Posts tagged Social media

Thumbs down for American Express’ ‘Your live story’

American Express has teamed up with Mark Ronson and Channel 4 in an interactive campaign heavily relying on submissions from the community. 

The credit card company said the campaign will aim to “uncover the UK’s best music experiences – the memorable stories behind the shows, in celebration of American Express’ involvement in live music and its award-winning ‘Preferred Seating’ programme launched last year”.

The micro-site is hosted on a branded section of the Channel 4 website, and simply asks for people to submit their experiences with the rather weak incentive of the best being made into a short film with the soundtrack being produced by Mark Ronson.

To be honest I just don’t get it. What does American Express have to do with music, and live music at that?  Music is “sex, drugs and rock and roll”, and American Express just isn’t.  It is ‘business’ and it is ‘winning’. It is not hedonistic trips and sweaty mosh pits.

This is exactly the opposite of everything that Disney did well in their ‘Let the memories begin’ campaign.  Disney have earned the right to ask for contributions; they have chosen an area that they “own” in asking for memories from holidays at Disney’s Parks and Resorts.  It fits, it feels right.

Amex and music just doesn’t.  If they were to sponsor tours for a while, and then sponsor some music awards (Mastercard and the Brits) or festivals then they would be earning the right.  But at the moment they are just two random things coming together and as such, I predict little success.  And with 10 videos and 60 photos so far, compared to the millions of people that have undoubtedly viewed the competition, early results aren’t looking good.

The final nail in the coffin is that I have searched the website and have not found any mention of the preferred seating programme which this is apparently celebrating.

All in all, this is not a social media success in any way.  Sorry.

Iranian Bloggers Beware

This week the Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan known at the Blogfather of Iran, who blogged at Hoder.com (offline at the time of publishing) has been sentenced to 19.5 years in jail.  Many accusations have been made against Derakhshan - including espionage - and I certainly do not know all the details of the case, but it is beyond doubt that part of the reason why he was arrested is because he was a blogger. Bloggers in Iran have routinely been arrested and questioned in the past.

Hoder was one of the first blogs to discuss Iranian politics and issues, but many others have been targeted by authorities. One prominent case was that of Sina Motallebi who was arrested and imprisoned in 2003 because of the content of his blog. He was released after 23 days after international uproar from the blogosphere.

Blogs by their very nature are not edited before publishing, unlike state-controlled mass media. In a country like Iran they have the greatest significance as perhaps the only real way to communicate with the world: they make reporting possible when even international journalists are banned. This allows people outside of Iran to gain a more accurate portrayal of what was happening inside the country, thus a loss of one Iranian blogger, or “free-speaker” if you will, is a real shame.

Thumbs up for Disney’s “Let the memories begin”

This week Disney have launched a platform that allows guests of their parks and resorts to share memories, photos and videos with the community.

The contributions are then owned by Disney, to be used in a variety of their promotional activities such as adverts, and even in their evening parades!

This is an interesting idea, and for Disney this is brilliant.  Why produce expensive adverts of actors enjoying themselves at Disney when it is much more believable if normal (unpaid) members of society will do it for you?

The first ‘share the memories’ advert (below) is fantastic, a perfect endorsement for Disney, and you can really see how these contributions will be used.


What took me longer to comprehend however, is what is in it for the community?  Why should they submit their photos, videos and anecdotes?
 
But then I realized that Disney had earned the right to this conversation, for this spirit of sharing.  They have earned it from almost 90 years of entertaining and living up to expectations.
 
Disney are an entertainment brand, and from that mission they have taken it to all domains; they have entertained in the home, in the cinema and in what anthropologists like to call the ‘third place’; on holiday.  They have taken this to the extreme in the form of a Disney town called Celebration, where people can live in a town built on Disney values.
 
Disney have slowly earned the good faith of their customers and because of this, the customers are happy to pay it back by interacting. Looking at some of the memories listed at ‘let the memories begin,’ you can see how important Disney is to peoples’ lives; indeed, people go back to their resorts a few times a year, and some people even propose and get married there!

