Facebook brand tie-ins that are bad get a lot of press. But here are two good examples. Herbal Essences which I found via Advergirl & O2 win a MASSIVE university big party thing. Leigh sums up why they both work very eloquently even though her comments are attributed to the shampoo stuff:

Set up as a group, not a personal account. You’re not a person, why pretend to be one?
Creative focuses on the ‘passion’ elements of the brand
Targeted approach to deliver visit > engage > share behavior (stuff to do when you’re there + a reason to come back)
And, the team invested in solid seeding behavior

Download a Forrester study of business decision makers use of social media in B2B world from the American Business Media.

Kids bored this half-term? Get them to draw Yoda (source: showmescifi)

There are now more than 1 million UK members of Linked In. And I can download a badge to add to my profile as I joined before it hit this landmark. So I did. But I’m not so sure why. A million is hardly exclusive. Does it help in anyway? Will it improve my life?

I walked back to Waterloo after a meeting in London Bridge on Friday. It was mighty cold. But took these two shots of London Bridge itself & the big spider thing outside the Tate. Thought you might like them.

Mums. Bless them. We love them. And they love the web. Can’t get enough. And you thought it was all the young dudes who made the news. New research from eMarketer tells us 89% use it twice a day. Wow. Search is by far the biggest weapon of choice (Google being the goddess of choice in mother search world) with a HUGE 86% of respondents using search as their most efficient way of searching for info. The interwoven nature of offline and online is demonstrated by nearly two thirds using search to find more info after seeing an ad.

But although usage is high, their behaviour fits into their hectic worlds. We like to call this “snacking”, an apt description when nearly two thirds of visit duration are less than 30 mins. In an out. Onto the next thing.

Here’s a video I pulled together for a pitch last year trying to depict this in more visual impact terms than the graphs here which are from eMarketer in July & August 2007. What do you think (apart from the reduction in quality to make it web usable rather than you having to go to lunch during download time)?

Iconoculture tell us some more mum/mom stuff in the form of a new magazine called Hybrid Mom for multi-tasking (is there any other type?) mums/moms who are, as they describe:

Hybrid Mom (hy brid mom, n.): An adult female who has discarded outdated and unrealistic conceptions of motherhood. She is parent, wife, volunteer, and sometimes entrepreneur, all in one. Known for her strength, sense of humor, and flexibility, a hybrid mom is actually a fusion of roles that suit her own individuality.

I’m not particularly target audience but content wise it’s a little light to say the least (on the site), an example of which is the sparsely populated blog: three entries since December which makes you think that someone thought “hey, we need a blog cos like everyone does” and then failed at seeing it through. Hopefully the magazine has more exciting content - about half of mums/moms spend about an hour a day with the mags so maybe it has a better role there?

Not content with the fabulous Golf night driving, VW have extended the use of the Touareg stunts from the new Matt Damon film, the Bourne Ultimatum with a 3D stunt simulator: create your own stunts, load ‘em, see if the people out there rate your stunt as cunning or not (deliberate Kenny Everett -ism there for those that remember).

I love this quote from the Sunday Times about America’s fascination with the Western as a film genre and how they are nothing less than:

the creation of national narratives

Such a wonderful evocative thought.

First Direct photography competition capturing the essence of the always-on, 24/7, crackberry addicted society.

Gossip at/about Starbucks blog. Whatever, I like their new Java chip coffee blended creme frappucino thingy.

I like the dunce hat we have at work. It seems to have got lost in the recent re-shuffle of desks.

Last time I was at Schiphol, I noticed they had a new huge screen alongside one the walkways. Unfortunately, the first user of this, Ford Mondeo, just sliced and diced the TV ad and lobbed it on the screen in a strange scrolling manner. Didn’t quite make the best use of the space and the genuine 30 seconds of attention you had. Quality from my mobile is a bit ropey but you get my point.

Faces For Charity is the Red Bull Racing team’s charity. But more important than that, for £10 you can get your mug on the side of their cars for the British Grand Prix!

So Spam the Monkey gets to fly round Silverstone at nearly 200mph. Woo hoo! (and feel good as he’s done something good for charidee.) He wanted to be placed on the Scotsman’s stout jaw, but settled for a space on the right hand side of his motor.  You can see more here. I will try & think of something witty to put in there eventually. A pretty simple user experience of pointing & clicking at the car to get your spot. Unlike Honda’s earth dream thing that seemed to take for ever to explain to you what it was all about and how you could join in. So I didn’t. But we do wash at 30 degrees now. A happy blend of doing good, web 2.0 type stuff, fun and fast cars. I saw the ad in today’s Times (below).

After sharing the heroic direct mail deeds of Shane Warne, here’s some more mail from my post bag over the last couple of weeks in a kind of dm review type thing.

DMA (Direct Marketing association) - those who remember will know that I have an alter ego in the shape of Ms Nicholas Gill. I have sent it back twice with amendments correctly marked up. They managed to correct the Nicola but my gender is still suspect. If they can’t get my title correct then the round file awaits (professional terminology there, folks). I have no idea what was in it, perhaps an invite to a door drop seminar?

HSBC bank - normally HSBC don’t tend to send my inserts/stuffers/crap with my statement but this time they do. Pleading with me to save the planet by opting for online statements. For every one who signs up to go paperless, they will plant a virtual tree. For every 20, they will plant a real tree. So far 123,000 have signed up and that means 6,000 trees. Two things wrong with this: 1) why does the bloody URL hsbc.co.uk/thevirtualforest go to HSBC homepage and make me click again (aaaargh) and 2) isn’t this the bank who made gazillions of profits last year? Couldn’t they fore-go the champers and caviar at the annual results this year and plant a real tree for every switcher?

