?

“Oh, wow,” the Internet says, “I‘ve been around for a while but no one ever thought of nominating me for the prestigious Nobel Pea—”

The crowd interrupts her acceptance speech with loud and booming cheering: “W00t! W00t! W00t!”

She flashes her dashing smile immediately lagging the yells of her fans. “Thanks guys,” she continues. “First and foremost, I’d like to thank my geeks. You have made my power possible. I’d also like to thank the great companies that have spent so much money, time and effort on the initiatives I carry: Mainly, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Twitter, and Firefox. To Microsoft, I say, all your base are belong to us.”

The crowd interrupts with more cheering.

The Internet waves her hand at them, “Oh, and I forgot Comic Sans. On parting notes, I’d also like to present this video about why I was nominated for this prize.”

Note: This “imagination exercise”, of what would happen if the Internet won the Noble Peace Prize, has not taken place. Just yet anyway. So far, the only thing that has happened was the nomination itself. She definitely deserves it more than Obama.

What do you think? Coolest or dumbest idea ever?

Toyota Turns To Twitter To Repair Its Image — Learn Social Media By Example

Beirut — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:30:52 +0000

Stat Box

Brand: Toyota (Car Manufacturer)
Campaign URL: Toyota Conversations
SM Channels Used: Twitter
Appeal: Emotional
Target Audience: Worldwide Toyota owners and potential customers
Start Date: March 2010
Duration: Ongoing

Numerous brands have been turning to Twitter to participate in conversations with consumers and to influence the way they are positioned and viewed. Remember Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines?

Toyota’s reputation has been heading downwards towards the pits and a lot is being at stake! Therefore, for a fast, effective and even cheap response, Toyota turned to Twitter to redeem itself and yet again, repair its image worldwide!

Idea & Objectives:

A crisis-management strategy!

The main ideas behind Toyota utilizing Twitter are: 1) To help stem the tide of negativity and 2) To deal with the backlashes that have been heaped upon it during the car recalls period. It seems that someone at Toyota is into social media, especially Twitter, and he/she have done their homework on the effectiveness and efficiency of utilizing Twitter in situations like these!

Toyota Conversations Example 1

“The Japanese auto giant has launched a branded channel on TweetMeme, in partnership with Federated Media, which aggregates and organize Twitter conversations regarding Toyota“.

To be clear in their message, Toyota named the site Toyota Conversations. What this site does mainly revolves around assimilating the top stories being Tweeted about Toyota, such as news articles and press releases, while showing visitors the most popular videos and images being shared about Toyota on Twitter.

If you follow the top stories that are being aggregated on the site, you would see that most of the news is positive. That doesn’t seem to match the general tone of the media writing about Toyota, which has been quick to criticize the car company for its manufacturing mistakes.

Toyota Twitter Stream

Furthermore, the channel includes a “Featured Tweets from Toyota’s Twitter account and press room as well as AdTweets, which are Tweetmeme’s retweetable ads for Toyota”.

Buzz Generated:

As you can easily deduce from the change in reactions towards Toyota, the buzz generated by Twitter for this particular crisis management approach has been effective, if not through volume then definitely through depth!

Nevertheless, tweets such as this one – @joegreenz: Maybe Toyota will be shutting up shop in the US sometime soon. The recall story just wont stop. http://bit.ly/cV44BD – don’t seem to be very reassuring!

Lessons Learned:

I like this simple campaign, really I do! However, I am alarmed by the fact that although Toyota is trying to repair its image on one side, talks of worries and concerns are still circulating the news. At the end of the day, Twitter, with all of its users, cannot stand in the face of real fact-based news targeting all!

Therefore, here are the lessons we can learn from Toyota:

Great efforts need to be placed in order to repair a degrading image.
Comprehensiveness is key in situations where promoting counter positive publicity is the main objective.
Even giant companies are beginning to rely heavily on social media – so keep an eye open for how you could effectively utilize social media for your needs!

How do you feel about this campaign? Did it, in anyway, change your negative feelings about Toyota? What else do you think could have been done here to repair the damage?

Looking forward to your feedback down below :)

Success 3/5, Virality 4/5, Innovation 3/5, Feels like an ad No, Brand visibility 5/5

Thriving with a Fan Economy

Roba — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:00:24 +0000

Inspired by a brilliant and mind-opening presentation about the fan economy created by Bud Caddell, a strategist at Undercurrent, here are some ideas about thriving online through the fan economy; an economy pushed by fans of a certain product, rather than just blind consumers.

1. The Web Has Allowed Niche Communities to Form

While the Web initially started out as an anonymous place where everyone was treated equally, it quickly became a melting pot of ideas, preferences and passions. Every day, people are finding it easier to network with others who share their likes, even if they are super freaky (remember Beirut’s post about ridiculous yet popular Facebook fanpages?) — People are finding it easier to exclaim that “Hey! We’re fans of this!”

2. Spend Money on Fans

Spending money on fans equals more “retention, recruitment, R&D, and longevity”. That’s mainly because fans don’t just buy products, they also convince their friends to try them.
Due to the fact that Web users define their digital identity by rallying around the things they like (Facebook fanpages are a great example), it’s much easier to find cost effective ways of engaging users.

3. It’s Not Just About Money… It’s Also About Listening

Fans are practiced at voicing their opinions, and understanding their desires and motivations starts by listening to them, and answering their concerns. Fans want to be treated like they’re an essential part of the product, and they want people to listen to them.

In order to be fan-focused, you need to concentrate on the following three things:

You have to have a point of view.
You have to have a belief in infinity, as fandom defies space and time.
You have to have an open-source relationship with your fans.

Bud’s slideshow provides a few examples fan-focused organizations. You can watch it here:

The Fan Economy: Becoming Fan Focused

View more presentations from Bud Caddell.

What do you think? Can you think of other organizations who use fan economies?

Fun-List: Top 10 Ways in Which Social Media Can Get You Fired!

Beirut — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:45:06 +0000

According to Proofpoint, an Internet security firm, of companies with 1,000 or more employees, 17 percent report having issues with employees’ use of social media. Furthermore, 8 percent of those companies report having actually dismissed someone for their behavior on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Some other interesting findings from the study:

15 percent have disciplined an employee for violating multimedia sharing / posting policies
13 percent of US companies investigated an exposure event involving mobile or Web-based short message services
17 percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies

So, how do you avoid getting fired when using social media? What are the things which will, most probably, get you fired? Here we go with another Thoughtpick fun-fact list with a point:

1. Speak ill of your boss or manager

Example: “I hate my job!! I want to tell my bosses how dumb they are and how meaningless this job is, then quit, and be happy!” Revealed by CNN.com

2. Post publicly that you are looking for a job, when you already have one

Since we all know that social media is not really a place to share private thoughts, I’ll bet you a thousand bucks that if you do post that you are looking for another job, someone, somehow, will make sure you boss knows about it! (Even worse, he hears about it right before your appraisal!)

3. Share company information with your friends through Twitter or Facebook

It’s bad enough that you can’t trust people you work with in terms of company information, try publicizing that information on your “private” Facebook account, or better yet, your personal blog that is supposed to be read my only “close” friends!

4. Bad mouth other employees on your Facebook or Twitter account

“I’m having dreams about killing one of my colleagues!” is not a phrase you should share! Even if it was just a “reaction” to a situation you felt strongly about at one point or another, try to keep it in! Someone might actually take it seriously – or even worse, they might just complain about you to management claiming that you are not a team player!

Sharing Too Much!

5. Post pictures of yourself while committing illegal acts

“Employers have increasingly begun to use Web sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com to screen applicants and current employees”. Daniel Abasolo

I don’t think any company would allow its employees to abuse drugs, even the mellow type which is smoked! ;) If you are looking to get fired, roll a joint, even a fake one, and place it in your mouth as your profile picture! This might even get you in jail – if that’s what you fancy!

6. Post pictures of yourself while committing acts that do not match your company’s ethics or code of conduct

For example: Let’s say you work for an organization dedicated to protecting animal rights, if you are aiming not to get fired, make sure you don’t post a picture of yourself choking a cat - with a caption that goes something like: “Die you little devil!”

7. Use your blog or Facebook account to share rumors about your workplace

Let’s say you heard a rumor about a certain employee in your workplace. Sharing this rumor would hurt other employees and can cause loss of trust throughout the team. This might get you fired, or at least, it will cause you to be left out!

8. Confess personal matters through venting on your blog or Facebook account

You are going through a rough time and you need to vent so you choose social media to do so and you get really personal; describing your mental and emotional instability, mentioning your thoughts of suicide or just telling the world that the “pills” are making you calmer. If this gets to your employer, you might be fired because they NEED somewhat “stable” people at the workplace!

9. Share contradicting or controversial information on Facebook

For example:

Jason Brown worked with the Colleton County Fire-Rescue for the last three years. He was fired in mid-February after posting a controversial video on his personal Facebook page. Brown said some think the video is racist. He said it was just meant to be funny.

10. Use social media excessively

Always remember: whenever you use social media, someone out there is able to track the time you are wasting there! Whether you are playing Cafe World or simply posting new status updates periodically, you run the risk of getting caught and fired!

Example of Using SM Excessively

So? What do you think about this list? Can you think of something else which could get you fired? And do you think this is fair? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts below.

The New Dork – Entrepreneur State of Mind, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys Spoof [video]

Amer Kawar — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:03:11 +0000

“The New Dork” is Grasshopper’s latest video targeting entrepreneurs and aiming to raise brand awareness. According to Jonathan Kay of Grasshopper (@GrasshopperBuzz), the video got over 150,000 views in the first day and Ashton Kutcher even blogged and tweeted about it. I just checked the number of views on Youtube and it’s more than 270,000 views. Impressive!

Enjoy the video: “The New Dork” — Entrepreneur State of Mind, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys spoof:

Tron Legacy Viral Campaign – Learn Social Media by Example

M. Bamieh — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:15:41 +0000

Stat Box

Campaign Name: Tron Legacy Viral Campaign
URL: http://www.flynnlives.com/zerohour
SM Channels used: Twitter, Web, Real Life, SnailMail
Target Audience: Tron Fans
Date: February 2010
Campaign Duration: Ongoing

Tron Legacy

Tron is, by definition, a cult classic that spawned a video game, a comic book and an up and coming TV series. The movie was released in 1982 to mixed critical review, while it had a solid story and featured the first heavy use of CGI in a feature film it never appealed to the critics or the general public. But there definitely were enough neon clothes and light cycle coolness to woo sci-fi fans across many generations.

As time went by and the movie picked up more and more fans, talks and gossip about a possible sequel started to emerge. Maybe a continuation of the original story, some said it might even be a remake that would bring it to the 21st century. Finally, in 2008’s San Diego Comic Con, and after 26 years of anticipation, speculation came to a head and Disney featured a preliminary trailer of Tron Legacy.

On February 25th, a viral campaign appeared on several websites that gave fans a chance to pick up the tickets to the premiere of the Tron Legacy in 5 different cities around the world.

What is it about?

The site Flynnlives.com, which was released in an earlier viral campaign last year, sent some fan mail that contained a various bits and the word “/zerohour” in a box. That lead fans to a page that had some sort of a countdown and set them on a scavenger hunt in 27 locations spread across 25 countries in order to unlock the mystery.

Those who go to the locations need to find an operative (e.g. Atlanta) wearing a “Flynn lives” T-shirt who will hand them a cell phone and a number to call in order to expose the next clue. Each of those clues will reveal a picture from the original Tron movie, which when clicked will reveal a bigger picture in the background. The Parisian prize winner blogged about her experience here.

The Puzzle Being Revealed

The event culminated in revealing 5 locations in IMAX theaters that showed the latest trailer to the movie, but there was still more. Fans also managed to uncover a hidden discussion forum that seemed to include even more clues that fans are hard at work trying to crack it. They also released video of a meet up of Flynn fans on the site.

