Follow Jam at the Social Media World Forum

Today the Social Media World Forum kicked off at the Olympia in London:

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you there!

Lomography, Gowalla and SXSW

Lomography (the people who bring you cameras like the LC-A+ and Diana+) are teaming up with Gowalla (a geo service who bring you wonderful Twitter updates like “Mike is at the station”…) for this year’s South by South West Festival.

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

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

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

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

Typography Friday at Jam

As well as indulging in “Pimp My Hyde” at lunchtime (decking Tom out in ridiculous clothing for the afternoon), we’ve been taking part in typography Friday this afternoon.

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

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

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

Old Spice low-fi viral homage

We’ve been discussing what makes a good viral of late. It would seem that (obviously) a key factor is relevancy – make a video of stuff that people are watching right now and you’re more likely to be swept up in a nice little meme.

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

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

The original:

A very funny homage: