Greenpeace, known for its outspoken criticism of corporate giants destroying the planet, harnessed the power of social media for its campaign against Nestle’s use of rainforest-destroying palm oil in their Kit Kat bars. A gory parody ad for said Kit Kat was created by Greenpeace and posted on YouTube, and despite Nestle’s request for it to be removed, soon went viral, getting over 1.5 million views.
Nestle felt the brunt of public anger on its official Facebook page, where ‘fans’ berated the brand for contributing to the destruction of the rainforest and the subsequent effect on the orang-utans living there.
As a result of the massive public outcry, delivered primarily through social media, Nestle promised to implement a comprehensive ‘zero deforestation’ plan. So, maybe step by step, the power of social media and the way it can be used to put pressure on corporations can help to save the world.
When we decide to book a break away to a new destination we look to friends, family and most importantly online reviews to help make our decision. The Canadian Tourism Commission has made full use of this behaviour to help create a new campaign to encourage American citizens to consider Canada as a holiday destination.
Those visiting Canada love to share their experiences in Twitter by uploading videos, photos, comments etc. All this great content has been used to launch live interactive street murals, that inspire Americans on their daily travels to book a Canadian trip. These murals cleverly pull content from Twitter to display real-time updates from and about Canada. Passers by can interact with the content on the screens by flicking through live tweets and be inspired by all the great things there is to do in Canada. I love how digital and Twitter have been cleverly combined to take what’s happening online into the real world to transform an American city landscape.
I’ve never been to Canada, and never really thought about visiting. I feel the main reason for this is that I’ve not heard of anything interesting to do there. However, if I walked down a street and passed a giant interactive Twitter mural containing hits and tips I would definitely be inspired into booking a trip.
Following the buzz generated by Apple’s iPhone 4 Antennagate scandal, we were tasked by Samsung to quickly respond and get people talking about the Galaxy S.
Watch our Case Study below to find out what we did.
So, you’re a Facebook savvy individual and you know your ReTweets from your @replies. You’ve checked into Google HQ on Foursquare via your 3G enabled company-expensed iPad. Because of this important business acumen you’ve been tasked with defining a social media strategy for your company. Great!
But like many of us surrounded with so many dizzying social media opportunities and our unfathomably large brains looming above our shoulders, perhaps you still unsure of where to start?
Never fear, things are simple really. Just apply the age old rules of courtship and you’ll be well on your way.
Look smart – first impressions make a big difference in the dating world, but they also apply to your web profile. Keep it clean, keep it smart and keep it relevant.
Don’t boast – yes, we know you have lots of great products/deals/opinions and you want to share them with your fans, but don’t appear too needy. Users nor lovers want to hear about how wonderful you are every update so give them a break. Let them talk about themselves too.
Ask permission – be chivalrous to your date and you should do the same to your fans and followers. Use their data wisely; don’t give their vital statistics out to all and sundry.
Be yourself – you can’t hide behind your Facebook profile, be yourself, be honest. If someone wants to slag you off, deal with it calmly.
Be faithful – they have ‘fanned’ you, you have their commitment, don’t neglect your early adopters when you are off in search of new and more attractive friends. Be generous and offer value in return.
What did we miss? Comment below with your tips on going-steady with social media
IKEA has a dream. And as it turns out, that dream is my dream too – Self-cleaning kitchen counters no less!!
According to a recent study, our collective dream of a future kitchen will be able to do all sorts of freaky and highly advanced things like reading our moods and suggesting recipes. It’s not surprising that people want their future kitchen to do all the work for them too. No doubt we’ll be just as lazy, if not more so in the future.
IKEA’s also concerned about environmental issues, so maybe they can come up with a way to turn food scraps into the energy that powers the retractable shelves – wouldn’t that be cool?
Apparently the dream of a self-cleaning kitchen is 30 years away from a reality though, which is way too long in my opinion. By the time I get my 3D food printer and holographic display on the oven, I could have grown children. Or even grandchildren.
I love it anyway though, and here are some things that would make me love it more:
A refrigerator that will crowd-source what goes in it.
A gizmo to alert me when I’ve had too much cake.
A way for the kitchen to make me a romantic dinner (including candles and roses) all on it’s own.
Clever folks from Harvard have tracked 300 million tweets over a 3 year period to find out the mood of the USA during various hours throughout the day. Excluding the various disparities between the mornings and evening of different states (and all the other various inferences they must have made), this is an interesting study into the data driven world we now live in.
Don’t be put off by one of their conclusions – people are happier on weekends (space pen vs. pencil, anyone?).
