You have never seen any posts made by me in this blog before, as I never had the opportunity. Arriving in London from Stockholm, Sweden and joining the Jam team three days ago I am the greenhorn of the gang. In a few days (weeks?) however, I will hopefully feel right as rain at the far end of the row of Social Media planning geniuses. If you want to know me a bit better, here is a Spotify playlist hastily put together. Its long, its weird…but its me.
There is a lot of change going on around me at the moment. First and foremost, I have once again left my hometown for a new city, a quite different one I might add (except for the weather, the weather in London is almost as bad as in Stockholm). But there are also massive changes going on in marketing industry, of which we are working in. In HP’s newest transformation video about how digital platforms are reshaping communication it is stated that by 2010, 70% of the online content will be created not by corporations but by individuals. This means that the corporations are losing their power and must start listening to their customers and start rethinking their communication. I do not think the old ways have to go completely, not all communication should go online. However, traditional messages has to be tweaked and delivered to where the audience wants to listen to it. I am still waiting for an amazing campaign where online and offline will go hand in hand in perfect synergy. The old must become integrated with the new:
Jam are big fans of the breakthrough act in music consumption Spotify. This blogger is obviously a fan too having come up with a lovely way to share his music collection. Having burnt all my CD’s during the rise of the MiniDisc sadly this is not an option for me.
The ad is for the blog, where you can find Spotify playlists from bloggers and presenters, whilst the microsite links to a MySpace page, Flickr group, Facebook Cause and Twitter account. You can also sign up to the safe sex pledge; pledgers are then totalled up and global regions compared.
It’s all quite interesting, and good to see brands make use of different channels, but the pledge numbers are quite disappointing. Maybe it’s early days, or maybe spreading the brand message across several channels dilutes it. A concerted effort in one network may be a better approach.
Here in the Jam team we are a big fan of Spotify, sticking it on when we have to crack on with a presentation or comparing music tastes in the Jam Sounclashs. On first using it we were impressed but we didn’t initially see the social media aspect. However the simple sharing functionality is genius, so simple you can share it anywhere, email, messenger, blog or even create a whole site dedicated to sharing playlists, and that is exactly what people are doing.
Some of our favorites are ShareMyPlaylists, SpotyShare and Listiply (Pansient League have reviewed the top 10), they are great for looking for something new to listen to or sharing your own playlists. Another good site for anyone who is missing Top Of The Pops is Topsify where you can get the most up to date charts. There is even now a Facebook app called Mixifier for sharing playlists.
We have been discussing how in some ways Spotify is similar to Twitter. They are both sticking to what they are good at and allowing people to build the tools to use them in the way they want, whether that be tools to help you tweet, analyze trends or share and find new music.
This all combined is in our opinion bringing back the mix tape culture of my youth, just with less use of a pencil to wind in miles of screwed up tape.
