As Sex and the City is out in cinemas at midnight, we thought it would be a good time to see what brand tie-ins are generating the most buzz in social media.
In the US, the brands that dominate the buzz around Sex and the City 2 are primarily HP and Apple, as people discuss Carrie’s Macbook being replaced by an HP in a big product placement deal. Apple and HP are each mentioned in 4% of SATC2 posts.
Carrie Bradshaw made Manolo Blahniks, Macs and pink Cosmopolitans, all synonymous with householdmusts. So to see Skyy Vodka, Mercedes Benz, Moet Champagne, and Swarovski in the lineup of marketing partners fits, just like her Blahniks. But HP? brand-girl.com
Official brands Skyy vodka, Möet & Chandon champagne and Lipton teas, are all receiving relatively low levels of mentions in SATC2 buzz, only being mentioned in a combined 2% of posts. One blogger promotes the vodka in a SATC2 post:
Have a SKYY Vodka pre-movie cocktail with your SATC-crazed crew; Pat Field (the darling stylist behind the girls envelop pushing looks) created the starry nightscape design of the bottle. Cosmo anyone? thefashionistas.org
In the UK, Apple and HP are only appearing in 1.7% of SATC2 posts, while Debenhams, which has a retail partnership with the film, is mentioned in nearly 7% of SATC2 posts. One tweeter has noticed the adverts:
Müller, which has been noticed for its SATC2 adverts, is only mentioned 1.8% of the time, likely due to its perhaps irrelevance to the film, as mentioned in this tweet:
Social media currently has the world wrapped around its little finger – and no one seems to be complaining. Like a hungry plant, it yells ‘feed me’ and we oblige because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to play Farmville with our friends, or tell complete strangers the minutia of our day-to-day lives.
It’s become a staple part of our existence and I’m sure it has caused a drop in clipboard sales; as no longer must we be surveyed whilst trying to buy our groceries. We can now order our shopping online as we tweet our opinions on the leader’s debate.
Dependence on social media has been born from a massive communication shift and is subsequently playing a major role in the soon-to-be-concluded general election. The parties can freely dip into a pool of public opinion to inform their campaign decisions – but are they? Social Media has oft been cited as a pivotal part of Barack Obama’s successful election campaign strategy. We think it’s a powerful tool that all UK parties should be using.
The following 5 graphs represent just how much online public opinion is being shared on the key issues.
23/04/2010 Buzz following the second leader’s debate (src: Brandwatch / Jam)
The first graph represents buzz from the day after the second leader’s debate. Focus on tax and the economy comes as no surprise, with conversation on defense & foreign affairs flared by debate over the war and Trident developments. A broad level of buzz on each subject is expected, as the candidates promote and defend their policies.
It is enlightening to see that parliamentary reform receives little conversation, surprising, as it features quite prominently in the Labour manifesto and has been a topic at the heart of tax and finance for many months now with the MP expenses scandals.
26/04/2010 Cameron is challenged on Education policy (src: Brandwatch / Jam)
The second graph represents the Monday after the debate, showing a very different picture. A student in Southampton challenged Cameron’s education policy, causing a peak in buzz around the subject, and the environment came into focus as the leaders clashed over green credentials. It is interesting to note that buzz surrounding education is sustained going into the next graph, whereas environmental conversation once again subsides. The level of buzz surrounding the environment may be low due to loss of public interest in the subject after the various IPCC blunders, however, this dip in buzz could be the perfect opportunity for one party to create a peak and stand out in the subject.
28/04/2010 ‘Bigotgate’ causes peak in buzz on immigration (src: Brandwatch / Jam)
The third graph, taken from the 28th of April shows the development of online conversation in the lead up to the final leader’s debate. It also reflects significant response to ‘bigotgate’, a catalyst for increased conversation on Labour and immigration. The peak in Conservative buzz on education also seems to cause general conversation surrounding the subject to increase for all parties. Considering the amount of online response to ‘bigotgate’, would it be worth creating a similar situation to create buzz around a subject, as evident in the graph below – taken from the day after the final leader’s debate – ‘bigotgate’ has caused a sustained rise in buzz on immigration. It has already been conjectured that the Conservatives are arranging ‘flash mobs’ to distract Labour voters, and a last minute distraction or revelation may be enough to sway voters, as I’m sure bigotgate already has.
30/04/2010 Buzz following the final leader’s debate (src: Brandwatch / Jam)
These figures aren’t a representation of popularity or effectiveness of communication; they merely give an indication of the volume of public opinion surrounding the parties and policies in the social media space. They also indicate how effective social media monitoring can be in following political progress and how it could be used to give parties an idea of where their conversation is focused.
However, focusing on a particular media platform can produce a very different graph. Comparing Twitter and forum buzz in isolation in the same period 23rd of April produced very different results:
23/04/2010 Buzz following second leader’s debate (src: Twitter / Jam)
23/04/2010 Forum only buzz following second leader’s debate (src: Brandwatch / Jam)
On Twitter, Labour can be seen to dominate buzz on the economy with Conservatives leading on education whereas on forums there is less focus on the environment and heavier Conservative focus on the economy and taxes. It may be interesting to note that the conditions of Twitter, allowing only posts of 140 characters or less, deter the elaborate discussion that forums provide. Forum posts are more likely to discuss all parties, where Twitter promotes a more focused response. With the formatting, Twitter is perfect for exploring direct and quick opinions; people are more likely to rant on Twitter, in juxtaposition to forums, where people are more inclined to rehearse their post.
Though online buzz alone cannot predict who the new PM will be, it can give a good idea of what people are talking about and where parties should focus their efforts.