For a lot of people Disney does represent some of the best memories of their lives, so why shouldn’t you share them? For the fans of Disney it is a privilege to take part in the parades, and it is an honour to appear in their adverts.
 
Disney have earned the right to have this kind of site and because of this I am certain it will be a success. There are many organisations that are trying to engage in this way that will fail because they simply have not earned the right for this level of intimacy with their customers.

The case against TripAdvisor. 

The legal action against TripAdvisor which could have far-reaching social media implications.

Mentioned in this video

Happy Social Good Day

Today is Social Good Day, a day that coincides with world leaders meeting in the UN to discuss the progress being made towards the Millennium Development Goals.  Social Good Day has been organised by the social media news provider, Mashable, and the charity designed to eliminate Aids in Africa (RED), in order to understand how the social web can help in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

As Chrysi Philalithes points out in the Huffington post, the social media world has changed so much since the goals were set…

When the goals were set, the words ‘social media’ did not live side by side. In 2000, Mark Zuckerburg was just 16 and it would take Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams another six years to launch Twitter.

I have been thinking about this all day. social media alone is not the answer to the world’s problems. But if used as part of a concerted effort with on and off-line planning, crowd-sourcing and communication, social media has the power to change everything.  Whether that be presidential elections, or international threats to struggling nations social media has shown it can make all of the difference between success and failure.

An example of the power of social media is shown in Social Good Day itself: there have been 1,500 meet ups, involving 15,000 people taking place over 122 countries! This is clear proof that with a little coordination people from all over the world can come together to discuss, engage and interact to make the world be a better place. 

Social media has made that happen and for that alone it should be celebrated.

Happy Social Good day! but what are you going to do…?

It is amazing what a YouTube video can do to smash a carefully rehearsed publicity stunt. Vladamir Putin has been touring Russia in a yellow Lada. For four consecutive evenings in August, the main bulletins on state TV showed the Prime Minister driving along the highway and stopping off for stage-managed photo opportunities. He took tea with villagers, chatted with lorry drivers and construction workers and visited a hydro-electric power station and the proposed site for a space centre. All the reports featured prominently the brightly coloured Lada, and the Prime Minister talking up its attributes. In Channel One’s Vremya bulletin on 29 August, he told construction workers that it “goes smoothly, holds the road beautifully and is not noisy”.   However, The Prime Minister probably didn’t notice the little knot of people from the appropriately named Diversant (Saboteur) off-road-vehicle club who had gathered along the side of the Chita-Khabarovsk highway in the hope of catching a glimpse of him behind the wheel. As he drove past, they had their cameras at the ready and what they filmed wasn’t quite the picture shown on television. Instead of the mainly close-up shots of the Lada Kalina, giving the impression that Putin was virtually alone on the open road, the Diversant film shows Putin’s car dwarfed by an enormous motorcade, numbering, according to one eyewitness, over 100 police cars, black jeeps and back-up vehicles.   More damaging for the Russian car industry was the revelation that the motorcade contained two more yellow Lada Kalinas, one driving behind Putin and the other riding on the back of a transporter truck. The common assumption was that the spares were needed because the car was so unreliable.   In the video you can see the Diversant vehicle club celebrate when the second Lada drives past, and toward the end of the video when the third rolls past on a repair truck they are beside themselves with laughter.   This video has become a YouTube hit with the two most viewed copies having around 850,000 views, the videos have also been mentioned by bloggers within Russia and has been used for political ridicule within the region.   This has also led to a number of pertinent questions being asked about the quality of reporting within the country, why was this not reported by the large media entourage within the cavalcade of cars following the former president?   The interesting thing here is not the fact that almost a million people have seen the truth from his road trip across Russia. But rather that this has shown the power of social media.  If things are not what they seem and if someone finds out about it then they have the power to tell the world in real-time.    This is something that politicians and companies will have to get used to because it is becoming increasingly the case that everyone is just one Google search away from the truth.