The more we can record about our daily lives, the more we can find out about ourselves. And the better decisions we can make. The website Daytum is another visual example of how we could capture this information.
Have a look at this interesting article from the NY Times for more about the data driven life here
It’ll come as no surprise to hear that social media has drastically changed the way people gain fame and gain income. Aside from the thousands of middle aged twitter users offering up their ‘wealth maximising e-book‘, entrepreneurial creative types are harnessing their video cameras and taking to YouTube to shift some units.
Increasingly YouTube is being used as the platform to launch viral songs that tap into a pre-existing meme. A video about double rainbows has since generated over 9m views and dozens of musical remixes. A tripped out post-dentistry kid has been mashed up to a breakbeat dynamo.
More often than not, these remix tracks are made by random coat-tail-riders eager to harness the meme, appear in the YouTube suggestions, get loads of views, revenue share by allowing ads next to their videos and make a buck.
Rare is the talent that can come up with the meme zeitgeist, remix it something that’s bloody funny and sell off the back of it.
The darlings of Sloane square, and creators of the YouTube video ‘gap yah’ Unexpected items are back with a trance remix of their hit clip, also available on iTunes.
I watched it, and then I, like, chundered EVERYWHERE!
“Parkour…for those who can’t be arsed”. So says the opening statement on the lying down game’s Facebook page which boasts nearly 100,000 members. The lying down game has been going on for a while, but has only just started to be noticed by the wider community. To play, you need to have your hands flat against your sides and your toes pointing at the ground; “As if you were standing, but vertically challenged. FACE DOWN!!!”
During the recent World Cup, the game got some very good publicity from John Terry having a go during one of England’s matches. Playing the game can be very addictive and I regularly see the same person playing the game in the area where I live.
Due to curiosity, I tried the game myself, and I can easily say that it was the most fun I have had in a long time. So my advice would be to try it yourself and to get your friends playing as well.
Harry Henderson joined Jam for a few days work experience – and penned this post.
I’ve never liked spam. Not even as a kid, it was flaccid and tasteless and I just couldn’t see the point of it.
Well that hasn’t changed, and as progress would have it, I’m jibing at its electronic namesake now…
Thanks to a filter built like Cerberus, I don’t get too much of it on email or Twitter, but I get slammed with it at home on the landline.
Most of this telespam is pre-recorded messages for kitchens/broadband/gas.. or even worse – 20 seconds of silence stacking up on the answer machine. (I’m beginning to feel a little sorry for the answer machine and have taken to putting my own messages on it, just so it hears a real voice once in a while.)
Anyway, spam on the phone is just really annoying. And I think it could get a lot more intense for everyone with the growth of geo-location services.
Right now, innovative opt-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla are relatively small, but they’re growing rapidly (Foursquare has grown to 2m users globally in under two years). With Facebook set to launch geo–location services imminently, a lot more consumers are going to be providing and receiving updates about where they, and their fellow humans are.
Brands of course are getting in on the action, with some big names likes Dominos, Debenhams and Starbucks running campaigns on Foursquare to good effect by rewarding loyal early-adopting consumers. McDonalds are also rumored to be one the first brands to trial Facebook’s service.
This emerging area offers big opportunities for brands to stand out on the high street and connect with consumers in what’s been dubbed the ‘last six feet’. It will also provide brand owners with invaluable data about who visits, when and where.
With location based ad spend predicted to grow to $4.1bn annually within five years, there’s a real danger consumers are going to be spammed by unscrupulous or naive companies who’ll fail to respect consumers privacy in an effort to get their attention.
So here’s the brief; get yourself a smart, sharp and thoroughly streetwise approach and you’ll find yourself making hay, not spam, in a hot new marketing channel.
You’ve got to hand it to Google, they definitely don’t rest on their laurels. They’ve given us google maps, streetview, location-sensitive mobile information, a free email system and access to a ludicrously fast search engine. All for free.
YouTube has clearly been woven into the same cloth since it joined the Google mothership, being innovative through streaming live concerts and creating a virtual orchestras.
They haven’t stopped there, the latest project is called ‘Life in A Day‘ and naturally, it’s quite ambitious.
“Life In A Day is a historic global experiment to create the world’s largest user-generated feature film: a documentary, shot in a single day, by you. On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a glimpse of your life on camera. The most compelling and distinctive footage will be edited into an experimental documentary film, executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald.”
Pretty cool huh. Will be very interesting to see what the final product is like, and what proportion of submissions feature kittens or nudity. I feel sorry for whoever has to sort through the rushes…