Buzz Generation

A lot of movie fans, bloggers and twitter users talked and blogged about the campaign. Furthermore, Jeff Bridges won an Oscar which also gave a boost to the #flynnlives hashtag on Twitter.

Searches on Google

Search for terms related to Tron increased quite considerably after the campaign showing the success of it.

Why did it do what it did?

42 Entertainment, which masterminded this campaign, did an excellent job including so many people in so many countries unlike what was done with a similar campaign for the Dark Knight. But it wasn’t just that, the campaign did many things extremely well:

The campaign knew its audience, and didn’t water down the clues or the mystery. It catered to its niche audience and had faith in their abilities and challenged them.
It didn’t limit the exposure of the campaign to a geographic location or medium. Given that Tron is a global brand, it was marketed to a global audience. People could participate in the campaign in both real life and online and each side have enough goodies to keep them interested and coming back for more.
Taking on such a big campaign showed confidence in their product, that in turn will generate buzz that will help to push the movie on its release to a bigger debut, Snakes on a Plane style.

After being away for almost 30 years, it is still amazing how the Tron brand adapted to the times and it found its place right at home in the current internet age, so let’s hope the movie lives up to the hype and becomes another classic from Disney.

What do you think of the Tron Legacy campaign? Let us hear your thoughts.

Success -3/5, Virality 4/5, Innovation 4/5, Feels like an ad No, Brand visibility 5/5

Love at First Poke

Roba — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:32:34 +0000

This might sound absurd to someone who does not hang around as many geeks as I do, but believe it or not, at least 10% of my good friends have met their soulmates online. When I say online, I do not mean dating sites. The relationships that worked were more like serendipity, often starting on social media sites when neither party even had the word “soul” in mind.

Can you find true love online?

The sparks either clicked on blogs or through 140 character tweets, but around 4% of these friends met on Facebook.

The conversations these friends have with non-Webbies are often hilarious, going something like this:

Non-Webbie: “Wait, did you fall in love before or after you saw him?”
Internet Romancer: “We fell in love before.”
Non-Webbie: “How did you know he wasn’t a 50-year-old grandmother with a lisp?”
Internet Romancer: “Um… we talked online for a year before we decided to take our relationship a step forward, so I knew him quite well by then.”
Non-Webbie: “Whoa! You mean you had a steady relationship with a person YOU DIDN’T MEET FOR A YEAR?”

I’ve seen such conversations go on for hours and hours, mostly because the Non-Webbies are always struggling to knock some sense into the Internet Romancers’ heads while the Internet Romancers are always trying to get other people to have a love story online.

Uncomfortable situation.

How Can You Fall in Love with Someone You Don’t Know?

Well, the answer is very simple really.

An avid Web user would tell you that it’s really not as easy as it seems to not be yourself online, especially if you’re active enough to be in finding-soul-mate status. But if you don’t want to take it from an avid Web user, then take it from a professor.

Psychologist Sam Gosling at The University of Texas at Austin has found out that online social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate real personality, instead of an idealized virtual identity. Gosling says, “I was surprised by the findings because the widely held assumption is that people are using their profiles to promote an enhanced impression of themselves. In fact, our findings suggest that online social networking profiles convey rather accurate images of the profile owners, either because people aren’t trying to look good or because they are trying and failing to pull it off.”

Chatting endless...

These new findings make sense, and psychologist Sandra Calvert of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. agrees. She emphasizes that social-networking sites have fostered a new type of communication among teens and young adults, in which one person can create personal content that gets broadcast to a multitude of friends. In a 2009 study of Facebook use among 92 college students, Calvert’s team found that young women reported a whopping average of 401 online friends, while young men reported an average of 269. You can read this study on digital identity psychology on UT’s website.

That just proves one thing: Honey, if he sounds awesome on Facebook, then HIT ON HIM <3

Do you have any online love experience that proves or disproves this study? :)

Be Ware! Top 8 Social Media Scams So Far [videos]

Beirut — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:28:15 +0000

“Every time I turn around there’s a new scam.” Maryanne Bessette

Scams, scams, scams… All around, everywhere… Now and before, here and there!

And for the past few years, scams are spreading even more and taking on a new face for everyone using social media to be seduced and deceived by!

Can you believe that there are websites, such as scambusters.org, dedicated to unavailing scam online?

Therefore, and in efforts to keep you safe, at least from social media inflicted scams, here’s a mixed list of top 8 scams you should know about and probably take to mind when using Facebook, Twitter and social media in general:

1. Free Facebook iPad Offer is a scam, Sophos reveals

iPad FaceBook scam automatically signs you up for a $10 a week premium cell phone service post from: FSMdotCOM.

2. Beware Facebook MySpace cell scam:

Introducing you to a different type of scam; the moral/ethical scam – “find out who your secret crush might be” is only one example!

3. Modeling scams on Facebook

Scamming young girls with dreams of modeling stardom into paying money upfront for becoming “super models”! Hayley Mills is only one of many! Look out girls: don’t add your phone number on Facebook or deception will find you!

4. Facebook Hackers Phishing and Taking Over Facebook Accounts

CNN picked up this story and we are spreading for your safety! Facebook has become the popular way to reach out and find your friends. However, sometimes scammers will find you and pose as you… You can imagine what could happen then!

5. Consumer Smart: Twitter Scams and Vanity Awards

“Make extra cash from Twitter, apply now!” Are these for real? Watch this t find out! And remember: there should never be a need for you to pay upfront!

6. Haiti Donation Scams, How Cybercriminals Take Advantage of the Haiti Disaster

Even causes are prone to scams! It’s sad but true! Be careful where your donations are going and how they are being used!

7. Farmville Facebook Application Linked to Scam

Ever heard of “lead generation offers”? TechCrunch did and uncovered the cell phone scams which are being facilitated through games such as Farmville and the cash they seduce you to buy! In this video, Zynga co-founder submits to scamming users! Really?!

8. Google cash scam

Yes, even Google does it and it’s called: Free Google Home Business Kit!

So, to wrap up, I am enticed to ask you the following questions: Have you ever been scammed? If yes, how? And are you protecting yourself from fraud as you should? Any further advice for our readers out there?

Harry Potter Tweet – Learn Social Media by Example

Roba — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:31:45 +0000

Stat Box

Brand: Harry Potter (Entertainment)
Channels Used: Website, Twitter
Appeal: Entertainment
Target Audience: Harry Potter fans and young adults
Date of Campaign: 2009
Website: Harry Potter Tweet

What’s the best way to get buzz going around a movie prior to its launch? Of course, the ways are numerous! It could be a really large campaign, across a multiverse of billboards and digital banners. It could involve fancy dinners, several elaborate websites, or freebies showered across different possible fans.

Yet regardless of how much cash is dished, campaigns often die after the movie has come and gone, which is why I find this Harry Potter Tweet campaign interesting. As this campaign is actually a tool that people can utilize rather than a simple announcement, people are still using it and talking about it, many months after the movie it was aimed to market was launched.

The Idea: A Digital Touch of Harry Potter Magic

The idea is refreshingly simple, which is good these days. It only uses one channel: Twitter.

With this campaign, you can select from a range of spells and then cast a spell on your chosen Twitter followers. The three spell-casting options include shrouding the follower’s Twitter page in darkness, sending a flock of birds that fly across the screen and declaring affection for a follower by sending a love potion.

Harry Potter Tweet is better tried that explained, but here are a few screenshots:

Harry Potter Tweet potion selector

The little magical bird, cute yeah?

Nice motion happening

Buzz Generated: People Are Still Using It

While conceptually, the idea is not really that brilliant (what happens with a person using TweetDeck?), it has proven to be successful as people are still casting spells on their friends’ Twitter accounts today.

People are still using it...

What We Learned From This Campaign

As I already mentioned, my favorite thing about this campaign is that it proves that sometimes the best way to handle a social media campaign is with good old traditional values. Yeah, sure, we, the Internet people, do sometimes love a brilliantly cool concept (like Skittles’ use of social media), or a freaky gift (like the chocolate grasshoppers), but sometimes, the best way to give value is by giving a tool that people want to use. Not just today, or next month, but for as long as that tool can be hosted.

Otherwise, here is my conclusion:

Longevity of a campaign can be assured by providing a useful tool that is not tied to a specific time period.
People love doing tricks with their social media profiles.
This campaign is very well-branded, and the usage of Harry Potter terminology, visuals, and ideas makes it even more successful.
It is hard to resist casting a spell when the visuals are so beautifully designed. Good design pays. I know I’ve said this before, but it really does!

Success 2/5, Virality 3/5, Innovation 1/5, Feels like an ad Yes, Brand visibility 5/5

Failure is Critical

Michael Buffington - Director of Grasshopper Labs — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:22:24 +0000

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you, the humble reader, are quite accustomed to failure. Think back to the start of your day, from the moment you woke up until now. What’s the first failure you can think of? How about a less obvious and even smaller failure?

My answers to those questions: after waking up I habitually pull on a cord to open the blinds to get a look at the weather. This morning I didn’t have a firm grasp on the cord and as I pulled on it my hand slipped off the plastic knob which then went about whipping me in the face. That was a surprising failure. A more subtle failure was that I let my green tea steep too long, making it taste a bit like fish.

I reacted to both failures in a certain way. Whipping myself in the face made me feel stupid for a moment, but then I had an idea for an alarm clock that would open the blinds for me. Steeping my green tea too long inspired me to see if anyone made a timer that would lift the tea bag out when ready.

Rather than simply say to myself “iIll remember that for next time.”, I said “there’s a solution to that problem that I can either buy already or I could sell.”

These are trivial failures used mainly to help illustrate a point. Oversteeping tea is a lot different than overestimating the demand for your product.

Which leads me to core of what I’ve been wanting to suggest all along: good entrepreneurs know not only how turn failure into success, but how to increase their opportunities to learn from failure.

Let me pitch a business idea:

We’re going to head over to Germany and see if the record stores there will either give or sell their unsold stock for cheap, then we’ll load them up in the trunk of my car and try to sell them to people walking past.

That sounds like a very simple idea that is also destined for failure. But that’s exactly how Virgin Records started. While it’s hard to find a diary of everything that’s wrong with the idea, two things are clear: every failure Branson experienced was overcome, and even if he hadn’t been able to gain from his failures the initial financial costs to Branson were incredibly low. By design, he made it easy to fail.

The phrase “fail fast” is practically a cliche now, but the principles behind the phrase are what allowed Branson to iteratively fail, learn from mistakes made, grow as a result, and become one of the world’s richest men.

Speaking about his decision to start an airline, Branson said:

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them…

I’d bet that the cost for Branson to travel from the UK to Germany to start Virgin Records is more than what it costs to incorporate, get basic accounting in place, and setup the services to start accepting payments from customers costs today.

Here are just a few services that can help you get started down a path of failing, succeeding, and repeating. Go rise above the unachievable!

Design
CrowdSpring
Sortfolio
99designs

Collaboration/Communication
Basecamp
Campfire
Skype
Grasshopper (disclaimer – I work for Grasshopper as Director of Grasshopper Labs)

Accounting/Billing
Freshbooks
LessAccounting
Chargify (disclaimer – Chargify started as a Grasshopper Labs project)

2012: Social Media Uncovering Signs of the End of the World!

Beirut — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:30:07 +0000

You may call it the Apocalypse, the Armageddon, the Big Crunch or just call it the end of life, it all boils down to the same conclusion: the end of mankind and maybe the start of a new era!

2012 Videos on Google

Whether we believe it or not, it seems that there is a general notion supporting the concept of a near end to the world, as we know it now at least. Moreover, sites have been developed, countdowns have been setup, documentaries have been produced and videos have been created to make sure the world is aware of the predictions towards a nearing annihilation of the world!

