After feeling very left out by seeing tons of other blogs post their predictions for 2010, I decided to do my own and why not.
Here are some of my thoughts for the next 12 months.
Enjoy and discuss.
Check out this great report by the guys at global digital agency Razorfish.
It’s filled with stats (sources included), metrics and fanastic findings about consumers behaviour and marketing in the social media revolution. This is one of the most interesting presentations I’ve read in a long time, definitely recommend you read it.
A condensed and full version below:
Condensed Report – Key Findings
Sometimes it’s a fine line between appearing innovative and just plain pissing people off..
A couple of weeks ago, Ikea managed to get tons of praise for their latest Facebook campaign which allowed users to win furniture by tagging their name onto the desired item. Westfield Australia however have done just the opposite, they’ve managed to annoy users enough to push them into creating their hate groups related to the promotion. That’s pretty special.
Westfield created a Facebook application to promote its $10,000 gift card prize draw. The application updates the user’s status with a Westfield branded message “All I Want for Christmas is a Westfield Gift Card“, with some extra copy thrown in stating the user has now gone into the prize draw to win the card. This was a viral hit straight away.
Over 369,000 Facebook users have installed the application and updated their status in just 5 days, great news right? Yes of course, just 10k to get 369,000 people engaging with your brand sounds like a steal…but the promotion has attracted a large amount of backlash from other users.
As you can imagine 369,000+ people updating their status in a country with 6.5 million users is bound to spam quite a few news feeds. What is the natural course of action for all these angry people? Yep, create and join a Facebook group.
There are now a total of 25+ anti-Westfield Gift Card groups, which is amazing considering the length of time this has been running. The largest group called ”If All You Want For Christmas Is A Westfield Gift Card, I Don’t Want To Know” now has over 4000 members but not all group names are that lovely, here are my favourites…
It’s not often you see a bank being innovative, that’s why this initiative from First Direct (http://www.live.firstdirect.com) caught my eye.
First Direct is part of the banking giant HSBC and offers online and telephone services in the UK with no actual branches. Their strapline is ‘banking’s better in black and white’ with the idea that First Direct is “honest, open and transparent” which ties in nicely with this campaign.
First Direct Live measures feedback from customers across the web, as well as inviting them to comment directly on the site. The page features Flash widgets that show sentiments such as positive and negative words being used about First Direct on websites such as Review Centre, Dooyoo and Ciao. However it looks to me as these three sites could be the extent of it’s external web sourced comments as First Direct doesn’t list where the information comes from, which is utterly lame considering this is all about being ‘transparent’.
There’s even sharing options in case you want to show all your Facebook chums how well First Direct is doing with customer feedback!…
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The only way this could benefit anyone is if you wanted all your friends to flock to the ‘hide’ button next to your newsfeed updates so that they never see any more from you again.
According to this blog, “It works by taking everything that’s said about us online, from over 8 million forums, blogs and social media sites, and then feeding it, live onto our website for all to see”. However out of those 8 million sites (are there really that many?), I can only see Review Centre, Dooyoo and Ciao mentioned. Read More
I’ve never owned a 4×4 before but I can imagine the temptation to drive around like your in a monster truck is huge. One woman in Canada could no longer fight the urge and decided to drive over a few cars with her BMW in a Ontario gym parking lot.
Security cameras caught the whole thing on tape and before you know it, the video has 1.7 million views on YouTube. Check out the video:
Not all flash mobs are cute little T-Mobile get togethers at Liverpool Street Station, oh no, they can sometimes be used for organising a mass robbery.
Definition of flash mob:
The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.
Check out the video below where 60 high school students rushed a grocery store. Pretty crazy scenes.
This is no where near as good as the flash mob decoy set up by a bank robber to fool a crowd of unsuspecting, identically-dressed, accomplices off Craigslist. Awesome.
History of flash mobs here.
Everybody loves these “If Facebook were a country, it would be bigger than Brazil” (yeah but with about the Gross National Product of Manchester) type of videos with loads of stats. Here’s some of the better ones.
Back in July I wrote about the battering Vodafone received on their Free Mobile Access to Facebook fan page by the sites users. Now it seems to be Honda’s turn.
Last week, Honda released photos of their new vehicle, the Accord Crosstour. So just like any company with an Internet connection they decided to set up a Facebook Fan Page to show all those Honda lovers whats in store.
Sadly the majority of the 6,300 fans could only manage to find new and creative ways to put down the car including “Being able to see this car with my own eyes really makes me jealous of Stevie Wonder” Ouch! Read More
‘Social Media‘ is the buzz word right now across brands, agencies and advertising in general. They all want a piece of the action, where ever the consumers go in their millions, brands are never far behind.
Sites like Facebook and Twitter are on the hit list for many companies, it allows interaction between consumers and brands on a more personal level. You can now comment on products you like, share them with friends and in many cases get responses to your questions and feedback. All this is great of course if your brand is loved by everyone but what happens when it’s not…?
If you’ve been on Facebook recently you have probably seen the Vodafone event invite in the sidebar as part of their new campaign.
Vodafone have launched a promotion giving all customers free Facebook access on their mobiles for one week. To support the launch Vodafone have created a fan page allowing Facebook users to join events, get updates, post forum and wall comments.
Now this is the part where it gets particularly interesting as the amount of fans has reached over 50k with over 77k joining the Facebook event Vodafone have started for this.
That’s a pretty good turn out but suddenly Vodafone have enabled all of these people to have a voice about the brand. Although (very) few are complimentary, the majority seem to either have something negative to say about Vodafone or pointing to superior competitor deals in the market – which I think is worse.
You can delete a comment saying ‘Vodafone is shit’ but what do you do if someone says there are much better deals on Orange, Three and O2? Read More
How One Mobile Developer Created Its Own Local Ad Network To Boost Fill Rates 
![Review Centre](<a href="http://mobileinc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/firstdirect2.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2568" title="firstdirect_live" src=){kind=link}