Land Rover Discovery 3 - “oh yes” I think as the shiny metal CD-shaped case arrives clinking on the doormat. “Oh bugger ” I say out loud as it takes me an age to open the damn thing up (approx 1 minute). “Oh” I say in a deflated manner as I realise that despite the integration with the new (very nice) ATL campaign about film-makers using the motor as their most stable and trusted moving tripod, there is no actual footage on a cd in the pack. The metal casing is even embossed/debossed (I can never remember) with old-fashioned style film casing design. Surely a trick missed considering the miniscule cost of cd’s these days and the high likelihood of getting some good video? Sad, I discard the Discovery.

Volvo XC-90 - I always remember from my DM days a key KPI being “How many opened the piece?” The plastic outer was so hard to open I gave up.

I just read a Forrester report on how Sony & BT have teamed up for a project to make the PSP a true communications device. Intended to be targeted at the millenials (those born after 1980 and thus deprived of an education in Bowie) who will naturally gravitate from wireless gaming to using the PSP to IM, surf etc. While I desperately want a PSP for no other reason than “just because”, the article lets slips something that is beginning to really piss me off. You’re likely to need a whole bundle of accessories to make it work properly. Text input? PlayStation thumb may be one thing but box, circle, triangle and X don’t necessarily translate to QWERTY to make IM a true possibility. So the next generations will either need a stylus (yuk) and input screen or a plug in key pad. And to become a video calling device so you can Skype and play, another webcam accessory. And a microphone, and another battery, and more memory disks. I’m not so sure. The beauty of the PSP is that it allows you to play high quality games wherever, whenever. Buy a better phone if you want to do all that other stuff on the move, surely? I have enough crap to lug around with me all day anyway. A blackberry (and lead and charger), a mobile (and charger), a laptop (and charger) an iPod (I ditched the lumpy for a shuffle), a usb stick or two, and an european plug adapter so I don’t forget when I fly. If only the batteries lasted longer in all these and all adapters were the same for everything. Maybe I’m just getting old?

Anyway, here’s a nice promo spot about the PSP, splendid production. I can’t remember where I found out/who gave me the link.

Search and radio: two unusual bed fellows you would think. Normally you hear blah blah blah.com but today I heard something different. I must admit the ad itself wasn’t great and was overly long on saying that if you have your tyres at the correct pressure you save on emissions because the engine doesn’t work as hard and my eyes have gone cross-eyed.

But at the end of the ad, instead of blah blah blah.com, they said “search the web for act on CO2 for more.” Google’d it and low and behold, that’s the reason why they didn’t give the URL, because it so damn blah blah blah.com. Interesting strategy though and thankfully the media chaps had been properly briefed to make sure the DFT site was top of the pops in the results.

Insightful interview from McKinsey with the SVP marketing of Nokia. You’ll need to register to get the full article but some food for thought, here’s his response to how media is changing Nokia’s marketing efforts.

“The Internet is playing a much more important role than anyone ever imagined. Brands are going to be made and destroyed on the Internet, and there’s a whole set of new marketing rules for it. One cardinal rule is trust and respect. I saw a great metaphor the other day: a picture of a sheep with the fangs of a saber-toothed tiger. That’s a great depiction of marketing on the Internet. If you start playing games with people, they’ll find out and eat you alive. Consumers on the Internet are open to interesting ideas and they want to co-create content with you, but make no mistake: they are in charge.

Marketers have to get used to people shaping our brand meaning via Internet marketing. As an industry we’re still pushing content and we haven’t figured out how to unleash all the creative potential that lies in people talking about our products in exciting new ways. I don’t think banner ads are a total waste of money, but they’re not very effective. Context-relevant communication makes a lot of sense. We’re investing a lot in trying to understand how brands can interact with sites like YouTube and MySpace, plus blogs.”

And approach to consumer insight:

“Our approach is all about putting people at the heart of the way we design and market products: “first we observe, then we design.” We have teams of anthropologists, ethnographers, psychologists, and consumer insight experts observing and understanding people’s behavior. Their insights are used to shape our R&D and design focus.

One thing we’re trying to understand is the unconscious mind and the real reasons people buy things. That’s where the gold dust is. Of course, the products have to be well engineered, and you’ve got to give people rational reasons to buy something. But there are very few consumers out there who buy only based on a rational, linear decision process. Emotional reasons—largely connected to the subconscious—play a critical role. This is especially true for items or objects that are consumed in the public domain. In these situations people don’t buy just for rational reasons.”

And here’s some videos Nokia posted on You Tube of the mobile future:

Source: McKinsey

Marry Jodie Marsh? And have the whole thing captured on the small screen for MTV? The date is already booked for the lucky/insane fella. Wrong, wrong, wrong. On so many levels. Caitlin Moran’s introduction of Jodie marsh to readers of the Times is very amusing though. I just can’t imagine what sort of a chap would want to marry a girl who’s dress sense mainly consists of belts across her ample bosom. Surely that wouldn’t go down too well in the supermarket freezer aisle?

This is just beautiful and I promised to spread the good blog love on this one. I commented on this too on Philippe’s blog (below):

At last, a great snippet that we can use in presentations to get the point across that the times, they are-a-changing. Could have done with these c. 6 months ago with a nascent client who happily signed of £5m ATL spend and then went, “hmmm, we’re gonna face some challenges on that tiny zit of a fee for digital.” Jeeezuuuuuzzzzz!!!!!!!

Enjoy the video “a 200ft declaration of love!”

Links for this post:

bring the love back blog

source & bringer of this piece of wisdom at bad idea, indeed blog (thanks, Philippe)