The one thing all these warning tools have in common with each other is the signs they speak of, such as: Wars, famine plague & disease, earthquakes, traffic accidents, rapid transport, knowledge, violence and more.

Since I consider myself an active social media user, I think I can safely state the following: regardless of whether the end is near or not, social media plays a crucial role in further spreading the idea and enforcing it into our minds, even if unintentionally!

Check out the following world end signs circulating the social media arena

The Twitter Frenzy!

GentleSouls: Authors Nancy Seifer And Martin Vieweg Describe What Will Occur Beyond 2012… http://bit.ly/bfIAbS

burnYERbraaas: RT @DntTouchMyFries: #IRefuseTo believe in 2012. I’m not ready to die yet! >:/

JerrodK Tweeting about 2010!

mwbarker: RT @trevinwax: RT @Ed_Goodman: If u believe Mayan prediction of world’s end in 2012, remember: the Mayans are already extinct & they never predicted that.

The StumbleUpon Buzz!

All about 2012 with 31,000 views so far: “The date December 21st, 2012 A.D. (13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count), represents an extremely close conjunction of the Winter Solstice Sun with the crossing point of the Galactic Equator and the Ecliptic, what that ancient Maya recognized as the Sacred Tree. This is an event that has been coming to resonance very slowly over thousands and thousands of years. It will come to resolution at exactly 11:11 am GMT.”

StumbleUpon 2012 Share

2012 The Future of Mankind with 9,580 views so far: A talk about the reasons for the world’s political chaos, the new imperialism, prophecies and predications, the origins of the ego, the master-slave relationship, culture of paranioa and sadism and more.

Doomsday, The Mayan Calendar and 2012 with 23,000 views so far: “What makes 2012 significant is that it coincides with the alignment of the center of the Milky Way galaxy, our sun, earth, and the large planets. If it was not for this fact I would say that 2012 was just another Y2K hoax…”

FAMSI – 2012: The end of the World? with 89,000 views so far: An overt attempt at clarifying and demythologising some traditions, old and new, which the author considers not to be solidly grounded.

The Mixx Murmur!

Chile quake may have tipped Earth’s axis

2012 Share on Mixx

2012 Official Countdown Product Report Sheet

2012 Countdown Share on Mixx

The Funny Side of 2012

The Funny Side of 2012 on Mixx

So… What do you think? Do you believe that our end is in 2012? How do you feel about it?

Looking forward to reading your comments down below :)

Is Twitter Finally Choosing a Business Model?

M. Bamieh — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:11:23 +0000

Ever since Twitter secured as much as $100 million dollars funding last year, speculation went wild on what kind of business model they will adopt. In November, Twitter COO Dick Costolo confirmed that the first piece to fall into place is the Ad platform which he described as “fascinating. Non-traditional. And people will love it… It’s going to be really cool.”

What We Know So Far?

Now we are getting closer to the day when this Ad-platform will be introduced publicly and it maybe as soon as next month during the South by Southwest Conference. According to the Wall Street Journal, the long awaited Twitter platform will look something like this:

The ads will be tied to Twitter search, displaying only the ads that are relevant to the search term.
The ads will be 140 or fewer characters, 3rd party applications will have the option to display the ads and Twitter will share revenue with them if they do.
Twitter will work with ad agencies at first but will move to a Google like self-serve model later on.
Non invasive and will be clearly marked as “sponsored” tweets

What we already know about the Ad-platform leaves a lot of speculations running in everyone’s head in relation to how it will work and what impact it will have on Twitter’s ever expanding user base.

What Will the Ads Look like?

An Ad.ly ad

Will the ads be clearly labeled like ad.ly’s In-Stream ads? Or will they be more like “I am having the new Italian burger at McDonalds” and “My favorite Chips is so-n-so“ or the direct in your face kind of “Click this link and 20% off of your next purchase”.

How will you pay for the ads?

With the way Twitter is used, it makes little sense that the cost of an ad is to be calculated on a per follower or per view bases, since a per click model is much more efficient. But that leaves the door wide open for them to auction off certain keywords or hash-tags to help increase an advert’s rank among search results.

Who Can Place Ads?

As a user, will I be able to place ads in my own stream and gain revenue from it, will I be able to allow in-stream ads in my feed and be able to share some of the revenue? Is there a way for Twitter users to get a chunk of the Twitter Ad pie? Or this Ad sharing is limited to those 3rd party apps who allow it to appear in their search streams? And does that mean that the deals Twitter struck with Bing, Yahoo, and Google will lead to Twitter ads appearing in their Twitter searches as well?

How Useful is the Twitter Search?

That's a lot of Info but I can't find anything!

Currently, with Twitter getting closer to its 10 billionth tweet, sifting through all this information is both very frustrating and not all that useful. You basically can look at conversations that occurred but you lack the context or the trails of it. Therefore, to make this Ad platform work, Twitter might need to completely overhaul its search engine.

How Tweeps Will React?

There are still plenty of questions about the ad platform but one thing is for sure: it is coming soon! At least we won’t have to wait too long to see it unveiled and see how Twitter users will react to having ads on a platform they felt they owned from the get-go.

With recent hints of “Nifty” new features becoming available to Twitter soon, we certainly are going to experience a different user experience with the service and hopefully it will keep on growing and wooing more and more users in the future.

What do you think of Twitter ads in your stream? Are you willing to sell ads in your stream if that became available to you? Let us hear your thoughts.

Feb-2010 Must-watch Videos: Skinput, OK Go, Youtube 101 & Chatroulette

M. Bamieh — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:30:50 +0000

The nature of the internet is filled with a lot of information and seeing it animated and simplified visual is certainly a blessing, since it opens our mind to new ways to see our world. Whether it’s through maps, info-graphs or psychedelic illustrations videos on the web surely added a much needed freshness to information and data on the web.

Hopefully with more bandwidth we will see more innovation in this field but for now we can enjoy some recent videos that have been noticed on the web by the Thoughtpick bloggers:

Skinput

Think of the possibilities for this one! This is actually a working prototype for the ultimate in mobile computing. Add a Wi-Fi capability to it, and make it as sexy and small as an iPod and you got yourself a decade long hit. Now I might find it difficult not to mention that I would find it uncomfortable to hold my arms in a fixed position for too long. Although it is slightly different it and definitely reminds me of Sixthsense technology.

Source – Mashable

Chatroulette by Numbers

If you are a girl that wants some instant attention then the best place to be is on Chatroulette, and if you are lucky you might get someone to sing a song for you. I have to admit that I’m thoroughly fascinated by it and I’m quite sure that while the mainstream buzz might die off in a few months the website will still attract a cult of followers.

Source – The AwL

Youtube 101: How to Find What’s Hot On Youtube

A very Brilliant and funny ad by Youtube explaining how to better use their navigation.

Source – Youtube

Augmented Reality Maps

Refusing to idle while Google monopolizes mapping services this is Microsoft Bing’s answer to Streetview and it looks amazing!

Source – TED

OK Go This too shall pass

Viral Music innovators and web darlings OK Go are back with an awesome video, if you enjoyed their treadmill music video be sure to see this one!

Source – Youtube

Procrastination

You know a thing or two about it, that actually might be the reason you are reading this in the first place. Social media has been the bane of all procrastinators around the world.

Source – Nerdcore

So what is your favorite piece of video? Let us hear what tickled your mind.

DoSomething’s Campaign for Cancer Prevention — Learn Social Media by Example

Beirut — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:33:28 +0000

Stat Box

Brand: DoSomething.org
Campaign URL: DoSomething.org’s Campaign For Cancer Prevention
SM Channels Used: Facebook & Website
Appeal: Emotional/Causes
Start Date: May, 2007
Duration: Ongoing

According to DoSomething.Org:

Cancer “is the second leading cause of death in the world, killing 58 million people each year. The leading cancer in women is breast cancer, with 1.2 million diagnosed globally and killing 500,000 each year. Overall, 1 in 3 people will develop cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer – affecting almost everyone via a parent, sibling, child, other relative, or a friend. Moreover, cancer strongly disproportionately affects the poor, who have no access to modern medical care”.

Idea & Objectives:

Since cancer weighs heavily on the lives of those who suffer from it, this campaign has been developed in efforts to fund advanced health education and cancer research for cancer prevention (since the pace of cancer research is depressingly low, partly due to sparse government funding).

Therefore, this campaign adopts an “innovative multilateral approach” to cancer research and public health cancer prevention.

: Cancer Prevention Campaign Fund Raising

Buzz Generated:

The way I see it, health related issues and topics such as cancer should be handled with care, sincerity and sensitivity. I guess DoSometing.org realized that while gearing up for this campaign a few years ago.

As I noticed, other than the updates concerning this project on their site, DoSomething.org don’t really have much exposure and buzz on any social media channel other than their Facebook page and causes application:

Currently, there are more than 87,000 fans on their Campaign for Cancer Prevention page and around 4,500,000 members on their causes application who have raised $186,472 so far!

Campaign Fans on Facebook

Facebook Causes Application

Furthermore, the team of DoSomething.org are highly active on the Facebook page and they further offer share petitions and ask for opinions concerning cancer related issues and research to keep the fans updated, involved and engaged.

Campaign Reactions

As for Alexa’s ranking for DoSomething.org’s site in general:

Alexa Traffic Rank

Opinion & Lessons Learned:

Cancer has always been the one thing I feared since my early childhood. I remember that back in the days, curing cancer was almost impossible, especially in certain cases. Therefore, I cannot but bow in respect for a campaign dedicated solely to raising money towards increasing the awareness about cancer and its prevention.

So, with that said, what can we learn from this campaign?

Sometimes, only one effective social media channel will do the trick of getting your message across.
If the main reason behind a campaign is raising money, make sure you don’t confuse your target audience!
Always try to be sensitive when handling issues such as cancer in order not to offend anyone.
Engaging your target audience is a great way to keep them involved in the campaign you are aiming to promote.
A creative message and approach has the power to turn heads and get you traffic!

Finally, I would like to ask you the following questions: Did you come across this campaign before now? Would you participate in it? What would be your overall rating of the way the campaign was handled?

Marmite: Love it or hate it — Learn Social Media by Example

Roba — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:31:07 +0000

Stat Box

Brand: Marmite (Food Industry)
Channels Used: Website, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube
Appeal: Sensory
Target Audience: Marmite lovers
Date of Campaign: Late 2009-Early 2010
Website: Marmarati.org

The thing about Marmite (what is it?) is that you either love it, or hate it. There’s no middle ground.

Due to this severe distinction, it is really easy to play on the these two groups feelings of intense love and intense hate for the product.

Marmite has been using this “love it or hate it” thing as a strategy for years, but that’s worth a whole post on its own, so we’ll do that later.

Homepage of Marmarati.org

The Idea: Marmite Secret Society

Unilever appointed agency We Are Social to create a social media campaign prior to the launch of a new extra-strong Marmite product.

The campaign kicked off early November 2009 with a hand-picked collection of netizens who were invited to join the “Marmarati”, a Victorian-style secret society for Marmite lovers. These netizes were invited to an event (complete with covered eyes and blind sampling) to try out Marmarati.

Afterwards, a second wave of Netizens was invited to try out the product before it went on sale by uploading content to marmarati.org that expresse their love for the food. Typically, visitors are asked to vote for their favorite content.

A part of the competition

Tom Denyard, marketing manager at Marmite, said, “With thousands of Marmite fans regularly talking about it online, we felt it only right to get them involved in the launch of this exciting product, which is being developed just for hardcore lovers. Social media is the perfect vehicle to help us find and interact with Marmite’s biggest fans.”

It is hard to not fall in love with this campaign because it is so well designed.

Buzz Generated: This Marmite Stuff is Love

Although it was a “secret society”, this campaign managed to get tons of feedback anyway. Their Facebook group is invite only.

Marmarati's Facebook group is invite only!

