Photography: russelldavies
Twitter’s launch of @earlybird at the beginning of July, an official timeline channeling discounts to followers, suggests that the company sees a future in tweet-delivered marketing offers. Despite the name of their new timeline though, the company’s a bit late. Businesses have long been using their Twitter accounts to do more than build a community, broadcast their brand and deal with customer relations. They’re also selling their goods with mini discount coupons. So what makes for an effective Twitter-based offer?
The format is important. In 140 characters, you’re not going to have a lot of space to deal with objects, build desire or even write headlines, the key ingredients of successful copywriting. One @earlybird tweet reveals just about all that can be squeezed into a sales tweet: Read the rest…
The Old Spice ads, starring former NFL wide receiver Isaiah Mustafa as The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, might just have been the most popular viral ad campaign ever created. The original ad has picked up over 15 million views on YouTube, the follow-up just over 11 million, and according to Visible Measures, a firm that tracks the popularity of online video, the real-time responses generated almost 6 million views in 24 hours, beating even President Obama’s victory speech, President Bush’s shoe-dodging, and Susan Boyle’s singing. The staff at ad agency Wieden + Kennedy have set a standard and a model that other social media marketers — large and small — will try to follow. Most will come up short, but the ads contain a number of key ingredients that can be incorporated into even the most budget-conscious of viral ads.
That might not be apparent in the original ad which began with Isaiah standing in a bathroom, showed him on a boat and ended with him sitting on a horse, all apparently in one take. In an interview, Craig Allen and Eric Kallman of Wieden + Kennedy, explain how that ad took three days to shoot. The bathroom was placed on a set and hoisted away by a crane, and a specially-constructed dolly moved Isaiah invisibly from the ship onto the horse as he talked to the camera. CGI was only used to turn a shell into diamonds and the diamonds into a bottle of Old Spice.
Seven Minutes for Every Video
Photography: Markus Merz
Personal branding isn’t new. It’s been around the since the days of P.T. Barnum, since Buffalo Bill turned himself into a one-man sideshow, since Walt Disney decided to name the studio after himself, and it’s been a staple part of marketing Hollywood stars for as long as there have been movies. The idea that personal branding can be applied to anyone, that it’s possible — and essential — for even a corporate drone to create a self-image and market it, is new. That idea has only been around for as long as social media has made it possible for individuals to create personal profiles on websites and social media platforms, and put them in front of anyone they can bring to see them. Dozens of writers now have written books explaining how a personal brand can help to win jobs and build careers, as well as sell products and help entrepreneurs. But while the techniques and strategies of turning a life into a brand are clear, it’s much harder to know where to place the boundaries. What are the limits of personal branding, and how do you know when you’ve crossed them?
To some extent, the answer is personal. Different individuals will have different sensitivities to sharing aspects of their personal lives. Evan Williams and Biz Stone, both founders of Twitter, are happy to post occasional tweets that mention their wives (and in Williams’ case, his child too) but are miserly when it comes to details about the work that they’re doing for Twitter. Actor and technology geek Stephen Fry, on the other hand, has averaged just over eight tweets a day in the two years he’s been on Twitter and talks about his TV appearances, his charity work, his scriptwriting, speeches and product reviews. He regularly replies to tweets sent to him and comes across as open and direct, all of which have become important aspects of how the public sees him. And yet in none of his tweets does he ever mention his life with his partner, an agreement the couple made when he began using the site.
Photography: callisto
When you market yourself as a freelancer, you try to be as open as you can. You might launch a blog to bring traffic to your website and demonstrate the way you work. You hit up clients for testimonials so that leads can see you have experience. You put up samples and portfolios so that anyone can browse the work you’ve produced and see what you can do. It’s all a matter of trust. The more secure you can make a lead feel about hiring you, the more likely they are to get in touch and hire you do the job. But when it comes to the new clients themselves, the same openness doesn’t apply. Clients tend not to be as forthcoming about their identity, their ideas and their experience as the freelancers they employ, and yet there’s plenty of risk on the freelancer’s side too. You can find yourself working for the kind of business that doesn’t pay until it sees a letter from a lawyer, or you can find that because you have little idea about the firm, you have no idea how to please its customers.
