Top 2012 Viral Campaigns

1. Kony 2012 - Invisible Children

This holiday season, give the best gift of all - the gift of coming home. A recent study found that 89% of former LRA combatants said "Come Home" messaging was what motivated them to escape and return to their families and communities.

2.  Stratos - Red Bull 

The mission, Red Bull Stratos, will take renowned athlete Felix Baumgartner to at least 120,000 feet above the earth, to the very edge of Space.From there, he will attempt a stratospheric free fall jump - the longest in the history of man - and hopefully will become the first human to break the speed of sound with his own body.

3.  Angry Birds Space - Rovio

The FIRST ever game announcement and gameplay footage from space: http://angrybirds.com/space. Brought to you by NASA and Don Pettit from the ISS.

4.  Galaxy S III - Samsung

Intuitive, innovative, and stylish, the Galaxy S III is The Next Big Thing—and it's already here

5. The Beauty Inside - Toshiba

 The Beauty Inside is an interactive social film, presented by Intel and Toshiba, directed by Drake Doremus, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Topher Grace, and all of YOU. It's Hollywood's first film that gives the audience a chance to play the lead role.

6.  Just my Shell - M&M'S

And now, a milestone in M&M's history - the debut of Ms. Brown! Here you'll get to see exactly why she hadn't revealed herself to the public in years.

7.  Proud Sponsors of Moms 2012 - P&G

8.  Your Daily dose of Drama - TNT 

To launch the high quality TV channel TNT in Belgium we placed a big red push button on an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town. A sign with the text "Push to add drama" invited people to use the button. And then we waited...

9.  LeBron's Day - Samsung

When LeBron James was choosing his next smartphone, he wanted something unique—something that would turn heads but could also make day-to-day tasks effortless. Something that had all the functional capabilities of a smartphone and all the creative elements of a tablet. With its fine-tuned S Pen, enhanced multitasking functions, and beautiful 5.5" Super Amoled screen, the Galaxy Note II was the Best of Both.

10. Angry Birds Star Wars -  Rovio

On November 8, the Angry Birds and Star Wars universes will collide, in our best game to date. http://angrybirds.com/starwars
It doesn't stop there though, we'll have a whole host of toys, animations and other Angry Birds Star Wars goodness to enjoy! So, watch the video a few times, follow ourhttp://angrybirds.tumblr.com page and check back *every* day - this is just the beginning. 
May the birds be with you

Why Facebook's New Metrics are A Big Plus for Brands

With more and more changes being announced by Facebook with what seems like every passing week at the moment, it's easy to get lost trying to keep track of what this all means for your brand's page. In the past, we have seen changes to Facebook Pages come and go - profile layouts, image use, application tab changes - however, never have there been so many significant changes announced in such a short space of time before. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the latest updates announced during and since the f8 conference represent the biggest evolution of Facebook to date. As a result, many page admins, social media agencies and brands are all currently running around trying to find out not only what this all means, but what is coming next. I would suspect there are a large number of brands out there that have spent countless hours and resource creating, tweaking and optimising their brand pages, content and online PR campaigns, only to now be wondering whether the latest changes will see them right back where they started all over again. But then hype has always been a wonderful thing.

The latest changes announced earlier this week come as part of a new update to Facebook's Insight tools for pages and include more than a hint at a shift in emphasis now much more weighted towards content sharing and engagement, as opposed to fan numbers and page 'Likes' - something that we saw a brief insight into with the recent 'view share' function. Surprisingly, up until now there hasn't really been a clear way for brands to see just how far reaching their pages and content are in the way that the latest features allow. If anything, the latest updates actually present brands with a much better measurement of true engagement, something that many page admins have been requesting for a long time. In light of this, below is a quick overview of the latest Facebook Insights changes and the ways in which they represent a step in the right direction for brands and PR agencies alike. 

 

People Talking About - The new 'People Talking About' feature has been put into place as an additional metric for admins and users to be able to see not just how many people are fans of a brand page, but how much engagement and conversation the page has. By looking at user-initiated activities for a page such as 'Likes', posts, comments, shares, polls, photo-tagging, mentions and check-ins, the 'People Talking About' function creates an overall snapshot for how much interaction and engagement a particular page has. Interestingly, the new feature will not just sit inside Facebook Insights but will be publicly displayed as a number on every brand page, sitting below the total number of fans for all to see. This truly is a fantastic addition for brands to take advantage of and yet another hint towards the importance of creating consistent levels of engagement. Essentially, it leans more towards favouring those pages that strive to create rich and interactive content on their pages that people want to talk about and share, as opposed to those that simply rely on high fan numbers and marketing-esque product posts. It makes it more about conversation and dialogue between fans and brands. In many ways, it is a mark of just how 'social' a brand's page is. As a result, brands will be able to use this metric to not only better measure the engagement of their content, but to use high levels of engagement as a means to attract more fans and increase engagement. For example, if a user lands on a page with a high level of engagement, they would assume that there is a high level of engagement because the content is appealing, because there is conversation and buzz happening around the page. And that is something that previously wasn't nearly as visible.

 

Friends of Fans - Like its name suggests, 'Friends of Fans' represents the number of friends the fans of your page have. So in essence this creates a 'potential audience' figure for brands as to the total reach that any posts shared by fans could have. This is very similar to tracking @replies and retweets on Twitter, in that brands are able to get a snapshot of just how much word-of-mouth can be achieved via their current fans and followers. In many ways, a six degrees of separation-type measurement of how many people your content could 'socialise-with' through your current audience. Where the 'People Talking About' function represents how 'social' a brand's content is with regards to how many people have engaged and interacted with the content, 'Friends of Fans' is more an indicator of the potential reach of how much a page's content could travel to socialise with an extended audience. Again, another incredibly useful insight for brands to be able to see, enabling page admins to look beyond their fans to examine just how far spread their content and brand messages can go. 