Twitter feedback

Most of the blogosphere fell in love with this campaign. Many people also participated in the second phase of the campaign, and you can watch the videos on Maramarati.

Lessons Learned: People are competitive

1. You know, paying a little extra on a very well designed campaign can actually pay off.

2. The best ideas are the easiest told.

3. Mixing a very niche preference with a secret society kind-of-treatment gets people to become very competitive. They start wanting to be a part of your campaign.

4. Do allow the consumers who love you to be a part of the decision making process, before the actually product is launched. That’s how you gain loyal customers.

5. Do encourage conversation, even if its categorized into only two categories: “Hate or love”.

Success 5/5, Virality 3/5, Innovation 4/5, Feels like an ad Yes, Brand visibility 5/5

Honda Accord Crosstour — Learn Social Media by.. Failure

M. Bamieh — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:55:27 +0000

Stat Box

Campaign Name: Honda Accord Crosstour Facebook Fan page
URL: www.facebook.com/accordcrosstour
SM Channels used: Facebook
Target Audience: Facebook & Honda Users and Car enthusiasts
Date: Sept 2009
Campaign Duration: Ongoing

Ugly? or Fugly?

It’s time to talk about a campaign that failed miserably. This is one of those!

Given the amount of money and time that goes into designing a new car it is easy to get blind-sighted by your own ego and lose the ability to evaluate your product objectively. It also didn’t help much that the marketing wheel of the industry was a closed loop and controlled for limiting any dissenting view of a new product.

Car manufacturers had a fairly simple marketing cycle for their cars, they would unveil their cars at international shows, have specialized publications which depended on handouts from the industry review their cars and make sure that the reviews are gentle and not scathing, and then wait for the people to decide with their bucks whether the car will flop or not.

The internet and social media changed everything, now everyone and anyone is a critic and if you are at the bad side of your audience on the internet then the whole world will know about it. So when car manufacturers like Ford and Honda tested the waters of social media marketing some of them forgot that on social media the audience is in control.

What is it about?

Honda was very excited about its new cross-over car, the Accord Crosstour. A car targeting empty nesters, parents who already sent away their kids and don’t need a bulky SUV and rather have a “sleek” CUV. So they wanted to test social media marketing and decided to give Facebook ago. Given how a Facebook fanpage is a fairly basic endeavor, they created the page, uploaded the images and waited for the crowds to start the conversation, and boy did they wish the conversation had never started.

OUCH!

The car conjured specters of the Pontiac Aztek’s aesthetics in commentator’s eyes, and fans expressed vehemently how opposed they are to the cars looks. Some expressed how they are jealous of Stevie Wonder because they had to bear the sight of this car, while others called it “the mutant redheaded offspring of a Chrysler Crossfire and Pontiac Aztek“. The “fan” page ended up being flooded with negative comments; while Honda’s PR team kept silent.

Flayed!

Then the storm took a life of its own when Eddie Okubo, a manager at Honda, complemented the car without disclosing his affiliation to the company, you can simply say that he was flayed alive for it. Shortly after the PR team decided to step in, they deleted the comment made by Eddie and released a response that was not only weak, it was deemed to insult the intelligence of the commentators. It is best exemplified by this quote:

“The photos: Arguably, the two studio photos we posted didn’t give you enough detail, nor were they the best to showcase the vehicle. There are more photos on the way. Maybe it’s like a bad yearbook photo or something, and we think the new photos will clear things up.”

The damage control mode was even more damaging to the car and the Honda brand so I believe that at that point Honda took the decision to ride out the storm. Eventually positive comments started to filter in after people saw the car in reality and buyers started expressing their delight with the way it drives. Now mostly positive comments are seen on the fanpage which they capitalized on by featuring some of those commentators in their “Everybody knows somebody who loves a Honda” marketing campaign.

Buzz Generation

Given the horrible way this campaign was handled by Honda, a lot of bloggers picked it up and ran with it. It even has some go further and point out the corruption of automobile publications and their dependence on the industry.

Facebook Fanpage: (Honda Accord Crosstour): 7,000+ fans (not that impressive)

Why did it do what it did?

It was safe to say that this campaign will serve as an excellent case study for how “to not run a social media campaign”. In general there are many mistakes that were committed by Honda here, but chief among them;

In Social Media campaigns always accept negative feedback, that will reflect well on your brand. Accepting feedback without lashing out at your customers will paint your company as open minded and concerned about their customer’s views.
Never delete comments, that usually indicates that you have something to hide. Censorship is kryptonite to the internet, and you don’t want to be associated with that.
Whip your entire company into delivering a unified message, users of social media that are affiliated with a company are spokesperson’s to it. Develop a policy to govern their behavior on social media sites and ensure they stick to campaign messages and don’t fall out of line.

Honda managed to recover eventually from the marketing gaffe. It is still not clear whether the negative storm on Facebook affected the Crosstour sale numbers but we’ll have to wait and see for that.

What do you think Honda did wrong in the campaign? What is the best way to handle an out of control social media campaign ? Let us hear your thoughts.

Success -1/5, Virality 4/5, Innovation 0/5, Feels like an ad Yes, Brand visibility 5/5

Facebook: A Penny for Your Thought?

Roba — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:56:52 +0000

Except that, in this case, Facebook could possibly be asking you to pay a penny for your thought, rather than the other way round.

Okay. That’s a very misleading title from my side, but I can’t help it. People who claim that Google is the next evil empire, move over. I’m willing to bet some money on the fact that it’s actually the blue-faced Facebook that will wreck more havoc.

Let me introduce you to “Facebook Credits“, now open for applications that not only spam our sorry butts off, but are also about to do some ripping off. Basically, Facebook Credits is a currency that is aimed at making the purchase of virtual goods across Facebook’s apps easier.

How many Facebook Credits do you need today?

Here’s what Deborah Liu, from Facebook’s blog, has to say about it: “By providing a single, cross-application currency, our goal is to making transactions simpler for users, leading to a higher conversion rate for developers. Specifically, our early testing has shown that users paying with Facebook Credits are significantly more likely to complete a purchase than the average Facebook user.”

To make it super easy, Facebook Credits supports different credit cards, fifteen currencies, mobile payments, and recently, PayPal.

The Virtual Goods Economy is All About Green Cows

Facebook Credits

As I have already expressed my exasperation over people’s obsession with completely meaningless virtual goods, it’s hard to not see how brilliant of an idea it is from Facebook’s side.

With over 500,000 apps on Facebook, app-makers and the Facebook team are becoming increasingly aware of the ironically high value that the virtual goods in these applications have for their users.

The Facebook cut will be 30 percent of revenue from game and application developers who integrate Facebook Credits into their programs. Facebook has finally found a brilliant way to monetize, and they will make good money from this idea, even if we’re talking a dollar a pop for each transaction made.

Virtual Internet Currency with Facebook?

If anyone can pull of a universal virtual currency, it would be Facebook. Facebook has that personal appeal, where we share our personal pictures with our personal friends. I have seen a few grandmothers on Facebook, as well as a few kids under seven.

If people from all walks of life can manage to feel so comfortable wearing their hearts on their sleeves in their Facebook comfort zone, what would stop them from feeling just as safe with dealing with a Facebook currency, especially with the trend of micro-payments on the rise?

Facebook Credits might eventually turn out to become the de facto currency of the Internet, given how popular the platform is.

What do you think? Does Facebook Credits have the potential to change the landscape of the Internet as we know it today? Or is it just some evil plot to weasel out as much income as possible from unsuspecting teenagers addicted to quite mindless games?

You can read more about Facebook Credits on Facebook’s help section.

“I’m With Coco” – Learn Social Media by Example

Roba — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:52:58 +0000

Stat Box

Brand: Conan O’Brien (Entertainment)
Campaign URL: I’m With Coco
SM Channels Used: Facebook, blogs, Twitter.
Appeal: Emotional
Target Audience: Conan O’Brien fans
Date: January 2010

Disclaimer: The quotation marks in the title are definitely quotation marks. I have to make it clear before I proceed that there’s no way in hell that I will ever appreciate Conan O’Brien’s nonexistent sense of humor, and I couldn’t care less if he goes off TV or not. With that said, I admit that I’m still surprised that the level of support that Coco has garnered from social media might as well be compared to the Internets reactions to Haiti, Obama, and — gasp — even MJ.
Conan O’Brien, funny or not?

I have seen this campaign scattered all across the Internet, from the Facebook profile pictures to Kuwaiti blogs.

The Idea & Objectives

I'm With Coco poster

As organic social media campaigns often are, this campaign became viral quite by accident. When Mike Mitchell, a huge Conan O’Brien fan, tweeted a link to a poster he created in support of Coco as a reaction to the Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno debacle.

The poster was adopted by the social media community, and the slogan “I’m with Coco” was used by O’Brien’s fans to yell out their support on their Facebook profile pictures, their Twitter gravatars, and their blog posts. Offline, this poster has been printed and handed it out as flyers. People have been using it as a graphical element in their support rallies.

Buzz Generated: Not All is Lost in the TV War

Conan O'Brien definitely had a good PR week

Thanks to the “I’m with Coco” campaign, Conan is the clear online winner, while NBC itself is parked on the loser side. Conan O’Brien has more support on Facebook than a cute little LOL-Cat about to get murdered, on social media platforms, blogs, and even Craigslist.

Not only did this campaign push Conan to put his foot down to NBC, it also got everyone talking about him:

Indeed it's worth the wait...

His fans really are crazy

Fellow who?

As Mike Mitchell explains to the Huffington Post, “Well in our current day, we as the little guy have been subject to all the bullshit that corporate America throws at us. Conan may be a multimillionaire, but NBC has made him out to be the little guy, and he stood up to them, and I think that’s a message that resonates with young Americans. Like I already said, in the face of corporate greed, and executive F-ups, Conan took a stand, and did it with professionalism and integrity. He left his show with some great parting words that will stick with a lot of people for the rest of their lives. Not to mention, he is one funny ass dude. Who under the age of 50 doesn’t love Conan?”

What the 961,539 fans are saying on the “I’m with Coco” Facebook group is practically barf-inducing.

Lessons Learned: All it takes is something well design

While I’m still very surprised at how viral this campaign has been, I guess there many lessons to learn.

Conan O’Brien is obviously liked by a much younger generation than Jay Leno, so it’s no wonder that the Social Media campaign has been so successful digitally.
People appreciate a good slogan and a nice poster, as this campaign shows. They’re willing to rally around it.
Online social media campaigns can be very easily integrated with offline ones.

I'm with Coco t-shirt

What do you think of this campaign? Do you even like Conan O’Brien?

The Meter: Virality: 5/5, Innovation: 1/5, Feels Like an Ad: No, Brand Visibility: 4/5

Livemocha Social Network: The Latest in Language Learning

M. Bamieh — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:30:55 +0000

Like many Americans, I studied Spanish in high school. For four years, I learned the obtuse conjugations of irregular verbs and practiced scripted fill-in-the-blank conversations with my other English-speaking classmates. Why then, could I not even so much as order a beer in my first trip south of the border? Well, I had never spoken to a native Spanish speaker before I set foot in that bar in Tijuana.

Enter, stage left, livemocha.com. Livemocha is a website that is harnessing social networking technology to give language learners real-time feedback and conversation practice with native speakers while sparing them the expense of immersion travel or one-on-one tutoring. In the process, livemocha.com is transforming the way we learn foreign languages from a blackboard exercise to a truly learner-driven experience.

How Livemocha Works

Train those language muscles

Livemocha begins with the premise that all language learners are also teachers of the language that is their mother tongue. A basic four course curriculum in over 30 languages is offered for free, teaching the learner basic vocabulary and sentence structure. There are also the traditional computer-scored multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and matching practice exercises one would expect from an on-line language course.