It is amazing what a YouTube video can do to smash a carefully rehearsed publicity stunt.


Vladamir Putin has been touring Russia in a yellow Lada. For four consecutive evenings in August, the main bulletins on state TV showed the Prime Minister driving along the highway and stopping off for stage-managed photo opportunities. He took tea with villagers, chatted with lorry drivers and construction workers and visited a hydro-electric power station and the proposed site for a space centre.

All the reports featured prominently the brightly coloured Lada, and the Prime Minister talking up its attributes. In Channel One’s Vremya bulletin on 29 August, he told construction workers that it “goes smoothly, holds the road beautifully and is not noisy”.

 

However, The Prime Minister probably didn’t notice the little knot of people from the appropriately named Diversant (Saboteur) off-road-vehicle club who had gathered along the side of the Chita-Khabarovsk highway in the hope of catching a glimpse of him behind the wheel. As he drove past, they had their cameras at the ready and what they filmed wasn’t quite the picture shown on television.

Instead of the mainly close-up shots of the Lada Kalina, giving the impression that Putin was virtually alone on the open road, the Diversant film shows Putin’s car dwarfed by an enormous motorcade, numbering, according to one eyewitness, over 100 police cars, black jeeps and back-up vehicles.

 

More damaging for the Russian car industry was the revelation that the motorcade contained two more yellow Lada Kalinas, one driving behind Putin and the other riding on the back of a transporter truck. The common assumption was that the spares were needed because the car was so unreliable.

 

In the video you can see the Diversant vehicle club celebrate when the second Lada drives past, and toward the end of the video when the third rolls past on a repair truck they are beside themselves with laughter.

 

This video has become a YouTube hit with the two most viewed copies having around 850,000 views, the videos have also been mentioned by bloggers within Russia and has been used for political ridicule within the region.

 

This has also led to a number of pertinent questions being asked about the quality of reporting within the country, why was this not reported by the large media entourage within the cavalcade of cars following the former president?

 

The interesting thing here is not the fact that almost a million people have seen the truth from his road trip across Russia. But rather that this has shown the power of social media.  If things are not what they seem and if someone finds out about it then they have the power to tell the world in real-time. 

 

This is something that politicians and companies will have to get used to because it is becoming increasingly the case that everyone is just one Google search away from the truth.