 

Weekly Total Reach - With 'Friends of Fans' looking at the potential audience, the new 'Weekly Total Reach' metric highlights actual audience, reflecting how many people have posted about your page, mentioned or referenced your page and how much viral activity your posts and pages have had. Where previously locating this level of tracking was not so easy, 'Weekly Total Reach' really does provide brands with a additional optimisation to see what types of posts are working and which have been far reaching - be it videos, photos, polls, competitions or new product posts. Again metrics that lean more towards bringing content, engagement and conversation to the forefront, as opposed to simply targeting fan acquisition and page 'Likes'. And whilst fan acquisition is indeed important - it will always be the content, interactions and dialogue that will keep fans on your page. 

 

With the latest updates all hinting at easier content management, deeper insights into the performance and reach of content, and engagement-foucused metrics, it's hard to think that the recent changes to Facebook Insights are anything but a good thing. Ultimately, changes that will influence brands to put further emphasis on creating rich and engaging content as well as provide them with a better means to monitor, track and tweak the overall effectiveness of their content week-by-week.

 

Good news all round then for page admins and brands - that is until the next Google+ updates change the way we use social media forever... but then hype is a wonderful thing.

(via socialmediatoday)

"My Blackberry Is Not Working!"

 "A series of failures in Research In Motion's private network has disrupted BlackBerry service to millions of customers across four continents." - Reuters

" (...) The outages are just another headache for RIM, which is losing ground in the corporate email market it once took for granted as employees increasingly push to use their personal devices, typically Apple's iPhones and iPads, and to a lesser extent devices using Google's Android software, in the workplace. (...)"

" (...)It is also facing calls from some investors for a break-up, sale or change of management following recent dismal results and a lackluster reception of its PlayBook tablet computer, designed to challenge Apple's iPad. (...)"

full article

Blackberry is a step to becoming a B2B BULL brand!

Branding is the soul of a product and Marketing the body, a weak body produces lost souls.

Will Blackberry be a addiction to the immense brand graveyard?! - Gotta be quick to react.

Top Brands 2011 - BrandZ/Interbrand

Don't try, just be it.

A brand marketeer has to known is environment, and what better way to know the brand "habitat" by reading the best reports.

After reading it you will get a general idea about what's going on the brand world, and use it in your favor by predicting the next moves in the brand world - don't forget to go to the streets and observe what people are doing. You can use that knowledge to get there first than the competition (hard step), or you can find a "shortcut", do something completely disruptive - Think Differently and be disruptive. After all you have a brand to be different from the others - don't try to be original, BE ORIGINAL.     

"Each year as we value the world’s top 100 brands, a few emerge as clear standouts. Brands that have used creativity and innovation to enable us to do things we never thought possible, and cause us to feel a spark of excitement and joy. These brands have, very literally, changed the world." - Interbrand

click here to read

"The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands isthe most comprehensive annual ranking of brand value.

Developed by Millward Brown Optimor, the ranking analyzes the world’s leading brands and the

economic and competitive dynamics that influence value fluctuations.

 (...)It’s the only ranking grounded in both quantitative consumer research and in-depth financial analysis." - BrandZ.

click here to read

"Steve Jobs Was Digital Maverick but Marketing Traditionalist"

"Steve Jobs Was Digital Maverick but Marketing Traditionalist", this is the title of the article published on the AD Digital written by Michael Learmonth 

He was marketing traditionalist in communications tools, but he already knew the importance of building a strong brand. 

I leave you with some relevant excerpts of the article about the marketing strategy process of Steve Jobs:  

«At a time when marketers obsess over the virtues of targeting, "likes," dashboards, platforms of all stripes and sophisticated social-media-monitoring schemes, Mr. Jobs kept it simple: tell the story of how an amazing product can change your life in the best environment possible.»

 

«Mr. Jobs was involved in every aspect of the marketing, down to the copy on TV ads, and didn't hesitate to kill a campaign that didn't meet his standards. Everyone at TBWA's Media Arts Lab, the agency set up to serve Apple, knew that the bar to meet was set by Mr. Jobs himself and articulated at weekly meetings on creative and strategy. "He's the person who would see a technology and say, "This is what it can give a real person in the world,'" Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told the BBC. "I would say marketing was his greatest strength." »

«Allen Olivo, who spent two stints as a marketer at Apple, and now teaches marketing at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business: "Steve not only liked advertising, he understood the value of advertising as part of building a brand, selling products and creating an entire customer experience.
There's a widely held trope in the tech community -- strong even among Mr. Jobs' disciples -- that the product is the marketing. Or as venture capitalist Fred Wilson once wrote, "marketing is what you do when your product or service sucks."
But Mr. Jobs didn't see it that way. While Apple's seductive products and luminous storefronts are core elements of its brand, Mr. Jobs saw the advertising as inextricable from the product. That's because the product wasn't an iMac, iPod or iPhone, it was the brand itself and how a well-designed product -- any product -- can make your life better.»

«Mr. Jobs' complete control over the message also flies in the face of current marketing dogma that the consumers themselves should tell the brand story through actions on Facebook or conversation on Twitter. Apple barely has a presence on either platform. Apple just recently set up a YouTube channel, but that, too was to better control the brand experience. Comments on Apple videos are always turned off.»

full article