Livemocha then takes it a step further by allowing users to submit progressively difficult free-form writing and speaking samples. Once posted, your work becomes available to the entire Livemocha community. You sit back and watch your feedback roll in, often in the form of audio recorded comments from native speakers using the site to learn other languages.

In addition to posting your work, the website allows you to email your work to your web site pals, designated language partners who you can find by searching the membership database. No friends, yet? Don’t worry, Livemocha will recommend a dozen or so native speakers who have a high “teacher score” in your language and whisk your writing or speaking sample to their in-boxes. Of course there’s a chat function that allows you to talk with real-time audio and video with users who are logged in when you are. The feature also suggests conversation topics and gives you a few opening lines to begin with.

Why Livemocha Works: User-Content, User-Evaluated

Like other social networking/user-driven content hybrid sites (think Wikipedia and CouchSurfing.org) Livemocha works for two reasons:

Users are interested and dedicated to contributing content, for free, here in the form of lesson corrections and feedback.
Since all the content is visible to all the users — lessons, exercises, comments, etc. — it’s clear which users make for good teachers and which don’t.

Moreover, Livemocha offers a convenient shorthand. Users’ “mochapoints” and “teacher score” let others know if they are good members of the online community. Complete a lesson and your mochapoints go up. Comment on a member’s writing sample or leave a tip on a lesson and your teacher points go up. Teacher points go up even more if your “student” says they found your comments helpful. The website encourages members to keep active by awarding medals and achievements for volume and excellence in contributions.

Don’t Fire Your Language Teacher Yet

There are perhaps only two downsides to Livemocha’s user-driven approach. The first is that the Livemocha software encourages you to “friend” or partner with students whose knowledge in your native language is far too basic for your comments to be helpful to them. For example, if I know English and I want to learn French, Livemocha might suggest French partners who are just getting started in English. I can only imagine that my comments on their English—in English!—must sound like just as much gibberish as their French is to me. A better approach would be for the software to find partners that have a third language in common. If my French partner and I also speak Spanish fairly well, we can use that to make sense to each other, at least at first.

A second failing of the website is that although high-quality premium content is available for a fee, the quality of the free courseware varies significantly across languages. The basic platform is replicated for all languages and content is top notch for high demand languages like English, Spanish, French, and Italian. Delve into Farsi, Catalan, or Urdu, however, and you will realize the course developers for your target language didn’t agree on which of five words for “boy” should be used. Arabic, for example, reads right to left, but words are ordered left to right in the software, and the developers didn’t bother to teach the alphabet, making the entire course bewildering for a person who has no experience with Arabic script.

A Language Learning Revolution?

Despite its shortcomings, social networking is a big leap forward in language learning. And it’s an approach that has tech-based language learning powerhouses like Rosetta Stone and byki.com scrambling to get on board.

Rosetta Stone, for example, has begun offering similar features as Livemocha to its registered software users, many of whom pay upwards of $1,000 per course. However, Rosetta Stone’s fee-based restricted access approach runs counter to the social networking platform approach — users, and lots of them, from all over the world online 24 hours a day. So far, it’s not helping to peddle any more of her familiar yellow boxes from airport lounge kiosks. Why pay Rosetta when you can log on to Livemocha for free?

European Union Kicks IE’s Butt

Roba — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:48:54 +0000

I never saw this day coming, but now that it did, I am very impressed.

The European Union, believing that “not knowing you have a choice is no choice at all“, has made Microsoft integrate a Browser Choice window in their operating system for both new users and existing Windows PC users. This screen will provide users with a chance “to make an active choice in the source of the software that acts on your behalf to broker your online experiences, and meet your own unique needs and interests.”

This decision ends a long-running dispute over the US software giant’s dominant market position. This “browser choice screen” will present users with a list of leading browsers — including Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome — presented in a random order. The screen will be offered as an automatic download for XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

The browser choice menu

The screen gives the user three options:

To simply “Install” any of the leading browsers listed.
To “Learn More” information about any of these browsers.
To “Select Later” – possibly inducing an endless loop for users who will always “Select later”, like I do with my updates.

You can read more about this on the European Firefox Community blog.

Victory for Better Softwares?

I am very happy to read about this news because come on, IE is probably the worst browser out there, and people use it most due to convenience rather than anything else. This decision from the EU will educate users and further give them the chance to browse the Internet with a much better tool.

The market percentages for browsers in February 2010, according to Net Applications analytics run as follows:

Chrome: 5.61%, up 0.39% from January
IE: 61.58%, down 0.54%
Firefox: 24.23%, down 0.2%
Safari: 4.45%, down 0.08%
Opera: 2.35%, down 0.03%

Meanwhile, on a parting joke, check out this hilarious image that I randomly found on Flickr (click to expand):

CSS on IE6

What browser do you use? Do you think this was a good decision from the EU or are novice PC users better off with less choices?

Interested in browser wars? You might like this post on Thoughtpick: What is Google Chrome?

Information is Beautiful [video]

Roba — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:32:07 +0000

If there’s only one video you’ll watch this month, then make it this one.

Aside from the fact that it’s a sight for sore eyes when it comes to design, this video is a fountain of information that really gives you a complete overview of the state of the Internet today.

Spam is King

One of my favorite parts of this video is their information on spam.

Out of the average 247 billion emails sent per day, 200 billion of them are spam. Wow, yeah?

I don’t really understand why their is so much spam in the world. You’d think that by now, you’d have the Anti-Spam Consideration Front, the PETA of the Web. Why isn’t there such a group yet?

The other very interesting part in this video is about Facebook’s exponential growth, with a staggering 6 million page view per minute. Does that make Facebook the queen of spam? :)

[Via FlowingData]

Do you enjoy infographs as much as we do? Well, then check out these previous posts on Thoughtpick:

Dove Self-Esteem Campaign — Learn Social Media by Example

Beirut — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:06:48 +0000

Stat Box

Brand Name: Dove
Campaign URL: http://www.dove.us/#/cfrb/
Channels Used: Facebook & Twitter
Appeal: Emotional
Start Date: Around 3 years ago
Duration: Ongoing

Thousands of women tend to strut around carrying the heavy burden of being influenced by media and commercials whether they like it or not. The bar of real beauty has been shifted and the price to pay for staying “beautiful” has been raised!

Testimony of Change Due to Dove's Campaign

Therefore, and through combined marketing methods and in efforts to help in elevating the pressure females, of all ages, backgrounds and ethnicity suffer from, Dove was able to come up with a project concept dedicated to “real beauty”: Dove Self-Esteem Campaign/Fund.

Idea & Objectives:

The Dove Self-Esteem Fund has created tools, downloads and even a guidebook to start the conversation between mothers and their daughters as well in efforts to help mothers guide their daughters to appreciate her own unique beauty.

“This Dove Campaign is designed to empower participants and create new ways to view beauty, body image and self esteem. It’s such a valid concept, especially in today’s society that preaches that thin and airbrushed is the true mark of beauty“.

Moreover, Dove is currently conducting workshops to further promote the idea of “being yourself” to younger girls.

“I promise I will not try to be any of the girls I see on magazine covers,” a young girl assured after attending one of the workshops.

Buzz Generated:

Due to the fact that this campaign has been going on for a while now and is still in progress, it was quite difficult to obtain accurate results about the overall stat changes for Dove’s Self-Esteem Campaign so far. However, I can surely say that the buzz is high and the idea is still being spread and loved!

Take Youtube for example: One of the Dove campaign related videos – Dove Evolution – has more than 10 millions views!

Twitter too is buzzing with praises and links for Dove’s campaign!

Tweeting about Dove's Self-Esteem Campaign

Facebook fans are constantly growing, by the day, with a current number of more than 60 thousand fans!

Facebook fans are loving it!

As for Dove’s current rank on Alexa, it has had a create jump in rank since the beginning of 2010, and now ranks about 3,000 in the US and about 25,000 worldwide.

Opinion & Lessons Learned:

I think, in this special case, everyone will agree with me that this campaign simply ROCKS! I mean although the main goal must be generating more sales through enhancing brand image, the execution makes Dove seem so true, sincere and even real about their concern with females and their overall well-being!

Free Dove self-esteem shirt

So what are the lessons you could learn from this campaign? Well, here they are:

Customers like to feel “loved” or at least “appreciated” by the brand they intend to purchase from. By building trust with those customers, you are obtaining loyal customers who will stay with you as long as you show you care, as a brand of course.
Creating activities for both parents and their children could be highly effective since it promotes family concepts indirectly and encourages more family building activities.
Displaying real life testimonies of satisfied customers has the ability to attract potential customers.
Combining an effective chain of online social media tools and channels sometimes can help spread your campaign to concerned targeted audience thus draw more attention to your brand.
Adding an offline component to your campaign, such as Dove’s workshops, really stimulates interaction and has the ability to result in more positive reactions and outcomes.

Well, those are my two scents about this well-planned campaign. I hope you will enjoy it and learn from it as much as I did.

Finally, I would like to ask you the following questions: Did you come across this campaign before now? Would you participate in it? What would be your overall rating of the tools and channels used?

Looking forward to your feedback down below :)

Where SMB Spend their Marketing and Advert Money? [Infograph]

M. Bamieh — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:18:06 +0000

The folks over at Flowtown have a great illustration that aggregates information about where small to medium business spent their money in 2009 and where they plan to spend it in the next 5 years.

Where is the Beef?

Some thoughts…

To me, it was really shocking to see that two thirds of small to medium businesses didn’t not even use any social media platforms in 2009. It might have been the economical tough times that are making them tighten their belt or maybe it is the generational gap. However, according to a study released earlier this year, the top two reasons sited by small businesses is that they don’t feel the need to use social media platforms because (1) their customers don’t use them (31%) or (2) they just basically don’t have the time to dedicate to them (21%).

While those might be viewed as valid reasons, God knows how using social media can suck hours upon hours from your day yet there are far more compelling reasons of why you should take the plunge. Just so I don’t make this post longer than it should be I’ll limit my self to the top three reasons (in my humble opinion):

Number 1: It’s Free

While being time consuming, the entry into this area of marketing is practically free. For a small business and especially in these tough economic times, the word “free” is like a pitcher of lemonade on a hot summer’s night. While it might take some time to get comfortable and establish your presence on several popular platforms, the fact of the matter remains that it will definitely generate leads.

Number 2: Given the stats you can still be an early adopter

While more than 350 million people are already on Facebook, you still might not find your clients and contacts on it. Being an early adopter will definitely impress your clientele and would send a clear message that you care about connecting to them on a personal level and catering to their individual needs by opening this communication channel. This will also put your competitors at a disadvantage for simply not caring enough to spend a few hours a week to take care of their customers.

Number 3: If your clients aren’t there, it’s a great tool to gain new ones

Social media has proved to be a gold mine for finding new customers and tapping into new markets. It allows you exposure beyond your niche market and demographics and provides you with the opportunity to connect to other people on a personal level. Social media sites like Yelp provided new hope for local Mom & Pop’s shops to compete and be heard despite of all the marketing noise that is present these days.

Whatever the reason it is that is keeping small and medium businesses from testing the waters of social media, there will surely be a change that will lead to adoption, just like the website was begrudgingly adopted 15 years ago.

What are your reactions about the statistics? What do you think are the main reasons why SMB should join social media sites? Let us hear your thoughts.

Target’s Super Bowl & Valentine Campaign — Learn Social Media By Example

Beirut — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:32:14 +0000

Stat Box

Brand: Target (Retail Store)
Campaign URL: Super Love Sender
SM Channels Used: Facebook
Appeal: Emotional
Duration: 2 weeks before Valentine

We heard it from Mashable that Target’s latest Valentine – Super Bowl campaign was preparing to kick off. So we followed up…

The Idea & Objectives:

If you go to Target’s Facebook page and click on the Super Love Sender tab, you are able to begin the process of sending a “JibJab-like, NFL- and Valentine-themed” greeting card.

Before you start creating the card, you can choose from one of five charities that you think should get the most money.

Super Love Sender

The charities Target is supporting are:

Kids in Need Foundation
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
The Salvation Army
United Through Reading Military Program
United Way

“The cards themselves are pretty funny. They aren’t quite as interactive as something like Elf Yourself, but they are a cute, funny way to send a greeting, while also voicing how you think Target should allocate its funds“.

Buzz Generated:

In support of the charity for kids

As it seems, Target were able to really hit it off with this amazingly unique, fun and charitable campaign! Right below the main page of the Super Love Sender application, there are about 1,700 posts comments on the idea of this campaign and even praising it, listing their favorite choice of charity to support on some occasions.

Super Love Sender Application

Furthermore, and as you could see in the image above, Target was able to fairly allocate its funds to support the different charities they had listed, therefore they were able to fulfill the campaign’s main purpose.

Lessons Learned:

I might be very biased towards this campaign due to the fact that it really covers corporate social responsibility in a very interactive and community built approach. Nevertheless, the truth of the matter remains that Target did things right and this is what we can learn from them:

Charity-related campaigns usually have more potential for success than others, if, and only if, they can demonstrate sincerity.
Combining fun with the emotional appeal can have a very great impact on your target audience.
Simple, straight to the point Facebook applications attract more people to participate.
Sometimes, all you need is just one suitable social media channel to achieve your campaign objectives.

Finally, what do you think of the Target’s campaign? How would you rate it? And would you have participated if you had heard about it?

Let us hear your feedback down blow…

Success 5/5, Virality 4/5, Innovation 4/5, Feels like an ad No, Brand visibility 2/5

Avatar Movie — Learn Social Media by Example

M. Bamieh — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:54:22 +0000

Stat Box

Campaign Name: Avatar
URL: www.avatarmovie.com
SM Channels used: Youtube, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Website
Target Audience: Movie Goers
Date: Dec 2009
Campaign Duration: Ongoing

Avatar The Uber Block Buster

Hollywood has certainly been one of the great adopters of internet and social media marketing. Some of the greatest internet marketing campaigns have been given to us by the movies, campaigns like that of The Dark Knight were truly game changing. Ever since early December, the movie world has been abuzz with one word “Avatar”, with an impressive nine award nominations in March 7th at the 82nd Academy awards ceremony, it was certainly one of the biggest movies of not only the decade but of all time.

A movie that was truly entertaining, bringing 3D cinematics to the mainstream and raising the bar for special effects. While Sam Worthington and the Na’vi own part of their success to Mr. James Cameron’s genius, a great social marketing campaign helped propel the buzz around “Avatar” to stratospheric heights on the internet; giving it the boost it needs to break a Titanic record.

What is it about?

While the Avatar campaign wasn’t as innovative in its approach to social media marketing, but it did learn its lessons well. The in-house team has created a solid marketing campaign that was present on all social media channels from Twitter, Facebook, to MySpace and Youtube. While having a great product can help, what really did help is that they have crafted their message and presence impeccably.

Comments Galore!

Their presence on Facebook was exactly how a campaign should be carried out. They updated their fanpage only with important posts, not spamming their audience and basically giving the fan’s the opportunity to lead. They provided them with the activities that allow them to create conversations and get Avatar brand exposure through updates on Facebook’s news feed. One of the most popular activities related to the movie was the Avatarize yourself website, which allows fans to upload their photo and get their own Na’vi Personality, a great viral ploy.

Avatarize yourself: How @amerkawar looks as an Avatar :)

Their approach to Twitter was more about feeding the frenzy. By building up to the movie’s release, they uncovered movie information and details aloowing their followers retweeted them tirelessly. To help catch the people not covered by those two social mediums they have also created a Flickr, Youtube and MySpace presence.

With all that presence, the uniform message and the purpose to feed the buzz it might have been enough, but they still went with more than just that. They hit the home-run with the release of an innovative and interactive Trailer that allowed people to experience a new way to watch it. The trailer allowed the viewer to take the role of inquisitive information seekers rather than passive watchers. By downloading the trailer application that was built using Adobe Air, users were able to get character profiles, and follow through on information tidbits that the trailer provided.

To top it off they partnered with MTV and Facebook and held and impressive webcast that feature James Cameron and the stars of the movie answering the questions of fans and they also live-streamed the premiere on UStream

Buzz Generation

Besides the Buzz that leads up to the release of a Box Office Mega Hit, Avatar was the top trending topic on Twitter for the majority of December and January. For the period of those 2 months, it was generating an impressive 15,000+ blog posts per day.

Huge Blogging Strom

Website Traffic: +850,000 Unique Visitors in December

Twitter Account: (@officialAVATAR): +26,000 Followers

Facebook Fanpage: (Official Avatar Movie): +1,445,000 fans

Youtube(HD Trailer): 2,636,020 views

MySpace: +790,000 friends

Why did it do what it did?

Avatar did a great job of creating a buzz. Besides the movie trailer, there was little innovation in the campaign but it was definitely a well crafted one. It helped draw in the fans thus utilizing various activities from applications that alter their photos to the chance to participate in a web-cast with the stars of the movie.

That focus on catering to the true fans and fostering them is what helped spread the word “Avatar” through the internet like wild fire on a dry summer’s day. This media campaign did everything to cater to its true fans and allow them to take ownership of the franchise.

What do you think of the Avatar campaign? Did you participate in it? Let us hear your thoughts.

Success 5/5, Virality 5/5, Innovation 1/5, Feels like an ad Yes, Brand visibility 5/5

Learn Social Media by Example: “It Has to be Heinz — Dip & Squeeze” Campaign

Beirut — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:28:07 +0000

Stat Box

Brand Name: Heinz (Consumer Products)
SM Channels Used: Twitter, Facebook & website
Appeal: Emotional appeal
Target Audience: USA bloggers, microbloggers, Facebook users, social networking users and Heinz lovers
Date: February, 2010
Campaign Duration: Ongoing

Previous campaigns…

Dip & Squeeze with Ease!

Heinz might be famous for its ‘57 varieties’, but that was a portfolio for a long-lost age, when stores sold your brands, rather than competed via offerings of their own.

Therefore, and in efforts to innovate and freshen up, Heinz has launched its biggest umbrella brand marketing campaign to date, in a £5m push to build on its “emotional connection” with consumers.

The “It has to be Heinz” campaign has been designed to celebrate the way people perceive the food brand.

Giles Jepson, Heinz sauces and soup marketing director, says: “As we have seen through the recent downturn – Heinz varieties are resilient to downward shifts in consumer spending, and we anticipate that this major new campaign will not only drive growth of the Heinz products, but will also lift each of the categories involved.”

Moreover, while Heinz is reinforcing its brand equity by playing on heritage and familiarity, it is also underpinning its brands with innovation through creating a bottle that stands on its head in efforts of reducing the annoying delay before the sauce hits your plate. EZ Squirt Bottles, Spicy Flavors, a ‘trap cap’ that eliminates watery ooze and Mystery Colors for kids all aim to appeal to consumers, while providing vital differentiation from private-label competitors.

“Heinz Ketchup will have a new Dip & Squeeze packet design after 40 years of the ubiquitous foil package. Holding 3 times more of the condiment, you can either dip into the cup-like packet, or squeeze the Ketchup onto your food. Here’s to 40 more years of very occasional ketchup innovation”! Richard Chemel

Outstanding Buzz & Remarkable Results!

The campaign has contributed towards Heinz’s strong sales performance and in the last twelve weeks alone, it has seen a growth of +16.2% across its ambient category.

Amazing Facebook Page! One of my favorites EVER! 18,000+ fans

Facebook Fans are LOVING IT!

480 Buzz ups on the Yahoo News article.

And on Twitter, people are going nuts over Hienz and their ads!

Heinz Ketchup on Twitter

Apart from that, The Washington Post wrote about Heinz’s new packet design in addition to others such as Portfolio Week.

My Take & Your Lessons :)

“To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success”.

Introducing Dip & Squeeze

Frankly, I am IN LOVE with this campaign: It is so humble and real. It also makes brand users feel closer to Heinz products in general and attracts more consumers to switch to this brand in hopes of “belonging” and “feeling appreciated”.

As for the lessons I think we can learn from this campaign, they are as follows:

Sometimes a large financial budget is necessary to produce desired results, especially in terms of sales.
Even large companies that have been around for many, many years need to invest their resources to keep up with market, at least every now and then.
TV ads and radio shows could play a very important role in adding value to your social media campaign.
Using emotional appeals with food products could be highly effective and beneficial due to the ability of relating food with good times and unforgettable memories.

Finally, I wonder: Have you heard about this campaign or participated in it on some level or another? Do you like it? Do you think it is worth all this money? Looking forward to hearing your feedback down below…

Virality 3/5, Innovation 3/5, Feels like an ad Yes, Brand visibility 5/5

5 Ways to Utilize Twitter to Grumble — Effectively!

Beirut — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:30:51 +0000

Each and every one of us, at least every now and then, and for one reason or another, feels the urge to complain, grumble and/or fuss about one thing or another. This is one part of human nature and for your average human beings, the “grass is almost always greener on the other side!”

Wah!

Regardless of your reason to grumble, it seems to me that social media has established itself as the trendiest “fashion” of venting and complaining publicly! It is like a confession board available for all to see – a documented manifesto placed into social media users’ hands!

But the issue is waaaaaaay bigger and more complicated than this: companies, customers, suppliers and even restaurant owners are now complaining about problems in their businesses online as well and Twitter is just one great example of that!

In a recent post I read entitled: “If You Can’t Take the Heat, Don’t Read Me on Twitter“, you will find how seriously some are taking social media grumbling:

Joe Dobias, tweeted that his deliveries from upstate purveyors had arrived, but not fish from a local supplier. He didn’t post the supplier’s name. Mr. Dobias is an extreme example of how chefs are now going online to confront customers, bloggers, critics, rivals and sometimes even their bosses.

“Maybe he should get to work instead of spending his time Twittering,” said the local supplier, adding that the delivery had arrived early but that Mr. Dobias hadn’t been there to receive it.

Amazing right? I thought so as well! Therefore, and in efforts to help you grumble effectively, here’s a list of 5 ways to utilize Twitter to do so!

1. Group up!

Misery enjoys company thus, the more people you have one your side, sharing your opinion and supporting your cause, the higher the reach and effect of your message! Try to talk to those who seem both interested and willing to help fuel your cries, doubts and concerns, preferably privately through Twitter direct messages for example.

2. Tone Down!

The common belief is that the angrier you are and the more aggressive you can be, the faster your message would spread and be heard. I disagree! You can be subtle yet get your message through and actually get results just by being logical, factual and real about what you think and how you feel!

3. Expand Within!

Complaining!

Do not limit your cries to one social media venue. Twitter is great for sharing short meaningful messages but it is never enough to deliver the overall idea and explore your problem or dilemma from inside out. I suggest that after using Twitter for a fairly reasonable time to team up and get the buzz started, you add Facebook groups and/or causes into the mix!

4. Be Consistent!

Allow me to further explain using the example of the chefs: If all chefs agree that their main problem is their suppliers, they should tweet about that and only that, at least for a certain period of time. The more general the complaints, the less people would be interested to hear them!

5. Be Convinced!

Sales people who do not believe in the products or services they are trying to sell always fail! Unless you are truly dedicated to your grumbling reasons and 100% convinced that they are valid, you will lose your audience’s interest and therefore get no tangible results – a more frustrated you!

What do you think? Do you agree that complaining over social media venues, such as Twitter, can really be useful and effective? Have you ever tried it?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Quarky News of the Web — Feb 2010

M. Bamieh — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:04:11 +0000

While news like the new Google Buzz, the new Facebook interface and soon to come mailing system dominate the headlines, there are always smaller headlines that tend to go unnoticed. They are the headlines that let us know how individualistic and unique some of the interactions on the web can be, and how much social media is shaping our world in ways that we could not have fathomed 20 years ago.