Neither of those two pieces of information is particularly easy to come by. Some freelance websites do allow service providers to write reviews of the hirers, which can give an indication of whether a company is likely to argue about the bill — or not pay it at all. But not all sites offer this and even contributors have an incentive to be nice about the people they’ve worked for: if they’ve said something nice, there’s always the chance that they’ll work for them again. Reviews on freelance sites then tend to either very good or very bad.
Photography: hawkexpress
For David Allen life is full of “stuff.” For people who have never heard of David Allen, never tried to read his geek productivity bible Getting Things Done, never wondered how to label a file or categorize their lives, that’s as unhelpful a truism as declaring that work is difficult. But for the followers of GTD, people who have been accused of regarding Allen as a kind of cultic leader (the same kind of leader he himself once saw in John-Roger, leader of the New Age Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness in which Allen remains a minister), it’s an eye-opening revelation. Employ a process that pushes that “stuff” out of the way and what remains will be only the most important elements. Instead of wasting their hours on life’s minutiae, they’ll be able to devote their time to the big things. They’ll get things done.
Mostly though what they’ll be getting done is the process of doing things – and that’s if they can figure out the process. Allen doesn’t just earn revenue from his best-selling book and its sequels. His seminars cost $695 per person, a sign not just that his followers consider his techniques valuable but that they’re so complex they have to fork out almost 700 bucks to figure out how to use them. Allen’s system requires multiple levels of categorization and treatment for every aspect of life from going to the dry cleaners and vaccinating the dog to launching a website and changing jobs. Every task has its moment, sometimes timed to the minute. Every chore receives attention according to its apparent level of importance, but only after you’ve put it through a system that awards it an appropriate priority level.
Describing iOS 4 at the WorldWide Developers Conference 2010, Steve Jobs kept one of the most interesting of the system’s upgrades until point seven. But the launch of iAds, the iPhone’s new advertising platform, may well be its most influential feature. While multitasking and folders will all be very useful, the incorporation of a native advertising program designed specifically with iPhone apps in mind could well have a huge effect on the 200,000-plus apps already in the App Store, and the thousands of others still to come.
The ads, demonstrated through the use of samples created for Nike, Target and Toy Story 3, aim to bridge the gap between the interactivity of digital ads and the emotional engagement of television advertising, Jobs explained. Initially, they look similar to ads currently distributed by Google’s AdMob service, appearing as a small banner at the bottom of the screen. When users click that banner though, they’re given a whole different experience. They’re no longer whipped out of the app as they would be when clicking on a Google ad. Instead, the app is frozen and the user is taken into what looks like a new app that may contain a number of different features, from mini-games and animated timelines to videos and wallpaper downloads. The features may be as inviting and enjoyable as the app itself, providing a reward for a user who clicks on them. And with the original app frozen rather than closed, there’s no penalty for clicking, pleasing the advertiser.
Photography: suesviews
It might be hard to believe now but when Facebook began, the settings were so restrictive that unless you were a university student you couldn’t even join the site. You could see the names of the elite who could join the site. You might be able to look at their avatars if they’d posted them, but even for other members, almost everything else was kept private. Private was the default setting. Members of the network could see where friends were studying, where they’d worked and what they liked to do, but everyone else was locked out.
Those were the days.
Photography: askpang
If there was a prize available for dedication to the job and the ability to do it in the most trying of conditions then Lee Unkrich would surely have won it. Earlier this year, the Pixar director pasted a photo of himself on Twitter editing Toy Story 3 while sitting on a flight at 36,000 feet. Of course, he cheated. Judging by the snazzy seat back, it looks like Lee wasn’t typing with his knees behind his ears in Cattle Class. He also broke the rules. Not the rules that prevent you from grabbing your bag as the plane touches down and standing by the exit or spending the entire flight in the bathroom, a private cabin where there’s room to stretch your legs, but just about all of the unspoken rules that dictate the right and wrong ways to work on a plane.
The rules are new. They’ve only developed over the last few years as long haul flights have added electricity sockets that make it possible to work without keeping an eye on a computer’s battery level and as some have added Internet access. Now that it’s possible to take an entire office with you in your carry-on baggage and plug it into a plane’s infrastructure, today’s digital, high-flying nomads need to know what they can and can’t do when they’re working in the clouds.