ScienceBlogs: Its Complicated   In July scienceblogs.com, a blogging platform which supports around 80 amateur scientific bloggers, caused international uproar when the multinational corporation Pepsi was granted permission to publish a blog called Food Frontiers on the site.   ScienceBlogs’ editor, Evan Lerner, welcomed the partnership with this statement…   The result of this partnership is that we are to hear from a wide range of experts on how Pepsi is developing products rooted in rigorous science-based nutrition standards, to offer consumers more wholesome and enjoyable foods and beverages.   The focus will be on innovations in science, nutrition and health policy and the transformations in Pepsi’s product portfolio, but we will also learn about some of the innovative ways the company is planning to reduce its use of energy, water and packaging.   The reaction to this was significant and immediate. There were blogger defections and extensive media coverage from the likes of Guardian, Newsweek and Daillykos. This negative reaction was mirrored by the active community of readers…   Craig Holman wrote his comments below the Food frontiers welcoming statement above (now taken down but referenced here):   A corporate-sponsored blog has no place in ScienceBlogs. It can’t be taken seriously and drags down the legitimate blogs by association. If this blog is not closed prompty [sic], I hope the other blogs leave ScienceBlogs as quickly as possible. Shame on you. Shame on the ScienceBlogs management.   Within a day of the Food Frontiers blog appearing and before any meaningful content was posted ScienceBlogs removed the blog and replaced it with this statement:   We apologize for what some of you viewed as a violation of your immense trust in ScienceBlogs. Although we (and many of you) believe strongly in the need to engage industry in pursuit of science-driven social change, this was clearly not the right way. How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? How can a large and diverse online community made up of scientists and the science-minded public help? How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage? We’ll open this challenge up to everyone on SB and beyond in the coming days so that we can all find the right solution.   So what happened?   What went wrong?  Why was this move so controversial? And how should ScienceBlogs have handled this situation?   Tackling what went wrong   In  a nutshell; Scienceblogs breached the implicit trust that was built within the site.    The implicit arrangement was that ScienceBlogs would manage the platform and publisise the site and allow bloggers to discuss scientific matters how they wanted, which meant (after initial vetting) the bloggers had full editorial control of their content.   The trade off is that ScienceBlogs could monetise the site by selling advertising space with bloggers receiving some of the proceeds.   That was the deal.   Put simply, Science Blogs provided the platform, the bloggers provided the material.   In giving access to Pepsi ScienceBlogs essentially moved the goalposts without any warning or notice to the lifeblood of the site.   This is why there was widespread condemnation of the Food Frontiers blog.   So how should ScienceBlogs have acted?   If there was a financial or strategic imperative to include companies such as Pepsi on the ScienceBlogs platform, then this argument should have been made first.   If the motivation of this move was made transparent to all of their bloggers and readers before talking to potential brands, then they would have been part of the process and a compromise could have probably been reached.   From this consultation a set of criteria or a list of potential partners could have been agreed upon   For example; some kind of profit-sharing if this was a move seen to profiteer from the contributions of the standard (non-affiliated) bloggers, or differentiation between standard content and the new “paid for” or “sponsored by” content, if there was concern that readers would not realize that the sponsored blogs were not authored by the same (non-affiliated) authors of standard content.   Most likely, a mixture of the two solutions would be required in order to reach a compromise. The fact is that ScienceBlogs’ success depends completely on the goodwill and trust of its bloggers, so reaching this agreement would be paramount.   Acting unilaterally like it did has not only damaged ScienceBlogs’ reputation in the community but also broken the implicit agreement of trust with its contributors immeasurably.    The knock-on effect of this is that this kind of negotiation in the future will be facing a much more cynical audience, if even possible at all. Picture: Gapingvoid.com

ScienceBlogs: Its Complicated

 

In July scienceblogs.com, a blogging platform which supports around 80 amateur scientific bloggers, caused international uproar when the multinational corporation Pepsi was granted permission to publish a blog called Food Frontiers on the site.

 

ScienceBlogs’ editor, Evan Lerner, welcomed the partnership with this statement…

 

The result of this partnership is that we are to hear from a wide range of experts on how Pepsi is developing products rooted in rigorous science-based nutrition standards, to offer consumers more wholesome and enjoyable foods and beverages.

 

The focus will be on innovations in science, nutrition and health policy and the transformations in Pepsi’s product portfolio, but we will also learn about some of the innovative ways the company is planning to reduce its use of energy, water and packaging.

 

The reaction to this was significant and immediate. There were blogger defections and extensive media coverage from the likes of Guardian, Newsweek and Daillykos.

This negative reaction was mirrored by the active community of readers…

 

Craig Holman wrote his comments below the Food frontiers welcoming statement above (now taken down but referenced here):

 

A corporate-sponsored blog has no place in ScienceBlogs.

It can’t be taken seriously and drags down the legitimate blogs by association.

If this blog is not closed prompty [sic], I hope the other blogs leave ScienceBlogs as quickly as possible.

Shame on you.

Shame on the ScienceBlogs management.

 

Within a day of the Food Frontiers blog appearing and before any meaningful content was posted ScienceBlogs removed the blog and replaced it with this statement:

 

We apologize for what some of you viewed as a violation of your immense trust in ScienceBlogs. Although we (and many of you) believe strongly in the need to engage industry in pursuit of science-driven social change, this was clearly not the right way.

How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? How can a large and diverse online community made up of scientists and the science-minded public help? How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage? We’ll open this challenge up to everyone on SB and beyond in the coming days so that we can all find the right solution.

 

So what happened?

 

What went wrong?  Why was this move so controversial? And how should ScienceBlogs have handled this situation?