If you read my previous post from last week you might be aware that I am not a big fan of Google’s new release, Google Buzz. Honestly, I feel that the release of the iPad is equally ridiculous. They have both created products for non-existing markets. The market Google Buzz operates in is already saturated, and Apple is offering a product that sits in-between two product categories (mobile and laptop) without any of the benefits! Both Google Buzz and the iPad are considered to be the two giants’ major releases for Q1 2010, and have therefore generated a lot of discussion. However, they have also receive a lot of critique (not just from me) among all praise.
I want to see which one is considered to be the bigger failure? Or am I wrong? Are they both products that will revolutionise respective industry? Please answer the poll, and if you consider me to be wrong, please tell me why in the comments field!
(This post and poll represents my own opinions and thoughts, and not those of Jam)
As all you Gmail users probably are aware, this morning Google launched a new leap into the Social Media space. They call it Google Buzz, and it works very similarly to Facebook’s “What’s on your mind?” sharing functionality:
You are able to share thoughts, links, photos, videos, RSS feeds etc. What sets it apart from Facebook, aside from one obvious thing, is that you are able to pull in content from your social networks or utilities such as Picasa, flickr, Google Reader and Twitter. This is a great functionality that facebook is lacking, and will probably do so due to equal lack of collaboration partners. All this is done straight through your Gmail account and is shared to your Gmail contacts. You are able to follow peoples’ Buzz feeds, or bring in random content from all your contacts.
Of course this has taken Twitter by storm (around 3,189 tweets over the last 6 minutes on ‘Google Buzz”) , and is the second highest ranking topic at the moment. However, even though it holds high share of buzz, it is not really received well:
According to me the biggest difference between Buzz and Facebook is also why I don’t think it will revolutionise the Social Media world: Gmail is not the forum where you want to share thoughts, party pictures or funny videos to everyone. My contacts in Gmail differ quite a lot from my friends in Facebook. Even Twitter gets around this problem due to a level of anonymity within the micro blog. As I have used my Gmail account for professional correspondence, I run the risk of sharing my content to unintended recipients.
Even though it could be considered a nice effort by Google to try to break into even another space, I don’t think they will succeed. I use my Gmail account for sending emails, for which it is great, but that’s what I will continue to do, nothing more. I’m not saying that Google hasn’t succeeded before in branching out, but this time they are moving in the wrong direction.
But an even more important question, what happened to Google Wave? I haven’t heard anything about it over the last months. This email system that was going to revolutionise the email world, did it flop?
As we saw last weekend, buzz isn’t enough to predict the winner – there’s something good going for each of the contestants, so which one is the best prediction?
Olly Murs has had the most buzz since 10 October and during the week leading up to this weekend’s final.
Source: Brandwatch
Stacey Solomon has the most fans on Facebook.
Source: Sum of Facebook pages with 100 or more fans
Joe is winning in the polls.
Forums on the Daily Mail, Digital Spy, Entertainment.stv.tv, PopSugar, StudentRoom and UnRealityTV forums all agree that Joe will win.
StudentRoom forums
Entertainment.stv.tv
DigitalSpy forums
So what’s the best predictor of who will win?
Buzz gave some indication of who would be voted off earlier on, but now that it’s down to the last three, buzz isn’t reliable enough. Stacey has a lot of Facebook fans, but it could just be her personality giving her fans. Polls are the closest to the actual vote, so I’m willing to bet that Joe will win this weekend.
After last night’s stunning X Factor performances, it’s time to make some predictions for tonight – based on what everyone is saying online.
(Click to see a larger image).
Over time, Danyl Johnson has had consistent buzz, with a higher than average number of mentions. Of the remaining five, Joe McElderry has had the least amount of buzz.
I’ll make a bold prediction: I think we’ll see Joe McElderry or Lloyd Daniels go home tonight on X Factor. If I’m wrong, I’ll try again.
During September, 22,781 online conversations circled around one major topic: fashion. This autumn’s major fashion events displaying collections for spring and summer 2010 have now ended.
When people are talking about fashion week, the main forum used is Twitter with 25% of all the conversation. Probably not all that surprising, but certainly highlighting Twitter’s integration with mobile handsets has now made it easier than ever to let the world know about the latest ‘must have’. What is also interesting to notice is that the major social media platforms are the main medium for discussion and not the dedicated fashion forums. That blogs hold 57% of the mentions, compared to forums with 9%, shows that, as with the designers themselves, fashion bloggers want their own stage, rather than sharing it with others.
The Graph to show where Fashion conversations are happening online. Twitter is considered a Micro blog, hence placed under the category ‘Blogs’. Source: Brandwatch
However, when people are willing to listen they want to hear from the experts and fashion brands need to be there. Gucci is one of the major brands that have understood this and their Facebook page has yielded over 450K fans to date. Marc Jacobs on the other hand, who is not engaging with the fans on Facebook, but is only hosting a fan page, has only 150K fans. Gucci consequently is the most mentioned fashion brand relating to the recent fashion weeks, and has three times as many mentions as Marc Jacobs. – perhaps not just a co-incidence.
So learnings for fashion marketers, head to the next event with your iPhone in one hand and your influential blogger in the other.
Since we twittered about it yesterday I’ve been playing with the rather sinisterly titled We are hunted website which is utilising buzz to create a chart of the hottest new artists and songs. In their words they “aggregate social networks, forums, music blogs, Torrents, P2P Networks and Twitter to develop a daily chart of the 99 most popular songs online”. A great concept and really well excuted as the site looks really good and appears to have some science behind it, the geek in me has taken them on their offer to find out more about how it all works.
Their is certainly a great variety of music related sites and applications out there nowadays. For new and possibly unsigned acts their’s Myspace and Bebo, for finding music to fit your specific taste their is Last.fm, for on demand music their is Spotify and now to find out the music with the most buzz on a particular day, week or month then wearehaunted.com is the site to go to.