It’s the biggest sporting event in the world. Thirty-two countries, billions of dollars, a television audience that stretches from South Africa to North Korea, and 90 minutes of 22 men kicking a ball in a sport that Americans tend to dismiss as a girls’ game. The FIFA World Cup, an event that takes place once every four years and captures the imagination of (almost) the entire globe, is now under way in Africa for the first time. Like any event with an audience that runs into the hundreds of millions, it’s also a huge business. According to accountancy firm Grant Thorton, the games could add as much as 0.5 percent to host nation South Africa’s GDP this year, an injection of some $12.4 billion. Much of that will have come from the effects of tourism. About 373,000 foreigners are expected to visit the country during the month-long sporting jamboree, spending about $4,000 each. Most of the money though will have come from government coffers to pay for new stadiums, renovated roads and security. The biggest beneficiary is likely to be not the country, but FIFA itself. The organization’s profits from the last World Cup, held in Germany, were a cool $1.8 billion.
But the international sporting body isn’t the only one making money out of the World Cup. Sellers of vuvuzelas, the plastic trumpets that sound like angry bees and infuriate commentators, and which South Africans insist are traditional musical instruments, are clearly doing well. Earplugs that promise to block the sound are reported to be selling equally fast. Pubs and bars with big screens and expensive beer will do fine too, despite Fifa’s attempts to stop them. Makers of novelty items will struggle a little but websites that discuss the World Cup, optimize their AdSense units or offer decent affiliate products can expect to earn a little income too. Anyone can do that, although they’ll struggle to do well on search rankings when FIFA itself, big broadcasters and media giants are dominating the rankings.
Last summer, Alex Brownstein decided to advance his career. He had a job as a copywriter at ad firm Publicis, but he really wanted to work at “a really creative shop for really creative [creative directors].” Rather than follow the usual route of updating his resume, sending it to the human resources departments of other ad firms and hoping that they had an opening, Alex took a route that gave him direct access to the people he most wanted to speak to.
In a move that also showed off his creativity, Alex identified the creative directors he wanted to work for and bought AdWords ads for their names. When the creative directors Googled themselves, the top result was an ad that said: “Hey, [creative director's name]: Goooogling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too.” The ad linked to his website, alecbrownstein.com.
Much has been said about Twitter’s ability to build brands, spread messages and create interaction. But Facebook’s business pages have been around much longer, are a lot more flexible and are part of a much larger platform too. Coca Cola’s tweets, made up of slightly creepy greetings to followers and public Coke drinkers, for example, are read by fewer than 30,000 people. The company’s Facebook page, which is filled with videos, active discussions, ad campaigns and all sorts of other goodies, has been liked by more than 5.7 million people.
Creating that kind of following though takes more than a well-known brand and about ten spoonfuls of sugar in every can. It also takes a smart use of the functions available to marketers looking to build their market with Facebook. Here are five brands that are getting it right:
Electronic Arts
Image: zengame
Being first to market always bring advantages You get to set the standard, establish your brand, create demand, and associate your product with the market. When there are no competitors, you’ll have 100 percent of the market share and the loyalty of satisfied customers. And when competitors do arrive, they’ll have to battle hard to push you off the top. But being second has its advantages too. You get to build on the mistakes made by the pioneer and enjoy a market that’s already been told the benefits of the product. With the right planning, the creators of a “me-too” product can quickly find themselves overtaking a tired front runner and moving from second — and even last — to first.
Stealing that position though will mean some smart preparations and creating a product that doesn’t just copy what’s already out there but which improves on it, exploiting the weaknesses of the current market standard and filling gaps so that your product can compete.
With more than two billion videos served every day — almost double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined — standing out on YouTube so that your clips win attention, go viral and perhaps even graduate to a meme is never going to be easy. There are a few ingredients though that every YouTube clip needs to have if it’s to beat out the music videos and the lolcats to win views and build an audience.
The most important, of course, is interesting content. That might appear obvious but it’s actually rarer and more difficult to create than it sounds. More than 24 hours of video content is added to YouTube every minute, so information that’s entertaining enough to be worth watching and original enough that audiences haven’t seen it before is actually relatively rare. When it does appear on the site, it quickly snowballs, building up large numbers of views.