 

Tackling what went wrong

 

In  a nutshell; Scienceblogs breached the implicit trust that was built within the site. 

 

The implicit arrangement was that ScienceBlogs would manage the platform and publisise the site and allow bloggers to discuss scientific matters how they wanted, which meant (after initial vetting) the bloggers had full editorial control of their content.

 

The trade off is that ScienceBlogs could monetise the site by selling advertising space with bloggers receiving some of the proceeds.

 

That was the deal.

 

Put simply, Science Blogs provided the platform, the bloggers provided the material.

 

In giving access to Pepsi ScienceBlogs essentially moved the goalposts without any warning or notice to the lifeblood of the site.

 

This is why there was widespread condemnation of the Food Frontiers blog.

 

So how should ScienceBlogs have acted?

 

If there was a financial or strategic imperative to include companies such as Pepsi on the ScienceBlogs platform, then this argument should have been made first.

 

If the motivation of this move was made transparent to all of their bloggers and readers before talking to potential brands, then they would have been part of the process and a compromise could have probably been reached.

 

From this consultation a set of criteria or a list of potential partners could have been agreed upon

 

For example; some kind of profit-sharing if this was a move seen to profiteer from the contributions of the standard (non-affiliated) bloggers, or differentiation between standard content and the new “paid for” or “sponsored by” content, if there was concern that readers would not realize that the sponsored blogs were not authored by the same (non-affiliated) authors of standard content.

 

Most likely, a mixture of the two solutions would be required in order to reach a compromise. The fact is that ScienceBlogs’ success depends completely on the goodwill and trust of its bloggers, so reaching this agreement would be paramount.

 

Acting unilaterally like it did has not only damaged ScienceBlogs’ reputation in the community but also broken the implicit agreement of trust with its contributors immeasurably. 

 

The knock-on effect of this is that this kind of negotiation in the future will be facing a much more cynical audience, if even possible at all.

Picture: Gapingvoid.com

Social Media apparently will drive election campaigning

In Marketing Week (7 Apr) it states that the election will be won with social media, and the evidence they have used for this is a vital microsite produced for the Liberal Democrats called Labservative, which is little more than a simple advertising idea.

So although all of the political parties state that they have learned from Obama, they really have not.  This campaign will be run by traditional means, that is PR, advertising and events.

That is not to say that British politics are set up for social media campaigning the time spans are much shorter (6 week snap elections verses the years of active campaigning in USA) and the budgets pale in comparison.  We will wait and see but I think it is most likely to be traditionally run campaign with Social Media being a sideshow to the traditional channels.

When most people think of social media they think of tools and technology.  However I think that all the tools have done is moved the emphasis not to where a message is stated but toward what an organization will say. This is where organisations have problems, they simply do not have a voice in which to communicate.  And if they do have a voice they use it in the wrong way.  An example of this was with Nestle, who were accused of killing orangutans to get palm oil by GreenPeace.  They were attacked on the official Nestle page on Facebook and they simply didn’t have a voice in which to respond.  It took them two days to respond and in that time the conspicuous silence was as good as an admittance of guilt. If they had had a voice they could have avoided what is being described as a PR disaster, whether it actually effects Kit-Kat sales is another matter. I have discussed this issue on this video which can be accessed here

When most people think of social media they think of tools and technology.  However I think that all the tools have done is moved the emphasis not to where a message is stated but toward what an organization will say.

This is where organisations have problems, they simply do not have a voice in which to communicate.  And if they do have a voice they use it in the wrong way.  An example of this was with Nestle, who were accused of killing orangutans to get palm oil by GreenPeace.  They were attacked on the official Nestle page on Facebook and they simply didn’t have a voice in which to respond.  It took them two days to respond and in that time the conspicuous silence was as good as an admittance of guilt.

If they had had a voice they could have avoided what is being described as a PR disaster, whether it actually effects Kit-Kat sales is another matter.

I have discussed this issue on this video which can be accessed here