So the Quarky News of the Web section will be dedicated to those pieces of news that might go unnoticed but still pack quite the punch.

Google only looks out for Google’s privacy

After a wild party hosted by Orkut Büyükkökten, a senior Google engineer, Google exec barred the pictures of the night from being posted on the web. The home-warming party was wild, with female and male strippers, booze and God knows what else; so there was a good reason for the ban. Thankfully, we can always depend on Facebook for leaks when Google fails, photos of the party surfaced on it.

Orkut at a party in Jan. 2009

Ambushing the Google Street View

Tipped off by their friend to the schedule of Google’s Street View filming truck, a couple of friends from Norway decided to ambush it. They did it with style chasing after it wearing wet suites and trying to hunt it down with tridents.

Now that’s the best 15 seconds of fame story I’ve heard in ages; I wonder how the Google crew felt about them. A local newspaper tracked them down and interviewed them to get the scope of how they have done it. You can go and see it on Google Street View here.

Facebooks convicts convict’s pages to the bin

Facebook has taken down 30 user pages upon the request of the British justice secretary after he received complaints from victim’s families that they were being used to taunt them. The prisoners having been using their Facebook pages to vent out their thoughts. Thoughts like wishing for a remote control so that the prisoner can “mute or delete people when I need to” and another one mentioning how he “couldn’t wait to see the fear in peoples’ eyes once he gets out“. The pages have been taken down by Facebook within 48 hours of the request and the secretary expressed how prisons are cracking down on smuggled cell phones. Of course, in order to detect those cellphones all visitors are now requested to sit on a special device that will scan for any contraband in the visitor’s orifices… OUCH!

A Japanese Pop star is born

The latest pop star sensation in Japan right now is none other than 14 year old Rebecca Flint, better known as Beckii Cruel. She is set to release her debut album on Wednesday which is expected to top the charts over there. She started off by posting Youtube videos of her dancing to Japanese pop music and just recently played to 600 hundred of her fans in Japan.

Basically to be a pop star in Japan all you need to do is look like a cartoon and act cute!

Bored of your online friends? Cam with a stranger!

People you might meet on Chatroulette!

The latest big thing on the net that is garnering quite a bit of buzz lately is the Chatroulette. It’s a website that enables you to randomly video chat with people from around the world. After taking it for a spin, it’s staunchly evident that most of the people on the web nowadays are quite eccentric. From exhibitionists to the costume wearing to frat boys being their obnoxious pity selves they are all there, but it’s quite the novelty to “see” them all in one place!

So what was your favorite piece of odd news lately? Share it with us in the comment section below…

Sea World Connects Coaster Enthusiasts — Learn Social Media by Example

Roba — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:27:59 +0000

Stat Box

Brand: Sea World (Entertainment)
Campaign Website: Not available anymore
Channels Used: Website, YouTube, Flickr.
Appeal: Humor
Target Audience: Coaster Enthusiasts
Date: 2007-2008

I’m not sure if there are any statistics, but the internet seems to be one of the best niche-marketing platforms out there. It’s easier for communities that share a passion for a very particular object/service/hobby to network around each other with the tools that the internet provides.

While roller-coaster love isn’t exactly that niche of an interest, I guess it does take a serious adrenaline fanatic to join a club or read a blog completely dedicated to all the scary rides out there. The Journey to Atlantis Sea World campaign reaches out to these digital enthusiast by giving them VIP treatment.

The Journey to Atlantis ride

The Idea: VIP Treatment for Adrenaline-Addicted Netizens

Working with Kami Huyse, Sea World reached out through social media to an influence community called “American Coaster Enthusiasts” to market a ride called Journey to Atlantis. They invited some of bloggers and digital communities to try the ride a day prior to the ride’s public launch. They also made the content related to the ride available on Flickr and YouTube.

Fortunately for the video-loving people out there, this campaign is explained in depth on FastCompany TV:

Buzz Generated: Let’s All Try It Out!

While “conversation” was minimal, the content available on YouTube and Flickr was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. That obviously worked well for them. According to Fran Stephenson, during the launch phase of Journey to Atlantis, in an exit survey at the park, the number one answer to “Where did you hear about the ride?” was “On the internet.”

People were itching to try it out...

What is more interesting though is the amount of “Social media punditry” that was unleashed. The FastCompany TV video aside, E-Consultancy, a blog about digital marketing, spent a good time writing a post claiming why this campaign was terrible. Meanwhile, popular blogger Jeremiah Owyang applauded it as a success. Kami Huyse, who created the campaign, also has a long post describing the objectives and the methodology.

If it gets the pundits arguing, it must be a good campaign, yeah?

Lessons Learned: Some People Online Really Do Have Reach

If you want to get buzz going around a certain product, then locate and target its passion community online (AKA its geeks!) then market this product through them. People are more likely to trust the opinion of someone in their community than that of a marketer.

In a nutshell:
1. Sometimes, it all it takes it to get trustworthy people to talk about your product to drive sales.
2. Conversation is not the sole driver behind a social media campaign’s success.
3. While elaborate ideas that use a lot of money and a lot of resources can indeed create a lot of buzz, buzz can also be gained by just inviting a few influential people.
4. Finding a passionate community for your product is very important.

The Meter: Virality: 1/5, Innovation: 1/5, Feels Like an Ad: Yes, Brand Visibility: 5/5

10 Ways to Lose Your Facebook Friends in 10 Days!

Beirut — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:32:40 +0000

“The friendship that can cease has never been real.”- Saint Jerome

By now, I would assume that most social media users realize the positive and negative effects that social media reflects on us and our current and future environment. Whether how social media can help parents raise their children better, or how it can hinder friendships or relationships, social media’s consequences are becoming more and clearer to its users!

As one of Thoughtpick’s content chefs, I am always seeking to research, create and write about controversial and intriguing ideas which have the ability to get you to think about different things in a new light! Therefore, for my special dish of the day, I decided to present you with 10 easy and time efficient ways to lose your Facebook “friends” in ten days!

Remember, if you lose them, then they were never really your friends :)

Are you ready for it? Here I go!

1. Make sure you BOMBARD them with meaningless video and audio shares!

I promise you, if you are a regular Facebook user focusing your use for business or just to staying connected with friends and their lives, you will just hate being bombarded with more than 2 video or audio shares per day. I personally removed friends from my account due to the fact that they seem to have too much time on their hands and they share meaningless and useless audio and video clips on my profile!

Bombard them with videos!

2. Limit their access to your profile!

Are you shocked? Well, don’t be! I had friends remove me from their Facebook account simply because I placed them on my Limited Profile list due to privacy concerns! Sometimes, I even got calls r messages complaining about it to the point where we almost lost our friendship!

3. Annoy them with status about your progress in Facebook games!

I would love to hear that my friends are playing a game that I enjoy as well but the continuous status updates about “reaching level 8 here” or “cooking a new dish there” isn’t really why I added you in the first place! This applies to me as well, especially that I am now officially a World Cafe addict!

Annoy them with Facebook Game updates

4. Constantly ignore their messages to your inbox!

Just as MANY people get pissed off that you do not reply to the messages they send to your mobile, some also would feel the same about the messages they send to your Facebook inbox! Therefore, if you want someone to leave you alone on Facebook, you should try ignoring their messages more often!

5. Add obscene comments on shared photos!

Compliments are usually flattering, yet, when it comes to obscene remarks and jokes which all your friends can have access to, probably before you get to delete them, this will grant you a “get out of my account now” free card!

6. Tag people in photos they asked you not to post on Facebook!

If you’re looking for trouble, big trouble, this is the answer you have been looking for! Tagging people in indecent photos or simply photos they have asked you not to post online will sure get you removed from their account and leave you with one less friend!

When my brother was in the hospital, I took pictures of him while sick in bed and posted them on Facebook. Thank God I am his older sister!

Tagging without Permission!

7. Complain about your life more than once a day!

I am sure your friends care about you and like you, maybe not all of them, especially those whom you only connect with through Facebook! However, too much nagging and complaining will get you off their bandwagons, sooner than later! Try it!

8. Send too many requests to and messages about groups or fanpages!

Each of us, and on a regular basis, gets a few or more invitations and requests to join this group or become a fan of another. In reasonable portions, this might be fun and educational. Otherwise, you are walking on thin ice!

9. Change your status from “single” to “in a relationship”!

LOL! This one is just too funny! I used to play this game more than often to see who of my male friends had a crush on me: once I change my relationship update, I wait for a few days to see who removes me as their friend and viola!

10. Change your political and religious views!

Really? Yes, really! Some people befriend you in real life and on Facebook simply because you are this rather than that! Conservatives will not want you with their other conservative friends if you decide to go liberal!

Change Political-Religious Views

Looking forward to you experimenting with those ways and letting me know what happens :)

5 Social Media Tools Must Haves for Small Businesses

M. Bamieh — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:35:59 +0000

With as many social media services as there are fish in the ocean, it gets very confusing for anyone to keep up with what’s what. While early adopters are raving about which service will be this year’s darling, for small businesses kicking off their social marketing campaign this discussion is completely irrelevant. To get their feet on the ground and establish a presence on social media, they really need to start off with 5 basic services. Now that doesn’t mean those services will be the end all of all services, they are just the essentials and are going to be the framework with which SMB will build upon in the future.

NameChk

What's my name

A consistent brand is essential to any marketing presence, the name check website is a great tool to allow you to secure your brand’s name on the top social media sites, even if you don’t plan on using all of them.

Twitter

Get it out there in a twit

Twitter is the 140-character messaging sensation of 2009, and it’s a great channel for SMB to provide support for their customers. There are a few must-dos on Twitter to set up the SMB for success: SMB’s need to make sure to customize their background, commit to sending messages at least twice a day and garner followers of their Twitter account by following their current and prospective customers. Also, a need exists for creating accounts for the companies employees and allowing them to use the service as well since it’s always a good move to adding a human face to the brand.

A great tool to manage all the information that is available on Twitter is Hootsuite. It will allow the SMB to control to multiple accounts, schedule messages and monitor the Twitter information stream.

Facebook

Will you be my friend?

With 1.6 million “active” pages, Facebook is always buzzing and that makes it a must have tool for SMB’s. Setting up a Facebook page is slightly different than setting up a personal account as it simplifies the management; no longer requiring any friend management since it is handled automatically. This page will provide a public profile for the company and will allow Facebook users to promote the brand by becoming fans of the company or its products.

There are many applications and tools that can be added to a Facebook page, from ones that aggregate posts from your blog and Twitter to others that allow you to upload your own flash videos. Best method in making a decision on what’s needed is to check what competitors have done with their pages.

Blogging

Get Personal

This is a social media staple, through a blog an SMB will be able to put out longer-form information regarding them, their products, events or anything else. It will also help by centralizing the message they will provide through other social media tools by linking to some of the posts at the blog. The other advantage is that a blog gives a business a human face and allows customers to interact immediately with the business providing an excellent feedback tool and space.

Wordpress is a great platform to get started with establishing a blog, and the hosted solution from wordpress.com will not require a manual set up and can vastly simplify the management of the blog.

The new business card

Business networking is an entirely different beast than social networking with an emphasis on getting leads, keeping up with an ever evolving market, and communicating with others in the field. LinkedIn is the defacto tool for business networking, and the LinkedIn groups will allow you to connect to like minded individuals and business with forums for valuable discussions on a variety of pertaining topics which will allow SMB’s to get leads on new partnerships or even new qualified staff members. With its new faceted search, it allows people to find information or people faster and in a much more sleeker fashion.

Now managing a social media presence can be time consuming, and it is best to have a person in charge of managing all those various accounts and maintaining a consistent brand tone and voice across all platforms. Although those are not all the tools out there, however, with those 5 tools an SMB will be able to get started by establishing a framework for it’s social media marketing venture and set the ground work for further expansion in the future.