Microsoft’s announcement that the latest version of its productivity suite, Office 2010, will have an online component should have been a vote of confidence in the cloud. Currently in Beta, the newest version of Word will allow for co-authoring, and the ability to edit papers “and share ideas with others at the same time.” Users will also be able to “view the availability” of people who are working on the document with them, and “easily initiate a conversation without leaving Word.” No less eyecatching is the ability to access and share documents from “virtually anywhere” by posting them online and opening them in almost any computer or Windows phone using a Microsoft Word Web app or Word Mobile 2010. The suite should be a must-have for just about any modern freelancer working with clients scattered around the globe. In practice though, while Microsoft Office might remain an essential tool, the new version is unlikely to be helped by its new attachment to the cloud.
Microsoft’s move is intended to counter advances by Google, which increasingly sees itself as a competitor to Bill Gates’s firm. The search giant might not have its own PC-based operating system (yet) but both companies have mobile operating systems and Google’s free online office suite, Google Docs, is an indication that it sees the future in terms of Internet-based services rather than computer-based software.
Users Spend Five Minutes on Google Docs
Image: docpop
Twitter’s trending topics were meant to be its jewel in the crown, a way for anyone to see a snapshot of the zeitgeist, to understand which are the most important issues of the day, and to see breaking news topics as soon as they happen. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Unless Justin Bieber is the most important thing happening in the world right now and the three words to say after sex are what’s really on everyone’s tongue at the moment, then Twitter’s list of trending topics — highlighted on its website — have been a mighty fail. But even if trivia remains top of the trending topics, marketers can still pull some value out of the list — provided they know how to analyze the information they’re gathering and what to do with it once they get it.
Twitter at least appears to have recognized the failure of trending topics to produce usable information. Recently the site changed its trending algorithm to focus on “emerging trends” rather than the most popular subjects over a period of time. So far, the change has made little difference. Instead of Nick Jonas winning a spot in the trending topics list, “Jick Nonas” has made the popularity charts as fans look for ways around what they believe to be Twitter’s keyword blocking software. And hashtags like “#thatswhyyoursingle” are still dominating the list.
Photography: Josh.Liba
Moonfruit’s tenth anniversary promotion set the standard for Twitter-based marketing. The content management and hosting company promised to give away a Macbook Pro every day for ten days. To enter the competition, twitterers only had to include the hashtag #moonfruit in their tweet; the more they tweeted it, the greater their chances of winning. It was a giveaway that caused a Twitter stampede. At one point, helped by additional prizes for creative entries, tweets with moonfruit hashtags made up almost 3 percent of all the tweets being posted on the site. Overwhelmed by the popularity of the contest, Moonfruit called an early halt to the campaign, giving away the remaining Macbooks in a one-day bonanza. Since then, other companies have tried to copy the model. In particular, recognizing that prizes have to be desirable — and that everyone desires Apple products — the launch of the iPad looked like a golden opportunity, a chance for any company to gain instant exposure by giving away tablets and cashing in on Apple’s hype. Their failures have provided a textbook on what works on Twitter, what doesn’t and how the site is changing for businesses looking to use social media for marketing.
Choose Your Hashtags Carefully
You’d have thought that turning the world’s neatest smartphone into a million-dollar whoopee cushion would have been enough for iPhone developers. Not a bit of it. While some coders have been busy creating games that mimic air traffic control, recreating Microsoft Word on a tiny screen or turning an iPhone into a race track, others have been thinking up some of the most bizarre things it’s possible to do with a mobile phone.
Here are five of the strangest:
iLickit Licks the Competition
One of the downsides to freelancing is the loose connection between buyers and suppliers. Finding a good replacement is never easy but for clients, freelancers are much easier to fire than permanent employees who have contracts and might demand compensation. Once you’ve managed to persuade a client to pay you for your work, you want to hold onto them — and you want to avoid these giant client killers that will soon have you pitching for new gigs.
1. Promising What You Can’t Deliver
The usual advice given for success in business is to underpromise and overdeliver. And the usual discovery of business owners is that when you underpromise you don’t get to deliver anything.