Do you have any tips for small businesses establishing a new presence on social media? What are the tools that would help them manage that presence? Share your experiences with us in the comment section.

Microsoft Takes on Google with Social Outlook

Roba — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:00:52 +0000

Oh, no.

These days, everything feels like it’s being drip-fed social media. Don’t get me wrong, I love social media, but companies are over-doing it, with the latest addition to the list of extensive-stitching-together being Outlook Social Connector.

I love the name! “Social Connector”: just as unimaginative as everything else that the horn-rimmed guys at Microsoft do.

My own anti-Microsoft sentiments aside…

What the hell is it exactly?

Look, they even use MS Word created clouds!

The Outlook Social Connector is an add-on for Outlook. When a user clicks to read an e-mail message, a new pane on the main e-mail reading screen fills with the sender’s most recent Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn activities.

As Microsoft explains:

First, we’re proud to announce the public beta of LinkedIn for Outlook, which will enable our millions of Office 2010 Beta users to connect the Outlook Social Connector to a public network for the first time. Second, we’re excited to announce partnerships with Facebook — the most popular social Web site in the world, and MySpace — a leading social platform connecting people through expression, content, and culture. [...]

Our vision for Outlook (and the OSC) is to provide a communications hub that is vital to both professional and personal communications; by integrating with both Facebook and MySpace, Outlook 2010 enables you to connect not only to co-workers and colleagues, but with all of your friends and family within your Outlook Inbox.

Honey, you can’t shut social media off

As the guys over at Wired note, this is fantastic for Google’s enterprise email solutions which still hasn’t introduced Buzz-like features, as companies try to stifle their employees out of social media air by blocking the networks and everything that has to do with them. Could that mean — gasp — blocking Outlook? Perhaps, or maybe companies can just take a chill pill and realize that NO ONE can really work for 9 hours straight.

LinkedIn on Outlook Social Connector

Outlook is such a serious place (which is why I refuse, refuse, refuse to use it), and this business decision is surprising from Microsoft’s part. It would have made perfect sense with Hotmail, but Outlook? Really?

I guess the fight is on, hard. Do you think it’s Apple’s time to join next? At least we’d know that it would be a nicely designed, interesting user experience.

What do you think of this whole shoving of social media in our faces? Do you like having it in your inbox? Does it even belong in your inbox?

For more on the social media fiasco, read our post about Google Buzz.

Learn Social Media by Example: Put Your Best Face Forward with Estee Lauder

Roba — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:37:07 +0000

Stat Box

Brand: Estee Lauder (Beauty Industry)
Channels Used: Facebook, booth in department stores
Appeal: Feel better about yourself by looking better
Target Audience: Women ages between 35-55
Date of Campaign: October 2009 — Current

I will go ahead and dare you to find a Facebook group with as much loving as Estee Lauder’s. Check it out, it is absolutely amazing.

Every wall-post has around three “I love Estee Lauder’s…”, and believe me when I say there are tons of wall posts. I have spent the past 10 minutes going over January, and all the messages are so loving it almost makes me cringe.

Estee Lauder must spend tons of money on getting their clients to love them so much.

What I love about their very subtle social media campaign is how it makes the effort to understand the needs of its audience. By offering luxury beauty product, there’s a fine line between selling an expensive product short and beautifully having women strut their best face forward with a nice nod to Estee Lauder. They address the desire to look good in one of the most important digital life-files online: Facebook.

Estee Lauder photo touch-up expert fixes the photos even further after the make-up is done.

You can also do a do-it-yourself make over with the option to upload on Facebook on Estee Lauder’s website.

The Idea: Put Your Best Face Forward on Your Facebook Profile Picture

Estee Launder is taking on social media with a campaign called “Your Beauty. Your Style. Your Profile.” All a woman has to do is head to the nearest participating Estee Lauder counter for a free makeover (with samples too!) A photograph against an Estee Lauder logo backdrop is then taken of her and emailed to her personal email.

By doing this, not only does Estee Lauder sell more of their products, they also gain new, very happy clients. When one of these clients uploads their made-over photograph to their Facebook profile, every one of their Facebook friends will see it (and the lovely Estee Lauder backdrop), and will probably want a make-over too. Word-of-mouth at its best! Read Vivi Mag’s experience of this campaign here.

Here’s one of the results:

One of the ladies who got a make over, looking good!

Buzz Generated: Happiest Customers Possible

Like I already mentioned, the happy buzz is unbelievable. Someone should go ahead and give Estee Lauder an award for making so many women so happy!

Feedback on Facebook

More feedback

Even more!

The beautiful thing about this campaign is that they managed to involve older women as well, and get them to interact in the group on Facebook.

Lessons Learned: The Trick is to Understand Your Audience

With a target age of 35 to 55, Estee Lauder customers are not in the typical age for a social media campaign. According to spokeswoman Tara Eisenberg, the promotion has a dual strategy: “Helping contemporize the brand for younger women while recognizing that somewhat older women have rapidly embraced social media, too.”

What we learned from this campaign:

1. Do mix social media online with some event taking place offline. This way, you’re getting two different audiences!

2. Do give your client added benefit if you expect them to love your campaign.

3. Do sit and brainstorm an idea that will actually make your clients feel good about themselves.

4. Don’t think “Ahhh, my target audience is too technically unsavvy” or “Mannn, I can’t do that! My products are expensive!”

5. Do be as subtle as Estee Lauder, rather than be so pushy about the fact that THIS IS A DAMN SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN. I bet none of the people who did this make over even knew what a social media campaign is.

Success 5/5, Virality 2/5, Innovation 3/5, Feels like an ad Yes, Brand visibility 4/5

10 Tips to Ensure That You’re NOT A Social Media Sucker!

Beirut — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:35:10 +0000

“Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself“. ~Alfred Sheinwold

If only we, for once, actually took the time to understand the value of this quote, most of us wouldn’t have gone through most of the crap we had to deal with, whether on a personal level or business wise! But we are humans and we are stubborn!

My mother knew better than to try to teach me from her mistakes, however, I still have faith in you, my readers, and in the fact that you will trust me enough to learn from my own experience on social media venues as to not commit the same mistakes I did!

Top 10 Tips You Should Follow When Using Social Media!

Are you ready for this? Here we go..

1. Culturize!

Being culturally aware and sensitive is very important when using one or multiple social media platforms or venues. Cultural ignorance is highly destructive in your relationships with the communities you are trying to be a part of!

2. Emphasize!

When active inside a realm as impersonal as social media, it is very important for you to be able to emphasize any point you are trying to make in order not to be misunderstood. No one can hear the tone of your voice or see your body language so your words are your weapon and your executor!

Social Meida

3. Humanize!

In order to be successful and gain your audience’s attention, always make sure that you are as human as you could be! No one wants to add a bot or follow a spammer! Engage with your community on a more personal level, at least once in a while.

4. Qualitize!

If you think you are some kind of social media guru or simply just someone who is special just because you use social media, you are mistaken! You are just a user whom nobody will notice UNLESS you take time preparing and delivering quality ideas, content and information!

Quality Counts!

5. Prioritize!

It is a great quality to love your work and be dedicated to it, however, if your work relies on social media, you might become addicted, just as I did, and your priorities will go bananas! Always remember that friends and family are crucial and that life outside of social media has a different and spicier taste!

6. Improvise!

People enjoy and appreciate creativity in most of its forms and manifestations. Although sharing current news and ideas is mostly positive, social media users want what is new, fresh and intriguing! Therefore, mix up your social media use by sharing content you find and creating your own from scratch!

7. Empathize!

Solid social interaction is usually built on trust towards and appreciation of others. Since it is quite difficult to earn people’s trust via social media venues, the least you could do is empathize with them in times of need, despair or sadness. Trust me, no matter what you are going through, you will always find a listening ear in return!

8. Organize!

I you think: “I don’t need to be organized on social media venues; there are too many others out there with messages, no one will notice!“, you are very mistaken my dear! I have almost 22,500 followers on Twitter and I know that at least 50 of them are regulars to my tweets. I always think about not disappointing them by organizing my thoughts and my tweets in a non intrusive and fun way!

9. Privatize!

If you need any of your information to be private, all you need to do is just keep it inside of your head! Don’t trust Facebook’s privacy settings or even your personal blog! As long as your private everything is offline, no one will access it. Otherwise, you are in trouble baby!

10. Specialize!

It is great to diversify. What is even greater is to specialize! When using social media, there are thousands, no millions, of others like you out there who will talk the same talk and walk the same walk unless you have something special to add to the table which has the ability to make you stand out!

That’s all folks! :)

Looking forward to reading any additional tips you may have or any comments you have on the tips I represented! Enjoy!

Learn Social Media by Example: Pepsi Refresh Project

M. Bamieh — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:58:37 +0000

Stat Box

Campaign Name: Pepsi Refresh Project
URL: Refresh Project
SM Channels used: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Blog
Appeal: Grants totaling more than $1.3 million Dollars for the 1st round
Target Audience: Younger Audience
Date: Feb/2010
Campaign Duration: 1 year

The Pepsi Refresh Project

With news about Tim TeBow Superbowl ad and CBS censorship filling up the headlines leading up to the Superbowl ad fest, there was another headline that was worth examining: Pepsi, a staple of Superbowl ads for 23 years will not be partaking in the marketing fiasco and instead will invest $20 million dollar in a Social Media campaign.

That’s how much of a major player social media has become in the world of marketing that a monolith such as Pepsi is willing to choose it over a Superbowl spot. Hopefully, the next generation will be able to experience some of the advertising gold like Pepsi vs. Coke commercials which usually premiere at the Superbowl.

What is it about?

The Refresh Project is a cause-related marketing initiative. The website will allow people to submit their suggestions for community projects and vote on which of them will receive the grants. Pepsi plans to give away multiple grants each month, including two $250,000 grants, ten $50,000 grants, and ten $25,000 grants.

People may submit their suggestions using the site, Facebook, or Twitter and the suggestions so far range from “Provide healing, hope & possibility to survivors of violence and abuse” to “Ship Girl Scout Cookies to the Troops Stationed Overseas“.

The first grants will be handed at the end of February 2009 and while it garnered international recognition and some people handed in suggestions for projects from overseas, it is limited to the United States.

Buzz Generation

The fact that Pepsi preferred to pull out of the Superbowl in order to do this generated a considerable amount of buzz where articles were written on the topic in ABC, CNN, NPR, Reuters, AP, Wall Street Journal, and many others.

Still getting into the Superbowl

Website Traffic: +110,000 Unique Visitors a month

Twitter Account: (@pepsi): +21,000 Followers

Facebook Fanpage: (Refresh Everything): +513,000 fans

Why did it do what it did?

It seems that Pepsi believes it’s better to invest $20 million in a year long campaign on social media rather than sink $33 or so in a Superbowl ad. This is certainly a step taken with the belief that mass marketing adverts and entertaining ads that create a buzz around the brand no longer give you the best bang for your buck. Part of the reason might be that people are so used to ignoring adverts that it’s really hard to get their attention and make them listen to what you have to say. In contrast, on social media it’s their personal interest and their own initiative that leads them to seek out the marketing campaign and partake in it.

That might be the main reason why big companies like Pepsi are trying new things to get the attention of people. This means that now social media will be competing with TV advertising bucks on a level playing field, and soon more and more companies will be looking into diversifying their advertising models placing further pressure on TV and print to innovate and evolve.

While this piece of news made the headlines because it was unprecedented, earning Pepsi extra PR points the 4th or 5th big company to take this leap of faith won’t get the same treatment. So it’s your move Coke.

What do you think of the Refresh Project? Will you vote for any of the projects? Let us hear your thoughts.

Success ?/5, Virality 3/5, Innovation 3/5, Feels like an ad 2/5, Brand visibility 4/5